Ageing With Technology

The other day, I visited my cousin Jai in Chennai. I was meeting her after a long time. Despite staying far away from the city in a peaceful suburb, with her two daughters settled abroad, she was her usual chirpy self. As if not to let her feel the absence of her demanding kids, she had her ageing father and her mother-in-law staying with her. Over the conversation, she said wryly, the kids have grown and are on their own but I still have enough on my plate to do. I could see the Gen X at the crossroads of parental duty and parental care.

As we were reminiscing our childhood days over a cup of coffee, her mother-in-law called from the upper floor. The Wifi signal was missing on her phone and she wanted Jai to check. As Jai was climbing up the stairs, Ashok - her husband -  called out from the other room – he had switched off the router due to heavy rains the previous night. As Jai came down pulling her hair, after switching on the router, she burst into laughter – I don’t get to know the difference whether I was connected on Wifi or mobile data but my mother-in-law is super sensitive. She doesn’t like the speed of 3G and wants only the high-speed Wifi for her Yoga lessons on the YouTube . And you were asking me as to how I spent my time with both kids away.  Ashok just quipped from behind the walls – they are ageing smartly and gracefully. Be proud of them.

As Jai was clearing the table her father came out from the room. He showed a long whatsapp message on his mobile to Jai and said – there is a very good home remedy for diabetes in my friends’ group. All these ingredients are available in our regular Anna Nagar shop. I have just now checked. Can you go to the town today and get these? It is very simple to make once we get the stuff.  Jai looked at the list, many of the items in the list she could not even pronounce. She took a deep breath, tried to hide the frown on her face and said – OK, just forward this to me – and moved into the kitchen.

As Jai came out of the kitchen, Ashok was leaving for his tennis session and waved towards me and Jai. Before he could leave, Jai snapped at Ashok and said – take a good look at my face. While your mother and father-in-law are ageing gracefully, I might suddenly turn into Eighty by the time you finish your game.  But don’t you worry, age is just a number after all. Ashok laughed and said – Go and watch Sankara TV with your father, that will calm you down.

The survival instinct

As I was entering my office I got a call from my colleague Prasad. Do you know that Narendra Babu has quit – he enquiringly declared with a bit of astonishment. Babu was indeed a hardcore org-person. Had joined the company as a fresher and loved the product that he had seen grow from a single client to 200 clients today. He would be the last person to quit, we all thought.  And Prasad added – you know Krishnan started reporting to him just about a fortnight back. Now, that was a piece of high-end analytics.

Suddenly I recalled the conversation that I had with AP Krishnan some 3 years back.  I had just been given the charge of a new department carved out and APK was one of the first to join the team. He had been an old timer with some 20+ years of experience but was a difficult guy to handle – at least that was what I had heard about him, though had never got a chance to work with him.

During our first conversation, APK was briefing me about the work done by him over the past 20 years and listed out all the Managers that he had worked with. And then, with an impish smile he asked me – do you know what is common across this list? I thought for a moment and said – I think all of them have left the organization now. And with the same mischief in his eyes he added – some of them not in the best of circumstances. I was taken aback by that menacingly honest introduction of APK. But I was badly in need of a Program Manager in my team so just ignored that as a friendly banter. And APK’s reputation as a strong Program Manager was overpowering enough to allay all other concerns at that point.

Two years later, I was in a situation when one of the programs handled by Krishnan was in trouble. And my new boss was livid. I was given an ultimatum that if the situation was not in control in 2-weeks’ time, I should look for a job. One of those evenings, we were sitting in a shanty bar in Mumbai, with a mug of beer in hand, discussing the strategy with APK for the set of problems in hand. For the first time, I could see APK feeling helpless and frustrated at the unending deluge of problems.  I suddenly recollected our first conversation. I felt like a wounded soldier on the hospital bed. Despite a valiant fight, the end appeared so near.  A good two months had passed since that late night call I had with my boss, putting money on my head. The situation had improved but not completely in control.

That night I could not sleep. Within an hour into my sleep I got up sweating. It was a bad dream. I was standing all alone in that big conference room of this client Bank, where large framed portraits of all their past MDs used to hang across the four walls. But what I saw in that dream was all the past Managers of APK smiling at me from those large portraits and there was one blank frame staring at me. And I knew the end was close. It was my turn now.

Next day, I entered the Bank and went straight into the room given to us for the project work. My eyes were red as I had not been able to sleep the whole night. To my surprise APK was already there – he normally used to come after I had settled in.  He too appeared a bit haggard.  And after a short exchange of pleasantries, he said, in all seriousness, that he had decided to go on a sabbatical for one year. The reason of course was not the travails of this project but something personal. I tried to reason it out with him but he had made up his mind on that.

As both of us got busy with our work in the morning, this sudden development kept pounding my mind. Is he really serious? Is there really a personal reason? Will this save him from losing his job? Or both our jobs for that matter? And that famous Bollywood dialogue came to my mind. Gabbar ke taap se tumhe sirf ek hi aadmi bacha sakta hai… Khud Gabbar.

And now, when APK joined back after one-year sabbatical, he started reporting to Narendra Babu. Prasad was perhaps hinting at this when he said that APK had just started reporting to Babu. Or did he genuinely mean that Babu’s team would be dismantled so APK would be available again for us to consider for one of our projects.

As I was deeply immersed in these thoughts, Raji knocked at my door. I had a scheduled review on the status of my operations. Towards the end of that review, Raji reminded me that one indent for a Program Manager that we had put in the talent portal was expiring and asked me whether that had to be extended. I felt like a live bullet had just gone past brushing my ears.  APK’s profile was a perfect fit for my indent. It was a close shave I thought – a second time in a row. And I told Raji – please delete that indent, we are not looking for any program manager for now. As Raji was leaving the room, I just turned towards her and asked – is there a way to find out who all have an open indent for program manager? I might have an opportunity to return a favour, I thought. 

Complex Majoritarianism and Majoritarian Complicity?

Recently, I was traveling by the Shatabdi express train from Chennai to Bangalore. During the journey, I observed that the steward serving us food was not very pleasant in his demeanor. Many of the passengers felt the same.  Some of them just ignored and a few others reacted but did not get any response.  And then, one of the passengers mentioned that the stewards were from the northern part of India and that indeed was the problem -  the north Indians coming down to south for work and vitiating the atmosphere.

As a matter of fact, the steward was indeed unpleasant but was not rude at all. The auto-rickshaw drivers in Chennai, on the other hand, are rude to the core. And I reckon, none of them is from the northern part of India. Same is the case with the local auto-rickshaw drivers in Bangalore or in Delhi. But dealing with them, people handle it as an individual aberration. However, when an ‘outsider’ shows a little attitude, the reaction turns parochial and an entire group is branded.

And therein lies the complexity of majoritarianism. The regional, religious, language or the social-class majority seeks a certain degree of primacy in the society, with a sense of entitlement. Be it this train incident; a roadside skirmish in any Indian city; an ostensible denial of a minority right in a majority domain; inside a minority dominated pocket within a majority expanse or even an offbeat thinker who doesn’t align with the majority viewpoint, be at work or in a society – the majoritarianism tends to command everything. Right from a trivial dress-code to a more expansive social practices or even to an organizational strategy.

As long as the smaller group remains submissive or compliant, there are no issues. The larger group doesn’t feel threatened as long as it maintains an upper hand. And precisely for that reason, the migrant businessmen from a specific part of the country are highly successful across the country and still are never at odds with the majority groups.  The psychology of Majoritarianism, howsoever complex it may appear, has also got to do something with the complicity of the Majoritarian. A majority group also consists of some balanced, moderate individuals. In fact, they form the majority within the majority. However, they remain passive on the face of such majoritarianism. And, as a result,  the small majoritarianist group sways passionate sentiments for unjustified and unethical parochial gains.

This passive moderate group has a major role to play if it truly believes in pluralistic principles - be it the roadside, a place of worship or a workplace. Did I err when I did not correct my fellow passenger in the train from branding and hence alienating a whole community. Perhaps yes. We can become a true pluralistic society only when the moderates thwart all attempts at isolating smaller groups in a given environment – the context could be a public place, a work place or a place of worship.  As there is no case for any patronage or appeasement of the smaller groups, there also is no room for any threat or check against the freedom of opinion and movement for anybody, anywhere, as long as the individual or the group is a responsible citizen of this country.