BPO Blast - People mgmt

When I wanted to be a people manager, I had no idea that I will be faced with these kind of problems. Sometimes it's so hilarious I want to laugh, sometimes it's so crummy, I want to cry, but I have to sit through that 1:1 or that skip level meeting with a completely straight face.

When I am asked to speak on "HR updates" what they are really asking is "When am I getting promoted" When someone says "I have an issue with the process" it means "my shift timings don't suit my personal life". So on and so forth.

Day after day, some unique problems surface. There's this girl who came to me with recently shorn locks. I was about to comment on how nice she was looking when she stopped me dead in my tracks saying - Please change my shift cab. There's a girl who comes in that cab and she has lice-infested hair. I caught the lice too and I had to cut off all my hair to get rid of them.

If you thought that was funny, there's this girl who lives very near the office and she comes in the morning shift walking. She wants cab service (not available due to proximity to office) her reason being - There are too many street dogs, I feel threatened to walk there. It's early in the morning and they are hungry. They could take a bite out of my leg.

Someone gave me a high!

Out of the blue, totally unexpected, one of my direct reports told me - The way you handled the All team meeting yesterday was simply superb. No one but you could have done it!
And the thing is that this guy is moving on to another team, so he really didn't need to. But I am so glad he did. It made my day.

Mangoes make life worth living

I can't express how delighted I am today. I picked up my first Alphonso mangoes of the season. So far I had to satiate my tastebuds with just Raspuri, Badami and the likes. Mommy did send some Alphonsos with Baby Aji but they were bad or went bad in transit.

Today I had the pleasure of smelling each one before I put it in the basket. I got greedy and took more than I could eat. After all they were only Rs50 a kilo. That's nothing. I remember when mangoes were so prohibitively expensive that we couldn't afford to buy anything more than 1 per person.

Ummm, more when I have savored them all.

India Reloaded - Accidents galore

I was going to write on Wednesday because it was a high point in my life. I actually drove my car myself to my office and back home. Ok I ran out of patience when I was trying to park back again in my puny little parking lot at DD. So I asked somebody's driver to help out, but other than that, the feeling was totally awesome and exhilirating.

I drove.

And I was determined to drive everyday now that I had driven once, I didn't want the confidence to ebb. But then, it rained two nights in a row and I didn't want to take the car out on wet roads. So my car stays perfectly parked (by the driver, of course)

Meanwhile, I had to gloat about my newfound ability to drive without causing major havoc on the road. So when Dicky (my childhood friend called me up, that's the story I told him first) He seemed wan. He told me his car was in the office as he had had an accident a couple of days ago. A motorcyclist rammed into him from the front. But since that guy had a fracture and he was the guy on the smaller vehicle, the law is likely to be on his side.

My world almost came crashing down all around me. Dicky has been driving for eons. And even in Bangalore he drives quite a distance to and from work. There is absolutely no reason that Dicky could make an error. And he probably didn't. Bangalore roads are truly the worst. I keep hearing of accidents day in and day out. A lot of them are fatal. Even pedestrians are not spared. It kind of makes you wonder whether you should go out at all.

The other day one of the guys in my team Ravi, had an accident, where he swerved to avoid a motorcyclist and rammed his car into the kerb. The crowd still broke his windshield. The crowd menace is probably more of an issue than the accident itself. In this case, the motorcyclist was totally unhurt, all that happened was that he fell off the bike.

And then just when we were going to go out on holiday, I heard that a jeep full of people from Fidelity had a head on collision with a truck and all the people including the driver died instantly. This was a Trinity Cab and I have been regularly using their services. It made me shudder and mutter a rushed prayer of thanks that it wasn't me.

Accidents have become very commonplace in Bangalore. People are very used to it. It makes me sick, the low value that life has here.

Life Is Same, Predictable and all things Boring

Sometimes I don't know whether to count my lucky stars that my life is predictable or boring. I always yearn to go back to Singapore where things are always the same. Nothing is a surprise. But is that exactly how I want to live my life forever?

I have tried to insulate myself as much as possible in Bangalore as well. For example, every Saturday and Sunday, Arya and I go skating and then dancing and we share a Chocolate Icecream at Corner House and the rest of the time we are at home. We do this over and over again every weekend. It makes me happy that I know that my baby is with me and she's safe and sound. However it irritates the hell out of me that I have nothing better to do on the weekend than ferry her around to her classes.

And I tell myself that since I am a working mother, this is the quality time that I get to spend with her and I should make the most of it. But I am so irritable these days. Most of the time I leave her bewildered during our quality time sessions wondering what she did wrong. She would rather not have that kind of quality I think.

It's Mother's Day today. I am really upset. There are a thousand things I want from life but most of all I want another baby. I wish it was easy for Kushal to understand. I wish he wanted a baby as much as I did. I wish things didn't have to be so complex.

I really don't want to be superwoman, supermom, etc etc. I just want a normal life with as many kids as possible. I want to look after them and teach them to be good human beings. I find it irritating that people gloat about how they balance a career and a family. I don't want to balance anything. I would throw away all the glamor to just have that second child. I know I really desperately wanted to have Arya as well. I thought I wouldn't be so keen the second time. But seems like it's an obsession with me. In the middle of my highly dramatic life in Bangalore, with so many uncertainities that it makes your head spin, I have insulated myself to the highest extent possible in the hope that Kushal will agree to have another baby, inspite of the turmoil and the uncertainty.

But No!