Why Companies Cut Workforce?

To become more nimble and increase revenues, especially in difficult times, you would say. Umm...yes…no…yes. Well, it’s not completely true.

Today, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has announced a deep cut in the number of employees, nearly 5,000 people have been, or would soon be, given marching order. Such a move has never happened in the history of the software giant. A friend, who is also the business news head of an English TV news channel, rang me up, and exclaimed, “The IT industry is in doldrums, eh.”

About six years ago, I made a similar comment at the Microsoft Analysts Meet at San Francisco, USA. Silicon Graphics was shedding weight then and there was rumour that Sun Microsystems and Adobe would follow suit. An American financial analyst, who used to contribute regularly to Harvard Business Review and New York Times, was around. He chuckled, and said, “Cutting jobs in a listed company has little to do with the health of the company; it has got more to do with the stock market.”

I was surprised. He explained that most big companies in the West periodically announce job cuts. These jobs are mostly sundry, from departments which usually have flab, like sales, R&D, product promotion, front office, etc. As a result, the exercise doesn’t affect the company’s operations. But the stock market investors feel that the company would become nimble through this job-cut, and hence, become more profitable. In the short and even medium term, this move boosts the company’s stock prices.

The analysis struck a chord, and as I researched more into it, the correlation became clear. I don’t trash the current so-called economic slowdown, the recession is real, but still take the Microsoft move with, not a pinch, but a pound of salt. Today at NYSE, Microsoft stock has fallen 11 per cent. But mark my words, over the next 15 days, it would zoom to new heights.

PS. Learning never ends. Why companies recruit more? To execute more contracts, increase production, and garner more revenues and profits, I thought. Satyam Chairman Ramalinga Raju taught another lesson: some CEOs inflate the payroll to siphon off company money to their personal accounts.

Honeymoon at Vrindaban

Does anyone go to Vrindaban for honeymoon? Aditi and I did, last week.

My high-flying friends who honeymooned at Zurich, California’s Napa Valley or Singapore were aghast. The lesser journos who did it in Manali, Goa or Munnar tried their best to dissuade us, while friends from the workplace shrugged, meaning, “Oh, Atanu always wants to be in a place from where he can easily dash back in case of a major news break.” It wasn't true, news rundown was the last thing in my mind when we undertook the 3-hour drive via Faridabad, Palwal and Kosi. The choice of Vrindaban was by default. The chief of Ramakrishna Mission Vrindaban centre requested us to spend a few days in Brajabhumi just after the marriage.

The decision turned out to be just right.

My wife Aditi, though a Vaishnavite by lineage, had never visited Vrindaban, and she thoroughly enjoyed the stint. From roaming around the serpentine lanes of Vrindaban humming Krishna kirtans, eating Rabri and Rasagullas at Brajbasi, to doing more than a few shakes during the high-pitch evening prayer at the Iskcon Temple, Aditi soaked Vrindaban with her body and heart. Meanwhile, to make the ambience more agreeable, migratory cranes, pelicans, ducks and wagtails have started swamping the marshlands around Vrindaban; the journey to Barsana and Nandgaon was memorable.

A piece of interesting news for Vrindaban lovers. The Uttar Pradesh government has sanctioned Rs 250 crore for the improvement of infrastructure at Vrindaban, and the work has already begun. The link road between Vrindaban and Mathura is now smooth and clean, the Krishna Janmabhumi temple area clear of hawkers and vehicles, relaying work of Parikrama Marg is in full swing, and restoration of old temples is on.

Of course, avoid looking at the high-rise residential flats coming up near the Iskcon Temple, and the hawkers selling boiled eggs beside the Vrindaban gate.

The Castle of Music

Mehrangarh Fort in Jodhpur is not just an imposing stone structure, with carved facades and exquisite filigree work, well-maintained museums, a bevy of heavy canons, and a continuous stream of foreign tourists. It’s also about music and nostalgia. In fact, during my recent visit, I found a lot of musical elements have been added to it lately.

At the first turn after the ticket booth, you will now find a young Rajasthani lad playing Ravanhattha (a simple string instrument looking like Sarangi). Nothing new, you would say, such amateurs are seen tenner-a-dozen all over Jodhpur. But what makes him unique is the patronage of a young security guard. As I slowed down to hear the Sarangi player, the guard started narrating in his hard-to-follow English the grand heritage of Jodhpur, its musical tradition and why I should part some money with him and the musician. Finding me unfazed, he joined the musician and started singing a Rajasthani song at the top of his voice. While I was impressed by the thought that they had mistaken me to be a foreigner, the vocal torture drove me away. I have heard the story of late Ustad Fayyaz Khan once taking up the challenge of singing all the seven notes wrong. These two didn’t need any wager in doing that.

Another pair of new musicians I found near the souvenir shops…a young boy playing Ravanhattha and his 14-year old sister singing a Rajasthani folk song. The boy’s chapakan needed mending and an immediate wash, while the girl’s Salwar-Kurta must have come from Nai Sarak flea market. About the music, lesser said the better.

Another interesting pair positioned themselves near the Kali Mata temple at the annexe. As the narrow stone alley neared the temple, I saw a lady in her sixties singing, “Darshan de mata sherawali…” Though it was a temple dedicated to Goddess Kali, but in northern India Sherwali Mata always attracts more alms. However, in this case, people’s interest (mainly of men), was going more towards the young lady who was lying on the ground nearby, sometimes offering falsetto to the senior singer’s tune. Her yellow Saree was tucked near the knees, and her breasts were popping out of the blouse. As I reached nearby, the elderly lady suddenly stopped singing, and hissed, “Chiri.” The young lady bolted up and ran behind the nearby wall, her saree trailing behind. A prospect must have arrived.

While leaving the fort, I stopped at the Loha Pol. I like this place. Immediately to the left are the handprints (sati marks) of the queens who in 1843 immolated themselves on the funeral pyre of their husband, Maharaja Man Singh. In a small recess beside the gate sat Amar, Birj and Sultan, who play the Sarangi, Algoza and Nagara respectively. They smiled at me (the last time I met them was two years ago), and said, “Kaise ho sahab? Ohi bajaun? (How are you, sir? Should we play the same tune?)” I nodded and sat on the opposite side of the lane, lent on the red stone, spread my weary legs and closed my eyes. The trio started giving their rendition of raga Darbari.

In dream, I went back to a cool December afternoon two years ago.

The Man under the Sky

You come down from the Mehrangarh fort, follow the main road, leave the Girls Secondary School at your left, reach the crossing and turn left. You are at the outskirts of the Jodhpur city. This road will go to Mandore Gardens, but that is still four kilometres away. Instead of waiting for the bus or a tempo, you decide to keep walking. And soon at the left you see an island of workers - men, women and children – their heads bent, weaving the brooms, containers and dividers made of bamboo sticks.

There are about 30 people working, and the elders would tell you they belong to one family – an extended family. You see the nimble fingers of the 8-10 year olds moving fast in stitching the bamboo partitions, creating exquisite patterns. You ask their names, and take pictures so that you can claim later that you met some ‘child labourers’. The children would happily pose for you.

Go forward a few steps, and you will find a young Rajasthani belle, wearing a red Salwar-Kurta, a veil covering her head and face, weaving a large broom. While her left hand is holding the broomstick, her right hand is moving in clockwise fashion to neatly pack fallen twigs, and tie them together. You haven’t seen her face but you can feel that she is young, very young. A rugged, old man standing at your left says, “Aasma. She is Aasma. Take her picture.” You kneel down on the road, focus your camera on her face, and pray to God, “Let the veil go off for a while.”

And it does. Three kids surround her, hold her neck, rest on her back, and in the commotion her veil indeed goes off. You feel she must be under 20. The old man mutters, as if to himself, “Her children.” An adolescent mother! But then you are busy clicking the photos. Aasma doesn’t stop her work. You stand up, switch your digital camera to ‘Display’ mode and show her the photo on the LCD screen. Still working on the broom, she sees it, and then, for a fleeting moment, casts a sharp, witty glance at you. As if to thank you.

You turn to go, ignoring the old ladies who are yelling, “Our photo, saab, our photo.”

You look at the thin, bearded man, who must be well over his sixties, and ask, “You also work here?”

“No, I don’t work. She does. Aasma is my wife,” he says proudly.

Paradise Lost for a Medal

Don’t get me wrong. I am extremely proud about Sushil Kumar getting a Bronze Medal in the Beijing Olympics, but couldn’t he hail from some other place in Delhi than Baparola village!

For the last five months, we (me and my fiancée) considered the link loads from Najafgarh to Rohtak Road, crossing villages like Neel Bal, Dichau, Hiran Kudna and Baparola to be our exclusive property. I have been driving in and around Delhi for the last 23 years, but hardly have seen such scenic roads before. The flat, black, bitumen roads stretch miles in front of your eyes, beyond the single layer of bordering trees lie acres of green, cultivated land, small lakes pass by, and you see another car crossing yours may be after 10 minutes. Paroquets and pigeons form dense shapes against the dark, cumulus cloud; sky meets the green in the horizon without any dot of the concrete.

Often did we see the thundering rains sprinting towards us over the fields, the maize and wheat plants bending on the ground as storm raged by…we stopped the car on the roadside and looked out in awe as the white blanket of rains enveloped us, almost caressed us.

On the sunny days, we spilled out from our car, scooped out fresh radishes from the field, spoke to the Haryanvi belles carrying baleful of maize plants on their heads, their whole body swaying on an even rhythm. We had tea with the Jat families in their sparse, grim outer rooms, while their children played with huge cows and buffaloes near the door.

Only we knew that such exotic places existed in Delhi, just 6-7 kilometres from Metro-marred Nagloi, four kilometres from the dirty congestion of Najafgarh and the planned monstrosity called Dwarka.

Over the last two days, at least 30 friends and colleagues have asked me where is Baparola. And I can imagine the future…Sardars and Sardarnis in their Hyundai Santro, Rajasthani upstarts in their Honda Civic and middle-class Bengalis in their vintage Premier Padminis (maximum speed 20 kmph, horns welcome) making a beeline on the Hiran Kudna Road, having loud picnics on the small oases in the wayside, re-discovering the sprawling, modern temple complex near Neel Bal.

And me and my fiancee searching for another place to get farther from the madding crowd.

All because of a piece of bronze.

Last Tango in Life

Last weekend I watched an excellent movie: Carlos Saura’s Tango. Mario Suarez is a forty-something tango artist, whose wife Laura has left him. He leaves his apartment and starts preparing a film about tango. Things become complicated when Mario falls in love with Elena, a beautiful and talented young dancer who is the girlfriend of the powerful and dangerous Angelo Larroca, an investor in the picture. I’ll write a detailed review of the film later. Meanwhile, let me share a portion of the movie, where Mario (Miguel Ángel Solá) goes out in a date with Elena (Mía Maestro) for the first time. He talks about his feelings, his frustrations, and it seems as if I am hearing to my own heart.

Here is the script:

Elena Flores: We’re splitting up

Mario Suarez: Why, may I ask?

We don’t get along. I’m hard to live with. Living with someone is awful. Every time I’ve tried, I’ve ended up in a mess.

I’m a special case. I’m a solitary animal… one of those old lions who roam in the African Savannah aimlessly. Lionesses are different. They gather, unite, hunt, whelp, nurse, protect their defenceless cubs. They have a concrete mission in life.

Nurse, protect, mate…that’s a woman’s mission in life?

I didn’t mean that. I respect women too much. Maybe that was a bad analogy. Men have been raised to hunt and fight for thousands of years. Now he hunts in his own way. Say he goes haywire for a little power…or a medal or money… a form of power. It would be shame for a woman to follow man in his folly. That’s what I mean.

All I ask of men is to respect me, listen to me, and not treat me like a nut, sprouting nonsense. Why is it so hard for man to admit that a beautiful woman can also be intelligent?

That’s not what I think. How can I put this? You wake up one day, look at a mirror, and say, “I’ve aged.” You go outside and the young call you Mister. To them, you’ve gone over the hill, you’re an old fart. Time goes by...your hairs start to fall out, and then the rest falls apart. You like good food, you get fat…you get lazy, stop going out. Still, despite the physical decay, you feel as energetic as a boy. So what do you do? Why is it so unseemly for a man to act like a boy? I can’t enjoy a girl of 18, because I’m an older man. How old are you anyway?

Twenty-three.

You seem younger. Let’s see if I can complete this. On that day you wonder, “What life have I had? What’s happened to me? Where are my youthful illusions, my dreams?”

You can’t say that. It’s unfair. You’ve done wonderful things.

Thank you. May be. But I feel I’ve wasted my time…that I only touched the surface of things. All I did was swimming frantically to avoid sinking into the muck. How does that sound to you? Pretentious, eh? But vivid, right? Anyway all that to say, I am a good boy, modest, simple, sensitive, hardworking, honest, unable to organize my life and deeply frustrated in love.

(Gives a gift to Elena)

It’s very nice. I have to leave, Mario.

Stay with me tonight.

I can’t.

Someone’s waiting. Sorry.

Convenient Morals

By Anju Makin

What's happening with people and morality nowadays? Seems to me, they spell it like c-o-n-v-e-n-i-e-n-c-e. The buzzword for bedding anyone now is ‘fondness’. You just need to be fond of the other person to make out. Toe-dipping into relationships is so “in”. In fact, relationship is a big word for these alliances that get made and broken with alarming convenience - that word again!

A sample scenario in a typical MNC runs like this: Mrs Mehta is involved with Mr. Pande who in turn is also eyeing the new joinee Mrs Bhatnagar, while Ms Mathur can be treated a likely prospect. However, the non-married (and some married ones also) people create just too much hassles hankering for love, commitment, marriage and God knows where they will stop. It’s much better to stick with the tried and tested Mrs. Mehta who doesn’t demand much, just as much as she gets.

Everything happens for a reason: let’s get closer; we were destined to meet… so on and so forth. Some of the cheesy pick-up lines are uttered with amazing poise. The problem is that this malaise is no longer restricted to the diseased nouveau riche sections of the society. It is now threatening to infect the ever fragile urban middle class which is a torchbearer in any social milieu.

Let’s not blame only the workplace scenarios and equal opportunity for women for this. I guess there were fragile marriages earlier as well, but now people who take advantage of the fissures in these marriages are more accessible and come packaged in neat clothes, mouthing niceties with alarming ease. Smooth is the word for them.

In the 2000-flat society that we stay in Gurgaon, 75% residents work in call centres that are mushrooming in this part of NCR. Of these, 70% are living-in together. In the flat opposite ours, a call centre executive stayed for two years. Over the two years, he lived with four girl-friends over various time periods. Finally, he got married to a girl from his hometown, arranged by his parents. We have been witness to his grieving girlfriends many times, except when his parents visited they were hushed under the carpet. After that, two girls came and stayed with two boys for six months. After this, we have lost count or interest. In fact, everyone now treats this as a common scenario. It might have shocked frumpy aunties earlier but with time things are getting acceptable. We all behave like pigeons. If it’s not happening in my home, I am not concerned. That’s the common mentality all over India.

Some time ago, New York Times ran a feature on ‘FWB’ (Friends with benefits) -alliances prevalent amongst university students, wherein you have an intimate relationship with friends with no strings attached as per each other’s convenience. The article was based on research done within the students’ community by a well-known and reputed research firm. The FWBs are here now.

India seems to be not only developing in economy but also in ethics degradation. Wonder where this will lead to? Is it about men and women? I don’t know. Why do women put up with people who are clearly not faithful? How can any self-respecting woman stay with someone they don’t love or who doesn’t love them but just wants to get closer? Don‘t they fall in love but practice nonchalance as they don’t want to risk losing their boyfriends, better to share them instead! I don’t know the answers to any of these questions. I hope someone out there does. If you do, let me know.

anjumakin@gmail.com