Here we go again

On the way to work, I was listening to one of those mindless RJ chatters on radio. The RJ was introducing a work by Shishir Kunder, a Bollywood director/producer. Then added with venom coursing through the sentence ‘of course Shishir’s only claim to fame is being Farah Khan’s husband’. You could almost feel the smirk on the RJ’s face.

A smirk which would have disappeared fast had I been able to grab her through the radio waves and give her a tight slap.

I just don’t get it. What is wrong if the wife is more famous/successful than the husband? Somehow, it is acceptable for the man to be the more successful partner. It is assumed that the wife will be content with consolation-prize statements like ‘behind every successful man is a woman’. Turn the tables, and everyone, including women, is laughing at the man.

Does that mean that men will inherently have to marry someone dumber than they are so that they are not outshined?

Does that mean that women will have to marry someone smarter, with better education and more career prospects, so that they don’t outshine their partner?

And despite all this careful planning, if the woman ends up more successful than her partner, then is their marriage doomed to failure?

If a female RJ in a city like Mumbai, who caters to a huge urban population, can come up with these statements, then it shows a dim possibility of us moving to a more equitable society.

On the other hand, it is always possible that RJ may just have been desperately trying to get a few laughs in her not-so-funny chatter by throwing in some stale jokes.

The culture of fear

When the first news of the bomb blasts at Opera House, Dadar and Zaveri Bazaar hit, I faintly remember having a feeling of déjà vu. I had already gone through the motions before – of staying at home, checking where immediate family was and asking them to come home, of answering SMSes and calls from family and friends checking to see if we were OK.

It is now, much later that the impact of the blast is slowly beginning to sink in. I went to a mall to catch a movie on Saturday and took a long time to enter parking. As I was waiting for my turn at the vehicle security check, I noticed that the boot of the slightly dilapidated looking vehicle in front of me was wedged tight and the security guy was struggling to open it. For a second, I visualized the boot blowing up and releasing flames filmi-style. Of course, life continued in its ordinary course.

Or maybe I should not say ‘of course’. I should say ‘luckily’

And I absolutely hate to think that I have to say ‘luckily’.

We live in peaceful times. In a country that has no civil war going on. And which has its border fights, but nothing that threatens to turn into WWIII or even a regional war.

Yet, why do we have to live in such fear?

It seems very normal now for malls to be frisking each person and checking each bag. It seems common to walk past detectors all the time. What was confined to airports once upon a time, is now a part of daily life. It is accepted that we will go through elaborate motions of security.

For what?

The blasts have laid open the fact it is not these motions that we go through that protects its citizens. It is a whole lot more. From the press that has been going on, it is clear that the elaborate infrastructure arrangements which were promised to Mumbai in the aftermath of 26/11 never came to pass. The elite force that was created for the city’s protection, cannot be called elite given the treatment they have been given. And finally, the whole intelligence set-up apparently still cannot catch possible security targets.

Yet, we have the powers-that-be rushing to the scene (buffeted on both sides by plenty of security cars) and looking properly grim and giving the same assurances. Do they even mean what they say? Do they even care that the ordinary Mumbai citizen now walks around with fear clutching his heart?

It is a really sad state of affairs.

And I, Mumbai citizen, am very very angry.

What the @#&*

Anyone watching any English channel regularly must be familiar with the censorship of ‘bad’ words that go on. The English subtitles provided in the channels all miraculously swallow up words like ‘fuck’ or replace ‘crap’ with ‘shit’ (or maybe it is the other way around).

I am most amused by this editing. Who is supposed to benefit from this I wonder?

Clearly it can’t be for kids. I certainly hope not considering some of the serials subject to this include ‘Dexter’ – a gripping tale about a serial killer who kills other serial killers. Which kid is watching this! Or for that matter which kid is watching the cynical ‘Family Guy’ or ‘How I met your Mother’ where the lead characters deal with relationship issues and one of the characters lives largely for sex.

On the other hand, surely we adults don’t need the policing.

Most times it is amusing. Like when ‘sex’ is replaced by ‘love’ in sentences like ‘It is just about sex, isn’t it?’ As you can well imagine, the whole context of the scene changes when you do the substitution.

Sometimes, it is plain annoying. Try watching a Guy Ritchie movie where the volume dips everytime an obscenity is used and your head will spin from the rapid changes in volume.

Of course, like everything else in our country that defies logic, after all this careful policing, we have five year olds singing the hit number ‘Bhaag DK Bose’.

Makes you go 'What the @#&* ' ?

Can we kill Chivalry now?

There are three or four of us in the lift – me and three men.

The lift races down. We stand in the polite silence.

We reach the ground floor.

Suddenly the Chivalry Tango begins.

The three men try to press themselves to one side of the lift to let me out first.

I have tried standing in the furtherest corner of the lift, behind someone, and still they do the Tango.

Everytime I feel like yelling ‘but will you just stop now’

Back in the days of yore, when women were considered delicate creatures with inexplicable female problems, a code seems to have been defined on how to treat women. This included opening doors for them and laying out coats in puddles so they did not wet their flowing dresses or their expensive shoes.

In today’s day and age is it still relevant?

I think not.

Women have come a long way. We work in equal opportunity jobs, we have incomes, we plan vacations, buy properties, open bank accounts and do pretty much everything that men can do.

So why this pretence at treating us like China dolls?

It is not logical and if anything, a bit presumptuous and sometimes, patronizing.

I can open my car door myself thank you. Infact since I may be driving, I would rather that you were belted up in the passenger seat.

I don’t know if this persists because of some sort of age old code that men pass on to each other about treating women well. I do know that it also persists because sometimes women themselves like to be ‘treated like a lady’

I just hope they remember that once upon a time being ‘treated like a lady’ meant not having the vote.

Taking away the chivalry code is bound to leave a vacuum in appropriate social behavior. Why not replace it with a new rule, one in which we agree to treat everyone with some kindness and a little bit of understanding?

Can we all open doors for arthritic, old men who suffer the indignity of fiddling with tricky knobs?

Can we let a young father managing a toddler and carry-on bags ahead in the airplane boarding queue?

Can we give up our bus seat for a college going boy with a plaster cast?

In all the above situations, substitute a woman, and it is still kindness and understanding, not chivalry.

So, can we kill chivalry now?

Getting to the top

Yesterday, there was news about a proposed revision in the new Companies Bill which states that in case of any board having 5 or more independent directors, atleast one director should be a woman.

This was dolled out on Women’s Day as spectacular progress in the march towards male-female equality.

Frankly I am all for quotas. I appreciate the fact that certain sections of the society just don’t have the same kind of access and privileges that other parts of the society has on account of legacy issues that have existed for centuries. I am quite ok with college seats reserved for backward communities. I am ok with panchayat seats reserved for women. I am also ok with women progressively getting higher representation in the parliament (The way politics works in our country, it is not like there are too many well qualified, honest, deserving male politicians who will be replaced by female novices).

However, in this case it is a whole new ball game. Will this reservation actually achieve much?

Which brings me to the question, what do independent directors actually do? I remember reading the annual report of an Indian airline company a few years ago. It listed movie luminaries among its independent directors. I nearly fell off my chair wondering exactly how they contributed to the running of an airline. Sure, they were brilliant in their own fields, but seriously!

If they really don’t do much, then perhaps this would amount to mere tokenism. And that won’t do us much good.

If, hypothetically, the quota were extended to actual executive board members, then would it still make much sense?

An entry level job is a fairly equal opportunity role. At that level, it does not matter if a slightly less qualified person gets the job.

On the other hand, an executive role in the board is a job that requires someone who has experience and exposure. Unfortunately, even with the best of intentions it will be difficult for a company to work with an executive board, some of whose members may not really yet be ready for the job. We simply don’t have enough women to go around today.

More women at the top level is not a problem that can be solved overnight by legislation. It is a long term issue that requires recognition of the fact that women are intelligent and capable; however they need support to get to the top. The support is needed on account of the simple fact that we live in a world that is biased and tuned towards men.

The good news is women in my generation and the following ones are already making strides. More women are passing out of colleges. More women are entering the workforce. So perhaps it is not that women are losing out by not entering the race at all. It is more what happens during the course of a working career.

In the last ten years of working, I have noticed that women are the ones who are considered as the primary stakeholders in bringing up kids and running a home. Legislation cannot change society’s attitudes in one day, but legislation can certainly help.

Especially during the crucial child bearing years when a lot of women drop out from too little support at home and too much pressure at work. Not to mention the usual overwhelming male work culture that treats women who attend PTAs or stay home to look after a sick child as corporate world's greatest evil.

Effective child support systems, especially by offices themselves would help. Flexible hours, part time work and work-from-home would help. Sure a couple of years will be lost from handling too little responsibility but atleast women are still in the race.

A bit more radically - maybe legislation to start changing men’s roles in society could help. If men were given three months childcare leave, same as women, then perhaps they would be more engaged at home as well? (Am assuming at some point enough men will take up the offer to ensure that is not odd that men take time off to look after their own kids)

Will these change the ratio at the top? I can’t see so far into the future where there will be more women than men at the top but I can atleast see a reasonable dent being made in the balance.

Dumb and dumber

Progessing (albeit rather slowly) through D’s Alfred Hitchcock collection, I began to get perspective on how female characters are treated in Hitchcock’s movies. The last two I saw were ‘Birds’ and ‘The problem with Harry’. In both cases the women are not simpering fools who sit by the sidelines waiting to be rescued. Infact, they act like how normal human beings, who are a bit enterprising and sometimes clever, would act. In one, the heroine chases the male lead to a small town and acts rather brave when things begin to happen. In the other, both the female leads keep their heads in a sticky situation and take an active role in shaping their love lives.

Compare this to the last Tamil movie I saw and I feel like hanging my head in shame. ‘Robot’ was a movie that was wrong at various levels but one of the points that irked me was the absolute stupidity of the heroine. The narrative starts off by establishing that she is a doctor. You delude yourself into believing that atleast this time, unlike in Shankar’s last movie ‘Sivaji the Boss’, the heroine may display more I.Q. than a piece of wood. Alas! That is not to be. Within ten minutes, she goes on to prove that she is a brainless twit and has no spunk whatsoever. The rest of the movie continues along those lines.

I am not sure if it is just our directors who think women are stupid or if it is the audience which expects women to be stupid in the movies and hence directors are forced to write such roles? Why can’t we have a baseline intelligence level for women in our movies?

Or perhaps it is just an extension of the fact that our male characters are not particularly smart themselves. (Look at the scientist character in 'Robot'. He spends a goodish amount trying to teach a robot 'feelings' and then suggests the plan of the heroine seducing (!!) a robot).

Given the average Indian male loves his dream girl to be slightly dumber than him, this really does not leave much room for women to appear intelligent as well, does it?

P.S. This issue has been irking me for a while. I thought of gathering more examples of Hollywood vs Kollywood portrayal of women but figured out it would become an academic exercise meant for well-researched publications. Besides, I would have never gotten around to completing the post ever then.

Being woman

Here is a very good video that echoes a lot of my views and gave me new perspective on being a woman and having a career.

Sheryl Sandberg, COO of Facebook on why we have only a few women in corporate world..and what can be done at an individual level to correct it.

Turning 21

Recently a cousin turned 21. As I began to write her a greeting that sounded sensible without being aunt-ji type advice (and I must say I did not do quite well) I began to think about what things were like when I turned 21.

Obviously I had no clue that life would change within a few years when my academic life ended and worklife started, when I began to live in a home of my own instead of the supervised environs of parental home and hostels and when everyone around me began to test what serious relationships were like. In retrospect, my early 20s was probably the time I actually discovered the ‘real world’.

The change from school to work was the most traumatic one I must have had. In my final years at school, I regularly got good grades. Work was a whole different world.

I could understand that some people were brighter than me and did better at work than me. I was at a loss to explain how some people with obviously lesser intelligence than me shone too. It took me a long time to work out that the parameters by which you are judged at work was very very different from the near black and white evaluation you have at school. You needed to be not just hardworking and sincere but also street smart, networked and have a whole host of skills that never came in books.

Not to mention, the lack of ‘intellectual’ challenges at work also perplexed me. After the exciting world of cutting-edge valuation techniques gleamed from international text books, most of my time actually went into photocopying, working on presentations, inputting annual reports into the risk system and other such tearful tasks.

The question loomed – was I in the right field at all? And within this field, was I in the right role? Was I in the right organization? With absolutely no idea of what to expect from the real world, I was shooting in the dark and incidentally, so were a lot of my friends.

In the 5 – 6 years after we all started work, the batch’s professional profile changed quite a bit. When we left campus, pretty much all of us sounded like high- flatulin MBAs ‘who wanted to work in intellectually challenging careers’ in investment banking, consulting or top IT or marketing companies.

Five years later, people had fanned out. Some had decided they needed to work on a bigger scale and decided to do a second MBA overseas. Some moved into entirely new fields like economics, developmental work, research (one guy from another school even started his own music band!). Some left their jobs and started their own companies. Some had stayed in their own fields, but moved to less ambitious positions and organizations that did not require 15 hour days and politicking like mad. It was as though all of us had been released from the B-School/parental/peer ideal of a top job and come to realize where our strengths, skills and interests lay.

It turned out that unlike our parents, at twenty-something we had not got stuck in the job we would do the rest of our lives. We could change roles, change organisations, change fields and infact even just sit at home to think for a while, without too much of an impact on our CVs or financial status. At junior levels, jobs were so plentiful that the worst that could happen was that you would have to start again with lower-brand name firm. And you were paid peanuts in any role, so the difference in working in an ad agency vis a vis working in a consulting job was not going to hurt for a few months. At any rate, it was worth taking the risk of making changes to find what you really wanted to do.

In the midst of all this existential angst on work, I had totally ignored personal life. Not that I did not care for relationships. However, the way I saw it, my parents would find a suitable prospect and one fine day I would get married. That of course, did not come to pass.

Happily enough, I was not the only one. My generation was lucky enough to push the definition of an ‘old maid’ slightly and change the perception to ‘independent, single woman’. Instead of the giggly, ‘I have a crush on you’ type school girl relationships, everyone began trying their hand at the more serious stuff. And learnt a lot on the way.

Like work, it turned out that you had to figure out what kind of Prince Charming would fit you well to have a shot at the happily ever-after.

Probably the most important change that happened in my twenties was my relationship with my parents. I had finally gotten over my teenage fixation of blaming my parents for everything and being equally dependent on them for most major decisions in my life. Instead we began to drift towards a new territory of an adult-adult relationship from a parent-child relationship. This meant that they had to accept some of the difficult decisions I made and I had to accept that I would have to disappoint them in some ways.

It was not just me. Parents all around were upset when their brilliant child who had gotten a great-paying job out of school had decided to quit and join an unknown start-up. Parents were upset that their children had chosen to marry outside the community or to postpone marriage indefinitely. They were reluctant to cut the apron strings, and when they were ready to do so, they were apprehensive about whether we were mature enough to take our own decisions.

As I said, I was discovering the 'real world'

But boy, was it also fun!

Finally we had the money and the time to enjoy it. We could go on Saturday morning shopping binges and Saturday night party binges without the guilt of spending our parent’s hard earned money. (The thought of saving money did not enter my head till I turned 27 or 28).

We were now responsible young adults, but we were only responsible for ourselves and not even to a spouse, forget children.

We could have a house in which mattresses strewn over the floor replaced sofas as seating, mealtimes were entirely dependent on the sleep/work/party cycle, lighting could be from the cool low hanging paper lanterns rather than the elegant, refined lighting of our parents’ homes.

There was always someone who had a relationship to be discussed and analysed and having ‘girly talks’ was a lot of fun.

We knew that no matter how bad things were at work or at relationships, one could get out and look for something new. There was no pressure to bring a semblance of permanence to our actions. Our options seemed wide, wide open.

One of the interesting things I have always heard about the West is how kids take a break year and ‘find themselves’ when they leave school. Of course, that concept would probably be laughed at in India. Looking back, I realize that we do not entirely skip the phase, especially when one is from a reasonably well-off middle class home in an urban centre. ‘Finding yourself’ is just what you do in your twenties.

Interesting times..

Festival time

One of the big debates I have been having in my mind of late is how do I celebrate festivals and what traditions do I follow.

I am agnostic, wearing towards atheist. I totally admire the concept of a god at a personal level since it clearly helps you grapple with issues too large for you to understand (eg. The death of a close friend’s child. The only way they got over those days was to assure themselves that maybe god meant for things to be this way). Or how much faith can help a person (like a friend’s uncle who found battling cancer just a bit easier thanks to his belief in religion).

I also admire the concept of god for society as a whole since it really is a sort of carrot and stick that tells you to behave decently and be nice to others (or else here is your passport to hell, mister)

However, when you have intellectually decided that the concept of a god is really a bit of a crutch and a bit of direction-setting for the society, then it is difficult to cross the threshold back to being a believer. A threshold which I desperately tried to cross back to when a close friend was hit by a serious illness a few months ago. A threshold which I always thought I could easily cross when it came to it. Yet, I could not do more than utter empty and meaningless prayers from childhood, perhaps just to calm myself down.

Now that it is becoming increasingly clear that the bridge to my belief in god has more or less been burnt (who knows, it may be resurrected someday), more practical questions arise.

The most important being, how does one celebrate festivals when one is in a no-man’s land? These things never concerned me much when I was single since really it is no fun celebrating a festival all by yourself and I never even attempted to do that. With D in the picture, there is a quorum to have some celebrations at home now.

I love festivals. I love shopping for new clothes and then wearing them. I love getting together with the family. I love the smell of the feast being prepared in the kitchen, the desperate urgency to string together mango leaves and tie them to the door before the brief pooja starts, the removal of lamps from storage so they can be cleaned and lit. In short, I love all the cultural trappings associated with festivals and I have some very happy childhood memories of them.

And festivals are about both – religion and culture. Unfortunately the two are so intricately mixed up that it is difficult to separate one strand from the other. Is it possible to decorate a statue of an elephant-god, complete with a colourful umbrella and yet not feel slightly hollow about the act?

This is not a big concern when we are with the larger family. The rest of them, while not devout, are atleast still believers and can actually pray during the pooja. So it is almost like somebody else is renewing their faith and I am just celebrating with them.

The real issue is when it is just D and me.

D happens to be agnostic as well. Like me, D also loves the festival food and the celebrations. Yet, can the two of us, by ourselves, sustain the motions of a celebration without touching the religious core of the day? How do we separate the cultural from the religious? Some actions – good food, decorations, new clothes – can be easily put down to culture.

There are other actions that are not as clear. Is it religion or culture that dictates you light lamps at god’s altar? (We still have a mini-alter tucked behind the water cooler, having inherited a god’s picture each from our parents) Can you lamp lights at an altar knowing it is a mere picture and not the supreme being that the day revolves around? If you don’t light the lamps at the altar, is your celebration even complete?

These are clearly difficult questions and the answers are going to take their time coming. Or perhaps they are not difficult questions at all since millions of Indians go through the cultural motions of festivals without consciously thinking about the gods they may be invoking.

For now though, it is Diwali next week and time to shop, eat and have a blast with the family.

p.s. This is not a theological debate on the existence of god. That is a separate issue that may appear some day in this blog.

Smelling good

When Axe first came up with its deodorant ads showing wimpy, loser types suddenly becoming the centre of attraction to hot, sexy women, I was appalled at the blatant objectification of women.

I also laughed out loud, because the ads were indeed quite funny.

Presumably a lot of others did as well, because suddenly it seems like we are on a deluge. One day there is Neil Nitin Mukesh walking down the street, with pretty young things flinging themselves at him. The next day there are billboards of a siren clad in what can only be called a minimalistic saree advertising a men’s deo.

Looking at all these ads, one may easily reach the conclusion that deodorants are magic potions, the application of which will lead to the Ladeez being attracted to the user like steel filings to a magnet.

The truth, as we of course know, is that deodorants are merely personal hygiene products that men use (or atleast need to use) to stop smelling like a bunch of old socks. The Ladeez may not appear, but atleast the rest of the world will not disappear.

So Axe got it first and got it right. But really, can the rest of you read the above explanation on what deos are meant for and come up with some sensible ads?

Sure, some products need the hot models.

SUVs for example. You can't very well say 'buy this, you enivronmentally-unfriendly jerk with loads of money'. Instead perhaps 'buy this, you environmentally-unfriendly jerk with loads of money and the possibility that someone may look at your car and hopefully you'.

Deodarants need them as much as anti fungal creams (oh look, no itchy red scratch marks on any of the three chins beneath my bald head. Bring on the PYTs)

Can all the creative people who design the Amul ads lend a hand here?

Finding Mr Right

The first time I had to meet someone as a serious prospect to get married, I was totally stumped. Er…me…getting married? At a purely academic level, I knew this is what happened to girls when they reached the ripe old age of 23. However, sitting in my room off the hall where my parents and the eligible boy’s relatives sat, staring greedily at all the goodies spread out in front me but demurely desisting from eating them was as close to an out –of-the-body experience as I was going to get. In a short while, I quickly lost the demureness battle and begin munching the snacks in steady succession. Especially when the eligible young man opposite me launched into a long tirade about the Congress government’s appalling behaviour in the Shah Bhano case.

Crunch.. mind quickly thinking ‘bloody hell, who is Shah Bhano and what did they do to her..is it too early to help myself to the next thatai or should I make some sort of a remark at this stage to show I am not really that dumb?

And boy was I smart. Here I was, a freshly minted MBA from a Top B-School in India. The young man opposite me was from the same school as well, give and take a few years. He was also from my community and fit my and my parent’s requirements of a groom to the T.

In which case, why was I not feeling anything but a slight wish to escape the increasingly stifling confines of my room?

When I was told that it was time to bite the dust like all Indian girls my age, I handled it the only way I knew – making a list of all desirable characteristics in a guy and then throwing numerous tantrums pointing at every shortfall in every potential groom paraded in front of me.

If I thought that my parents where picking out the worst specimens on earth, was I in for a rude shock when I signed up online.

Looking for fair, luvely girl who will be my best friend for life

I come from an educated and broad minded family. I am open to both Iyer and Iyengar girls.

I would like who will help me soar into the sky to reach my ambitions.

Our son is fair, IIT-IIM,,cooks well, is an investment banker who lives abroad and any girl marrying him will the luckiest person on earth

Option A - Archies cards inspired freak
Option B - self-deluded bigot.
Option C – What about me, you MCP?
Option D – ‘No girl is good enough for my son’
Option E - die alone eaten by Alsatian dogs a la Bridget Jones diary

What would I choose from the above?

Option E,E,E

Yet more and more friends were leaving the singleton brigade and walking into the gloaming, glowing.

Another list zeroed in on the various reasons that the right guy was eluding me

1. I belonged to the wrong community. Everyone in my community is an MCP. (Ha, like any other community in India is any different)

2. I was too good for everyone (MBA Pay – check, decent looks – check, intelligent and well read person - check)

3. I was not at all good for anyone (dusky complexion and taller than the average Indian male – check, independent and outspoken – check, on the wrong side of 27 - check)

Sigh. Getting into B-School had proved easier. Being shuttled around like a football in between all these reasons was my ego which had rapidly began shrinking to the size of a tennis ball.

Finally I gave up the search in futility. Various relatives had stopped asking my parents about my wedding and had concluded that I would burn in singleton purgatory. Instead of feeling like the family pariah, I felt nothing but plain relief wash over me.

Why was I so happy instead of anguished?

Time for more lists

I was thinking of getting married

1. because it was the right thing to do when you reached the correct age

2. so my parents would not stand out like social misfits in a culture governed by the progression towards spouse, house and progeny

3. so my ego would be satisfied knowing I was not so repellant that not a single guy liked me

Conclusion – I am not getting married since the above reasons seemed completely inane.

So began a happy existence getting to know the long ignored me. It turned out I loved travelling, hanging out with friends, trying my hand at new stuff and basking in the pride of being an independent woman. And finally when I got to know me better, I realized after all that I would like to give marriage a shot someday because it seemed like fun if you were with the right person.

Of course, that meant getting back into the game. But no more looking for The One like a desperate Dan Brown character looking for the Freemason’s secrets.

It would be more like reading or travelling – something I would enjoy doing but which would not consume my life. The really fun part of my thus-far distressed love life finally began.

Dating, it transpired was not the shrewd psychological game designed to assess a person’s suitability as a life partner over the course of an iced tea at Barista. It could be just plain fun and anyone who seemed intelligent and interesting was fair game for a movie or coffee.

So it was when D came along a long while later. He was definitely intelligent and interesting and probably at an earlier period would have had me stressed about not meeting every single criteria in the Mr. Right list. D also turned out to be smart, kind, fun and we had a vibe that no list could have predicted or I could have missed entirely by being focused on the end result rather than the person.

So it was that we got married.

Of course it turns out that ‘happily ever after’ is a state not caused by marriage but rather by two people working on it. But then, that is a whole new story in itself…

Survival guide for the Single woman

warning - long post

As a tween, teenager, twenty year-old, whenever I read Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, I could immediately identify myself with Elizabeth . It turned out I was not the only one. Almost every girl who read the book did not want to be the pretty and nice (boring?) Jane. For obvious reasons, no one could even think of themselves as one of Elizabeth ’s other sisters. It sounded good, being rude to Mr Darcy and then having him fall for you hook, line and sinker. Especially when he was tall and handsome (a memory that only got enhanced by Colin Firth’s portrayal in the BBC series) and had class and lots of money. Ah, perfect life.

Sadly, I turned twenty seven, without seeing Mr Darcy in the horizon and began to notice the much ignored Charlotte . Charlotte was blessed with average looks, brains, some family money and overall a decent personality (After all she was Elizabeth ’s friend). Unfortunately she chooses to marry the insufferable Mr Collins. When Elizabeth visits her house later on, Charlotte makes it fairly clear that the marriage has not brought her any joy in terms of companionship but she is grateful for the comfort of a home it has given her. With some careful maneuvering, she ensures that she and Mr Collins don’t spend much of their time in the same room. Even reading about Charlotte makes one want to cry.

Yet, why is it then that every Indian girl who has reached the magical Charlotte age of twenty seven, so keen on marrying, even if it is Mr. Collins ?

Maybe the answers lie in the Indian society of the last generation, which is not substantially different from the English society of the novel. The operative words being ‘the last generation’.

We grew up watching our aunts, older cousins and sundry female relatives tread the path of holy matrimony, when they turned the right age. The unfortunate few who did not find a mate were consigned to the jobs of being teachers and staying with their brothers after their fathers died. Or becoming hostel wardens. Or (gulp) came to a Bad End, having fallen under the clutches of evil men who exploited ‘frustrated’ older single women. I cannot recollect a single woman who stayed by herself, had a career and had a life.

My generation has it better. More women were getting into professional courses and the average middle class family expects its daughters to study, as much it does its sons. You can even have careers that are more demanding than being a primary school teacher. Yet, when the golden age of 25 has been reached without a groom in sight, it is panic time. Panic among parents, the extended family, friends of the family, triggering off a panic attack in the girl till she agrees to marry the first bloke who comes along. If he turns out to be Collins, so be it. But atleast she has the comfort of holy matrimony.

No one stops to question this logic, least of the girl – Is marriage at the ‘right’ age still so important that you marry Collins? After having worked hard to get into schools, colleges and jobs you deserve, is it necessary to settle down for less when it comes to marriage? We seem to be producing more women engineers, MBAs and all other professionals than before. But when it comes to marriage, it is time for the blinkers to come and follow the sell-by date set by some vague society standards.

And when this happens, the few who hold out, either out of choice or compulsion, suddenly realize they are clueless about what to do next.

You had enough classmates around you, preparing for GMAT or cracking the CAT. You had friends who feverishly discussed their preferred first jobs with you. Then, bang, all of them get married and lead a very different life from you. You have neither role models, nor peer groups to get a cue from. What next?

Well, I would think, maybe it is time to think. For the first time in your life, here is a chance to be yourself. Finally you don’t have a peer group that tells you what you ought to be doing now. You are not married at 25. This automatically means, you don’t have to have a kid at 27, buy a house at 28 and have a second kid at 30. Alright maybe the bit about the house is not true. But we will come to that later. Instead of constantly moaning about how you must be the most unattractive person on earth, and how you will die being eaten by Alsatians, here is the time to do all the things that you were good at or interested in – travel, dance, sing, write poetry, take Spanish classes, learn animation, do photography, volunteer at a primary school. The list is practically endless. You have the time and money to do what you want. It is a tragedy of human race that when we are given the opportunity to have all the adventures we want, instead of grabbing it with open hands and letting loose our imagination, we cry in anguish at having missed out on joining the stereotype.

So, your parents and peer group are aghast and keep asking you when your ‘real’ life is going to start. Maybe it is time to turn around and say that this is your real life and it does sound more interesting at times. The problem with the definition of ‘real’ life is that it usually means ‘all of us are doing it. So we must be right’. Which means pampering husbands and producing babies is real life. But climbing mountains and rappelling down them is not (Boy, don’t you ever go around thinking that is not real. It is as real as it gets. Especially when you look down).

There are of course the immediate problems – who do you travel with, who do you go for a movie with, what if you want to have a random coffee? This is where it is time to remind yourself the differences between the last generation and this. There are enough travel groups you can go with and women-only travel groups if you please. Unlike the last generation when being single meant you were ostracized from the average middle-class society, you will be pleasantly surprised to discover that once your friends recover from the initial flush of marriage, they are more than happy to hang out with you. And really, watching a movie or drinking coffee alone is not something you will be shot for.

Enjoy being yourself. You are more interesting than you think.

The other funny thing which the unmarried twenty-seven years old do is to ignore their careers. Somewhere deep down you think that your time will come anytime now – should I really take that transfer when six months down the line I could be asking for another transfer if I get married? I hate my job but do I really want to quit when six months down the line I anyway have to quit when I move to the U.S. ? Wake up, girls. If there is no one in sight, then maybe it is a bit silly to plan your life around an unpredictable event? Firstly, being married is not the ‘big change’ to do course correction in your jobs. If you think you need to do it, then the sooner you do it the better. Secondly, you have reached where you have after putting in a lot of effort. If you don’t respect that, no one else is going to. Including your boss who will decide your pay and the guy who shows up to ‘have coffee with you’. And finally, so what if you moved jobs just now and decide to move again when you get married? This is hardly the day and age of ‘permanent’ jobs in PSUs. Instead of one job change this year, you have two. Big deal.

Don’t ignore your career. It is going to be around for most part of your life.

And while we are it, I may as well add about the house. Savings and finances infact. For some reason, being single automatically dissuades women from investing in shares, opening FDs or acquiring property. This is yet another hangover from the last generation, where most women held onto low-paying jobs till they got married or anyway had jobs that would not be enough to put food on the table. Today, a lot of us earn enough to support ourselves and more. So perhaps it is time to be grown-up about money. So you do get married two years down the line. What do you expect? Your husband to manage your overdue credit card bills and exploding wardrobe? If you end up meeting someone who cashed out totally in the last internet boom or inherited tons of family wealth, then life is good. But more likely, he is also a hardworking guy in a normal job and fiscal responsibility is something that you both bring to the table?

Money is good. Single or married.

I must confess that for all the talk on how it is time to look inward and doing things that you most want, it is not easy being the odd one out in a group. Whenever you meet up with your friends (all married), you look on while they indulge in couple talk and act. Yet, step back for a minute and think of how it would be if the situation were switched. You won’t be the one feeling like an aberration. So maybe it is good to make new friends who are single too? You made new friends when you went from school to college, when you shifted house, when you found a job. Yet, when our current friends move onto a different phase of life, we hanker to get into that phase, rather than find people who are in the same phase of life as us. Maybe you are not ready to get married but you still do since everybody around you is?

It is not that difficult making friends as you grow older. It is just that we are in fewer situations where we meet new people. Remedying that is easier done than said. Two years after I moved to Chennai, I was still wallowing in the ‘I have no friends’ syndrome. Then I joined a series of classes – aerobics, dance and eventually Salsa, and now some of my best friends are from that bunch. This is more than I expected (touch wood). But really, what you are looking out for is not ‘best friends’. Just someone who can go for a movie with you. Or someone who can meet you for a brief coffee.

Having alteast some friends who are like you is important.

And I am not even going to end by saying that like a muse who appears when you are looking out for it not directly but through the corner of your eye, the right guy will appear when you are busy leading your life and not made searching for him the mission of your life. For some of us, it could happen and that is great. For some of us, being alone may work out best. But then, that has been my point all along.

You don’t have to be Elizabeth or Charlotte. You can just be you, perhaps?

Working woman

I have always been strongly suspicious of initiatives to bring a more balanced representation of women to any work force. This is not to say I don’t support any moves for a women’s reservation bill in politics. I still believe that ours is a very patriarchicial society and if we waited for the society to evolve to a state where it would be natural for as many women to be governing as men, we could wait till the cows came home, or till homo plasmians (or whatever name you would give the next evolutionary beings after homo sapiens) came home. Besides, if women have been artificially dumbed down to their homes, no harm in artificially boosting them up. I am quite confident they would display the same level of competence or incompetence as men when it comes to leadership and governance. All they lack is experience, and this can be easily fast tracked through a reservation bill. But wait, I am getting completely sidetracked.

Ah yes, Diversity initiatives. It has now become highly fashionable for organizations to talk about the number of women in their ranks and how x % of senior executives are women, x defined as something that is respectably double digit without making it seem like the Board is a happy kitty party in progress.

B School had 17% women. From being in all-girls schools and colleges, I was suddenly in an environment, where there was less than one in a five chance of seeing women at any given point. Worse still, a large part of the male community had been in all boys schools or all boys colleges (most engineering colleges would count as one given the number of women in them) and some genuinely believed that men are superior to women. This meant that you had to fight your way to be heard (not too loudly though lest you be mistaken for a harridan.). Not having really interacted with too many men before, I was shaken. Were men actually more intelligent than women? After all how come there are so many of them in B School as opposed to a handful of women? It took me time to realise that confidence and attitude should not be mistaken for intelligence. Most men in my batch were only as clever or as smart as more women. True, the toppers in my batch were all men. Not so in my junior batch though. Besides, given how our society has evolved, the probability of a bright woman being brought up in a conducive environment that allows her to be ambitious and stride into traditional male bastions like higher education in B-Schools is low.

Move to first job. The place was full of women. It was not uncommon to be in a lift with 5 women and 1 guy. And we were not in a school or other such traditional areas where women are plentiful. It was perfectly ok for a boss to be late for a Saturday morning meeting because she had to go for her child’s parent-teacher meeting. As long as you delivered your results like everyone else, you went home happy.

Moving into my second job, I realised not all places are as conducive for women to be themselves. A lot of the corporate world expects that you act like a guy. So saying that you had to take your child to the doc makes it seem like the organization wasted good money on employing you, a woman, who spends valuable office hours mothering. Never mind that the father of the child could not be bothered doing it and the human race would come to an eventual halt if women also refused to do this job. Never mind that three other male colleagues were late on the same day because one had to pay his insurance premium, one had to test drive the new car which he is getting on his promotion and the third had to pick up his mother from the airport. The first two jobs are seen as important things to be done for normal life to proceed. The third is seen as a Raymond’s man who has a sensitive, caring side to him.

Sure there are women who always have a ready excuse about how their child is falling sick, how their mother in law is in town and how they have to get the house ready for Avani Avitam and hence they can’t make it to office on time. But aren’t there as many men who come into work and spend two hours by the coffee machine, another couple of hours talking to various colleagues in person and over phone? Everyone, who intends to shrug work, will do so, irrespective of his or her gender. However be a woman and give ‘female’ excuses to not do work and hear another nail being driven into the equality coffin.

The other thing I can’t get is obscenity. Men swear. And swear a lot. I cannot hear a day pass by without someone yelling ‘Tell that fucking bastard to release the deal or expect him to get a kick in his balls’. They will yell all this in a voice loud enough for their mothers back home to hear them. But in a closed room conversation where there are women, they will mention fuck, redden, and then apologize and substitute it with a chaste word. What is the deal with that? I remember a colleague in FMCG who mentioned that her male boss said having women around cramps their style. They cannot be their true selves and swear all they want. Implied in the sentence are (1) my natural style is to swear and (2) I am comfortable swearing in front of a guy so let us hire a male even if he is slightly inferior to the woman. As for the first argument, your natural style could also be to rave and rant about that unreasonable boss of yours. But do you do it? How come you can resist the temptation to do that yet find it impossible to go light on the swearing. The second argument begs the question how exactly will it help an organization achieve its strategic objectives.

Actually go ahead and use the swear words. I am not personally too fond of them but I can live with them. What I can’t live with are the subtly sexist jokes. I don’t mean the really gross ones where you can hear the slap of a sexual harassment case. I mean the snide ones that you can’t really protest against without looking like a prude but which clearly objectify women. Men being men immediately laugh at it lest they be seen as a pansy.

Sample this

Male Boss on conference call (presenting a slide to show there are 27% women in our office thus showing we are keeping in mind the Diversity and Inclusion objective of the bank) – These are the number of women in the regional office

Unknown male voice across the conf call – Lucky guy. Send some here

Unknown male voices – ha ha ha

The casual use of below-average sexist humour as a bonding tool is almost a given in the corporate world. It no longer is considered offensive. Seriously. Stop. And if you are going to crack a joke about gender, race, religious or other stereotypes, atleast take the effort to make them funny! I will be happy to laugh.

I appreciate the Diversity and Inclusion initiative in most places. Most cultures have a philosophy that speaks of the Yin Yang balance. Organisations these days are beginning to recognize that achieving this balance means being able to connect with your environment better, having a balanced set of skills and viewpoints leading to optimal conflict levels and better results. The pressure is on to increase representation across gender, communities, abilities, races etc. How it can be translated into a crude joke at a personal level is however appalling. I was introduced in a meeting as ‘a representative of the diversity and inclusion initiative’. Which was demeaning to say the least because I was certainly not hired because I was a woman. I did not get into B-School and be in the top quartile because I was a woman. I don’t remember being given any out-of-turn promotions or pay hikes because I am a woman. Why exactly would someone suggest that I am where I am because my organization is sympathetic to the female sex at the moment!

Especially given that all my life, I have hated even the hint of a suggestion that I gain some benefit for being a woman. I have never been happy with women being given ‘the best woman entrepreneur’ award or ‘the best woman employee’ award. It makes my achievement seen very cheap when the only person I am going to be benchmarked against are other women. Someone senior I know (a very balanced gentleman) did make a very important point. The award is as much about recognizing the achievement of a woman in a male dominated society as it is about providing encouragement to millions of women across the country and the world who are still trapped in lives where they sincerely believe women are inferior to men and who need to be told that women are capable of achieving something.

This is not to say that I do not believe that there is no hope. On the contrary, these are times of change. The one main reason for this is as more women come into the corporate world, it gives men a chance to build a better understanding on how to behave in a workplace with women around. My first organization was an excellent example of that. Men did not find it odd going out for dinner with a bunch of female colleagues (and they could handle snide remarks about being in a Krishna leela). Men did not crib how the female boss took time off to do female stuff. They were trained into seeing the final results and appreciating all of us had to necessarily do gender based roles in a society. The level of vulgar jokes were far and few in between (and this substantially raised the overall humour and creativity levels of the team). Sure they sent each other pics of naked women. But as long as they don’t crib about how hiring a woman means one less person to send nakes pics to, I am fine. The surprise news is that this organization is not going down the drain on account of the high proportion of females in the workforce. To all men (especially some B-School batchmates of mine), this might come as a shock. But what do you know!

So men are slowly no longer treating workplaces like an old boys club. Yet we are far from achieving true equity. And in some sense, I would think equity is not just about equal representation of women. It is about women being women and not having to completely change themselves to fit into a professional life. It is about not having to pretend that you were ok with that client’s offsite in Thailand involving massage parlours lest you be seen as a ‘non-team player’. Which is where a lot of Diversity and Inclusion initiatives lack. They focus on the number but very few places focus on the culture shift that is required. Of course, numbers themselves would enable a lot of the cultural shift as I have experienced.

There are some initiatives that do help cultural shifts. Firstly consciously hiring more women in the male bastions. For instance, in banks treasury jobs are seen more often than not as traditionally male roles and at some level it is assumed very few women can do the job. Perpetuating the culture that it is ok to act like teenager with a raging hormone in a dealing room. Breaking male bastions would go a longer way than hiring more women in your back office processing.

Secondly, give women more leadership roles. No, I am not saying hire a woman CEO. All things being equal, employees who have had more leadership roles usually have a career path right up to the senior management. Most male bosses bring the typical society attitude to jobs – whether it be of ‘protecting’ women from taking tougher roles or simply assuming that a guy can do certain jobs better. Sadly it is these roles that ensure one has got the ability to finally get to the top. If I had a chance to grab even the smallest of these roles, I would go all out and do it.

Thirdly, encourage your men to be more actively involved in their personal lives. The corporate world can’t single-handedly change society’s attitude to child rearing and the like. But providing day care and encouraging even the men to use it actively, making it easy for men to move cities because their wives got a transfer, giving paternity leave will certainly help.

Finally, senior management consciously taking the effort to get the sexist attitudes out. Right from assuming your female employee will not be interested in an overseas internship to cracking those terrible jokes. No culture forms because the guy who does the photocopying thinks like a mcp. It is bosses who set the standards on what is acceptable speech or thinking aloud. Louder raps on the knuckle need to be given to them for even a hint of inappropriate behaviour.

Perhaps someday women can actually cry in front of a male boss when they get an unfair performance review. Oh relax; I am not suggesting the water pots burst. Everyone knows, when upset, men get angry and women cry. So can women be themselves?

Update: This post got featured in the 49th carnival of feminists. The carnival had some fabulous posts well worth reading