Monday, January 19, 2009

No need to bother...

I don’t know about all desk jobs, wouldn’t want to make a generalized comment. From my little experience, with PwC and now as part of marketing stint in Marico, I have come to realize that google is best thing that could have occurred to one. The manner in which an astounding innovation comes to light in a matter of five minutes of time spent with the monitor gazing and movement of the mouse, is really cool and presents you with a solution that gives one the confidence to go ahead with a mid term review with the category head. Prior to those five minutes, I was stuck, cornered with no ideas/ creative insights keeping me rooted to the spot, and in fact I was in that position over the weekend though I didn’t actively attempt to arrive at a breakthrough. In the course of the day, I came across one of my emails, which put me in the same situation, though it wasn’t meant to. I didn’t know how to react, whether to react, and post some reactions how to make my point, if at all I had one. How I wish I had google help me get me out of that spot as well. Alas, it doesn’t customize solutions the way I want it. My google equivalent is memories from the days gone by, that let me relive those really wonderful moments and keep me assured that there is no need to react. It doesn’t mean I am maintaining/ forced to maintain a (dignified, yeah right) silence, it is just that I don’t feel threatened or disturbed by the email. It only reminds me how comfortable and assured each one of us is in each other’s company that we don’t worry about image/ what bitter taste is left behind – because honest expressions are never bitter.
Who art thou to fight back,
When there is no war.
Who art thou to pass a remark,
When there is no need of a defence.
Who art thou to worry about an image,
When there is an open slate out there.
Who art thou to feel instigated,
When there was no attempt of intimidation.
Who art thou to express your feelings,
When there is no one out there who doesn’t know you.

Monday, January 12, 2009

Follow up

Does the solution always lie,
In the effort that ensures regular authentic check points,
In the discipline that ensures sincerity without a hint of greed.
If so,
Then the whole deal is nothing but simplistic.
It intrigues me,
Why is there no sincere effort to make it a way of life,
Why is there a gap – intended or otherwise,
Leading to uncomfortable turn of events,
Holding to ransom a larger audience, many a time, for no fault of theirs.
Blame it on the turn of events in the last few weeks since the clock struck 12 to indicate the dawn of a new year, or on my craving to follow-up my last post with another attempt at poetry – that’s how my post for the year is going to start, with a few lines of poetry.

Poetry was always about the men that came and went by, about the river that continued to flow without paying attention to who came and who went by, about the daffodils that painted a picture so blissful to have a craving for a childhood in the grasslands of Europe, about the kings and the wannabe kings who went into monologue mode, time and time again, to express some opinions that were anyways concerning their individual lives but still managed a captive audience at any elocution event. Nowadays, it’s more about a simplistic, meaningful (with no offence to the poems of the past, I am referring to my coherence capabilities) or rather I should have put it across as ‘understandable’, expressive form of communication that helps me in burning my old cells. Given that the drops of that ‘smooth’ drink have never gone down my throat, I will have to make do with the language to help me burn my old brain cells.

I know I cannot get away without mentioning the events I referred to once I changed to paragraphs of expression. For starters, it is that resolve that goes missing once I post my thoughts (once in a year almost) leading to the gap in time. Here I am obviously assuming that there are loads and loads of people held at ransom for no fault of theirs. I will be humbled even if one of you reading this post would feel that the paucity of posts in my blog is holding you at ransom, creating that craving for more from my stable. Look at the audacity of the penultimate line to this one, loads and loads of people – well I can visualize one of you go ‘yeah right’.

However the genesis or the force behind me setting off writing this post is from some disturbing and thoughtless grave statements that have come into public domain in the past fortnight, serving as reminders on the importance of a regular follow up. I contemplated naming the post as ‘Greed’, given that this is the first post of the New Year; let us begin with a positive mindset for the days to come.

What about regular follow-up connotes positive energy?

The fact that it has continuity about its existence, the fact that it is an act when carried out diligently can open up pot-holes and hidden craters forces one to treat a sincere regular follow-up as a solution. The term independent lost its meaning in direction and audit. ‘Catch them young’ is a phrase I believe in, I hope the shrub could have got knocked off before it was allowed to take magnanimous stature of a monster tree. I have lost count of zeroes I have managed in my life, how can there be too many ‘brilliant, sharp qualified’ minds not be intrigued by the presence of that many zeroes in the records that eventually will end up in the public domain. I felt it tough to witness, when the person serving my food had to give me an explanation for a delay/ non-compliance of my order. How does it not affect these ‘brilliant, sharp qualified’ minds who need to eventually serve the owners of the entity with information that ought to be verified, scrutinized and stamped with authority of being in the right form. How does it go unnoticed that in spite of huge amounts of zeroes, the margin on offering solutions is a lot lower than those of the entity’s counterparts in the same operating conditions. I am no expert to comment on how a regular follow up should be or should have been done in the given context. I only know it should have been done.

What disturbs me at another level is how can one play around with trust, unconditional trust that gets generated as soon one brand’s stamp is seen on the records. I read that it may be too early to blame the auditing minds, however given whatever information and more of gut feel I possess, I would not want to see that brand anymore in my country. This incident only makes me more conscious about how easy it is to lose trust and confidence in minutes when it takes decades to earn them. Moments such as these make you start doubting anything and everything you hear, see and sense. It then leads to two roads – one that is bitter all the way due to the lack of spontaneity and trust, and the second one that can only start, raise and maintain hope for a better way of life with all the twists and turns, the bumps and humps that any terrain should have to start appreciating the end of the tunnel. Though not intended, trust me on this one, I must request you to read my previous post once/ once more. I do not know if I can finish the post in a better way.

(Forgive me if I have been completely cryptic, very consciously I have not used any terms that would have immediately made you comprehend the reference only because these days that term has lost its meaning and has turned oxymoronic)