Captive Adaptations

The pesti-cola war rages on in India. While most of the main stream media is spending sleepless nights in providing coverage for this, I painfully would like to point out some even more serious threats (not that I back cola companies, or the Centre for Science and Environment), such incidents serve notice to all of us, to have a heightened awareness around us.

I was pointed out to heinous acts of deception, some 8 months ago, by one of my senior friends in the company. It was a casual conversation and for the first time I heard about Aspartame. It intrigued me because it had some high profile names like Donald Rumsfeld, I just decided to dig a little deeper(not to mention those were also my diet conscious days).

The new found evil,never escaped my mind, and it was shocking in late April, to discover that its presence was rampant in our own home. Both my parents are diabetic, and I have previously blogged about some not-so-good-incidents. The doctors at Diacon had advised them to use “Sugar-free capsules” as an alternative. And for a little over 2 years, my innocent and ignorant parents were blindly using it, and I was not informed about it, till I myself accidentally discovered them in our kitchen. Infact artificial sweetners were part of their regular daily diet.

The first thing I did as soon as I found the Artificial sweetner was to see if it contained Aspartame, and it was a sinking feeling to find it on top of the list of ingredients.

For the next month or 6 weeks, I advised a complete change in their diet and recommended my parents to switch their doctors as well. The transition was not smooth either as blogged in June, but I now have first hand experience of the many ills plaguing our society and how they have encroached our safe homes.

All you “Diet Coke, Diet Pepsi, Diet Everything” guys/girls, its high time you realized that behind every “diet” word, there is mostly Aspartame, google it to realize its evilness. Pesti-Cola OR Diet-Cola, the choice we have as consumers is to choose the lesser of the 2 evils. Is packaged drinking water safe? Let me know if you find out.

Its been 7 years. 1999 was the last time when I was around to celebrate this festival with my sibling sisters. Not that I am religious or ritual, but I don’t miss an opportunity to participate in anything that symbolizes love and warmth.

The amount of time that goes invested as part of growing together, while learning more from your siblings than your parents, is what makes this day all the more meaningful, at least to me. Almost all virtues that I carry today are undoubtedly what I have subconsciously learnt from my elder sisters. And the privilege to be looked upon as a role model, is bestowed by my younger sister. In many ways they have been the true guiding forces for me to “behave”.

“Raksha Bhandan” or “Rakhi” implies that a brother protects his sister during the times of adversity, but in a deeper sense, I think its their prayers, love and affection that has enabled me to stay away from trouble, else its easy for a hyperactive individual like me to drift away into troubled waters. Call it faith, call it a belief system, even when I have not been around with my sisters, I have always momentarily paused and wondered, is it their protective shield that is still working !

Its important to remember that all professionals need to develop healthy working relationships inorder to grow in this ever shrinking world. Its always good to determine where your professional life is heading towards. And the second most important task is to make sure you are accompanied by the right people in that journey. Young minds today have to work towards getting these priorities right.

Its easier to fall prey into believing the corporate management philosophies, and adopt the thumb rules which state that everything has to be in black or white! What somebody is worth, is directly proportional to what his/her percieved value is or what his/her productivity is, or for that matter what he/she is being paid or what his/her level of employment is. Are these the only scales of measure ? NO.

Most business have already agreed, that the intrinsic value of any working relationship can not be directly judged by the deliverables, nor can it be calculated from the quantifiable or tangible outcomes of any relationship.

Intangibles, the ingredients that make any working relationship tick must be assigned the highest weightage, and people both supervisors and subordinates should learn to question their heart to find the true value derived from any working relationship. I have increasingly come to believe that quitting is the easiest thing on earth. Like anything else all relationships also have an ending, but let me stress again, its not the end that matters, its the means to the end. Lets give the means a chance before we conclude the inevitable.