Business Talk: Which Way Ahead??

By Ananya Mukherjee
Singapore

HR pundits have identified the gaps in the existing HR strategies that when effectively addressed can translate into higher productivity and better bottom-line results.

Basic Instinct: Being Fundamentally Right

Naturally, as the market rebounds, employers will be looking at using this upswing to their advantage. Growth is clearly on everybody’s agenda, but what is the best way forward?

“In times of crisis we have traditionally responded by being conservative and hedging our bets, but with recent events we are realising that the situation is quite volatile and unpredictable. We have to have the combination of being quick to spot opportunities and act on them and being prudent in other places where maybe opportunities are not so intense. Market-specific adaptation is needed,” Milagros C Perez, vice president for Global HR areas, Philips, says.

Learning points

Therefore, keeping the voice of the markets within hearing distance is key, she adds. HR needs to truly understand not just what the markets are saying but also ensure that these are accurately translated into its plans concurrently. “In HR, we are starting to do this through a disciplined approach to workforce planning, working hand-in-hand with the business in concretising the implications of our business plans and projections into structure, headcounts, capabilities and sourcing. In addition, we intend to review our existing HR practices to see where it makes sense to have market-driven policies instead of global ones,” she underlines.

Star Wars: Talent Attraction & Management

Having said that, no matter how foolproof the infrastructure is, businesses cannot run successfully without managing the talent optimally. No strategy or execution can be achieved without the right people in the right places and HR needs to be relevant in achieving this for the organisation.

Moreover, as Singapore transforms itself into a global hub for technical and managerial expertise, global talent will become increasingly central to its competitiveness, HR leaders point out. The challenge, however, is not restricted to attracting global talent only, but also to find innovative ways to prepare local talent for global roles. Developing a new generation of leaders and accelerating their development is seen as one of the fundamental challenges in the year to come. “Singapore, like Japan and China, has a rapidly ageing executive pool. The next generation of executives is ambitious and keen to join the executive ranks at a much younger age than their predecessors. The challenge is to accelerate their development and build a ready pool of next-executives who can move into leadership positions sooner,” notes Indranil Roy, managing director, Asia Pacific for Korn Ferry International’s Leadership and Talent Consulting Business.

Besides, the workforce today is a combination of different ethnic and cultural groups, with different expectations and as the job market slowly improves, better work opportunities will surface. Employees may be tempted to leave if they feel that their employers are not giving them enough in terms of stability, growth and developmental opportunities, or they do not feel connected with their organisations, Sureish Nathan, vice president, Asia Pacific, Center for Creative Leadership, observes. “Perks like compensation and career development opportunities play a big part in retaining talents, but ultimately, the most compelling reason for employees to stay is the relationship they have with their immediate managers,” he says.

Long-term solution

As a starting point, fair pay and attractive benefits will have to be in place to reward the employees who have weathered the downturn together with the organisation. Also, it is high time to start coaching your employees and giving them a chance to continue learning. A company is likely to lose its key employees if it does not provide enough opportunities for their development, learning and advancement, HR practitioners share.

As mentioned before, engaging and retaining talents is about how good leaders are. A CCL study on employee engagement conducted in partnership with Booz Allen Hamilton found that among those who strongly agreed that they worked for a manager that cared about their well-being, 94% said they intended to stay with their current employer. “The most effective way to engage and retain employees is to improve the quality of managers at every level in the organisation. Companies need to focus on helping managers learn how to be a good coach, give effective feedback and provide direction to facilitate the learning and growth of their people,” Nathan suggests.

Never say Goodbye: Talent Retention

Attrition is an issue that remains a major concern for HR whether the market is buoyant or recovering, and so it will remain a dominating factor in HR management in 2011. Human resource gurus agree that retention is linked to engagement and this is strongly correlated with how an individual feels his managers and the organisation are interested in his individual and career development. So why is developing talent a challenge? Andrew Bryant, director, Self Leadership International remarks: “Because it requires an integrated and cultural approach and many organisations are too focused on execution with the minimum cost. In addition, there has been a strong Asian mindset of following establishing procedures rather than finding creative ways to lead and solve problems.”

Follow the leaders

However, not all organisations fall into that category. Employers have formulated all kinds of innovative designs such as workplace fl exibility, work-life harmony initiatives, rewards and recognition policies, healthcare benefits amongst others to top up the already existing tools like pay for performance, higher bonuses, career management, training and development opportunities that help retain talent. For instance, NatSteel has found a unique tool to motivate its workforce which has an average age of 42. Protecting the health of its people is key to sustaining productivity and managing medical costs, says Frankie Yung, vice president, human resources, NatSteel. The organisation has done well in this regard, having achieved the Platinum standard for the Singapore HEALTH Award.

The organisation has a comprehensive health programme, Yung informs. It conducts annual health screenings for all staff aged 40 and above, and biannual health screening for other staff. “This enables us to arrest any health issue at its early stage. Any employee discovered to have chronic illnesses are managed by our Occupational Health Unit on an ongoing basis. Through this effort, we are able to reap the benefits of having less downtime, while ensuring that staff productivity is not compromised.”

In short, foster a work environment in which employees feel appreciated for their past conducts, see that their present is taken care of and perceive a definite growth for themselves in the future.

Measure the Intangible: HR Productivity

Having said that, it is also time for HR to look into its own mirror image and gauge its functional success. Traditionally, HR professionals talk generally and conceptually about employee morale, turnover, and employee commitment as outcomes of HR efforts.

But the HR function can no longer be an expense generator and administrative function and not a value-added partner. As HR expert Dave Ulrich was once quoted as saying, to fulfill the business partnership role of HR, concepts need to be replaced with evidence, ideas with results, and perceptions with assessments.

ROI-the ultimate checklist

Naturally, the need for measurement becomes vital. HR gurus recommend that as managers, you need to focus more on the money spent on people costs for ROI in terms of dollar and compare the improvement with the previous year. Beyond that, begin putting each of your job functions under the microscope. For example, start with checking the quality of your recruitment skills. Are you hiring the right talent for the right job? Check the performance appraisals of new employees and you’ll know if you are doing it right.

Determine the difference between the talent who take jobs offered due to development opportunities and the employees who leave the company because of a lack of a good career path, and you will have clues to many unanswered questions.

The Road to Success

With the emergence of significant regional powerhouses like India,China and Korea,Singaporeis no longer an attractive destination for low cost activities. Even for higher-end skills like R&D and technical expertise, China andIndia are proving to be increasingly attractive destinations. Singapore, therefore, has to constantly set the bar higher for its own workforce to remain competitive. The emphasis has to be on innovation, creativity and higher-end technical skills and governance skills.

Most importantly, markets and economies are changing fast. Most of HR insights are from hindsight and no one can confidently predict what is going to happen. So organisations make choices based on how it views the world and where it fits in it. Whilst as HR, you can plan for those choices you must also know that at any time you may have to change the course because the landscape will change yet again. However, by mapping out some of the anticipated challenges, HR managers may be able to plan their strategies more effectively.

(The article was first published in The HeadHunt newspaper)

Aleph: Where Time & Space Converge

By Ananya Mukherjee
Singapore

If Aleph is indeed the autobiographical account of  Coelho's journey of personal discovery, The Zahir is perhaps a reflection of his inner search, only narrated more beautifully. Aleph, in all fairness is probably Paulo Coelho's most personal account ever to be printed in black and white, yet, if you have read The Alchemist or The Zahir before, you may find traces of a deja-vu in Aleph.


The novel starts with Coelho's revelation apropos the stagnation of his spiritual growth. He embarks on a journey that starts from Africa and then to Europe and Asia via the Trans-Siberian railway. Most of the book describes the author's experiences during the journey with his publisher and Hilal, a girl whom he meets in the travel. Coelho soon finds out that she's the one whom he had loved five hundred years ago in a different incarnation. What follows next is a very intimate account of the relationship in their past lives. 


Here the novel takes a Bollywood slant and for those with a more realistic eye, the timelessness of Hilal's presence in Coelho's life is somewhat unconvincing. If reincarnation and related stories are not particularly your choice, I would suggest you skip this novel.


To me, reading Coelho is a trial of self discovery more than the relevance of its contents in terms of realism. The beauty of the sentences leave an indelible mark on me, the magic of his words and thoughts often overwhelming and provoking the mind to see beyond what the eyes can behold. 


And who knows such an Aleph may just exist somewhere for you too....waiting only to be discovered!   

Fourth Estate Under Threat!

By Deepak Adhikari

Kathmandu, Nepal

In the dead of the night on June 5, Khilanath Dhakal, a reporter with the Nagarik daily newspaper, was brutally attacked.

He was in Biratnagar, a once thriving industrial town in Nepal's southern plains. Members of the Youth Association Nepal, a wing of the Unified Marxist Leninist (UML), a party that until June 30 ruled the country, targetted him.

They were angry with his report on June 2 which exposed their attack on a rival gang while inside a local court.

Dhakal, 23, had moved to the border town a year ago. He was invited to an intersection with the pretext of a meeting and then forced to pillion ride a bike. The assailants, armed with bamboo sticks, drove to a secluded place and assaulted him. He sustained serious head injuries. Luckily, not long after his attack, a policeman spotted him running for his life.

A man of slender build, Dhakal is now back to work after undergoing 18 days of treatment in the local hospital’s neurology unit.

“The attack was the worst incident of my life. But on a positive side, it triggered a massive, countrywide campaign and my case became a symbol for a battle for the free press,” Dhakal told the Doha Centre for Media Freedom. “My pictures and the accompanying news was covered by all the media and it felt good to be a part of the campaign.”

Undeterred by the assault, he started to file stories for his daily column, often highlighting the wrongdoings of Parshuram Basnet, a local UML activist, who, says Dhakal, ordered the attack.

"Parshuram Basnet became indispensable to certain leaders in UML precisely because he has been able to acquire overwhelming dominance over rivals in the environs in and around Biratnagar,” wrote columnist Aditya Adhikari for The Kathmandu Post in June.

This phenomenon, when the state allows the prime suspect loose, in disregard for the rule of law, has cast a dark shadow over Nepal's fragile and troubled transition to democracy.

Private media flourished after the restoration of democracy in 1990 and is credited with creating awareness about the fledgling set-up.

It also helped the 2006 pro-democracy movement that forced King Gyanendra to step down and paved the way for an end to the decade long Maoist insurgency. But since then, the media has found itself in a murky environment.

Several armed groups, all jockeying for power, launched after the Maoist insurgency ended. They often threaten journalists, prompting them to self-censor.

Culture of impunity

Journalists like Dhakal, working in a hostile environment outside the capital Kathmandu, no longer feel safe.

There is a culture of impunity that encourages and protects armed groups, which rely on violence and even resort to murder in some cases.

These groups could either be purely criminal or gangs masquerading as political outfits. Often nurtured and used by political parties, the government rarely punishes them.

This protection, Dhakal said, is at the heart of the crisis.

"This also shows how weak the state has become,” he said. “If the officials arrest these people, then there is pressure from the politicians. Fearing for their jobs, the officials bow to the highhandedness from the politicos."

These days, Dhakal, who has recently reported on an illegal arms deal involving Basnet, treads cautiously, informing the local police about his whereabouts.

But, he adds, he still “can't think of any other (better) profession except journalism."

The Committee to Protect Journalists’ impunity index, released in June, ranked Nepal as the seventh most dangerous country out of 13 from 2001 and 2010.

“Political parties have, in competition with each other for power and resources, built vertical networks that extend from Kathmandu to the districts ... and operate in a grey zone between legality and illegality,” wrote Adhikari.

A series of attacks

It has been a long time since journalists in Nepal have been able to report freely.

Several recent examples demonstrate the kind of threats reporters encounter.

The assassination in February 2010 of Jamim Shah, a media entrepreneur was covered internationally. After providing detailed coverage of the circumstances leading to Shah's murder in the Kantipur, the country's influential daily, its editor and publisher also received threatening phone calls.

In January 2009, Uma Singh, a radio reporter in her mid-20s based in the restive southern plains of the country, had written articles critical of the local administration. A group of armed men hacked her to death. 

In December 2009, Tika Bista, a 22-year-old journalist with the national Nepali-language newspaper the Rajdhani Daily was working in the remote western hills of Nepal. Members of the Maoist party attacked her until she was unconscious, leaving her 20 metres under a cliff, with severe head injuries and lacerations. Forced to flee, she now works from the Kathmandu office.

Maoists and the monarch

The darkest day in recent history for Nepal's media was on February 1, 2005. Gun-toting army soldiers raided newsrooms across Kathmandu and major cities, following King Gyanendra’s orders. All communication systems, including the internet, were shut down. The country's half-dozen TV channels and radio stations were banned from broadcasting anything except the royal proclamation.

During the King's autocratic rule, from February 2005 to April 2006, there was a severe media clampdown and heavy censorship. After the restoration of the parliament in 2006, however, the interim constitution guaranteed freedom of press.
Before that period, the biggest threat to the safety and independence of Nepal's journalists came from the Maoist insurgency.

Journalists, especially those critical of the leftist rebels, were threatened, kidnapped and murdered. 

Shailendra Kharel, a freelance photojournalist who worked in the conflict-hit midwestern region for theKantipur daily, said journalists were often caught in the middle.

"If we covered Maoists, the army would suspect us for collaborating with the rebels. On the other hand, the Maoists would call us spies if we met security personnel,” he said.

More than 14 journalists were killed during the insurgency, a majority of them at the hands of state security forces.

It was after that period that criminal gangs entered the fray. Threatening journalists, such as the young Dhakal, they punish those who even think of writing anything critical of their behaviour.

"Things like these tend be a natural byproduct of the transitional phase that we're in," said Dharma Adhikari, the general secretary for the Media Foundation, a Kathmandu-based research group.

In recent years, the threats from non-state actors have far outweighed the ones from the state, but the Nepalese media is ‘revolutionary,’ he argued.

"The media has been one of the most vocal institutions in the transformation taking place in Nepal,” he concluded, echoing the sentiments of many who continue to endure pressure in their fight for press freedom.

Deepak Adhikari is a Kathmandu-based journalist whose work has been published in his native Nepal and internationally, including TIME magazine. 

The Unbearable Lightness of Being....Jobsless

By Aritro Bhattacharya
Kolkata, India

This Bijoya Dashami, as Maa Durga of our ancestral Puja was about to hit the waters of Ganga, I slipped in some fervent prayers. There were the usual greedy supplications to take care of me, my parents, my girlfriend, my one-car-one-home-one-pug-two-kids utopia, my depravities, my aspirations, my fears, my nightmares. It was all about the I. The prayer, inexplicably, however, ended with "Maa, take care of Steve Jobs". But then, not so inexplicable I guess. It ended indeed with an 'i'.

Before the 8th of January, 2007, Steven Paul Jobs was as alien to me as Justin Bieber is to me now. Prior to that fateful smoggy Bhubaneswar morning, I was another cog in the all-encompassing wheel of Infosys. I was 24, I was still trying to get a hold of software programming, boozed and/or doped most nights, and had already attempted once to take my life. I was trying to be in terms with a bad heartbreak, and to top it all, my ex-flame was in the same town, allegedly with another guy. Rudyard Kipling, I believe, once famously said that all of us want to run away from something- if not from a troubled home or childhood, at least from an unpleasant school. At that point of time, I really wanted to run away. From life it seemed.

But then, I digress. On that fateful morning, in between learning to be efficient with spreadsheets, I clicked open a mail from a friend of mine. It was a fairly long note, and the subject was suffixed by the dreaded "Fw:". I was about to use my newly-found alacrity of pressing Shift-Del, but then suddenly, the penultimate sentence of the mail caught my eyes. Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish, it said. And I decided to not go back to my mundane A6-B5 filling up of cells. And am thankful I did.

By now am sure you have assumed, and correctly so that the mail contained a copy of Steve Jobs's famous speech at the Stanford commencement, that for the last few days have been translated and transliterated into every conceivable language by every conceivable newspaper. In 2007, however, it felt orgasmic. It felt like a million suns had exploded in my brain. It resonated as the best poetry I had ever read. The three stories literally had me hooked on. If the first salvo was about connecting the dots, the last straw invariably was about stoking the hunger and stupidity within oneself. It wasn't about reading a billionaire technocrat (honestly, I didn't know it then) ranting about his life. It wasn't about the drivel of a been-there-done-that honcho. Certainly not the pedagogy of a CEO to future business leaders. Rather, it was Bob Dylan. And the Buddhha. Or Vivekananda. And Rajesh 'Anand' Khanna. Or Sharukh 'Kal Ho Naa Ho' Khan. It was Lucky Ali. Or Kurt Cobain. And Allen Ginsberg. And Mohammad Ali. And Che Guevara. And the innate Bohemian we all secretly cherish. And it was all I needed. To come back to life. And solving its eternal puzzle of connecting the dots and expecting that a Mac Air takes shape. Even after churning out a thousand useless prototypes.

Today, when the world mourns the death of a genius. A visionary. An employer. A friend. A husband. A colleague. A classmate. A partner. A father, I feel lost. Because I was not an employee, or son, or fanboy, or colleague, or partner, or techno-blogger, or biographer, or columnist. I was just a believer who Steve Jobs healed. And inspired. And retaught dreaming. And hoping. And had been doing so for the last several months. Every single day.

Bijoya Dashami and Dussehra coincides every year. This year was no exception. As the Hindu diaspora revelled in the defeat of bad by good, I stole in a sly smile. Steve Jobs defeated cancer, didn't he?? After all, he is on the same side as God!!!

Thank you, Steve. Stay hungry stay foolish iWill.

Exactly how Untraditional?

In a one-to-one exclusive with novelist Sweta Srivastava Vikram, My Little Magazine takes a peek into the untraditional life of an Indian woman and discovers the intricacies of human relationships 

MLM: How did Perfectly Untraditional happen?

 “Perfectly Untraditional,” true to it name, happened in a rather unconventional way. I had this story inside of me—gnawing—waiting to get unleashed—touch ink and morph into words. Not the detailed book that you see today. But I had the seed for a story. I knew I wanted it to be different—about common people—all of us. But nothing stereotypical or mundane A narrative about relationships, identity, immigration, and modern Indian families with subtle suggestions on how we could make our society a better place.

When I started working on “Perfectly Untraditional,” by the way it was called something else then, I basically wrote a 40-page novella. My agent came across the novella and asked if I had ever thought of writing a full-length novel—she had liked the story and my writing style. I was ecstatic and nervous. I am a poet before a prose writer. I knew it was a humongous undertaking, but I was determined to take up the challenge. The way I saw it, I had nothing to lose.

I have had so many friends and family members support me through my madness. Be it helping me with research to putting up with my crazy hours to tolerating my artistic moments to evaluating the title of the book to just being there as sounding boards.

MLM: At any point do you identify with the protagonist Shaili?

Before I answer that question, I would like to clarify that “Perfectly Untraditional” isn’t my autobiography. You wouldn’t believe the number of people who have asked me that question even though my husband was standing right next to me. 

Yes, I do identify with the female protagonist, Shaili Kapoor—but only in a symbolic way. Like Shaili, who realizes the truth about herself after moving to New York from India, I too found myself, in a *symbolically* similar situation, when I moved to NYC from Mumbai.

I had always wanted to be a writer. But due to personal reasons, I couldn’t follow my dream when I was in India. While I thought I had made my peace with the decision to study sciences and turn away from creative writing and journalism, I was terribly wrong. Living in New York, I couldn’t fool myself any longer. I conceded that I am and will be nothing without words. And much as I respected all other professions, I didn’t see myself spending eternity studying or practicing sciences. Even if I tried…I couldn’t.

Both in Shaili’s and my case, distance offered a perspective on “The real us.” It gave us opportunities to blossom and carve out our individual identities. When we are inside the system of societal expectations, it’s difficult to think differently—even if your inner voice begs you. There is no room for it, actually.

As desis we are trained to appease and not consider our happiness. But once we move away, many of us start to evaluate terms like sacrifices, happiness, and fulfillment. Arisitotle said, “Happiness is the meaning and the purpose of life, the whole aim and end of human existence.” Can we impart happiness if we are unhappy from within? Can we pretend to be someone we aren’t? And is it really worth it?

MLM What's the best thing you have heard about the book so far?

Readers have been generous with their response so far. People have discussed it with me or reached out and said that they found at least a few things in the novel that resonated with them. For a writer, that too a debut novelist, knowing that your “untraditional” book was received well by both men and women across different age groups and ethnicities, has been extremely humbling and encouraging.

As writers, we pour our heart, blood, sweat, and soul into our books. And when readers recognize the efforts, interpret your book, and discuss it at length, it gives a warm, fuzzy feeling—that of fulfillment. I was pleasantly surprised at how involved people got with the characters. They had their favorites and not-so-favorite ones picked out.·A ninety-six-year-old-American man, who fought in both World War I and II, said to me, “Your book touched me in a way nothing else has. Never stop writing.” A psychotherapist, also a reader of my novel, commented that I understood human complexities and the different layers of human emotions. Her lesbian friend complimented the authenticity of emotions in the novel. An aunt-in-law in Minneapolis said, “I always wondered about the lives of writers and actors. It was such a distant world. Beta you have shown us that world. And I am so proud of you. any people have said that they couldn’t believe this was my first book. Numerous women have requested me to write a sequel…because they want to find out what happens to the young, male protagonist: Sadhil Sethi. He turned out to be a favorite with the ladies.

MLM: Any anecdote related to the conceptualisation of Perfectly Untraditional that you may wish to share?

I have shared this anecdote at probably all my readings, but it still cracks me up. When I wrote about Sadhil Sethi, in the first draft, I exaggerated his goodness—to the extent I put most Yash Chopra heroes to shame.:-) Sadhil was unreal, by human standards, in terms of his looks, heart, benevolence, attitude, manners, and personality. Or at least that’s what I was told. Sure enough, after having worked on Sadhil Sethi for as long as I did, I lived inside an unreal bubble of expectations. One evening when my husband returned home from work, we debated about some trite issue. I was upset and retaliated with, “Sadhil Sethi would have never done this.” Poor guy didn’t know how to respond. His competition was a fictitious character created by his author wife. 

MLM: What's next?

I am working on several projects simultaneously including my second novel. But in the near future, I have a chapbook of poetry, titled Beyond The Scent of Sorrow, scheduled for October 13, 2011 release in Brooklyn, New York. And I am working on a nonfiction collection of prose and poetry, Mouth full, which will be released in London in early 2012.

I and the wind of the city

By Ansuman Dey
Kolkata, India


I and the wind of the city -1


This day, no one's playing dreams.
this day, torn papers and old leafs
are flying in the air like me; very afflicted!
Such hollow mentality of the city wind
has left no philosophy on the streets.
The streets go down and down and lost
whichever way, without the history.
Like smoke, the wishes coming out
of the melting windows to breathe,
to smell the most latent aroma,
to perceive the waves of death.
This day is reverberantly excruciating.
This day, frogs and I are mute and busy
digging the soft mud ; very shattered!



I and the wind of the city -2


Neon sparks
and
I become
the mirror of the city.
Sleepy bricks crawl
into the Gothic darkness;
a very dilated and secret exodus.
A photograph excavates my soul and disappears.
Chronic noises hang
like the ear-worm blues from the futile erections.
I snuff out the neon to become
mirror to the city.

Sir

By Ananya Mukherjee
Singapore

It is impossible that you could miss him in a crowd. And had Shokhanaath Sikdar ever shared a first-class compartment on a long-distance Kolkata-bound train of the Indian Railways with Ray’s Lal Mohan Ganguly, I am convinced the latter would have definitely wanted to “cultivate” Mr Sikdar.  Though almost separated-at-birth-twins with Mr Ganguly, the resemblance further accentuated by accessories such as a brown monkey-cap and a red and blue checked muffler, Mr Sikdar had a distinguished and unique style of his own. 

His day started early fighting with the neighbourhood paperboy, he called Khoka. Each daybreak, Khoka would toss the popular morning daily, neatly tied in a roll, and throw it across Mr Sikdar’s coveted south-facing 7x 3 ft verandah adorned with money plants, a potted tulsi and some kamini flowers. To an onlooker, the blue-walled balcony adjoining the cramped living room was nothing beyond a slice of additional space generously used as a clothesline. Between Mrs Sikdar’s printed cotton nighties and petticoats, there was just enough room for an old cane chair and two low choir stools. In all, the weaving had fallen loose, but it did not bother Mr Sikdar, nor kept him away from his private haven, and he fought to conserve its authenticity as the truly intellectual corner in his middle class suburban home. Khoka and his Olympic style paper tossing was a constant threat to that preservation.  Mr Sikdar had repeatedly warned Khoka that it in the past, his rough and uncouth attacks had hurt the kamini buds and snapped a portion of the money plants, both signs that were considered inappropriate, but the boy had paid no heed.

After calling out names, each morning Mr Sikdar would sit down in this blue space, reading the morning newspaper from the first word on the front page, browsing through headline news to classified pages including quack aphrodisiacs and gauging the impacts of planetary movements and their predictions on his less celestial life. Once he had Rahu and Ketu’s orbits sorted, dipping thin-arrowroot biscuits in his tea, he would always attend to the matrimonial, obituaries and all the other components that spiced up an ordinary man’s life in an otherwise monotonous setting.

After retirement from his job as the mathematics teacher of a government higher secondary school, Mr Sikdar’s world had become confined to the blue walls of his modest one-bedroom flat. Mrs Sikdar, childless and ageing had begun to complain of gout, since she stepped into her 50s, and now her days were all spent in cooking a simple meal for the two, a few religious rituals and watching melodramatic soap operas on Bangla television.

From his cane chair on the verandah, Mr Sikdar would watch her getting engrossed in the high-pitched family dramas on the idiot box, often so much that she would emote with the characters on screen. At times, he had even caught her crying with the innocent and cursing the wicked and scheming faces on television. Mr Sikdar, who grew up in an age when television was a rarity and being a couch potato was sinful would wonder how a 50-year-old woman could get so carried away by something so unreal and distant.

Apart from the TV, the blue-walled modest living room had a sofa cum bed. This was meant to be the most decorative and most expensive of furniture the Sikdars had ever bought. It was the pride of the living room. A student’s mother, out of sheer respect for Mr Sikdar’s Mathemagical brilliance had gifted a self-created set of appliqué cushion covers for the sofa cum bed. On occasions when there were guests in the house, and it happened rarely though, this was used as the extra bedding for the special visitor.

But of course, there was a brilliant laminated family photograph of three generations, proudly displayed on the TV top that you couldn’t miss. On a rare moment, when all the three generations of Sikdars had taken a Kundu Special tour to Darjeeling and the entire family of primary school teachers, bank managers and government servicemen had pooled in all the LTC they got, booked company holiday homes and managed to spend a week basking in their own glory in the Himalayan town. The photograph was a memoir of that rare moment one morning, when all the Sikdars, including the young ones Dollar and Sonnet (Mr Sikdar’s youngest brother was a bank manager. His convent educated wife had a fetish for English names and after the twin boys were born, she used her obsession with an overpowering vengeance thereby dismissing all alternate suggestions made by other family members) had arranged themselves proudly in three rows. The men in bright mufflers and hand woven pullovers at the back, the women in wet flowing tresses over cardigans and sarees were seated in between, and the children in road picked Bhutia jackets were kneeling down at the front. The group was facing the sparkling white mountain range with the holiday home as backdrop. Though proud to be framed in a perfect Suraj Barjatiya style family frame, none of them noticed or remarked upon the fact that there would be proof of the mighty Kanchenjunga in the photograph.

Till date, the pride associated with this photograph knew no limits and though neighbours and friends tried to often contest the value of this priceless piece of Sikdars, none were successful so far.Once, Mr Sikdar’s next door neighbour Shambunath Pal, tried to flaunt a photograph that showed his grandson standing below the Eiffel Tower. Now Mr Pal, unlike Mr Sikdar was not a man with many degrees (“uneducated businessman” in Mr Sikdar’s words). He ran a saree shop in one of the bustling districts of the city and had amassed a lot of wealth. A considerable portion of that wealth had gone into sending his only son Babushona to a private engineering college in Bangalore. Babushona, once his engineering degree was earned managed to do an MBA and find a job in a company that was doing a project with a French multinational. Needless to say, Mr Pal, much to the resentment of Mr Sikdar, was extremely proud of the fact that in a family where matriculation was considered sacred, Babushona had added so much glory so as to live in “bilet” or foreign shores out of his own academic steam.

So one day when Mr Pal brought out the picture of the Eiffel Tower and challenged Mr Sikdar on the pricelessness of photographs, Mr Sikdar looked unshaken. Studying the picture with the spectacles right at the tip of his sharp nose, he raised an eyebrow and said, “Hmmm....mane thik e ache, tobe oi amader Howrah Bridge taye beshi loha bodhoi,” (seems ok, but methinks our Howrah Bridge has more iron in it).

It only happened by a sheer conspiracy of fate that I landed up at Mr Sikdar’s door one hot and sultry summer afternoon. Let me explain. Mr Sikdar’s ‘almost umbilical’ ties with a government boys school was destined to weave into my life as soon as I met and fell in love with the brightest and best student the school had ever trained. My fiancé, Sid (Shiddharto to his teachers and all the other trails of his past life) was Mr Sikdar’s favourite student in his entire teaching career. The boy, the first in his school to crack the indomitable IIT entrance exam, as he recalls and narrates to all he knows was the “Braaitest” student he taught.

All that was more than a decade back! And Sid’s life, interim had undergone several changes. From the IIT Campus in Kanpur, he had moved to Rutgers for a Masters and ever since the lure of the greenback and the thrill of international recognition had kept him committed to sharing his bright intellect with the US of A. But he hadn’t forgotten his teacher. “I owe it to him in a way,” he would say. 


Since I was travelling to India, Sid insisted I dropped by Mr Sikdar’s residence and paid him a visit. He even bought a shiny Kenneth Cole watch for his teacher and jokingly called it a “delayed but branded gurudakshina”.  I knew the significance of this teacher in shaping the man I adored, so I agreed without further debate.

So on a hot uneventful summer afternoon, I cajoled myself and took a drive down the by-lanes of suburban Kolkata and landed up straight in the blue walled living room of the Sikdar’s.

“Are you also an engineer like him?” Mr Sikdar asked me as he gestured for me to sit on the prized sofa cum bed. He had not even offered me a glass of water as yet! Fearing that my IQ level was at stake and I might be subject to solving brain racking Calculus before my eligibility to sit on the sofa were decided, I sat down quickly and replied “No No, am into literature” then added stupidly enough, “My Math sucks!”

“What?”

“Er, I mean, I am scared of Math.”

“What are you saying? How can you be scared of Math? What is there to be scared? Only the dumb, dull and lazy are scared of Math,” Mr Sikdar almost roared in front of me.

“Aha...why are you scolding her? She is not your student,” Mrs Sikdar came to my rescue with a glass of red liquid.

I folded my hands in greetings and took the glass from her.

“Rooh Afza...I got it from Moni’s dokaan just yesterday. Dekho to kheye kemon?  (See how it tastes!)”.

I smiled gratefully at her and sipped into the over sweetened artificial flavoured drink. But on a hot afternoon, it did not taste as bad as I had feared.

Mr Sikdar seemed put off by my presence. He sat on a stool, a little away measuring me up inch by inch. Perhaps even contemplating how his brightest student could even consider a life with a woman who did not enjoy calculus or trigonometry. I realised I had goofed up by touching the most sensitive passions of his life...mathematics! Not really thrilled about being classified in a category of “dumb, dull and lazy” I dug into my purse and took out the gift that Sid had sent to appease Mr Sikdar.

“What is this?” He still seemed unsure if I could be trusted.

“It’s a small gift Sid has sent you.”

“Sid? Who is that? Oh, Shiddhartho!” he said while opening the wrapper and seemed utterly delighted as he saw the gift. “Baah...please say my thanks to him,” he stood up as he spoke clearly indicating that our conversation ended here.
Sensing that I had little reason to linger on, I got up to leave, when Mrs Sikdar stopped me.

“Oki? Where are you going? Ei bhor dupure na kheye chole jabe naki? Ami bhaat boshiye diyechi. Kheye jeo.  (how can you leave in this hot afternoon without having lunch? I have started cooking rice for you. You must eat with us).

I thanked her for her hospitality and looked nervously at Mr Sikdar. She perhaps sensed my discomfort and said, “He’s like that. Doesn’t speak much with anyone. Plus, today, they have the Higher Secondary result coming out. He’s tensed.”

“Oh,” I said and smiled with relief. It wasn’t me. The old teacher was anxious because of the board examination results.

She asked me to call her “mashima” and invited me to her little kitchen. I drew a small pidi (a raised wooden platform) and sat watching her chop potatoes and onions on a traditional bothi and marvelled at the finesse of that art. She asked me what I did in America, if I cooked at home, if posto was available in Houston and yes, if I could watch Bangla serials on television. There was something so sweetly simple about this middle-aged lady that I fell at ease immediately and even the ordinary meal of daal-bhaat and alu posto in a shabby oil stained kitchen tasted utterly divine.

Just as I was about to wash my hands after the meal, I heard a loud commotion outside the house. In few minutes, I saw a swarm of young boys rushing into the room, all talking at once and falling at Mr Sikdar’s feet while he shouted excitedly, “Ki holo? Kemon holo?” (What is it? How is it?).

One of the boys, a shy dark lean one in very simple ordinary clothes came forward from the group and touched his feet. “Sir, I got a rank. Not sure if first or second as of now, but I scored the highest in the district.”

Mr Sikdar hugged him to his bosom and said only one word, “Baah...!”  

And I could see all the pride, the affection, the support and the intensity of appreciation encapsulated in that little word.

Then, he picked up the watch Sid had so fondly bought for him and asked the boy to stretch his hands.

On his bare wrist, he clipped the watch and said...”This is your prize.”

As I stood at the kitchen door with Mashima, witnessing the simple selfless act of an old teacher, whose only dedication in life was to shape the lives of others, whilst he continued his own modest living, I realised why Sid had such high regards for his man who never claimed his portion of the victory but nobly passed the baton of glory and success from one hand to another through generations.