Pens and Pages

I am writing this because I'm angry and my anger is slowly receding. I want to write this before I lose my anger and my memory of the incident. I want to write this because once I write this, I will flush it out of my system too. There are inherent patriarchal remarks we have to walk through every day and it goes unnoticed. It's my last day at work today, having worked in an organization composing of 80% men above managers and maybe around 95% men as a whole, so I believe it is now safe to bring to notice some of the workplace remarks by men here: When a woman is angry about some work, men don't take a lot of time to jump to one of the two following conclusions- 1. If she is young/unmarried - she must be sexually frustrated / PMSing. 2. If she is older, above 45-ish - she must be going through menopause. Regarding PMSing and Menopause- I don't want to deny that hormones don't play a role in our emotions. They do. But concluding it like that in a workplace is totally...

  This is not the first time that an article is being written about emotions at the workplace. However, this article has nothing to do with preaching you to manage your emotions at the workplace but everything to do with how you perceive those emotions at the workplace – yours and others’. If you are a working professional with a little experience, you must have at least attended one corporate session by now on how to perform better in your organization or how to succeed in what you do or anything to the likes of learning to be better. And if you are a woman, you must have thought of or heard some other woman standing up in such a session and asking the question, “How do I convey my message assertively rather than aggressively?” In my short years of working at professional organizations, I have heard this question plenty of times. However, I have heard this being asked only by women. This has nothing to do with the workplace environment but more to do with our subconscious beliefs....

Most evenings tension lines form on my forehead. Most nights I can’t sleep well. I make sure the door is locked, I make sure the windows are closed, the curtains are drawn, and one or two lights remain turned on. I don’t know if growing up means living in fear because you know too many truths about how the world works. I am not sure if I can call myself very practical or a little paranoid. They say a child knows no fear and they only acquire it as they grow up through various environments. It would be fair to blame it all on my environment- toxic, untrustworthy, full of criminals. But I seldom find any solace in being blame-free. I would blame my own fearfulness as much as I would blame the environment. It was easier as a child to forgive myself, mostly because I thought when I’d grow up I’d be perfect. That there would be no mis-happenings, if that’s a word. * One really cannot blame a thirteen-year old coming back from school in public transport, wearing a decent uniform, ...

It’s been more than a year now since I have joined my first organization after MBA. However, the days have gone by pretty swiftly especially during the second-half my year-long tenure in the organization. Having previously worked in cities like Hyderabad, Mumbai and Bangalore I had never actually pondered about the meagre ratio of females in organizations. Having worked as the only female ASM, a ratio of 1:9, in the unit, in a Tier II city now, for a sales-driven organization, for more than 7 months, I do realize all the challenges and the changes involved. For a change, no one has made fun of my accent yet- or at least not in front of me. I remember how in my previous organization or in college, my accent was pretty much imitated and laughed at; often, I would laugh along. When in Mumbai, the Assamese accent of mine was identified as “Fake British Accent”- something that often annoyed me when discussed in extent. People working in Bhubaneswar cannot be fooled that e...