Wednesday, November 29

सोफिस्टिकेटेड कैफ़े

वो चाय के जाने पहचाने अड्डे,
जहां खुशनुमा बातें थी-
आधी रातों का सफर-
भीगे मौसम की राहत-
प्रेमियों की मुलाकातें थी.

अब उन गलियों में सोफिस्टिकेटेड कैफ़े है.
जहां चुस्कियों के बजाये सिप्स है-
गुफ्तगू क बजाये कन्वर्सेशन है-
छुपने छुपाने के बजाए डेट्स है-
महंगे कप्स में सस्ते मज़े है.

वक़्त के साथ छोटी खुशियां गयी,
चाय के अड्डों से कैफ़े कप्स में बस चली
नुक्कड़ से खुशियां निकली -
फैशन स्टेटमेंट की गली.

Monday, November 6

Talent Crunch & Sectors most affected by it in India

Despite the number of job openings across all sectors, Indian companies are finding it harder to fill mission-critical positions to due to severe lack of talent. It is becoming more and more difficult to find a suitable person to fill in positions in all the sectors starting from e-commerce, R&D, sales, IT, Outsourcing industries to even the government bodies like; the Indian healthcare system and the Indian diamond processing industry. The companies are willing to pay boosting wages, however, the skill shortage has led to a vacuum in the companies.

India Inc, as a whole, is experiencing explosive growth but finding the correct manpower is becoming a hurdle in the path of this growth. The main reasons for talent crunch in India are suggested to be lack of talent availability and high level of attrition. Companies across the globe are looking at India as the source of cheap and abundant labour force creating unprecedented demand for workers with the right leadership and technical skills giving them the opportunities to work abroad. This, in turn, is affecting our domestic growth as the lack of skilled workforce has fuelled an explosion in wages, especially in tech and outsourcing sectors.

Most of the recruiters find it very challenging to find talent with relevant experience who fit in the rigid job requirement category. Business standard research for the e-commerce industry says that some of the top executives are spending over 40% work hours on recruitment. It is also mentioned that firms like FutureBazaar have to go through interviewing over 150 software engineer candidates to hire one that suits the bill. It is observed that finding man-power with relevant internet experience is growing to be a major challenge.

The Indian Outsourcing industry is facing a grave threat of attrition along with the shortage of skilled and educated workers. The attrition rate has seen a phenomenal increase of 55%, of which there is a significant relocating occurring in the mid and senior management levels. However, it is also observed that Indian organizations are adopting a global way of working, which in turn has made them more competitive and has changed the pattern of work and skill set required for a certain job role. This has created a serious gap of knowledge, information and skills amongst the workforce already in place in these industries.



The sixth annual talent shortage survey by global human resource, consultancy and staffing firm Manpower Group claimed that 67% of the employers are struggling to attain the critical-level hiring target. In India, Talent scarcity is increasing and the reason behind the same is considered to be the lack of skill set required for a certain leadership role. Across companies, positions for research and development, sales manager and IT staff are found to be facing maximum difficulty while recruiting. Whereas, the 5th report had suggested that the industry faced lack of talent in cleaners, domestic staff, insurance segment, including qualified brokers, technicians, customer service representatives, customer support and quality controllers.

Wednesday, October 11

इंसां का ख़ुदा

कितना कमज़ोर  है इंसां का ख़ुदा
की किसी क़ाफ़िर के हँसने से उसका सीना छलनी हुआ जाता है
कितना कमज़ोर है इस इंसां का इमां
की किसी के मज़ाक से यूँ डगमगा सा जाता है
किस ख़ुदा की इबादत वो करते है
जो महज़ इंसां  के बनाने से ख़ुदा हुआ जाता है















Kindly do not translate and read. The entire meaning is changed.
Image clicked by: Richa Vani

Monday, October 2

It was a dark and stormy night…

It was a dark and stormy night and I had recently shifted to my new home. The rains and the huge house were making a perfect eerie set up for me stay all alone. My husband was out of town and I had to arrange the house before he was to come back. The new house was a beautiful old villa with multiple rooms furnished with renaissance furniture and wooden fireplaces. The tainted glass windows gave it the look of perfect English architecture.

My job was to settle the house and arrange every piece of furniture before my family arrived, but the rains were making it very difficult to get things arranged. However, tonight being my first night I was with my guards on. These villas are always celebrated for being haunted and I was scared about the same.

Suddenly, I heard a swooshing sound that had me chills running down my spine. I could see the flaps of the windows stuttering and making eerie noises. I somehow managed to close the window but the sound was never ceasing. I was scared the ghostly stories flooded my mind and I could see the child running around the house with her dress making those swooshing sounds. It was rumoured that a brutal father had cut her playful and beautiful daughter into pieces and had her buried in the store room.

I was scared through the night and could not get even a minute of respite from the ghostly house. Somewhere around 4AM, I suddenly heard giggling noises in the house. I was so scared by now that I could not muster courage to get up and find what was making the sound.

The storm calmed with the morning and so did the giggling sound. I had a bit of respite through the day and it passed with the repair work in the house. The entire staff was gossiping about the child in a white frock seen running around the house and giggling. I had a difficult day to deal with and the night, I knew was going to be all the more difficult.

Second night in the haunted villa and I was scared to the core to think of what I might experience today. The night again started with the storm in its highest spirits. The swooshing sounds had receded due to the window repairs done during the day, but I was waiting if the giggling sound was merely a fragment of my imagination or in real. The night ticked away and the clock struck 4AM, and lo here starts the giggling sound. The sound was so close and so real that I froze in my bed. Somehow I managed to spend the night and was waiting for the day break as my husband was to return today.

My husband returned late in the evening and I narrated the entire event to him. He laughed at me and my story, so I told him about the rumours spread by the workers. He laughed at story and told me nothing will happen tonight. I was praying that nothing happens and I can sleep for one night. Due to the rains there was no electricity at home so we went ahead to sleep early.

As the night grew, the rains started their magic, but somehow I could sleep peacefully tonight. The night progressed to 4AM and the giggling started. I woke my husband up and with the help of a flashlight we started searching the giggling ghost.

We followed the sound to the store room located near my bedroom and found the source of my nightmare for three nights. It was an old tap that gurgled when water started to come in at 4AM.



We laughed through entire night and got the giggling ghost repaired the next day.

Friday, June 30

Hangover

Hangover – quite a common word.

Wikipedia defines it as an “experience of various unpleasant physiological and psychological effects following the consumption of ethanol” (Alcohol in common language).

This is a very general meaning of the word, however, the unpleasant physiological and psychological effects can be for various reasons – love, anger, fight, angst, irritation, etc. Have you ever felt a hangover from any of the above? Yes, then you will understand what I am talking about.

Superficially everything seems fairly sorted and even, but the unpleasantness lies somewhere under the skin after a huge fight or something wrong that just happened. I had a fight. With you ask. Let’s just say that I am married and I live with my in-laws so what has happened is really normal for an Indian household. Fights happen and I am not concerned about the fight or what happened during the fight.

What I am concerned about here is the hangover. There are times when the word uttered lose their meaning but it feels like they are hanging over (literally & sometimes figuratively) your head. The aftermath has happened. The tsunami came by, drowned you and somehow you magically survived. However, the survival is not enough. The lingering effects of the verbal tsunami remain. You don’t know how to deal with it. Does it go away eventually? Yes, like every other hangover it does go – but what happens until then.

Everything seems normal and natural but the pangs of pain keep coming. You act happy and smile ear-to-ear. Apologies don’t happen, and even if they do – they are fairly useless. Even when you do the formal apology, it does not really work. Then deep down inside you know you are wrong and yet not completely. In a fight, no one is completely wrong or right. The matters delve much deeper than that. How do we deal with that? Is there an Aspirin out there for such hangovers?

The physiological effects can be acted upon and you can work on a fake smile (I have years of practice – and it's magical) but the psychological effects can be really unnerving. I am scared for the first time in my life after a fight. And yes I have been in zillions of fights (both literal and figurative). Despite that, I have never been scared – not for my life but for some seemingly unknown reason. It’s the psychological reasons that hurt.


Can the hangover be dealt with? If so, how?