Dastaan-e-Induction

Two jobs and two induction programs – the second one ending last week, with the difference being almost an year, but the experiences remain similar, despite the locational and organizational differences, and they will remain the same intertemporally too, forever.

To start the farce, the first day begins with an over-enthusiastic HR starting with the company overview, being the first presentation amongst the twenty odd cramped up in the next three days, one for each of the important departments like – housekeeping, kitchen, and administration being the most important ones.

Invariably, the overview presentation begins with the objective slide that will invariably boast of words and phrases like – “globally competitive”, “leadership potential”, “the preferred organization”, blah blah, etc. Invariably the slide will read: “To become a globally competitive organization, being the best in the industry exploiting our vast leadership potential, and strive to become a preferred organization of choice for all the stakeholders and the society at large”. While, I’m still try to figure out what exactly does it mean, I have already decided to use the sentence as the objective of my enterprise, as my boss did invariably when he opened this company, picking up the line from the last induction program that he attended.

What follows the first slide is the second slide, err… an organizational structure for which the over enthusiastic HR will invariably proclaim how ever-changing is it. Invariably the presentation will leave you flabbergasted – you knew more about the company than the HR himself knew. Usually, before or after this, a set of introductions from each of the participants follow, with the introduction pattern modified according to the last poker game he played last night – pass two cards left… err… introduce two on your left. So, invariably invariable!

As expected this is a forum “to get a basic hang of the organization” (as announced in an introduction to the program), and this doesn’t fall short of your expectations as you get to know at least the following:

1.How enthusiastic can the HR be (mind you, he is the only person though), as if by a divine process of transfer of energy, he/she sucks on the depleting energy of the participants. Well, at least that’s what I thought, until I saw his head bobbing from one side to the other, while he continued to smile and appear enthusiastic in his peaceful slumber.

2.The realization turns into shock and the shock into fright before it mutates into a full-fledged distress situation, and sends you scurrying for your CV so that you can apply to another company even before spending a day at office, as with the gradual progress of the presentations you realize that the company is running on sheer luck with the support departments believing that individually they are indispensable, and the core sales function being equally lethargic at the same time.

3.An Induction program is perhaps the best place to learn how to grab the little morsels of importance that are thrown to you once in a year. The whiff of it comes from the fact that every presenter is late, and apologizes at the beginning of the presentation, citing the same reason for an urgent meeting even if the same was with his girlfriend in the adjoining garden, or with his boss to discuss on his lackadaisical attitude and to warn him that he might be fired if he doesn’t stop gazing at the girls on the net during working hours. If this was not enough, it is emphasized by a bloated eagerness to talk, and the enthusiasm diminishes only as the end nears. What makes it certain is the regular exceedance of the allotted presentation time by a minimum 50%, over and above the schedule time (which already included a buffer of 100% over and above the time that the speaker had originally requested for).

4.Well, you also get to refresh all the games that you used to play in the class (tic-tac, etc.), develop new hobbies like writing (Write a poem on that female sitting opposite you or write this blog-post like me), learn new ways of sleeping (with your eyes open, scribbling with a pen, while you’re sound asleep), etc.

Well, that’s the minimum that one can learn. I am sorry that I can’t add more to your set of knowledge, being asleep a major part of the three days, except for the bits and pieces of moments that have been highlighted above.

To cut the long story short, the three days of farce is reduced to a 13 odd presentation affair, with the rest of the presentations lost in the self assumed importance of the speakers who spoke and the one who got so carried away in their mire of those imaginary ‘meetings’, that the failed to turn up. Also, the entire purpose of knowing the company stands defeated now that your future looks as bleak as that of the company, if what they said in the presentations was true enough. This is mentally painful, yes, but physically too you end up losing, in the form of gaining – as you gain another two kilos of weight due to the rich and oily food that you had for the three days in which you just sat, and slept and ate and of which all you remember now is zilch.

P.S: Is that how an induction is supposed to be? I don’t know what to say having gone through the same ordeal twice, but I’m sure of one thing now. People going through the inductions leave the organization faster than the ones those who don’t attend one. What do you say? Please comment. Thanks.

For Kat...

In your large black eyes ebony,
my world lay in the black pearls' depth,
the lovely cheeks thy pink and rosy,
a peck, a touch, trade i'd for death,
thy rosy red lips lovely and soft,
to kiss them only i think as breath i oft,
the wavy black web of your hair,
enchants fragrants as it the air,
the shining pearls of your teeth,
give me peace relieve pain of i seethe,
sweet music's your each word,
you're my love my life and all my world!



--- Vella Viks

Coming from an induction program, through a number of boring presentations. But, beauty reigns (being reminded of Katrina Kaif by a friend, while SMSing from under the table). Hope you like it. Comments welcome :)

Of broken glasses and my life....

A few years back, one of my friends had posed a question that went something like: how do you make an able sighted person and me blind at the same time? The answer was simple as it is today... Take off my glasses and ask the other person to wear them! Such is the condition of my eyesight. However due to the rapid advances of science and optics, that invented the glasses, I never have bothered much about this state. But this Sunday, I was drawn back to this realization when my bulky body comforted on the bed, until … Crash! It brought my relaxation to a screeching halt, and the reality dawned on me that lying atop squarely on them, I had broken my only pair of glasses.

The soothsayers, will jump and tell you that every person like me has an extra pair. Yes, true, I too keep an extra pair, actually two. But they don’t realize that this was the second extra pair that I just broke. But this is nothing new to me.

I have been adept at breaking them since I first wore those eight years back. I could break them during all states of activities – playing, Jogging, talking or when I was just sleeping. Confused? Imagine a fat slob jogging and a beautiful gal passes by. Crash! Or just imagine him talking. All the frustrations are finally taken out on that week old frail pair of manmade eyes. Boom! Or just sleeping with them on, you don’t want to miss that sweet little thing in your dreams, and you just turned and rolled to kiss her. Wham!

So, I have a long tryst with them, an innings wherein I have scored an half century in my own right and still stay unbeaten, taking my standards up a notch at a time, couple of times every two months or so. But time has taught me not to excel only here but also how to feign that you can see all when you can’t even make out Mallika Sherawat from Salman Khan (I know that they both don’t believe in covering the upper part of their torso, though that is where the similarity ends).

It is very easy in the class – just keep scribbling with your pen, nod your head twice every minute and you are done. In the cricket field it is even easier-go out to bat, take a wild swish, thump the bat onto the ground or kill the air with it depending on where the ball went and whether the wicketkeeper is jumping or it is your captain clapping from the sidelines. For detailed classes, rush to your TV now – Indian batting starting in a minute, and Prof. Sehwag is opening. However, for good measure, you can tell all that you are wearing your contacts, and no one will ever cast a shadow of doubt on you. And when you are normally used to colliding with people and things even with your glasses on, people will not expect anything gone amiss.

Though i have been adept at all this, i was nervous as hell, because the optician had shaken his head helplessly before announcing ominously that they can only be repaired in two days, this was the first time that this has happened since I was in Mumbai and also had important meetings lined up with my boss during the same time (Read: Performance appraisal) and I couldn’t afford to miss them but it was risky to go out in the crowded streets of Mumbai, when the world is just a canvas of modern art beyond six inches of your eyes. However, i decided to try, and hoped that i not be killed in that process.

Then for the first time i understood why people loved Mumbai. You go out, stand in the middle of the road and people will push you to the station, you stand at the station and lo behold you are in the train, position your fat self at sixty eight degrees to the gate and you will get down... You want to get into the bus? Nah! Got you here! Lazy boy, you can’t depend on the crowd here – The buses' platforms are raised. Somehow i reached office and for the first time in my life i realized the importance of my learning from the school – tell your colleagues about the new contacts you just bought, but a little change in the strategy – you have to scribble less and nod more to whatever the boss utters. Today finally the one year old project is completed and I think my nods will have managed me a decent rating. Amen!

Using a similar strategy in the morning, I reached home. On the way though I broke a number of thumbs I climbed on, and a little more small nebulous stuff that I kept climbing on, and just escaped being beaten twice in the process, but then nobody cares in Mumbai, stepping on toes and small collisions are normal. Today, I love you my school, I love Mumbai. Today, I think it’s a good idea to feign visibility than to actually wear glasses and see the mess that I am living in. I wonder how many of the zillions here would be doing that daily. But now finally, I got my glasses back and can now again see the objects and people that I'm colliding with!

So, when i reached home i was careful enough to place the pair of my repaired spectacles this time at a safer place – two meters away from the circumference i roll my body in. And, I cursed myself again – right beside the place I kept my glasses; lay my pair of contacts that I had completely forgotten about! Damn!

Do you remember?...

Do you remember the times that we spent together sitting here at this lonely beach, toeing away the sand? Do you remember the sea shells that we picked up from here, looking for that elusive pearl, blowing them away? Do you remember the time we spent gazing at this dawning sun? Do you remember the time; I lay in your lap, blowing on that thin curl that kept on falling on your face? Do you remember how we spread our arms wide here as the drizzle fell on us? Do you remember how we ran when the drops were heavier? Do you remember how we blew handfuls of sand away in this deep blue sea?

Do you remember the vows that we made to each other? Do you remember the poems we rhymed for each other? Do you remember that you were my most precious pearl ever? Or do you remember the promise of staying together till the last sun dawned? Do you remember the time I first kissed you and you ran after me?

I am sure, you remember my love, and that you'll never forget. Today we stand together on this windy beach again, with you in my lap, watching another sun setting, waiting for a drizzle, like the old days. Today we are together again, one final time, as I blow your ashes away in this old deep blue sea...

---VV

This might serve as a good platter of feelings for a poem, but I decided to write what I felt. As usual, all brickbats, comments, et al are welcome :)

Musings... Once again...

Another cog in the wheels of this moving world, another inane page in the already dense blogsphere – is that what this page will remain? Will something change in the third blog that I try to create now, in the last three years, and the first two of them already dead, with only a single post to their name? Will I be able to overcome my ever-prevalent laziness? Well, the answers should unfold with time, as I hope to continue to evade the stares of my boss dancing on my head and add some words to this page!

Amen!

With my boss looking at me with the same fiery eyes that his wife looked at him today morning when he burnt her toast, and broke that expensive piece of cutlery of hers, I too will have to serve a burnt toast as in a stale post – a story that I wrote this weekend. Hope that you find it, well, palatable and bearable. Kindly keep your nudges, comments and dollars (well… I don’t mind) coming in! Adieu for now!


As a child, all I could think of was growing up, and the days the life I will enjoy when I grow up. Today when I am one of the grown-ups, I can’t help but think of my childhood. I can’t help but think of the days when I went to the school, in that old wrecked house, and that one class that we had, that one old teacher, and that small group of even smaller friends.

That was long back, because I never studied beyond the fourth standard. I never went to that dusty house or sat on that dusty floor again, in my entire life, after I turned eight. Those memories might be vague but equally vague are those memories of sitting besides the river, and watch it going down to a faraway land, hoping that one day I will take me to a new land, a land where the sun meets it and shines forever. But besides these vague memories I will always clearly remember the time that I spent with my neighbor, my childhood friend, with whom I climbed all those trees, plucked all those mangoes, and oh, the taste of those half ripen ones, these memories will live with me forever.

As there are good memories, there are not so good ones too, the ones of my father torturing my mother, and beating me up whenever I was around, or as soon as he saw me. The helpless pain of my heart when my neighbor was sent away to the city to work and fend for his parents, that twinge will remain forever. Also, cant be forgotten are those memories of the village weddings, when looking at every girl only fuelled my desires to dress like them, to decorate myself like them, while retracting in the shell of my wishful dreams, and brought to the present, in the single torn piece of cloth that I had.

And then I was married, but there were no decorations, an ominous sign of the hell to come. For the next four years, I lived my mother’s life, burning my hands, beaten day in and day out, ravaging my body every moment, and praying to heal it. In the four years, I was dead, my dreams were dead.

But, this morning, I am happy. My dreams are alive again, the dreams that I left four years back in the small dusty village of Badlapur, the wishes that the river Yamuna carried with them to a new world, the starry hopes that my neighbor took with him to the city. Today, I am happy for my tomorrow, when I will never have to burn my hands, and I will never be beaten again, and I will never have to pray to that insensitive non-existent being called God. Today, I am happy for today. I am finally dressed and decorated today, as I always dreamt and wished for. Today, I am indifferent that my forty year old husband breathed his last. But, alas! I will be sati at seventeen!

--- V Viks