The Amateur's Scratchpad

It’s been almost two months  for me now in Bombay and while I am indulging in the bitter-sweet taste of independence, struggle and freedom of the city, my biggest qualm still remains to be food! The food here is just abysmal! Coming from a city which is known for its food and thus having a very particular tongue for taste, I almost always find myself in the search of that perfect Bengali thali. Even my Instagram and YouTube algorithms now suggest me nothing but food videos. The situation clearly has gotten out of hands- it is that bizzare! Anyway, one evening while randomly scrolling through the different videos, I came across something known as the “ Pice Hotels” in Kolkata. Before this I’ve never even heard about them. A little more extensive search revealed that these kind of hotels have been there for quite a long time.

So, what are these pice hotels? They are authentic Bengali eating houses, established anything between fifty and hundred years ago. These unpretentious eateries are often hidden away in narrow allies, serving flavoursome meals to the hungry office-goer or the “on-budget” college student at fairly unbelievable prices. They are Calcutta’s best kept culinary secret. The Marxists did one thing right in the city where almost nothing is ever right- delicious food at super cheap prices! The concept started in the era when things were available in paisa and a full meal would cost the same. Thus the name, “paisa-hotel”/ “pice hotel”!

Now, moving on to the menus of these hotels, they change regularly depending on the availability of the type of fish or vegetables in the market. The moment you step in through the door, you notice the handwritten chalked menu on the board, the manager seated on a slightly elevated platform right beside it. The walls behind him are adorned with pictures of gods and goddesses often contributing to the fuss-free style of the place. For more authenticity, most of these hotels still serve the food on “kashar thala” (copper plated utensils) with a banana leaf on top. Before you could read out the entire menu, the friendly waiter would come with a face full of smile and ask you, “Aj ki neben, rui?” (What will you have today, rohu?) even if they have never ever seen you before. That’s the level of homeliness they intend to make you feel. But in case if you are a frequent customer, they will bring you your customized thali even before you could utter a word. Some parallel world Starbucks, right?

Apart from these, there are two things: you cannot ask for a table all by yourself or you might get shoved out from the place and the more you tip the waiter, the more choice you get in personalizing your piece of succulent mutton or fish the next time.

To conclude, pice hotels are almost a part of the city’s heritage now. Though the millennial generations are flocking more towards the cafe culture, these hotels are still managing strong and the secret lies in the variety of offer, the price and most importantly the homemade ambience. The pice hotels of Calcutta continue to thrive in their secret corners, satisfying the tongues and stomachs of hundreds who hustle on a daily basis without asking costing their arms and legs.

“The enemy of feminism isn’t men. It’s patriarchy, and patriarchy is not men. It is a system, and women can support the system of patriarchy just as men can support the fight for gender equality.”- Justine Mask

Feminism in India is like electricity. The larger chunk doesn’t get it. Sounds like a joke, doesn’t it? Well, the concept of “feminism” in India is quite similar. People think that ‘feminists’ are a group of women who try to overpower men and demands to rule the society. And thus, being a feminist or believing in feminism is simply a jest. But, what is more saddening is that these people who take women’s liberation as a standing joke consists greater number of women than men. So, in order to analyze that who is the actual enemy of feminism contributing to the slow growth of the concept in the nation, patriarchy should be taken into consideration. The system of patriarchy is embedded into Indian women in such a way that most of the times, they, themselves do not understand the problems with some of their actions. The Indian society teaches women to be co-operative, timid, coy in every situation. It doesn’t matter if the situation is of domestic violence or marital rape or simply mental abuse. Statistics say that 65% women are involved in abusive relationships because of three reasons- illiteracy, no financial stability, no family support. The option of adjustment is mostly suggested by the mother.

Another noteworthy example is how the Indian society teaches boys “not to cry like girls”. How often do we hear mothers ask their glorious sons not to cry like girls? Here lies the root of patriarchy. We, as a nation, are so paternal that we think showing any signs of emotion is weakness. Boys and men in our culture grow up with this mentality and eventually turn out to be exact photo copies of their fathers who had been raised up in the similar way, which is mostly degenerating women- be it someone of their kin, a transgender or even a sex worker.

Thus, if we ever want to attain the badge of equality, first, we need to shatter free from the cycle of patriarchy irrespective of gender. Patriarchy traps boys and men into restrictive standards of masculinity which compels them to act under certain circumstances. Instead of always finding solutions to prevent certain actions, let’s teach our boys the basic, so that as they grow up gender equality becomes a natural way of life. For example, instead of putting deadlines on our girls, let’s teach the boys what not to do when they find a girl alone in the street in the middle of the night. Let’s teach the guys that ‘no’ means the end of request or persuasion. Women do not like to be buttered again and again till they say ‘yes’.

And as for girls, let us just teach them that they can reach as high as humanly possible.

Deepak hails from Bihar. Every year during the pujas he stands beside the Maddox Square gate under the array of yellow lights that adorn the streets. He sells balloons, little toys and whistles. He makes it a point to stand for at least twenty hours a day, especially during this time of the year, all in the hope that this year he can earn enough to make his father’s gall bladder operation happen. He stands there with hope in his beady eyes which eventually flickers whenever he sees a kid badgering his/her parents to buy them something. The parents usually give in to their beloved kid’s request initially but then back off after they hear that, that toy gun costs fifty bucks. The parents try to bargain and lessen it down to twenty or thirty bucks. A few even offer nothing more than fifteen. Sometimes they get tired and buy it, sometimes Deepak, being helpless gives it away for twenty. Most of the times they take the children away by making a promise of ‘later’. Deepak, keeps on standing. The Doraemon and the Shinchan tied to his stick flies above his head!

Manoj runs a make-shift fast food stall right opposite the entry gate of College Square. People come to his stall to grab a quick bite before they join the wave to enter the pandal of College Square. His customers are restless, hungry, some of them complaining and angry as well. Manoj and his brother are the two employees of his stall. The orders keep piling up and both of them have a hard time managing the stall. Manoj wears a vest and a trouser both of which has occasional holes in them. Just like his customers, Manoj is also restless. He knows his eight-year old daughter is waiting for him back home expecting a new pink-coloured frock. He wants to make as much business as possible before midnight and go back home to his daughter along with her pink frock. He hurries up and puts another egg roll on his big ‘tawa’ to fry.

Abhishek stands outside his kiosk on the crossing of Gariahat wearing his uniform- a white shirt, a pair of white pants and a white helmet, the straps of which hurt his chin now and a pair of black boots. The boots are a gift from his wife. They got married two months back. He has slept only five hours in the last two days. He watches the sea of people crossing his kiosk to go see the pandals of Ekdalia Evergreen and Singhi Park. There is no traffic of cars really but a traffic of humans for sure. Some come to him for directions, some for requesting him to move the rope boundary faster than usual. Honestly, Abhishek too wants to do everything faster than usual. “Tumi amay thakur dekhate niye jabena?” (Won’t you take me out for pandal hopping?), he cannot get these words of his wife out of his head. This is her first Durga Puja in Kolkata. This is their first Durga Puja, together!
“O Dada!, dori ta shoran! Kotokkhon wait korbo?” (Brother, remove the rope! How long should we wait?)
Abhishek comes out of his cloud of thoughts. He removes the rope hurriedly thinking of how long he has to wait before he can go home.

We often get so lost in our own happiness, in our own merry-making that we forget there are people sacrificing the biggest joys of their lives to make ours more joyful. So, this puja, if we ever come across a Deepak or a Manoj or a Abhishek, let’s not forget to smile and at least acknowledge their efforts. Let us not hackle Deepak for a mere ten or twenty bucks, let’s not bug Manoj to make that plate of hakka chow faster or shout at Abhishek for clearing the traffic at once. Maybe, then only the puja will be everyone’s!

The first thing that Melissa Waggener Zorkin, Founder & CEO of WE Communication asked the audience to do after taking the stage at Praxis’8 was to check out the card kept in front of them and answer the question in it.

In this ever changing universe of technology and wave of content, it is hard for an individual entity to stay afloat, right? So, what should these brands do to stay relevant, original and impactful? How should it fit into the consumer’s life? Melissa answered all these questions in her talk with Mr. Mahesh Jayaram, Director, Corporate Communications, Dell India.

Brands are getting into motion. They are becoming more and more dynamic with every passing day, trying to find out new ways, new strategies to keep their consumer base engaged. “But, are they forgetting who their hero is?” , questions Zorkin. She says in order for a brand to stay impactful it needs to follow three key things:

• Lead with purpose and personal conviction: She explains this by picking a very recent Indian campaign, the Zomato Logout campaign. The forward tweet made by Deepinder Goyal, the founder & CEO of the food app is an excellent example of how leaders should be.
• Building brand loyalty at 360 degree respect: A brand cannot have a loyal consumer base unless there is 360 degree respect. In order to achieve that, the brand has to prove itself through different tactics.
• Proving global impact with local action: Here, the CEO takes the example of The Clean India campaign by Dettol where they made a lot of noise by putting in action locally. Not all the countries in the world have the issue of cleanliness but the way this campaign was presented made a buzz all throughout the world.

Also, leaders should understand the fact that with purpose comes consequences. They neither can run away from the consequences nor can they leave the purpose. So, what can they do to keep both? They can unite stakeholders and show what they stand for. She took the examples of people like Greta Thunberg and Gandhi Yashinda.

“You’ll be with the content team!”, announced Mr. Amith Prabhu, our dean. And, my fate was sealed! Right from then, I had a hurry-scurry of thoughts in my otherwise mostly dormant brain about what would my work be? What could they ask me to do in content? Can they ask me to create something then and there? Honestly, I was a little perplexed about my job role until we had the first core team huddle on 27^th morning and were finally briefed about our individual roles. I, was in charge of finding the speakers from wherever they were and get them ready with technical stuff like mics and headsets, a few minutes prior to when they go on stage.

Initially, it seemed like a very tough task to me, finding the speakers being the most difficult part since I didn’t know most by their faces. I think, a few times I must have come across as someone creepy looking weirdly at their lanyards. In my defense, I was trying to check out their names. You got to do what you gotta do, isn’t it? Anyway, we started our duties at 9.30 in the morning which was two hours before the start of the actual event. So, we started by doing the nitty-gritting work such as transferring audio from pen drives, keeping microphones well set and so on. Once, the keynote addresses began, I was immensely helped by Anubhuti Mathur, the content director of the event. I was astonished at how she kept so calm and coordinated with me in getting the speakers. She helped me in identifying the speakers by their face even when she had to run from one pole of the hall to another while working at the console at the same time. Also, while running back and forth, I learnt how all these enormous events work. It’s because of the synchronization between all the team members. All of us, starting from my classmates to the ones in the core team had a beautiful correlation amongst ourselves for which the event sailed on smoothly.

But just like the second side of a coin, there were some incidents where some of the speakers refused to wait even a minute before they were to go on stage. I, had to handle that part of the crisis which I managed somehow! Way to be a PR professional, right? Handling crisis and all!

I pretty much had the same job to do for both the days. But, the biggest takeaway of being in the content team was that I got to know so many new faces who I wouldn’t have known otherwise, I had the chance of talking to each one of them privately, even if it was for a moment before they went up on the stage.

It was two days full of fun as well as learning. Even a person like me whose best friend is the bed didn’t complain even once! Being a thousand kilometers away all my life from athletics, though I couldn’t get out of bed the next morning because of my sore legs but would I do it again? The same way? In a heartbeat!

Someone I knew for a long time, committed suicide yesterday. When I heard the news I sat on my bed, stunned, trying to figure out what must have gone wrong with him. I played all our interactions and conversations of the recent past in my mind over and over again. I could remember nothing. He had always been so ‘normal’! I went to his Facebook profile to find some status updates- updates which will seem very normal otherwise, but under this circumstance they evolved some deeper meanings. I went through them thoroughly and finally got some hints on what all he wanted to convey. How come nobody noticed? Maybe, this is how so many lives are lost because apparently mental health is a taboo, a bane! Something that we talk about openly in our country because of the fear of being ridiculed, laughed at or simply being called crazy. A recent study showed that at least 56% of Indians suffer from different mental traumas and a staggering 47% can be categorized as being highly judgmental of people perceived as having a mental illness. Within this category, many were listed as saying, a safe distance should be kept from those suffering from a mental illness or otherwise the ‘normal’ person might get affected. What’s worse is a 26% of these people, belonging from upper-middle class backgrounds are literally afraid of mental illnesses. Often, as it happens, the person going through some kind of mental trauma does not even get a companion to sit and share his/her story with. Mental health is not age or gender specific. A person can be ever-smiling and yet be going through some dark tunnels in the mind. According to another survey, in India, people working in private sectors suffer hugely from anxiety and clinical depression. This is mostly because of the “hustle” culture that our country glorifies. A person staying all day in the office, without considering if he/she is actually doing some work or not is praised more than the one who finishes all the work in the stipulated time period and takes out time to relax. Not only people with full time jobs, mental illnesses are increasing among teenagers and early twenty somethings as well in spite of having relatively normal childhoods. The common reasons being excess pressure about studies, meeting expectations, social pressure etc. Parents, most of the time are either clueless about the entire situation or choose to ignore it thinking it to be a “phase” that will pass eventually. All these could have been taken into consideration if at least people understood what mental illness is!

Sabyasachi, the famous fashion designer shared a post on Instagram a few months back degrading mental health. “If you see a woman ‘overdressed’, caked with makeup, armoured with jewellery, it’s most likely that she is wounded. Bleeding inside, silenty. Holding on to her pride and dignity, shining for the world, though within her innermost being there is a dark, blinding pain. Take some time off to give her your precious company, heal her with your empathy, because sometimes nothing can replace human warmth. Not even the most precious of jewellery.” , his post read. If a personality like him can share such a meaningless write-up, let alone those who belong from the lower strata of the society!

It’s really sad how so many souls are lonely and sad and have panic attacks on a regular basis inside their rooms, even when they are surrounded by their nearest and dearest ones while their family sit in the next room watching TV.

India, as a nation, should immediately be educated about the cons of mental health and steps should be taken in forming a network where no one feels alienated to talk openly about the demons going on in their heads. Because nothing is worse than living with a unexplainable sadness or as Miss Havisham said in Great Expectations, “The agony is exquisite, is it not? A broken heart. You think you will die. But you just keep living. Day after day, after terrible day.”

Line in Italics 1 taken from: Sabyasachi’s post on Instagram

Line in Italics 2 taken from: Great Expectations by Charles Dickens

Chaos. The sound of the morning crowd consisting of cuss Maharashtrian words, some Hindi, the happy yells of the school going crowd, the gaga of the hawkers fill the compartment of the Mumbai local. I, stand in a corner. A little uneasy and a mix of terrifying and emotions. What if I miss my station? What if these people push me out and I die on the tracks? Random thoughts circle around my weird little brain.

Suddenly, “1,2,3,4 mic testing…Check check” I look around and within the little gaps of someone’s armpits and over someone’s shoulder, somehow cramming my neck out, I notice a couple. The husband has a huge harmonium strung around his neck and has black glasses on, the wife helps him set up. After a few minutes, the man plays a few reeds of the instrument and starts singing. His powerful yet melodious voice echoes throughout the compartment. One would not be familiar with such a scene in a Mumbai local on a Monday morning. For me, the whoosh-shoosh of the train, the ever screaming voices of the Marathi women, the screaming babies stirred up a concert of its own. The rest of the city had just recovered from the rain submerged week that was before and was barely ready to plunge into the upcoming one (including me). And here, this man was single handedly trying to make the city as well as the compartment come alive.  Soon, what started out as a couple of R.D Burman songs evolved into a full-blown karaoke with Kishore Kumar, Mohammad Rafi and even some Kumar Sanu thrown in. After a point, most of the men in the compartment joined in. Some, in the greed of a little free entertainment, some just to free themselves out from the shackles of the mundane everyday routine. What choice did the rest of us have but to join? The metal seats, handlebars became the instruments for the over enthusiastic audience.

Among all these hustle and bustle, I suddenly notice the wife, chopping vegetables! Inside that crowded little coop where people were almost falling on each other and her blind husband sang like there’s no tomorrow, she chopped vegetables on an almost broken vegetable board, as if totally untouched by the chaos around her. I had a plethora of questions going on in my mind, the first and the foremost being why was she chopping vegetables here and how? I also wanted to ask the man if he ever tried to make a career out of his singing. If no, then why? Was his one of the million dreams which got crushed among the crowd? Meanwhile, “Agla station CST”, the announcement breaks my bubble. But, me being the unmindful person that I am, gets shoved out of the train onto the platform before I could compose myself. But just before I would fall flat on my face, someone grabs my top from behind. It’s the vegetable chopping lady. Both of us get down. I thank her and she gives me some tips on how to behave on a Mumbai local. In between the conversation, I finally ask her my most anticipated question. She answers, “Mujhe bas jaldi se aapna khaatam karna hain taaki main Sholay dekh sakun. Bus itna hi toh hain zindagi mein. Chalti hun, madam. Dhyaan se jaana aap!” And, both of them walk away.

Before I could answer, the pair goes out of my sight, lost in the sea of people, absorbing in the city of sometimes broken dreams, the melody slowly fading away leaving behind the static sound of the cars, traffic and somewhat empty hearts.

My mother has been a housewife all her life. She has never had a job, has a very basic education and so automatically she has never had huge demands from life. But, does that mean she doesn’t or cannot have an identity of her own? Is being a housewife any less than having a full-time job?

These questions got me thinking about “identity”. What does it mean? What is the actual definition of identity? Does identification only come for those who fit into a socially structured definition of a 9-5 job? What is identity/ identification?

According to the search engine, “The definition of identity is who you are, the way you think about yourself, the way you are viewed by the world and the characteristics that define you. An example of identity is a person’s name.” Now, if we take a keen look at the definition, we will see that the word used most in the definition is “you”. Then, how come people like our mothers or our grandmothers have spent almost their entire life living under the identity of being someone’s mother or someone’s daughter or someone’s wife? How come they are just someone’s “missus”? Is it just because they do not have a 9-5 time bound job that pays them at the end of every month? Our very patriarchal society has somehow hegemonized us to believe that a woman’s identity still remains under the garb of a man’s. So, even when appealing for women’s rights or women’s safety, some particular phrases are very frequently heard; “Stop rape! Because she is someone’s mother or someone’s sister.” Or “ Would you do it if it was your mother, sister or wife?’’ Shouldn’t it have been, “She is someone.’’?

India, as a nation might be taking baby steps towards a more undogmatic mindset, more liberal thinking, more acceptance, but honestly, are we there yet? How many of us can genuinely say, even only to ourselves, that we do not take our mothers, especially those who are homemakers for granted?

From the time when I’ve learnt to differentiate between right and wrong, I have often been heartbroken by how the society has treated our mothers. And the bigger problem is, the victims often themselves do not comprehend the set back in this. For instance, my own mother who has never really cared if people call her by her own name as long as they know that she is particularly someone’s wife, whose only point of concern has been if we have eaten or not, whose only goal in life has been how to make my father content. For her, identification of herself has never mattered as long as she is appreciated by her family for the new recipe that she tried for dinner. She has never really started to care why identification is so important!

This self-identification problem is not only limited to the ladies of our previous generation, but is also very much acute in the on-going millennial cohort.

‘Perhaps Eckhart Tolle said it best: “When you lose touch with yourself, you lose yourself in the world.” And when it comes to losing touch with themselves, women seem to do that best, especially when it comes to relationships.’

No matter how strong or how independent , how individualistic or unconventional a woman is, most crumble down under the coercion of the relationship where a man is involved, sometimes even unintentionally. This happens mostly because the common population still believes in the wrong definition of “feminism” and the men even worse, they think “letting” a woman do all that they does on a regular basis is feminism. More sadly, this misconception is not only ingested in the mind of men but also in the minds of 70% of women, belonging both from the prior as well as the current generation. Maybe, that’s why a bitter relationship is always expected and normalized between a mother-in-law and her daughter-in-law. Neither the mother-in-law nor the daughter-in-law wants to acquire their own identities but they want to be the female version of their husbands’ surnames. The women find themselves in this dilemma because most women are brought up to see an amorous partnership as the main event of their entire lives.

This situation is likely to evolve along with the course of the next few decades. So, not only men but women should also be taught about the fact that how significant self identification of a person is. Till then, let us try to shamble the stereotype where women struggle everyday to discover their own identity which is often dominated and stumbled upon by the paternal society.

“She is a person!”

Source: Line in Italics taken from: How do women lose themselves in marriage?- Huff Post

Shiv Shivakumar, Group Executive President, Aditya Birla Group took the stage of Praxis 8 as the first keynote speaker. He began his speech by telling us a story. A story about a pilot and his wife and the trust between them. The story goes like this. Once he was in a flight and it was going through a lot of turbulence. While he and the other passengers panicked, the women beside him remained calm and composed. After a little hesitation, he asked her how she was not panicking. “It’s my husband flying the plane. We are also going back home to Bombay!”, she had answered.

“That should be the level of trust of trust between a brand and its consumers. Trust is the essence of all relationships.” , says Mr. Shivakumar. An alumni of IIM Calcutta and IIT Madras and being in the corporate communication world for over 28 years, Mr. Shivkumar agrees that the definition of “trust” between the brand and the consumer has evolved from time to time. He puts a little example here to explain further. In Bangalore, when Tropicana faced a backlash from the media after a mother complained about how her son fell sick after drinking the juice, they got a mother from Gurgaon to talk about how she had trusted the brand over years with her children. Why did they do this? They did this so that people believe them, so that people can again form their trust on the brand based on the mother-child connection.

NGOs now a days have the biggest trust connection from people. Because in NGOs there are volunteers, not employees. People believe that NGOs are helpless and whatever they are doing, they are doing it for the ones who need it. What are brands doing to make its users believe this?

He says that in this dynamic world, brands have to keep updating themselves to keep up with the pace of change. Thus, one has to be a team player rather than being an individual star. There is no point in being a leader unless you’re a team leader who is smart, has a perception and is approachable. Poor leadership has already destroyed a lot. Facebook digital data fiasco, Uber, Boeing all very few examples from a ton. “Customers also can see through you.”, mentions Mr. Shiv. To support his statement, he puts statistics such as only 38% of the people believe in the brand that they use. Customers have been fooled by brands so many times and in so many ways that people have stopped putting their faiths in them. This is the reason why brands have such a small number of loyal customers. Yet, the world has become a place where brands and its users has to co-exist. What can these brands do to make the relationship between them and its users and its employees better?

• Make media the friend, not the enemy: The brands have to start taking media as their friend and not the foe. Media does what it is supposed to do- publicize and spread the news. One of the biggest loopholes of brands is that whenever there’s a positive story, they want the media to carry it. In case of a negative one, they try to shut out the media.
• Filtering out fake news: A lot of times fake news about a brand keeps circulating in the market which eventually leaves a negative impression on the consumer. Brands should see to it that these kind of fake news should be filtered out in one go.
• Being a friend to the employee: Brands should appreciate their employees the same way they held them accountable.
• Being more see- through: Brands should try to be more transparent, find out more ways through which customers can approach them. The more transparent they are, the more consumers will come.

Trust is the social glue. Without trust between the management. Company, brand and its consumers, everything will fall apart. “Trust but verify”, he signed off with a quote from Ronald Raegan.