The ‘walkout team’ or rather the ‘walkout group’ has been sending negative mails and messages full of abuses. So much of venom in their hearts and minds. I wonder how they faked for so long that they were working as a team and for the company. All they were doing was ‘hating me’ and GC. It appears now that they were being tortured in GC and me (me being next to ‘Hitler’ maybe). Then why were they lying and hanging on? Why were they writing good stuff in their blogs? Why did they not leave earlier? There was no written bond. There were no certificates withheld. So much of poison in the office. And I could not detect the dis-respect, the hatred in their hearts and minds. It is strange. But now, I am glad that the poison has burst and flown out. That at least for now, the office is clean. And God help the companies that they now join. A snake will remain a snake. People do not change from within. This is what I have learnt from this experience.

Ashok, who had also left the software project midway is keen on re-trying. Trusting again is a difficult proposition. But at least he had left with no rancour, no maliciousness, no acid in his heart. Perhaps he felt incapable of taking on the task. But he never maligned GC or me and that is a positive sign. So we will see. Maybe we will take a chance again.

Appu was very upset yesterday. All this affects her a lot. A lot of my feelings have died. Many parts of me are already dead so maybe I do not feel the pain so much. but she is as yet, fully human and fully alive and it affects her. All that is happening in GC and in the house. She has her dance performance coming up and I hope she is able to do well regardless of what is happening around her.

The interviews are over and I think we have a small team in place. Let us see how we can move forward. For once we are unarmed and have no idea what works anymore. Freedom or discipline. Control or the lack of it. Faith or mis-trust. So we will need to take it one day at a time. Face the ball as it comes.But we will definitely ensure that GC is not vulnerable to further damage.

Another vicious chapter has been closed for GC. I hope it is a new phase for our growth and learning.
May this Diwali be another homecoming for us.

To ourselves.

The office was not opened till 10:00 am this morning. The guard had taken a half day leave and the keys were handed over to the housekeeping peon who works in the evening shift. He came to the office with the keys and did not know how to use them to open the glass door. Ajay, the manager (who should have managed) the crisis reached office only at 10: 15am. I was frantically making calls to the office after 9:00 am and nobody was picking up the phone. I had even called Ajay yesterday, i.e on a sunday to remind him that there could be a problem in the morning as the guard had taken off. I was assured that everything was under control. I was upset by the time Ajay reached office and I told him that with a senior profile like his, he should have taken more responsibility. That with a ‘manager’ on board, I could do without the tension of checking whether (and how) the office had been opened on time. bas ho gaya. The fragile male ego got punctured.

And then it was the worst possible show of all the male egos getting together to stage a walk out and quote, unquote ‘teach me a lesson’. At least, in this area, I have already learnt my lessons, guys. I can live alone, work alone and stand alone. It is OK. This is not the first time it has happened. They did not call me, inform me or say their goodbyes. The office became a picnic spot. They picked up their bags and left. Quite a manly thing to do, I must say. Just walk away. The ‘walk out guys’ have also enrolled Dimpi in their mission. She also refused to take my calls and most probably will not come back after her holiday. She was also not ‘woman’enough to talk to me. I am the ‘villain’ again. Bahut aadmiyon ke saath kaam kiya. Aadmi koi bhi nahin mila ( worked with a lot of men, did not find even one man amongst them). ek bhi nahin. Not even one with any balls.

The following have walked away unceremoniously from our office today : Anand Singh Rawat, Ajay Kumar Bhatia, Dimpi Nayak, Kamakhya Puri Kushwaha. Narendra Kumar Das had also left after reacting very badly on a trivial issue. I did not mention it earlier as I wanted a peaceful closure. I wish we could put them on a blacklist so that they do not cause harm to another company. But I guess that will have to wait. There are other more pressing and urgent issues to be handled here.

Ajay had worked earlier in an office automation office as an admin executive. I think the promotion to the level of a manager in an IT company was a heady cocktail of of ‘power and control’. jhel nahin paya. Same with Anand. Both were new entries to the IT sector. And could not deal with the freedom along with the responsibilities and of course ‘my gender’. I do not know about Kamakhya and Dimpi. maybe it was pre-planned. They were just waiting for the right moment (just after the salaries were dispersed). How opportunistic is that?

We have begun the process of taking interviews. Just that the training in the applications of aviation will have to be done again. The collective energy will have to be channelized again. par achha hai. A complete clean-up is good to build a better and stronger building. A complete virus scan so to say. No remnants of any virus strains. I think over the months there was this smugness in the technical team that they had learnt all that was required. That they were the best. And this ‘smugness’ was harming us. It was stopping us from learning and growing. So it is nice that we can start from a fresh and clean slate again with no skeletons in to bury. Sometimes relationships which are meant to end just end. And it is for the larger good of all concerned. Its just the way they are ended that makes it messy. And painful.

We will go forward. We will fight the remaining battle. As always. Even if the ‘we’ includes just ‘me and God’ as of now.

I do have one request for my HP. Give me the same brain, the same feelings, the same problems maybe but in case I need to re-visit the earth, please do not make me a ‘woman’.

Repeat:

‘Please do not make me a woman’.

Dimpi, Bhagat and Narendra have taken on the responsibility of shaping up the online shop before August 8, 2011, the launch date freezed for the shop. We have requested Paul and Adam to check the working of the paypal account since it is showing an error. We tried buying one of our own maps and the transaction did not get completed. The money transaction is important. At the end of the day. It is the only measure by which success is measured in the outside world.

I think I am done with the corporate world. Even without making loads of money. The whole process is quite meaningless (But I think I am saying that today because the office rent can be paid). Its amazing how philosophical words can be understood once the basics are in place.

I have placed a small tulsi plant on my table. Just some way of connecting with HP. The bird who has built a nest in one of the trees in our courtyard is very protective of her babies. The eggs have hatched and I was just trying to peep into the nest today to take a look and the bird flew around my head making a loud sound. I got the message and retreated.I was just thinking that, when even the birds are so protective of their children, how is it that my mother could just abandon me. Never got any answer to that. And I guess I never will.

Ashok is planning to finish the first basic distance module by friday. Bhagat and Balram have also defined their deadlines. Dimpi and Narendra will work on the interface. So far so good. We are all trying. ‘Trying sound good’. But it is never good enough for this world. After all we have been trying for several years now. It never worked in the outside world. The bankers said they only understand money. The landlord said that he only understands rent.
So we have to do better than trying. We have to do the ‘best’ in whatever it is that we choose to do.

Need to lessen the noise around me. It is so easy to create a lot of noise and hide one’s true self behind it. Hide our true feelings, intentions and soul. The noise becomes a cover up for the real ‘us’. And with time the real ‘us’ is lost. Only the ‘cover up’ remains.

And the ‘cover up’ covers us up completely.

The visiting cards with the new swanky design are being processed. And it is being discussed that the entire lunch will be prepared in the office as we have a larger pantry now and it is also away from the technical section, hence the noise and fumes will not afffect the equipment and PC’s. So it is that all the  containers with dals and spices have been packed into a carton with a pressure cooker, ‘kadahi’ and ‘thali’( wonder what is next?). Of course as of now it is going from the house so I will need to replace everything in the house (tough job). So now we will be a company providing freshly cooked lunch, in-house to its team members. Nice. Very nice. Unless of course the burden of buying rations for the office kitchen falls on me ( buying for the house is enough of a job).

Shiva handled the contractors in the office today and I am very grateful for that. They are quite a handful to handle. Always trying to do a shoddy job to save money (that too peanuts). I wish we could as a country, focus more on ‘the creation of wealth’ than on ‘saving peanuts’. And doing that by executing a damn good job than just trying to cut corners and saving pennies by delivering sub-standard outputs (this sentence is really too long).

Me and Appu have been discussing the setting up of a fund for ‘women enterpreneurs’ at some stage. I thought of it when I was making the rounds of various banks and it took me three years to just start this unit. Specially for women ‘with no apparent men’ (husbands,fathers,brothers) in their lives. It takes an eternity to kickstart anything for women in general but for ‘women with no men’ in their lives, it is a task next to impossible.

Somebody ( a man) had asked me once ‘teri aukat kya hai’? Frankly, I do not know. I just know that I am trying to be self sufficient and self supporting and it has taken all my energy to do that. If ‘aukat’ is a measure of the amount of property and family support one has, then I have none. But if it is a measure of the ‘efforts’ put in to build a clean and decent life, I have loads of it. So I guess it depends on what the measurement scale is. I felt very hurt and humiliated then. But now I understand that ‘reference frames’ can be different. Just like Newtons’ laws apply to only Newtonian frames, the measurement of ‘aukat’ would only be valid for people living in a world where ‘money and property’ is everything.

Feeling the feelings. Quite a luxury.

The turnover of the company should look good ( number crunching exercise with some manipulations thrown in for greater effect). Sometimes it can backfire like in the case of Satyam guys. I guess they went overboard with the manipulation. The turnovers were all fake. But they were real for a number of years. The common man believed them. The banks believed them. They looked good you see.

Similarly, in our lives, we just fake everything, our feelings , emotions, relationships just to look good. ‘Feeling good’ is secondary. ‘Looking good’ is the ‘be all and end all’. Our family may be dysfunctional but its not OK to talk about it. There may be abuse of all kinds in the family but the message always is, push it under the carpet. If there is alcoholism or some other addiction in the family, don’t ever talk about it. In fact assume that it does not exist. Just ‘act’ normal.

How much damage this ‘looking good’ business causes.

But maybe ‘feeling good’ may mean letting secrets out, showing the real me, standing in the sunlight just as I am with all my faults and foibles and that would be scary man. Very scary. What if everyone rejected me?

So hiding is next best option. Act as if. Act as if evertything is OK. Act as if there is nothing wrong. And do this for a generation till it becomes a false reality for the next generation and the cycle of ‘acting good’, abuse, addiction continues over the next few generations till someone decides not to look good.

The choices we make are never easy. But I guess for me today ‘feeling good is definitely more important’.

Whatever the cost may be. Anyway, there is nothing more to lose.

‘All is quiet on the western front’

My mother was always worried about the bottomline, the roof over our head, the money inflow, the bills, the marriage of her daughters, the fixed deposits, the running of the house, the quality of the food, the appearance, the looking good part. And she was an efficient housekeeper. The stuff she was in charge of was always managed well. Except that there was no emotional content to it. It was all done clinically. As a matter of fact. The ‘feelings’ did not matter. Maybe she had buried hers a long time ago. (Sometimes I wonder, if I am becoming like her, that thought itself is very scary)

And my father would always talk of the topline,the ideal way life should be lived, in simplicity and honesty. He would speak of truth, of justice and love. He loved books and he would always surround himself with them, specially when my mother pottered around the house creating a lot of noise. And she would say that he was a very impractical man. He had no idea how to live life. My father was very good in discussions, in understanding the various angles and layers of relationships. He would understand and explain but if he needed to do anything to change the existing equilibrium, he would promptly back out. He never took a stand for or against anything. For him, education was equivalent to acceptance and tolerance.

Somehow, this never made sense to me. How could tolerating injustice be a proof of concept for being educated?

So it was that we were always swinging like a pendulum between the bottomline and the topline, the earth and the sky and never really found our feet. It was good to talk and exchange views with my father but if one needed money or food or a commitment, one always went to mother and to this day this is how it is.

My father is a good man(good old soul) but my mother is the one who controls the family and makes (or does not make) things happen( so it is that I have been ostracized from the family according to her wishes).

And I guess in the company today, we are struggling to achieve the bottomline but constantly trying to move in the direction of our topline which is to generate revenues by the creation of intellectual property and not be the ‘labor class’ in GIS.

We got the small mining project ( some oxygen and challenging work)
We should be able to pay the rent in two days( the eviction notice is dangling over our heads sweethearts)

Ok.So far so good.
Once again, stay the course.