Dear X. I still have Feelings for You, but...

2(3x – 7) 4 (3 x 2) = 6 (5 x 9 ) 3

Solve for x.

Poor x. Alone in this world, with no identity. Shunned by the other numbers, because he does not know who he is. X cannot fit in the fives, or the eights. He isn’t even really a number. X is misunderstood. A mystery, who must be solved.

Fear not X! I am your savior. I will find out your worth x! I will assign you a value! Soon you will stand among your numbered comrades, no longer nameless, but with a numerical worth. You may fear that you will fall on the end of the scale, as a fraction, or worse, a negative. Do not worry little x. That’s what they made absolute values for.

Time to start our journey together X. I fear it will not be an easy one, as it seems you have surrounded yourself with a bad crowd. You are locked in a parenthesis prison with a 3 and a -7, and a 2 outside of you, guarding the gate. It looks like you are pretty tangled up x. You are busy on both sides of the equation. That hanging 3 looks suspicious. “Add me at the end!” it seems to shout. No, 3, you will not fool me. I will subtract you.

Actually I don’t know where to subtract you from 3, so you can stay there. This is really hard. Things are not looking good for you x. You’ve really got yourself in a situation.

You know what, x. It is not my fault that you fell into this bad crowd. Surrounding yourself with all those other numbers, confusing people. I wanted to help you x. And maybe I could’ve if you didn’t get stuck in those parenthesis. I don’t know how to get you out of those, x.

X, I have failed you. I will never be able to help you figure out who you are now. You will remain nameless, undefined, the variable. I hope that you will find others like you X, maybe an a-squared or a p. Maybe if I had found you at an early stage things would’ve been different ,like when you were just X-3 = 6. Your life has become too complicated for me to help you with now x. It looks like you’ll have to solve yourself. Good luck, x.

PS: I have no idea why they came up with this thing called Algebra!! Seriously, they made my life a living hell.... daah.. >.<

Today's Corporate World

I often wonder when the “easy” days are coming. Challenges come in many shapes, sizes, and danger levels. Attitude often determines whether people face these crises successfully or crumble under the pressure. No one wants to exist in crisis management mode forever. This attitude often generates the wrong results when find a job, earn some money for living, becomes the challenge on the table.

With the rise of Globalization, Economics and economists view reality through the lens of money.  Everything has its price, they believe, from rain forests to human labor to the air we breathe.

Our country is in the process of being built on various fronts like education, healthcare, tourism, fishing and agriculture, and industrialization … As for the society, it was in a flux.  Except for rich resort owners and those who held high posts in the government agencies and the bureaucracy, or public sector undertakings, everyone more or less is economically at par.

There are thousands of people in the corporate world who worked for a better future, but the general fervor that pervaded the very atmosphere then is somehow absent today. If we had been working together to better lives then, it is more of a ‘benefactor -beneficiary’ exercise today.

Activist literature colored our thoughts or rather robbed them of color. Everything had to be in two shades – black and white. If your freedom is curbed, fight and then bolt. Bad work environment? What are you still doing there? Walk out! Boss being mean and you feel discriminated? Just slap him and resign from the job!   Black and White – that was life. Where was the need to complicate it?

It took a while to realize that while issues could be in black and white. Problems have hundreds of shades and unless we can see them, we would be the losers in the end.

(And strangely today, things seem to have come as a full circle here too, but with a twist. It is now to do with individualism tinged with radicalism. Corporate world is junked as being political, with the danger of throwing out the workers with their position itself, compromise is considered weakness and a blow to one’s self-respect (or ego?) at work environment.

Back to the past: one thing had changed for us though; we wanted answers to a lot of questions that were baffling at the work place – Employment Act and beliefs including employment Tribunal and the place of a worker in the Corporate Ladder, starting with the basic rights has been created and became vital. Even though very few supported their colleague in their quest for answers and sometimes didn’t even understand what the noise was all about. It even upset the policy makers that the people were asking questions about things that had been accepted hitherto meekly. As our minds had been opened and we began thinking about the rights of an employee and other things that affected our lives.

Changing lifestyles and increasing incomes, rise in inflation; saw another phenomenon at the work environment and job market. Employees are reportedly being discriminated against for their gender, disabilities, religion and even in retaliation for a multitude of different reasons. Sometimes, the discrimination can be so subtle, that it goes unnoticed and unreported.  Despite all the awareness created, statistics from government organizations upholding the country’s employment act shows that still the Workplace discrimination and harassment  occurs, during the process of selection of staff for the job, Training and type of training being offered, Being considered for a transfer, promotion or sacking, and by setting Work place conditions at larger scale.

Political changes and the dilemma in the name of democracy have also created a new job market. Sacking people when ever they needed and giving jobs to the ones they chose without even thinking about their position and qualifications, earning extra money made the difference between eating one meal and starving for the poor. Erstwhile employer and employee and the change was cleaving the once near homogeneous fabric of society that they didn’t see anything wrong in sending their kids to work instead of to school or provide them with higher education. Some were sent to work in companies as child laborer.. If poverty had bound people, development drew them asunder. It was a sad thing that the very same benefits which were intended for everyone in the society were slowly being appropriated by the privileged few.

Slowly and almost imperceptibly the concerns of the discrimination began changing and then completely diverge. And while we were finding our feet and even sprouting wings, they were still floundering on the filthy earth.

The divide that began in the past has widened today to an unbridgeable chasm, with no apparent meeting ground of the two in sight. Even with so many women at top positions in government agencies and political corridors today, the status of the poor nonetheless is still the same. A large part of our working population, whether urban or rural is still in the grip of insecurity, ignorance, violence, exploitation and discrimination at work on top of everything else. The worst ignominy for this working population of the nation is that we have no job security; we have no proper guidelines to follow, even with the so called Employment act which is  just a structure that has no base in it. So what kind of development have we achieved in the last half century?

And the Activists, or who raised their voice against discrimination? Well, they groped their way through, fought, argued, questioned and sometimes found answers, but often didn’t. But they had the advantage of a better social and financial standing when compared to low income group and they were resourceful… but that’s not the end I guess, even for them!!

People change?

I've always wondered how brilliant minds fall prey to ills and evils ? How a person with high credentials and intellect slips deep down in their moral behavior? How our leaders and executives and all other people with great power and much greater responsibility go past their standards and do some heavy nasty things. 

Corruption, bribe, cheating are just the popular ones there are so many holes in their armors that it seems impossible to imagine that sometimes back, they used to hold one. How this transformation of good into bad takes place ? Is it an instant process or gradual ?

Men and women with great passion and hard-work pave their ways to high places. They turn their day n night in studying and creating a personality which segregates them from general mass. They are seen with respect, are tagged with wisdom, knowledge and discretion. Then how this well-informed, educated and trained mind gets distracted ?

Nobody is born bad. Initially we all are same delicate, childlike, spotless innocent creatures. Than what makes us good n bad ? Is it the genetic make-up, deeds we do, things we say or the people around us ? Is there no way of knowing, detecting and sensing this braniac pollution? When and how its going to attack ? Its symptoms or side-effects ?

Questions are many and so are the answers. But none helps. This monster is growing, and its growing with speed higher than ever. Some are resistant, some are resilient. But for how long ? We all know how great technologies which we proud today, helping us in building our nation, uniting it and controlling it, can be used disastrously if got in wrong hands. How some people bend rules. How the laws and rights are misused ? How the data [which we believe to be encrypted and super-safe] collected in the name of protection and benefits and fast and easy transactions holds the capability of stalking and monitoring our each and every move ?

How the things/rules/laws and people which were once good turn into some friendly monsters. Those who are fighting against it, how long before they fail to abstain ?