Marissa Mayer and the WFH policy

By now, everyone and his uncle have formed an opinion on Marissa Mayer’s controversial decision that forces remote employees to pack their laptop bags and report to the office. Her effective discontinuation of a hitherto popular Work-from-home policy (hereinafter referred to as WFH) has disgruntled quite a few employees and industry people. Views for and against, as well as some reasoned analyses, have gone flying around the internet.

I work in a company that allows WFH with the approval of the manager. For my part, I much prefer working in the office. When I am working at home, my five-year-old daughter clatters around in the background most of the time while I try to read two words on the laptop. She doesn’t quite grasp the concept of ‘working’ from home – the only portion of significance to her is ‘home’. She imagines a heavenly world where Mummy has surrendered all official responsibilities so she can cling to her and wring stories out of her one after another. I believe I get more work done in the office than at home.

Having said that, the WFH suits the rare occasion when you can work but you can’t make it to the office for whatever reason. I grasp the WFH straw whenever her school schedules parent-teacher meetings at around lunchtime, so that I don’t have to drive down thirty minutes just to sit in the office for a couple of hours.

I made good use of it in the early weeks of Feb when an attack of viral fever rendered me too weak to drive to office and sit in an AC haven. Instead, I heaved out the laptop and started pounding the keys immediately after packing my daughter off to school.

I guess certain people use the WFH to their advantage to goof off at home the same way they would goof off in the office. Like everything else, a few rotten apples spoil the bunch. So unfortunately, those genuine users of WFH bear the brunt of harsher policies and stricter governance.

A friend once told me about one of his colleagues who sent on email to his team with the subject line – ‘Working from today’. A few minutes later, he sent a follow up mail – ‘Working from home today’.

Looks like the folks at Yahoo won’t be seeing this kind of faux pas in their inboxes anymore!

South Asian Challenge 2013

Last year, I signed up for the South Asian Challenge 2012. Knowing my schedule, I allotted myself a conservative estimate of 10 books to read.

It turned out that I was busier than I thought. The figure of 10 books was way too puffed up, and finally I fell two short as 2012 hurtled to an end.

Out of 33 books I read during the year, the following qualified for the challenge:

1. Diary of a Social Butterfly by Moni Mohsin
2. She’s a Jolly Good Fellow by Sajita Nair
3. Beast with Nine Billion Feet by Anil Menon
4. Who let the Dork Out by Sidin Vadukut
5. Broken News by Amrita Tripathi
6. Love Over Coffee by Amrit Shetty
7. The Red Carpet by Lavanya Sankaran
8. Chinaman by Shehan Karunatilaka

I had been waiting to read Chinaman for such a long time, and absolutely loved it when I finally got around to reading it. Two of my favourite things – literature and cricket – all wrapped into one! What more could I ask from life? It is a little-known fact about me that I was a huge fan of Sri Lankan cricket even before they won the World Cup in 1996. So reading a book set in that era was quite thrilling for me.

Another amazing book I would highly recommend is The Beast with Nine Billion Feet. I can’t remember the last time I absorbed so many different ideas from one source. After reading this book, I truly felt enlightened.

Lavanya Sankaran’s exquisite writing in The Red Carpet bowled me over. A couple of her stories set in the corporate world have inspired me to try my hand at something similar, though I doubt I can achieve her level of finesse and subtlety.

I also enjoyed Broken News by Amrita Tripathi, which, for some reason, I wasn’t really expecting to like because I know nothing of the world of news and television journalists and their hectic life.

Though I haven’t signed up for the similar challenge in 2013, I have already read 3 books by Indian authors and have lined up 2 more.

What good books have you read lately?

Isadora Duncan’s Scarf

Lately, the garment in the title has surfaced twice in my reading material in the last few months.  For the uninitiated, Isadora Duncan was a famous dancer whose tragic death ensures her presence in most collections of ‘Famous Last Lines’.

The first time, I came across a mention of the titular garment in a poem on Poets.org. If you don’t subscribe to their Poem-a-day, please do so at once. It has increased my limited knowledge of poetry while enhancing my appreciation of the finer verses.

The second time I encountered it in Alexander McCall Smith’s novel Corduroy Mansions. In the first book of this delightful (relatively) new series, a literary agent called Barbara Ragg meets a young man in the car park of the hotel from where she’s just checked out. She offers him a lift to London.

At the beginning of their journey, noticing the scarf, Barbara had warned him of the date of Isadora Duncan.

‘Remember Isadora Duncan,’ she said as they drove out of the Mermaid Inn’s car park.

He looked at her blankly. ‘No, I don’t know her, I’m afraid.’

The car started down the cobbled street. ‘you wouldn’t,’ said Barbara. ‘She died in 1927. In tragic circumstances that are brought to mind, I’m afraid, by your scarf.’

The young man frowned. ‘You’ve lost me,’ he said.

.

.

.

‘It’s rather a sad story,’ Barbara went on. ‘Isadora was given a lovely long scarf by a Russian artist. She was taken for a ride in Nice in an Amilcar GS – a very nice little sports car of the time – by a very glamorous Italian mechanic, Benoit Falchetto.’

Hardly ten minutes later, the unthinkable comes to pass. The young lad almost suffers a similar fate. Barbara grasps the situation instantly and with quick thinking reverses the car.

It was the right thing to do, even if the right thing may sometimes come too late. To reverse the car is not the solution to an ordinary accident; one cannot just drive backwards, and in doing so bring a broken vehicle to wholeness again. But in such an accident as this, one can reverse and unwind that which is wound up, in theory, at least.

If you enjoy subtle, gentle humour rather than the rib-tickling slapdash variety, then you must read the Corduroy Mansions series. Until such time you can beg, borrow or purloin a copy, enjoy the poem I talked about earlier, reproduced below in full as I received it from Poets.org.

Complaint of Isadora Duncan’s Scarf

by Charles Jensen

My only glory was in beauty,
how I reached from her slender neck
toward the sky, ravaged by wind

the way a rough lover handles
you: dizzying, powerful,
unpredictable, but with joy,

joy in touching you,
joy in seeing you disheveled. The cool
night air ran its lips on my silk skin

to make me dance. I danced,
long and lean, with perfect
extension and seamless flow.

I had no bones. Not one bit of me
was firm or harsh. I was air
itself. I was becoming

pure performance. I could
see the tire’s eye watching me.
The car at the sidewalk with its

inflexible frame-it hated
my freedom, my lift, my flight.
The car, gravity’s great love,

envied me. The wind, for a moment,
set me down with ballet grace.
I lit upon the cold steel spokes

striking out from the wheel
like the arms of great Kali. She
tangled me, and when the car

drove off the wheel pulled me
tighter. I wound around its neck
the only way a scarf knows how,

pulling my whole silk body
and everything that anchored me
into the mouth of never.

From Poets.org:This is the first publication of “Complaint of Isadora Duncan’s Scarf,” copyright © 2012 by Charles Jensen. Used with the permission of the author.

What enlightening poetry have you read lately?

The Unbearable Wetness of Rain

In countries all over the world, it rains. In some places, it showers, in others it pours, thunders and even drizzles. Over in the good old Indian subcontinent, we have the ‘monsoons’, a polite term for rain so heavy it feels like someone perched atop the roofs of buildings is emptying buckets of water on our heads.

But we’re used to it. We wouldn’t swap our monsoons for all the cutely-named hurricanes and typhoons raging anywhere else.

There is little to do in the monsoons, except to get drenched in the rain or better yet, stay indoors, play board games, eat monsoon-friendly food, watch movies and purchase an umbrella, a handy device for those days when you feel adventurous enough to brave the outdoors. Let’s look a closer look at these activities and their impact on our rain-filled lives.

Appetizers for a rainy day

The most favoured snacks during the monsoons consist of steaming cups of tea and pakoras (prepared by smothering miserable vegetables in a batter of gram flour and then deep-frying them).

Bengalis make khichdi, which an Indian author pandering to western audiences might describe as ‘an exquisite mixture of rice and lentils flavoured with onions and tomatoes’. They believe the simultaneous preparation of khichdi in a dozen households together creates a low-pressure area thus diverting the clouds’ attentions to other drought-prone locations. This works fine for day one, when the rain does indeed stop. Come day two, we are back to the rain pelting down on our windows and threatening to unscrew its hinges without manual intervention.

My mother has resolved this problem by persistently cooking khichdi every single day of the monsoons until the rains finally beat a prolonged retreat, at which point she takes full credit for the crystal-clear skies.

The Umbrella Phenomenon and Murphy’s Law

This year, for a month and ten days it rained. Continuously. I got drenched, while running from the bus to the office, the home to the auto stand, the auto to the shopping mall…you get the gist. After losing several kilos due to this sprinting activity, I started carrying an umbrella. The first day I armed myself with this shelter-bestowing device, it drizzled. The sky appeared grey and downcast, in no mood to pelt down lashes as it was accustomed to. On the second day it stopped raining altogether. A week of my umbrella-carrying and no-rain-occurring continued, at the end of which I left my umbrella at home, and the entire process repeated itself again.

The Bathers

A few ‘fun’ people actually used to welcome the monsoons. What an opportunity, they said, to not take a bath at home! On 26^th July, 2005, after witnessing the city of Mumbai turn into an ocean, they changed their minds. The next day they signed up for swimming lessons, and have always bathed indoors ever since.

Rain in the films

Indian movies tend to give the impression that doing the salsa in the rain is one of the most pleasurable activities one can indulge in. It convinces people that things like pneumonia are but a figment of their imagination, and they need not fear the consequences of waltzing during a downpour and getting soaked to their skin. The sight of heroines wearing sarees or other transparent apparel that have the added advantage (much to the hero’s delight!) of clinging to her curves go a long way in confirming this view, with the result that clinics all over the country during the monsoons witness an unprecedented increase in the number of sneezing coughing patients.

Cricket in the monsoon

The unduly long monsoons that lash our country prevent cricketers from playing as much as they would like. Usually, this period is devoted to playing county cricket, so our players get to inflict their ghastly game on the English viewers. This is beneficial to the cricketers, but sadly, it deprives the BCCI from earning as much as they could have if they were able to set up a few exciting clashes with our rival teams. The BCCI, however, is innovative. This problem cannot stump them for too long. I think the day is not far when an article, such as the following, will grace the sports pages of national dailies:

Cricket in the rain

In a desperate bid to revive cricket frenzy in the country, the BCCI, in a fit of enthusiasm, declared yesterday that instead of abandoning a rain-threatened match, they would provide all the players with umbrellas to continue the game.

This meant that the batsman would have to take guard with an umbrella in one hand, and his bat in the other. But it would be inhuman to suppose that the bowler could bowl holding his own umbrella. Thus the 12^th man would be utilized to perform this service, by holding it and running after the bowler in hot pursuit.

This step will have two distinct advantages:

• The batsman would be considerably unnerved by the spectacle of two burly bowlers descending on him, and this would lead him to hit some rather shaky strokes.
• The 12^th man would justly earn his bread, as he would be required to run 50 overs per day. (In case of the opponents of the Indian team, this figure may be drastically reduced)
  

In addition to the above, it will be necessary for the wicket-keeper to catch all catches with one hand. But if he dislikes this activity, he is welcome to (on payment of a token fee) purchase a container in which he may catch the ball.

Of course, the best solution to all these situations, that would combine wholesome public entertainment together with great reduction in costs, would be for all the cricket-playing teams to purchase the CRUMB or the CRicket UMBrella. This is a simple device that attaches itself seamlessly to cricketers’ helmets, caps, turbans, and any other headgear they may choose to wear. Certainly the BCCI would be pleased to be able to offer the CRUMB at a fabulously discounted rate of US$150,000 per piece. The governing body of other cricket-playing nations may also choose to purchase a set of 15 CRUMBS at a nominal rate of US$5,000,000.

With each purchase, the following are free:

1. Ear-piece – skin-coloured, waterproof and cleverly concealed in the lining, perfect for communication with the coach throughout the match
2. Raincoat – automatically drops down from the CRUMB at the press of a button
   

We urge cricketers to place their orders for the CRUMBs before it’s too late. After all, the special offer stands only as long as stocks last!

The rain in India,

In mainly near the Vindhyas,

But the cricket in the monsoon,

For the board, ‘tis a boon!
 

As the poet Henry Longfellow said, ‘Into each life, some rain must fall’!

 

A slightly different version of this was originally published on Rediff.com

Book Review: Room by Emma Donaghue

I’ve wanted to read this book ever since the buzz broke about it, even before it became shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2011. 

One reads many of these news items about women and young girls being held captive for years on end and even forced to bear the children of their tormentors. I skim over these articles usually, as I cannot bear to think about the ordeal these women suffer. 

However, I steeled myself to read this book. Its USP, as you might know by now, is that it is narrated by a five-year-old boy called Jack. Incorrect usage of words pepper the story. Plenty of instances of ‘I runned’ just like my daughter says. I like how he refers to his mother as Ma throughout and we never know her real name. He simply refers to her name as ‘her other name’. 

I squirmed while reading the parts where the captor visits her in the night and Jack sits in the cupboard and counts the creaks of the bed. Equally tension-inducing were the parts where they planned their escape. 

Jennifer Weiner conducted an interview with the author which made for very interesting reading. Overall, the book is as brilliant as it is promised to be, and very thought-provoking. 

Now that Room is off my reading list, I still have the following gems to tackle: 

My TBR Pile:
Pigeon English by Stephen Kelman
There but for the by Ali Smith
Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes
Corduroy Mansions by Alexander McCall Smith
Meltdown by Ben Elton
Shades of Grey by Jasper Fforde
The Dog who came in from the Cold by Alexander McCall Smith

What books have you read recently? 

My Story in Bartleby Snopes

I’m pleased to report that my story ‘Social Not-working’ has been published in Bartleby Snopes:

http://bartlebysnopes.com/socialnotworking.htm

 

Do read it and tell me what you think!

Book Review: Across the Universe by Beth Revis

I had read a lot about this book even before it was released. The blogosphere was abuzz with the news of a debut novel sure to scorch the bestseller lists. I also read the first chapter and was intrigued enough to want to read more.

As it happens, the book slipped out of my mind in the following months. But thankfully I have my trusty library at hand! They keep slotting the books in the shelves in such a way that the most interesting titles jump right out at me.

On that particular day, I bagged a handful of good ones – Pigeon English by Stephen Kelman, The Reader by Bernhard Schlink, and Across the Universe.

I finished reading Across the Universe last night and I have to say I was zapped. It was awesome!

The brief synopsis, from the book’s website, is this:

Amy is a cryogenically frozen passenger aboard the vast spaceship Godspeed. She expects to wake up on a new planet, 300 years in the future. But fifty years before Godspeed’s scheduled landing, Amy’s cryo chamber is unplugged, and she is nearly killed.

Now, Amy is caught inside an enclosed world where nothing makes sense. Godspeed’s passengers have forfeited all control to Eldest, a tyrannical and frightening leader, and Elder, his rebellious and brilliant teenage heir.

Amy desperately wants to trust Elder. But should she? All she knows is that she must race to unlock Godspeed’s hidden secrets before whoever woke her tries to kill again.

 

I really liked how every chapter was narrated alternately by Amy and Elder. I have used a similar device in my novel Mabel, so this book had a lot to teach me.

Amy is a nicely written character – a fiercely independent woman who questions and challenges everything that is told to her and accepted as a matter of course by the people on the ship.

I liked Elder too, though he is seemingly less fleshed out. His mental turmoil about how he will manage the ship really comes to the fore and I totally identified with the conundrums he faced.

Though the book focuses on Amy and Elder, the character of Eldest is appealing too. Eldest is the current leader of the ship, from whom Elder is slated to take over. Eldest is almost dictatorial, and not very nice to Elder or Amy, but gradually we discover the reasons for his particular brand of leadership.

The spaceship and other aspects of the book set it firmly in sci-fi territory, but it embraces the genres of dystopia, murder mystery, romance and so easily could’ve been a Twilight-type YA but mercifully it avoids that angle.

The sequel to this book, A Million Suns, is on sale now. I look forward to reading it too. This promises to be an exciting trilogy to read!

Some other reviews of this book online:

http://iamareadernotawriter.blogspot.co.uk/2012/01/book-review-across-universe-by-beth.html

http://www.geeksaresexy.net/2011/01/31/book-review-across-the-universe/

http://fantasybookcritic.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03/across-universe-by-beth-revis-reviewed.html

 

What new books have you read lately?