English Club in a Government School!

Engrossed in the grammar of school…

Feud with the tenses of their lives…

Matching their little steps with the articles of their family…

Learning the nouns of living…

English club is a small endeavor towards the conundrums faced by these kids which they are not conducive of. We do not teach them the grammar and literature; we embellish them with the strength to carve a niche for them.

We make them unveil the wonderful sojourn of reading, writing and speaking affluent English. It is more about building CONFIDENCE through READING so that they can be portray equanimity in any life path they choose. It is more about faith that they can SPEAK against the atrocity. It is more about WRITING their feelings so that they can be felicitated with all good luck in their lives.

A SMALL step may lead to a BIG success!

English Club!

Boundaries – A Woman’s Perspective!

Wish there could be no rules,

For my clothes till ankles.

Wish there could be no jaw dropping,

For my very short shorts.

Wish there could be no mentoring,

As to how a woman should ‘behave’

Wish there could be no need,

To hide under wraps my sanitary pads.

Wish there could be freedom,

To normally talk about my periods.

Wish there could be no smirks,

At my want of new lingerie.

Wish there could be no guilt,

Of doing too less household chores.

Wish there could be no deadlines,

To enter at 12.

Wish there could be no staring,

At my legs and chest.

Wish there could be equality,

As we want our dreams too.

Wish girls were more risk takers,

After all we need to stand up on our own.

Wish the whole world understands us,

Like our male peers have started to.

God could have made our life simpler,

Wasn't he satisfied with our monthly pain,

And that nine months journey.

That he added boundaries for being ‘woman’

THE ADVENT OF ETHICAL MANAGERS!

HUSH NEGATIVITY – THE ADVENT OF ETHICAL MANAGERS!

Imagine the world where your office had the sensor that beeps around the whole office when your boss starts his usual harangue and beeps till he speaks something positive. So, presenting before the world is the “Hush-Negativity Sensor”. Coming in the office at 1030 (when your boss comes at 0830) and seeing his usual smirk face puts the day off the edge.

Why not start the day by greeting each other? Why not start the day with a cup of coffee discussing things only in a positive manner. Feels Great! This article comes straight from the heart of ‘not an HR’ person who gets really irritated when you have to start a day with someone else nagging and cribbing. Be it your mistake or not, for our boss we are the puppets in his hands to vent out the feud with his wife. 

Why we need it? PYGLAMLION EFFECT

I think everyone in the OB world would know about this effect. All managers would have noticed this after their tenures of at least 10 years! Then why Un-Pygmalion Effect? I don’t know how relevant it is but by if by encouraging people productivity increases, then my pessimism does it decrease? Nobody needs to study this! We all know this! All the pessimism around us discourages us. I, being an engineer, got discouraged a lot not because my manager was against engineers but he felt there were way too many engineers in this world and nobody really know anything about technology other than how to use Google effectively. This happens very often when a non-tech manager is assigned to a technical project!

The cultural diversity in India is HUGE! It cannot be ignored in this tech world! All this feud of north India and south India is never going to end! A South Indian thinks that the North Indians are way too open and irresponsible. They don’t come on time; they party all night and use invectives. A North Indian thinks that a South Indian is way too monotonous and boring and doesn’t live their lives to the fullest. They are bound by their crutches of responsibility and traditions. Well, people are different! Isn’t it the work (the very core work) of a manager to understand the cultural diversities, ethnicities, different faiths, different beliefs and different upbringing of each and every person he has in his team?

During my tenure, I had a wonderful team of six people excluding my manager. We used to respect each other, exchange our diverse stories and discuss a lot of things about life in the past and the life we wish to have in future! We had huge diversity. I belonged to Delhi and am very open to night life and parties. I used to talk about different English plays I had seen and they used to cherish my moments from their eyes. One person was from Punjab with his usual cool attitude and hardworking nature. Everybody admired him for his no-panicking attitude even in the phase of failure of deployment (technical jargon). There was a lady from Maharashtra and we used to love listen her hamlet stories. She used to sing beautiful Marathi songs. I remember how I ran to her when I fell in love with ‘Navrahi Majhi’ song but didn’t understand it. There were two people from Orissa and they couldn’t stop themselves from gauging on sweets and talking about Rasgulla (and proving that Rasgulla came from Orissa and not Kolkatta). And there was a very simple guy from Jharkhand who used to amaze us with his beautiful stories of sitting beside a river.

See the diversity? Immense! And we all had different needs, different way of working, and different style of speaking. We wanted holidays at different times of the year. Our working time was different, our goals were different, and our ambitions were different! The problem aroused when our manager didn’t realise that Vijay Dashmi might me important for some people and Diwali for some. Some people might be comfortable starting work at 8 in the morning and some at 10 in the morning. He wanted everything to be strict, stringent and timelines attached to all.

He used to come at 8 in the morning (though I caught him reading newspaper at that time) and expected everybody to follow suit. Soon, the whole team expressed a lot of cold and negative vibes towards him and a lot aversion was formed for him. This affected both the team and him as well. He gave a lot of bad appraisals to a lot of people despite they had worked equally hard.

The time is not far when we will have another category in our hierarchical level ‘Ethical Managers’ who will ponder on the ethics of each person. This will be the most difficult portion even for OB people. To see the underlying emotions of some person(my manager in this case) and trying to discern why he chose to do that and then make a judgement of wrong and right ethics. A colleague of me who got bad appraisal eventually left the company. The company was void of a very good resource only because of the animosity between the manager and him. Ethical managers will be like the Investment Bankers in the area of Human Resource and Organisational Behaviour and will take the call of investing in the right people. And we all know how difficult it is to get the right person for the right job in this quagmire of too many people but too less skills. This corporate world is like a quicksand of thousands of us where we all just keep flowing with the mud but a very few people are able to come out of it!

And those are people who know and understand diversity and respects optimism!

Written by: Shagun Maheshwari

This article was written for a competition conducted by FMS OB society.

Results Awaited..

SPJIMR, Mumbai

The beauty of failure! – PG LAB Day-1

Those four days,

With initial juggle of feelings,

Of Why, what and how.

Serenaded with serenity,

Of LONAVLA.

We started a different sojourn,

To experience different relations.

To experience different bonds,

That life had for us.

Mesmerized by the beauty,

Happy with our grandeur stay.

All flushed with new track pants and shoes

High on energy and rules.

Speechless on the view

From our balcony from the room.

We four girls,

Happily exploring each other.

Day First,

‘Meet two people more different from you’

And we explored all the faces

Some we had never seen,

Some we had never talked.

And hence we made a group of three.

‘Meet two more groups different from you’

And it went till we had fifty four!

Four groups, four days, four activities!

Life had suddenly taken a fast pace train.

So much to explore,

So many bonds yet to be made!

So much to delve inside ourselves.

So much to deluge from our hearts.

ASSAULT the first activity,

Fifty four people, all charged up.

Further divided in four teams.

Drizzling all the way,

With drenched rain coats.

Delivery boy, the first game.

Two bowls filled with water,

Six balls in bowl, six people with bucket with strings.

Standing in a circle with each string each person

‘Deliver the balls from one to another with your bucket’

Clueless with the known faces but unknown people

No strategy and no game plan

We started, and our balls out of reach.

Miserable with our performance,

No coordination,

Don’t know where to push and where to pull.

The team disheartened!

Second game, crocodile across the river.

Legs on a plank, and

We move the plank with our hands,

Started, lost control

Started again, lost coordination.

The other team won,

We, little irritated.

But, we knew team is coming along.

We finished, high on hopes and little high on confidence.

Crazy ball,the third game.

Desperate this time,

We can do it, we will do it..

High on coordination, high on confidence

Running forwards and

Making a continuous pathway for the crazy ball.

Yes, Yes!! We won this time!!

From rags to riches,

From failures to success!

The beauty of failure

The beauty of unknown people

The beauty of achievement

The beauty of team

The beauty of PG lab - day 1! 

The day when I hugged a book and slept.

There are days in my life,

when I want to be surrounded

not by people, but by books!

The view of those million pages

have always made me,

smile like a child.

The scenery of those unread pages

have always made me,

grim as harsh sorrow upon me.

The smell of those pages

have always made me forget,

the pangs of hunger.

There are days in my life,

when I want to be surrounded

not by people, but by books!

One more minute,

just to read that extra paragraph.

Sneaking out of a late night party

to lay my hands on my book

To drink my favourite coffee,

and realizing the absence of book.

To get locked in my room,

just to find solace with my book.

To love Austen,

And miss Bronte.

To get up at night,

just to read few more words of your orb.

There are days in my life,

when I want to be surrounded

not by people, but by books!

Books! Words!

You world has never failed to charm me!

You make me forgot all that serenades me

People come slowly,

They go fast.

You are just there. Always!

Besides me!

At times of happiness,

I see you and feel more happy.

At times of sorrow,

I hug you and sleep.

From path of clutches to path of calmness!

Don't look for relationship, look for that Bond!

When you get a space at my blog, you should know you mean A LOT to me!
Yes Gaurav Kumar Rawat!
We have seen together that life, that I believe is the most bizarre form of life!

But dude, the bond that we had formed together is unconditional!
You be seven oceans away from me, and I would still pray for the smile on your face (I hope, then you will have a better hairstyle).
It is sometimes , that I am unable to give any name to this relationship. Because I don't care in what form you are with me, be my brother, be my friend, be my confidante, whatever you want to name it, You are that special person in my life with whom the silence on the phone can tell me thousands stories (People will read this as a love story, but for us it is not! It is that like that special bond I have with my mother when she intrinsically know that I am hungry. Well, I am hungry right now!).

I thought I would write about our friendship and about how wonderful as a person you are on your birthday!
But, it seems my fingers are writing entirely different! I want to write about how pure a relationship can be! How just the presence in your life of somebody makes you feel secured. How, anything you say, any joke on anybody will not affect the core bond that we have!
That's why, I want to say to the world today, don't look for relationship with a person, look for that bond!

That bond, which will give you immense happiness when the other is happy!
Ant let me tell me you dear Rawat, I am very happy for you since you are happy!

And with all my heart,I wish you all this happiness in your future! (This deal is valid only if you keep disturbing me)!

Well, I do miss the times when we use to share things together, new knowledge, new music, new movies, new observations!! But, Abhi picture khatam nahi huyi hai dost! You can always ping me for anything you want to tell about your new DSLR, from aperture to focal length (but you know I don't give a damn though), but it feels good!...

I think I have made it too complex. Let me summarize it for you!
Its just that, its your birthday and I feel happy! :)

God Bless you and me !!
19th Aug '2015