"My Story" by Kamala Das: Book Recommendation 1

Last week, I read Kamala Das’ autobiography, My Story. The acclaimed poetess passed away recently, and when I read the mention of the book in tributes to her in various publications the name rang a bell. I have read her poetry in college, and was particularly struck by the extract from this poem (An Introduction) which reflects the many identities we juggle as Indians:

I am Indian, very brown, born in Malabar,
I speak three languages, write in
Two, dream in one.
Don’t write in English, they said,
English is not your mother-tongue. Why not leave
Me alone, critics, friends, visiting cousins,
Every one of you? Why not let me speak in
Any language I like? The language I speak,
Becomes mine, its distortions, its queernesses
All mine, mine alone.

The interesting background on the book is that Das wrote it when she was in the hospital, being treated for a bout with heart disease that she was sure she would succumb to. She started writing chapters for serialised publication in a journal. It helped pay the hospital bills and clear her conscience. Imagine her mortification then, when she made a surprising recovery and had to contend with the consequences of laying bare her heart and unmasking the deepest secrets of her family. Yet she faces up to it bravely, as seen in these lines:

This book has cost me many things that I held dear, but I do not for a moment regret having written it. I have written several books in my life time, but none of them provided the pleasure the writing of My Story has given to me.

What you notice immediately in the book is how she constructs sentences of simple beauty that hold profound meaning. For instance, “Like alms looking for a begging bowl was my love which only sought for it a receptacle. At the hour of worship even a stone becomes a idol.”

And her criticism is acerbic. “The obsession with sin destroyed the minds of several girls who were at the beginning of their adolescence normal and easygoing. If there was a dearth of sin, sin at any cost had to manufactured, because forgiving the sinners was a therapeutic exercise, popular with the rabidly virtuous.”

My Story is essentially an account of a woman’s search for love and happiness in the face of loss, loneliness and societal restrictions. She longed for some form of connectedness with the universe and her writing was one way of achieving this. With tools like the Internet, we often take for the granted the ease with which we can engage in conversations with like-minded people in far corners of the world, something that Kamala Das spent her whole life searching for.

On NGO Challenges and Volunteering In India

I’ve been interning with this really earnest NGO called VIDYA (don't judge them by their website; it's poorly designed and inadequate). It started out by focusing on providing education to underprivileged children, but over the years it has expanded its activities to include courses on life skills, vocational skills, setting up a production centre and engaging in microfinance. My work is mainly focused on their microfinance activities (more on that in a later post).

Recently, I was speaking to a part-time volunteer here, an American NRI who has taken a sabbatical from work to volunteer with various NGOs and I became aware of how different the social service scene is in these two countries.

From what I understand, school kids in America are introduced to volunteering at a fairly young age. There is ready infrastructure for those who want to engage in social service, both within America and abroad, such as through organized programmes like Peace Corps. Volunteer experience is an important component of one’s college application. The flip side is of course that there are many kids who participate in various volunteer activities not because they care but because it will help them get into a good college.

Nevertheless, the point I’m trying to make is that social service organizations and NGOs find it much easier to access skilled workers in the US than their counterparts in India, which is unfortunate. Most Indian NGOs are typically held together by a bunch of few passionate, committed people who do all the work and end up spreading themselves too thin. Administrative and funding issues end up taking so much time that they aren’t able to take as many initiatives or refine their functioning as much as they would like to.

I got my internship through this excellent NGO called Joining Hands, which connects people who want to volunteer with NGOs that could use their skills. But one Joining Hands is not enough. There are similar organizations in other cities but a unified central agency is missing. Of course, colleges have the National Service Scheme and I’m sure it does good work but considering the number of students it has access to, it would be fair to say that its achievements have been much below par.

I believe that this lack of social service infrastructure is one of the reasons why philanthropy is seen as something that rich people and a few not-so-rich sensitive people do. Unless someone has worked as a volunteer at least once, it becomes easy to ignore the difference that even a small amount like 50 bucks can make. Giving is not a way of life here, it’s a luxury.

Some people say that most NGOs don’t do good work but even if that’s true, the lack of skilled volunteers/workers is probably mainly to blame for this. Even a net-savvy teenager can make a stellar contribution to an organisation’s fund raising by setting up a cause on Facebook, uploading videos on YouTube or creating a snazzy newsletter. But that teenager needs to first realize his/her potential to contribute, the difference that potential can make and then be put in touch with a relevant organization. This would also make NGOs more accountable because the good ones would gain visibility through word-of-mouth spread of volunteer experiences.

I always wanted to volunteer with an NGO but I was “too busy” all through school and college. It wasn’t until the first year of my M.A. that I signed up to give tuitions to a boy at an orphanage and since I’ve realized that you can make all the excuses you want for not being able to volunteer, but if its important enough to you, you will find the time.

An ode to the trees at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi

Do the trees in JNU have a life of their own?

Do they whisper to each other about mysteries unknown?

About lovers sheltered under bougainvillea blossoms

About CSRD students debating on wheat versus sorghum

Though most trees are welcoming, some can seem menacing too

The latter must be hanging out too much with the Naxalite crew

The tree in the picture looks like its going out to war

If you spot it on campus, be sure to hail Mao from afar

Their branches are now weary of Time’s sadism

Witnessing it divest naïve do-gooders of idealism

They remain behind gates through which generations have passed

On the threshold of the future, holding on to the past

Love and a cigarette

Love kills slowly
Like a cigarette
You hold on to the damn thing on one end
Feel reassured by the fire on the other
You draw breath from it
It draws life from you
And just when you think you can't be without it
It fizzles out unceremoniously, like this post

Tagging photos/videos on Facebook: a social minefield

“Noooo! Don’t tag me in pics with my boyfriend. My mom’s on my friend list and she doesn’t approve of our relationship.”

“I removed my tags from your party album. I wore my roommate’s favourite top without asking her and if she finds out she’ll kill me.”

“Why do you have to tag only those photos in which I look fat?”

Tagging — attaching name labels to people’s faces in online albums — is a task fraught with risks. If you tag your friends, you could get reactions like the one above. If you don’t tag them, they’ll think you’re not considerate enough to identify them in your photos. Sigh!

To be fair, I’ve been on the other side too. A friend recently uploaded a video of us dancing and making totally silly comments on her Facebook profile, which she tagged me in. I was mortified, not to mention furious. She couldn’t see what the fuss was about, though fortunately she was understanding enough to remove the video. So one person’s entertainment can unwittingly become another person’s embarrassment.

Maybe there should be some sort of convention for this. Like you let your friends know that instead of wasting time tagging stuff that threaten their social life or self-esteem, you’re just gonna upload the photos/videos and they can tag themselves in the most flattering or appropriate ones. And save the really no-holds-barred stuff for emailing to only those people whom you trust, with the permission of the people involved.

The strange thing is, I thought technology was meant to make our lives less complicated.

Lehman Brothers’ toxic legacy

It seems that when Warren Buffett referred to derivatives as “financial weapons of mass destruction”, he was being more literal than he intended. The Times of India reports that failed investment bank Lehman Brothers holds a nuclear stockpile of uranium, from a former commodities contract undertaken before it collapsed in September 2008.

The best take on this comes from the New York Post, “It turns out we were looking in the wrong place for weapons of mass destruction…They were not in Iraq. They were in Lehman Brothers’ portfolio.”

It seems Mr. Bush wasted all that time scouring West Asia when all he had to do was hop over to Wall Street and ply some chatty investment bankers with copious amounts of expensive alcohol; the truth would have come out sooner or later.

If Saddam Hussein is still alive, as some speculate, he must be falling off the chair laughing.

Mother Nature adds more power to Earth Hour

Like many other cities, Delhi observed Earth Hour on March 29, by switching off non-essential lights between 8.30 p.m. and 9.30 p.m. Except that our Dilliwallas had a partner that Londoners and Sydney-ites did not: Mother Nature.

As reported by a Hindustan Times front-page article on March 30, Delhi voluntarily saved 600 MW of power. Moreover, around 400 MW was saved due to the weather and the tripping of two transmission lines, according to a Delhi Transco Ltd. official:

“Thanks to the thundershowers, a 66 KV line and an 11 KV line collapsed, causing power cuts to a large number of areas, thus contributing to the darkness.”

Of course, Delhi's residents and commercial establishments deserve credit for saving 600 MW, which is no small feat. According to the same article, this is equivalent to a mid-sized captive power plant’s capacity or to cutting 324 tons of carbon dioxide emission.

And in case you were wondering, I was also among the households “forced” to participate by a power cut. Nevertheless, this was a darkness that lit up many a cause-weary heart. The capital's power load fell from 2600 MW to around 1650 MW during Earth Hour. Prakriti Mata ki jai ho!

You can find out more about Earth Hour from its official website.

What IIM-A can learn from IMI

Jack Welch, former CEO of General Electric once said, “Listening to your customers and responding to their concerns is as critical to your business plan as your capital investment.” And if we needed more reminding on the importance of customer feedback, here’s another word of advice from him, “There are only two sources of competitive advantage: the ability to learn more about our customers faster than the competition, and the ability to turn that learning into action fast.”

Mr. Welch’s quote can be extended to justify why management institutes need to be open to the concerns of potential students - their customers. Now I know that MBA institutes in India are not strictly businesses; they are required to operate as non-profit concerns. Nevertheless, their decisions affect the quality of management talent in the country and thus their functioning is not beyond question.

In tribute to management teaching methodology, I am going to present a case study wherein I show how two MBA institutes, IIM-A and IMI, Delhi, responded to a situation: student dissatisfaction with parameters used to shortlist candidates called for the Group Discussion-Personal Interview (GD-PI) round. I have withheld the names of the students involved, on request. All information given below is authentic. Any minor changes made are purely grammatical.

Part 1:

For the 2009 GD-PI calls, IIM-A decided to evaluate students based on their CAT 2008 scores and academic performance in Class 10th and 12th. The second parameter was the source of much discontent among applicants.

For the 10th and 12th marks, IIM-A devised the following point system:

Percentage	Score
<60	1
60-69	2
70-79	4
80-89	6
90 and above	8

The Academic Performance (AP) score was the sum of the individual scores awarded for 10th and 12th marks. Thus, 16 was the maximum AP score. Further, for general category students, the formula for calculating the Composite Score on the basis of which candidates were short listed for GD-PI was

CS = 3 (total percentile — lowest total percentile of the pre-screening criteria) + AP

One of my friends met the CAT 2008 score criteria but did not get an IIM-A call due to his academic performance. He wasn’t a poor student; he just completed his 10th and 12th under the Maharashtra SSC board, which isn’t very scoring. He sent the following e-mail to the institute:

Dear Sir,

I have the highest regards for the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad and the admissions team of IIM A. I am hence, hoping that my request will be given fair consideration.

The admissions policy document released by IIM A on 9th January on the website of IIM A
(http://202.41.76.206/website%20shortlist%20note%202009-11.pdf) states the procedure
adopted by IIM A for giving out interview calls for PGP 2009-11.

I would like to point out to you that the document is silent on the normalisation/standardisation of X/XII boards. Looking at the profiles of the call getters one assumes that no normalisation procedure has been undertaken. Note 1 of the above mentioned document gives a table showing Academic Performance values at various percentages in the X and XII board exams. The anomaly that I want to bring to your notice is that due to lack of standardisation a lot of deserving open category candidates who have cleared the pre-screening criteria have missed out on an IIM Ahmedabad call.

For e.g. take a Maharashtra State Board Candidate like me. TRNO (omitted) Name: Omitted

I cleared the pre-screening criteria - Quant 95.10, DI - 96.42, Verbal - 99.49, Overall - 99.68

Std. X - 85.86% (easily in the top 200 of the candidates who wrote the S.S.C exam in March 2002. Not even 100 students from Mumbai would have got a score of 90% and above)

Std XII - 85.13 %, ranked 26th in Mumbai in the commerce faculty in the H.S.C exam in March 2004. The person who topped the exam got a percentage of 89.

According to the academic performance values table I should get a score of 12.

Compare that with a candidate from say ISC or ICSE board. A person with an 89.xx or a 90 percent may not even be in the top 200-300 of their board but will still manage to get a 16 in the academic performance values criteria. Plus since, the weightage given to the CAT score is so low, it is statistically impossible for a candidate like me to cover up this gap of 4 marks.

In cases like the Andhra Pradesh board, toppers in the 12th std. can get as much 97-98% whereas in Mumbai a Commerce/Arts topper would not even get 90%! There is enough empirical evidence to verify.

Unless a student of S.S.C or H.S.C (consider upto the year 2004) gets a 90%, which is very unlikely, given the marking pattern he/she will never be able to get more than 18/22 in the Composite score formula even if he/she has 100 percentile. If you study profiles of current IIM A students who are from Maharashtra State board S.S.C/H.S.C., they would have never made it! To give you a example Ms. XYZ (batch 2007-09) and Mr. ABC (batch 2008-10)

Also, if you study the marking and scoring patterns of students, such a criteria completely closes the doors on students of Arts and Humanities across India. How many Arts std. XII toppers even cross 85%?

Besides, please consider the fact that candidates appearing for CAT 2008 would be mostly people who took their H.S.C and S.S.C exams in 2002/2003/2004. In Maharashtra board you can check the relevant statistics. It would be highly unfair to compare the performance of the students literally.

If it is excellence that is being sought wouldn't it be better when there is a level playing field? In the current scenario clearly a section of the candidates will miss out unfairly.

I must add here that I sincerely appreciate IIM A for being so transparent and releasing a document promptly.

I would be grateful if you could please reply to this email and some alteration can be made in the current scheme of things. I really want to be given a chance to prove my mettle in the GD-PI Stage and be a part of the prestigious IIM Ahmedabad. But the current system does not allow me and many others like me to.

Thank You.

Regards,

Result:
My friend did not get any response to his e-mail. He didn’t give up. He went to IIM-A at the time of their GD-PI round. He managed to meet someone who handled admissions and that person told my friend to just take the criteria in his side. There was some stray comment about how the AP criteria was designed to help get more women into the IIMs (for example, girls score higher than boys in the CBSE exams fairly consistently). And that was that. Now let’s see how IMI handled a similar situation.

Part 2:

When IMI brought out its list of candidates shortlisted for GD-PI in 2009, it said that the criteria was CAT 2008 scores. But since many applicants who met the CAT score cutoffs didn’t get a call, they concluded (through discussions with call-getters and others on message boards) that work experience and academic performance in 10^th, 12^th and graduation were also criterion for shortlisting students. Another friend of mine took umbrage at this and wrote the following e-mail to IMI:

Respected Sir

I hope this finds you salubrious.

I would most humbly like to point out, on behalf of many like me, the widespread disapproval of the admission policy of an institute we looked upon as professional and highly efficient.

I applied to IMI and my CAT Regn Number is (omitted). I didn't get a call at 98.91, even when I had decent academics and extremely good Extra-curriculars. That's not the point, however, as this is not pertaining solely to me. People with 99+ percentiles have been denied a call allegedly based on their not-so-optimum performance in Class X, XII or Grad. I would like to ask, if you permit me, to clarify some doubts that have sprung, some questions –

1. Is not being able to get ‘good’ marks at any stage of life a mistake that can't ever be rectified? What if one gets 55 in school and then tops in college? It seems God may forgive, but IMI does not. Is this not cruel?

2. How are marks in, say, Chemistry and Political Science, at Board level, related to Managerial Skills and Business Acumen? WHY this emphasis on Marks attained in Boards that hierchize learning by rote over application of knowledge as tested by CAT there?

3. Does IMI know that in this diverse country of hundreds of universities, variegated marking schemes exist? I got 59% in graduation, perhaps the reason of my rejection. Does IMI know that a First Class in Literature at DU is rare? Delhi University topper in BA English Literature gets around 65%. Does IMI equalize marks across spectrum or not? An engineer gets 75+ easily; we in Literature slog hard to get 55+. Is this taken into account?

4. Not even Harvard and Yale show this utter disrespect to Qualifying Exam (GMAT) that IMI has shown to CAT. What role does CAT play if its toppers loose to parroting toppers of Boards?

Based on these questions, I most humbly suggest your institute to specify an eligibility criterion - Grad in Either Engineering, Commerce or Economics, that too with 80+ marks throughout, because if not then even a 100 percentile in all India exam CAT is utterly futile, and it may save many a middle-class families from investing in a venture whose result has long back been decided by the Board Exams.

I hope, dear sir, you will pause to ponder over these questions for minute, and in true democratic spirit, raise them at the appropriate juncture.

Yours faithfully

Result:
IMI replied to his mail within 24 hours saying that they would consider the points he had raised. Soon after, he received a mail saying that a second list had been uploaded on IMI’s website and he should check it. Voila! He had a GD-PI call from IMI.

Conclusion:
Some people may argue that since IMI is ranked considerably lower than IIM-A, it could not afford to ignore the murmurs of protest from students. I disagree. IIM-A may be among the cream of MBA institutes in India at present, but as the Satyam and Lehman Brothers debacles show us, reputations and credibility are not cast in stone. Of course, the IIMs are not as dishonest or as financially lax as Satyam or Lehman’s, yet they would be wise to pay attention to student feedback today in order to avert a future crisis. They need only to look at their own syllabus to know that responding to feedback is one of the pillars of a good branding strategy. IIM-A’s stubborn refusal to normalize the 10th and 12th scores was suggestive of the kind of rigidity and cutting corners attitude that has run many a company aground.