A bright-eyed septuagenarian in a world that doesn't make sense

"We'll buy something from him on our way back", Ma said as we got off the cable car to reach the far bank of the Narmada at Bheraghat. In my rush to see the magnificent river and take the mandatory 'selfie', I completely missed seeing the seller she was talking about.

The Narmada is awe-inspiring and yet, in a way that only water can be, inviting. Led by my sister we picked our way through the semi-rocky path to find a relatively quiet spot with convenient rocks to sit on. As we were getting ready to settle down and dip our feet in the water, a good Samaritan accompanying his family to see the same sights cautioned us against stepping into the fast-flowing river. I smiled at him and proceeded to do what we had come to do aka sit on a rock and dangle our feet in the water. Soon after, when I saw that he was the only one in his large family keeping safely out of the water, I figured he was used to people ignoring his well-meant advice ;)

This was the later part of November and Jabalpur (in the state of Madhya Pradesh), where Bheraghat is located, was experiencing a warm 28C.

The Bheraghat falls on the Narmada.
Photo credit: My family

Our chosen spot was across the river from the main 'ghat' and could only be accessed by a cable car, which was (strangely enough) run by a company from Kolkata. Thanks to the additional cable car fee, a lot of the local people typically visit only the main ghat. So, from the far shore one can get a birds-eye view of the great Indian male clad in underwear taking dips in the river without a care in the world (if you have travelled to any popular water body in India, you will know exactly what this looks like). The women, of course, take their dips fully clothed!

We finally had to drag ourselves away from the beautiful waters of the Narmada to make the five-hour drive ahead of us. As we walked back up the path to the cable car, Ma stopped at a ramshackle stall where a scrawny septuagenarian artisan was carving handicrafts from the famed marble of the region. We had bought a similar batch the last evening from a lady on the main ghat but Ma and I knew we had to get something from him. So, we bought another batch, paying him the prices he quoted, even as I struggled to understand how a lovely hand-carved marble flower or turtle could be worth only INR 20 (less than 30 cents in American money)*. Right next to him was a man selling cucumbers and guavas and I asked the artisan if he would like something to eat. He refused, smiling at me toothlessly with the brightest eyes I have seen in a while.

And as I did that day right after he smiled at me and do today, as I write this from the heated comfort of my home in a first world country, I can't stop the tears streaming down my face. Tears that stem from the unfairness of it all -- from the under 30 US cent-value placed on a hand-carved piece of work compared to the shiny plastic trinkets that sell in American stores for much more than a few dollars. It's just one of those times when the world and its ways don't make sense to me.

*Side note: If you read this and ever travel in India, and can veer from the beaten track, go buy your trinkets from the artisans instead of the metro-centric 'ethnic' stores that share very little of their takings with the artisans themselves. Also, I encourage you to ignore the guidebooks that tell you that bargaining is part of the fun of the Indian experience. Do not bargain with artisans. Most of them, especially outside the metro cities, are likely never even going to make it into the lower middle class. 

The bards of the Narmada

"They aren't reciting poetry. On my last ride, they did, all through the ride", said my sister as our boat meandered down the Narmada through the marble canyons of Bheraghat.

And of course, as soon as she finished saying it, the guide began to recite poetry a.k.a narrate the myths of the mighty Narmada. As we sat tightly packed in a boat with about 20 other tourists, the scrawny man with a booming voice and great sense of rhyme, shared stories and historical facts about the river and its canyons. As happens with most film shoot locales, a good number of the facts involved items from various Bollywood movies including from the Shahrukh Khan-Kareena Kapoor starrer Ashoka.

In silhouette: Our bard against his Narmada

While the vista was awe-inspiring and our co-tourists a treat, the most interesting part of the tour to me was the guide. As his two colleagues pulled mightily to steer our well-laden boat into the canyons and back, he told us about how the floods raise the river high enough to cover a good portion of the rocks walls. When the water recedes, it leaves a portion discoloured, creating a marked two-tone rock face.

This and other facts helped add more colour to our 45-minute ride into the canyons and back. As we paid our fares and added a tip for the guide, he thanked us profusely, neither having asked nor expected one. And that made me think about the cruises I have taken time and again in the U.S. where even a short commentary is followed by a request for tips. Before we stepped out of the boat, I asked the guide how many years he had been doing this work and he said he started as a child, so for about 15-odd years. "It is a family heritage", he said. "My dad did this work and so do I." "And what about your kids, if you have any?" They go to school, he said. "I didn't go to school but I am making sure they do."

Will educated children mean that our guide's future generations will cease to be the bards of the Narmada?Maybe. But I won't romanticize poverty. Instead I will hope that education will give our poet-guide's children access to a life with more opportunities. And maybe this bard's children will 'startup' an organization that gives the bards a higher quality of life and our future generations continued access to the poetry of the Narmada.

The scourge of the distracted

I had talked a couple of blog posts ago about my tendency to chase rainbows. That sounds poetic and quaint and brings to mind pastel images.

In reality, it can be more like a pulsating strobe light that emits very different, violent colours and ends up tiring you. I know because I chase rainbows every single day, at work and at home. How many do I catch? I am not really sure.

Recently, I have been trying to ask myself the question -- what do I want to be. I have advised many people to ask themselves that question and answer it as honestly as possible, after deep thought. I have, however, not followed my own advice in this regard. I dither as I try to push my brain to take that next step. Or maybe I see a rainbow that needs to be chased just as my brain tries to focus on the task at hand.

I know I want to succeed and my hierarchical culture tells me that success comes from designations at work. On the other hand, my own instinct is to do the best job possible and shy away from touting my own achievements. As I culture and personality clashes, the rainbows appear. I get attracted to the many role models I could follow, the myriad paths I could take and the many causes I could espouse. Which one or ones, should be mine? And this attraction causes instability and distractions that stop me from doing my best at the tasks at hand.

As my husband put it the other day, "you admire and envy successful people you know, don't you? Stop and look at all that you have to be happy about". I know he's spot on because it's just another version of my deep inner voice that deserves to be listened to. And I know I have to do something before imagined defeats and feelings of being left behind drown out the shine of my opportunities at work.

May be challenging myself to give my best to everything I do is the only way to be, at least for me. May be, the designations will have to figure themselves out without any help from me, for the time being at least.

And that involves hunkering down, setting my priorities right and then getting the job done, creatively and effectively. May be if I start with "I will focus on what I am working on right now (since I do have really cool projects at work)", I will then be able to take the next step of "here are the things I enjoy and want to do more of and here are the ones I want to drop". That seems like a recipe that should work for me.

Maybe that is what I will do. I will pick my 'blue chip' rainbows. Others, flit away. I owe it to myself (and my happiness) and those I love not to chase each one of you.

Motherhood and its gifts

No, I am not a mother to another human being yet. And the only time I have been closest to experiencing this state of being was while taking care of mowgli, our family's short-lived experience with a pet when I was still a pre-teen.

Anyway, that's not what I wanted to blog about. As my husband and I contemplate parenthood, as is often the case when you are considering something, instances of motherhood seem to pop up more often in front of me.

On the flight back from my last work trip, I was sitting next to a mother and her 6 or 7-year old son. I offered to give up my window seat so that the little boy could look out but the mother smilingly refused (much to the son's chagrin). As the one-hour long flight progressed, the son chattered non-stop about the little he could see out of the window and his mother paid close attention. She answered every question he asked and responded to each comment he made. And then both of them worked through a puzzle in his puzzle book together. She didn't do the puzzle for him but instead they took turns. It was a very interesting experience for me in a world populated by kids and parents occupied with their own individual 'devices'. Not only did the son have a paper puzzle book, they were actually sharing a pencil to work on their puzzle!

But more importantly, I enjoyed seeing how much they were enjoying each other. I am pretty sure there are instances when the little boy manages to drive his mother crazy (and vice versa) but on that plane journey, she was clearly enjoying him and he, her. And for their co-passenger, it was a beautiful thing to watch.

During that same work trip, something a colleague told me, also made a huge impression. A young mother of three, she is a very creative and efficient professional and with seriously amazing visual skills. When I asked her how she managed to get everyone ready in the morning before she came to work, she said that her kids were old enough to dress themselves. So, I asked how old her youngest was and her answer? Three. You have a 3-year old who dresses himself? I am sure a huge share of that credit goes to you!

She smiled and said that she had once heard a colleague talk about feeling really bad when she had to travel for work, because her son, who was a lot older than three, was unable to get ready for school on his own. At that point, my colleague resolved that she would raise her kids differently. They would know how to do things on their own, even if that took a little while longer initially. That just makes everything so much easier for everyone at home, she said. As she said this, images of whiny, dependent (sometimes obnoxious) children in many Indian 'malls' followed around by their doting parents, flashed in front of me.

I couldn't be happier to witness these beautiful exceptions that make me a little more open to the idea of motherhood. And not surprisingly, they remind me of the choices my parents made when they trusted my sister and I (both under-10) to take our first plane journey on our own. The memory of the air hostess telling us that the boarding cards were tickets for our dolls, makes me smile and thank my parents for their choices.

Independence and trust are probably the toughest gifts for a parent to give and my sister and I are lucky -- our parents gave and continue to give both freely.

2015, here I come before you go away

Back again. Let's see how long this round lasts but I have a hunch it might be a little longer, maybe as long as Blogger lasts? We'll see.

Anyway, as I like to do yet get to do very little, here goes a stream of consciousness.

I am feeling very beaten-down right now. Before I go down that path, however, I will be the first to acknowledge that I have a lot to be grateful for, in life. Be it a great family, a wonderful home or a good employer that challenges me and simultaneously allows me the time to explore my ideas and interests. I even signed up to volunteer so that I could develop my communication and social media skills more than my internal communications job might allow. So, why do I feel defeated?

And the answer, as first-world as it may seem, is that I don't think I get the recognition I deserve at work. Is it because I occupy the margins--I am brown in a white-skinned world? No, that can't be true. I do diversity communications and I 'know' big companies don't operate like that. Is it because I am not based in a 'central' location for the company and don't have the ability to pop into bosses' offices? Could be, but I don't want to believe that. Surely the quality of my work overcomes the need to make sure the big bosses remember what I look like.

Or is it something else? Since I just came out of a two-day culture workshop that my company flew me out for, I am going to believe that the reason lies elsewhere. Maybe it lies with me, in my inability to 'sell' myself hard enough because I am not sure I have the right proof points.

Let me explain.

As I learned during that same workshop, I am an analyzer. I trust data and base my decisions on data. While that doesn't sound so bad on the surface (I mean the rest of the data-crazy world can't be wrong, correct?), I am a relative anomaly in the world of internal communications. While some of us are stepping off the beaten path, traditionally, a lot of internal communications practitioners have been firm believers in 'give them the content and they will come'.

Umm, no, it doesn't work that way, screams my 'analytical' brain.

Sending out an email on behalf of a leader or posting a blog entry DOES NOT mean the audience has received the message. As media planners have done in advertising and marketing for eons, you have to know where that message landed, whom it reached and try to understand, who (if anybody) did what you had asked them to do. Only then will you have some understanding of whether or not you achieved what you had started out to do.

But it's also wise to know that measurement is only one element of your communications plan. And depending on what tools you have, measurement will give you a limited amount of information and therefore, limited understanding of your audience. So, what do you do?

Well, I think, you still measure. Use that measurement as your first listening outpost. Then you talk to your leaders and members of your audience. You work hard to find out who your audience is, maybe build personas. And then you build a communications plan with multiple channels to try and get the leader's message to those different personas.

Ok, you say, but other than the persona bit, what is new? Internal communications has always used multiple channels. Yes, we have but have we been able to tell you much about what the impact of those channels is? Whether an email sent at 2pm has a different readership compared to one sent at 8am, so you should pick one time slot over the other. Have we been able to tell you if your blog title made a difference to your readership? No, and well, it's internal right? Nobody's buying our product based on internal communications, so why does it matter. And you are right, sometimes it doesn't matter.

But at other times, it does. It matters when your engagement scores dip and you are not delivering the best you can to your customers. It matters when you don't really know how to tackle the morale issues that seem to abound in your company. I think a little understanding courtesy measurement would help at that point. Because, that understanding will help break your 'mass of employees' down into understandable types. While people are more complex than a 'type' or a readership score, getting a glimpse of that type and a hold of that score would be a start. It might help you decide which of your multiple channels could help you reach that person who sits a million miles away and is culturally a complete mystery to you. Or so it seems to me!

Anyway, trying to rein in the rambling here. So, why am I feeling 'unrecognized'. I think the answer lies in my rambling. Because understanding is so important to me, I often chase rainbows. While they are sparkly and understanding the font of colours at the ends might be really cool, I do need to focus on the rainbows I absolutely must understand. To do that, I have to force myself to hone in on what's most important to my employer and how I can use my skills to address those needs.

And outside of work, I have to hone in on what's most important to me in life. And maybe, once I have both of those things figured out, I will be able to truly understand what I need to do to be recognized the way I think I should be.