How to say goodbye: The do’s and don’ts of an office farewell

A lot has been said and written about interview etiquette or your first day at work, but not enough has been said about how an office farewell can be used as a powerful tool to build people and teams. Especially since office farewells are as common these days as inductions.

The first thing to evaluate is whether you want to give an employee a team farewell. And if you do, you do have a responsibility to create a memorable experience for the person leaving your organization and your team. In order to do that, it’s important to understand what a team farewell is in the first place.

A farewell is an opportunity to celebrate an employee’s performance and the good work that you did together. It’s not a performance appraisal and neither is it the place to give employee’s feedback on their working style in a public forum. The need for this feedback to be given at all—on the eve of an employee’s departure—needs to be evaluated. If so, it is best done through a one-on-one meeting and not a farewell.

5 things you never do at an office farewell:

1. Start by revealing for the first time that you never liked the person initially. It’s a bad opening line and could come as a bit of shock to a person who had “no idea.” In addition, corporate behavior is all about focusing on behavior that is appropriate. Using the term “like” makes it personal.
2. Tell a person that they are difficult to get along with, and leave it at that. That’s just bad professional etiquette. If you didn’t talk about it when you worked together, a farewell is a bad time to bring it up. It’s wiser to “forever hold your peace.” In these cases, especially if you didn’t work together closely, it’s a better idea to use the following line, “We didn’t work together closely, but I wish you well.”
3. Use the opportunity to show an employee how you have been imitating them behind their back. Imitating your colleagues behind their backs, just for laughs, is poor professional etiquette and shows a lack of maturity. Period. So if you have been doing it any way, it’s a bad idea to make your revelation now. Also, you have no idea whether the person concerned would actually find it funny.
4. Tell a person that you hope that they are “happier” in their next company. It’s an admission to the team that the employee wasn’t too happy with you, which may or may not be the case. More importantly, if a farewell is about celebrating the good work you did together, you end up shifting the focus.
5. Make startling negative revelations about a person. There are so many platforms for that. Why choose a farewell? You end up publically humiliating an employee, and then it’s no longer a farewell.

5 things you could do at an office farewell

1. Celebrate the good times: All teams and people have them. What were yours? Encourage your employees to remember them.
2. Remember that the first and last speakers set the tone: So choose them wisely. Make sure that these two speakers actually have something uplifting to say.
3. Stay positive: If the environment in the room is turning negative, you need to moderate. Interject with a positive comment that lightens the mood.
4. Include a team lunch: Choose a place where the food is good, but more importantly where you can talk and just enjoy being a team. And finally, in the age of “selfies”, don’t forget a fun team photo 🙂
5. Choose your farewell gift carefully: At Wipro, my team gave me a quill in a book and a miniature cycle because I was taking a break from work to write. I still have it in my book case, and each time I look at it, I think of my wonderful team. And that’s what a good farewell should also do—leave you and your team with something to smile about.

Gautama Buddha once said, “If you propose to speak, always ask yourself, is it true, is it necessary, is it kind?” That applies to a lot of situations, but it is especially true of an office farewell.

What’s been your best or worst experience at an office farewell? I’d love to hear more about it.

Change will come, but change is slow

My father moved into the house, which we still own in Kammanahalli, about 25 years ago. In those years, as its name suggests, Kammanhalli was literally a “halli” or a village. It was the back of beyond.

A mud road connected our house – one of only four houses on the lane – to the main road. The Bangalore municipal corporation did not provide water to the locality, so my father actually bought his own water, and this from a man on a bullock cart. Our sewage collected in a septic tank, somewhere deep in the ground, and was cleaned annually – once again, by another man in a bullock cart.

In 25 years, much has changed. Street lights, sewage lines and tarred roads came first. Then, I also remember the day when our road got its first bore well, and the municipal corporation began to supply the area with water soon after (even if it was just two times a week!).

There were other signs of change as well. New houses, new shops and new people. Now, our lane has 10 houses – some of them double storied, and home to at least six families (each!).

Our family was the first to bring a computer and a car into our lane, but now every other family has one of them too. Our neighbours come all the way from remote districts in North India to Afghanistan.

And here’s the clincher – garbage actually gets cleaned every day, and it’s hard to find an open garbage dump anymore!

Four years ago, I remember blogging here about how prosperity had come to Bangalore, but had bypassed the “halli”. I can’t say that anymore.

As the line of swanky new shops on the main road continues to advance one step at a time, the lines that link the richer residential localities and the “halli” is finally blurring. Development has indeed trickled down.

But for that to happen, it’s needed many little steps on the ground. A series of good Congress and BJP corporators, who’ve built on each others successes. The Congress brought lighting, sewage systems and water. Then, the BJP maintained it and also added garbage collection. Funds were actually utilised to benefit residents, till each of us can finally see a difference.

So, if successive administrations work together, there’s nothing that they we cannot achieve.

But most importantly, we need citizens to step forward to both build and maintain these localities. Every time when a city corporation fails us, we must have vigilant citizens, who pick up the phone and demand action from their local corporator. Like my mum does!

So yes, change is slow, but if you persist, it does finally arrive.

A call to prayer

A prayer thought in silence.
The solitary comfort of a hot cup of chai.
The stillness of a walk in the park.
A newspaper pondered in pensiveness.

Mornings,
Rest my spirit.

But now,
New voices,
Clamor for my attention.

At 5 am,
The call of the muezzin.
At 6 am,
Superhit bhajans.
At 9 am, Sunday,
The dancing Pentecostals.

 In my view,
Spirituality resonates loudest,
In human hearts.

Not over loudspeakers.

Introducing “Movies I Can’t Forget”

So, as promised, here it is then, my new blog dedicated to the glorious world of cinmea that will journey with me through my experiences in the movies. Welcome to the “Movies I Can’t Forget”

https://moviesicantforget.wordpress.com/

And if you’re still reading this blog, I look forward to your views and other comments.

Experiences at the movies – my bucket list

Five years ago, I ambitously made a list of the 116 films that I wanted to see during a short break that I was taking from the corporate world. Today, less than half way down that list, I realize just how difficult that task would have been accomplish in a meaningful way over a couple of months. But over the last few years here are some of the incredible 44 films that I have seen from my old list that have also done a lot to change my perspective of cinema.

• It Happened One Night (1934)

• Mutiny on the Bounty (1935) – Seen

• Modern Times (1936)

• All Quiet on the Western Front (1939)

• Rebecca (1940)

• Citizen Kane (1941)

• Double Indemnity (1944)

• The Lost Weekend (1945)

• It’s a Wonderful Life (1946)

• The Best Years of Our Lives (1946)

• Sunset Blvd. (1950)

• All About Eve (1950)

• An American in Paris (1951)

• Singin’ in the Rain (1952)

• From Here to Eternity (1953)

• Roman Holiday (1953)

• The Caine Mutiny (1954)

• Rebel Without a Cause (1955)

• Marty (1955)

• Around the World in Eighty Days (1956)

• 12 Angry Men (1957)

• Some Like It Hot (1959)

• Psycho (1960)

• The Apartment (1960)

• To Sir With Love (1967)

• Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner (1967)

• Oliver! (1968)

• 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)

• The Godfather (1972)

• Chinatown (1974)

• The Godfather, Part II (1974)

• Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975)

• Jaws (1975)

• One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975)

• Kramer vs. Kramer (1979)

• Apocalypse Now (1979)

• Raging Bull (1980)

• Ordinary People (1980)

• Terms of Endearment (1983)

• Amadeus (1984)

• Platoon (1986)

• Goodfellas (1990)

• Groundhog Day (1993)

• No Country for Old Men (2007)

Each of them beautiful classics, alive and powerful in my mind. But I also realize that unlike in the past, there has been no blog to capture that story. So here’s to the remaining 72 – some among that I have seen in parts or a long time ago – and also another blog that will tell their story and pay homage to that glorious world of cinema that I have always loved.

A house becomes a home

It’s been more than a year since I moved into my new house… And slowly, but surely, a house has become a home. A view of the world from my writer’s desk.

I See India…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In the statue
Of Infant Jesus
On my cab driver’s dashboard.

My cab driver,
A Muslim,
At Infant Jesus,
Every Thursday.

In thalis at Christian weddings,
Jesus in puja rooms,
Indian biryani.

In Eid Mubarak,
Happy Diwali,
Merry Christmas.

Three greetings, one reply,
“Same to you”
“Aapko Bhi”.

In Kabir’s dohas,
The tricolor,
Jodha-Akbar.

In Irfan Pathan,
Declaring,
He was proud to bowl for India.

Irfan Pathan,
Almost burnt alive,
in Gujarat 2002.

In Nargis epitomizing Mother India,
Sania rallying for India,
Priyanka turning Mary Kom.

In politics
That gave us
Manmohan Singh as Prime Minister,
Abdul Kalam as President.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh,
President Abdul Kalam,
Both, at the same time.

In Mumbai’s apartment buildings,
Teams in global corporations,
A Pub and an Islamic Boutique, standing side by side.

In those moments,
When Mubarak is Hindu,
Lakshmi is Christian,
Andy is Muslim.

Yes,
I see India,
All around me.

India has become.
I choose to believe.

We cannot be undone.

(A poem inspired by a blog post that I’d written a couple of years ago on “Incredible India’.)

House Hunting: Episode 3

As I look back over my blog, I find that two years ago at the same time, I was in the middle of an important exercise—I was house hunting.

It’s taken two years for that journey to reach fruition. But yes, in August 2013, many lifetimes later, I can finally say that the search is over. I do have my own space.

It’s a two-bedroom house in Kammanahalli. Yes, it’s a bit of climb. But I love my two enclosed terrace gardens that go along with this space.

I found the house through the conventional route—a real estate agent. Infact, it was the first house that I saw. But there was something about the house that called to me. Maybe it was those two enclosed terraces that gave me lots of space for experiments in the garden, and so I said ‘yes’.

There was also one moment that did it for me. It was when I stood in the second bedroom, with the sunlight streaming in through the windows, and looked into my neighbour’s terrace garden. That’s when I knew beyond doubt that this was the house for me.

Then came the negotiations with the landlord that saw me exceed my budget by over Rs 2000. But I liked the place, so I gave in again.

After all the agony with my mother and the sense of being stifled when I lived in an extended family when I was married, it feels so good to have my own space. And so, this is another journey that comes to an end 🙂 Another bridge that has been crossed on the road to self-reliance.

The house does have its shortcomings. I hadn’t noticed during my first visit that my street was noisy. It already has two restaurants, and there is a third one coming up! Also, it’s a long climb to the second floor, especially when you are carrying things all the way up many times.

But it’s such a lovely compact house, with space for things like gardens. It’s also a new construction. And once I am in, I do manage to shut the whole world out.

So I get up every morning to the sound of birds chirping in my neighbour’s terrace garden, and the sound of my mother’s nagging voice seems far, far behind. I also look forward to having my friends and family over to visit. I want this to be the open house that I had always intended my home to be, and that my mother never let it become.

Location: Kammanahalli, HRBR Layout

Size: 2 Bedroom 1,200 square feet

Price: Rs 17,000

I’ll Do It My Way: In Response to the Response

When I chose to write a book on Aamir Khan, I always knew it would be controversial. Not simply because he is an actor whose work has impacted Hindi cinema, but because he always seems to evoke two extreme responses – adulation or extreme dislike (on the belief that his work is overrated and his positioning pseudo).

So just as I am grateful for the attention this book has received as the Landmark No 1 Non-fiction Bestseller (For almost two months in a row), a Crossword Non-Fiction Bestseller and its debut amongst Nielsen Bookscan’s top non-fiction bestsellers, I realize that I must accept both the criticism and the praise that this book has received with equal grace and humility.

However, there seem to be a few myths doing the rounds and I would like to respond to them as if I don’t set the facts right about my own book, nobody else will

1. “I’ll Do It My Way” is not a biography. It is a filmography – as all the summaries released by the publisher will tell you – and should read/evaluated/reviewed as such. A filmography does not dwell on the man Aamir Khan, it looks at his work. So readers who expect me to examine all the dark rumours around the man will be disappointed. These are not the subject of the book – not because I was too scared to investigate them, but because they were not an area of interest. My passion is cinema – both film-making and the rationale behind it – and that’s what this book is about
2. Am I die-hard Aamir fan/admirer? Not really… So I can say that I did not care for some of his recent films like RDB, Ghajini or TZP (and many others too!). But as an objective film researcher, I cannot ignore their impact, especially if it has been very clearly documented.
3. So is the book only “in praise” of Aamir Khan. That is not true – unless one is so prejudiced by one’s own views that one is not able to take a balanced perspective. For instance, one of my favourite interviews in the book is with Mahesh Bhatt – simply because it is amongst the most objective voices. Mahesh appreciated Aamir’s sincerity and commitment, but seemed to find Aamir’s search for perfection exhausting – even as Mansoor Khan provides a different take on the same subject (without any knowledge of what Mahesh had said before this). The debate between the two views is interesting. Then, later, for the first time, directors like Dharmesh Darshan, Indra Kumar and even Mansoor talk about certain filming decisions taken in conjunction with Aamir that were mistakes. So we see that while Aamir has made cinematic decisions that have worked well with audiences in the recent years, there have been mistakes as well. Just as there were many poor film choices in the early and middle phases of his career. This book touches on all that too. Infact, this is more than most existing books on Indian actors have done so far.
4. A review in Deccan Chronicle insinuates that Amol Gupte was dropped from the list of interviewees because Aamir Khan/his office edited the list of interviewees. That is not true and borders on defamation. Aamir Khan’s office did not suggest that I drop anyone… But they did suggest that I include directors Muragadoss, Rajkumar Hirani and Vidhu Vindod Chopra. As I had begun working on this book much before Ghajini was released, they were not on my original list and it worked well for the book that this was pointed out.
5. So why was Amol Gupte not included in my list of interviewees? Only because in MY view he was not a director, producer or principal actor in Taare Zameen Par. My interest was in how the film was made, and there was sufficient documentary coverage from the producers in the public domain that allowed me to analyze this aspect.
6. Incidentally, my modus operandi was to try and get every director whose film was being included in the book to give me some commentary on his/her film. If directors like Ashutosh and Farhan are not in the book, it’s because they were busy and could not give me their time. Ditto with Juhi Chawla! In fact, for the record, the person I tried hardest to reach while writing this book was not Aamir, it was Juhi. But her secretary was unable to put us in touch over a period of two years. Incidentally, Juhi did not interview for the only other book that currently exists on Aamir — “Aamir Khan: Actor with a difference” by senior film journalist Lata Khubchandani. On the subject of interviewees, I would also like to point out that none of the directors I spoke to were interviewed for the previous book by Lata as well. In fact, this particular panel of interviewees is unlikely to be put together again. As a documenter of Hindi cinema, I believe that this makes the book significant — both in any study of Aamir’s work or his films.
7. Aamir collaborated with the book in some way. No… He did not. This book was an independent research initiative. Aamir’s office was only aware that I was working on it — nothing more. I even paid for all the expenses/travel related to the book on my own, and till the end I believed that I could have to self-publish it. Just because the stance is positive does not mean that it is less independent or researched. Anyone who has read my previous work would know that I am a positive person and I like celebrate the best in people. This book reflects that approach.
8. Is the book is a compilation of interviews from film magazines? Hardly! The first information source was live interviews, then came film/video coverage, followed by coverage in the national press and then film magazines. Having said that, I think a researcher is striking a pseudo-intellectualist stand if they believe that film journals are beneath them. Film journals reflect popular culture and can be a rich and extremely interesting source of information as they capture nuances that are sometimes missed by mainstream media. Typically, any quote that I have used in the book is not an isolated statement. It is corroborated by other interviews that he has given over the years.

When it comes to my work on creating the book, I am grateful that I got to write this book from a non-film background as this gave me the freedom to write my book without any prejudices. I started with a clean slate, and if at the end, my conclusion was not ‘negative’ or ‘darkly sinister’ enough to suit either the cynic or the traditional film writer, then so be it.  

I also did not have any pre-conceived notions on films like “Dil”, “Raja Hindustani” and “Ghajini”, and responded to them on the basis of both how they were made/how they were received/their impact. It does not matter to me that most people who appreciate “French cinema” better did not find these films appealing enough. In all truth, none of these films appeal to me personally either… But I am ready to look beyond myself and understand that making commercially viable Indian films is also an art that most film critics themselves have never mastered, and these films represent that art and to that extent reflect popular culture.

In fact “I’ll Do It My Way” is a actually a piece of film research, a methodology that I picked up under the Media Studies Department at the London School of Economics. But we also turned that approach on its head to make the book accessible to the lay reader. As I look at the book’s Flipkart journey, I believe that has already happened, and that is this book’s biggest achievement.

Finally, “I’ll Do It My Way” is an Aamir Khan filmography… So this work was begun with the view that Aamir’s work is significant to Indian cinema. The films that were covered in this book were meant to reflect different shades of his work as that was the area of my research. People may have their own views on it, and if this book encourages discussion around Aamir’s craft or even prods someone else to write their own book on the subject, it would have served its purpose.

(This post has also been cross posted on my blog for the book “I’ll Do It My Way”.)

House hunting: Episode 2

It was THE lane with the most beautiful house in the world. It was THE lane where I wanted to live when I was a six-year-old girl.

The lane hadn’t changed much over the last 30 years, except for two new apartment blocks. I was visiting one of them (the red garish one) on Househunt, Episode 2.

But the flat that I was visiting in this apartment block wasn’t on rent. It was on sale. I’d heard about it in the old-fashioned way that still works best in this part of town – by word of mouth.

Since the flat had been built 18 years ago, it didn’t have a lift or car parking. So I walked up to the second floor.

As it turned out the flat was being refurbished, so there was paint and plaster everywhere. But though small, it was quaint – almost out of Enid Blyton’s world. Yes, this could be home.

Then Mr P, the house owner began bargaining. The initially discussed price of 34 lakhs now became 35 lakhs. He wanted me to make him my best offer. I asked for time to consider it over.

As I drove back, I did consider the fact that this was THE lane. But I found that as I thought about it as a property that I wanted to own and not rent, I was dissatisfied.

It was a beautiful lane, but this apartment had not been built for the future. In Bangalore of 2011, parking was important. So was a lift – for a a flat on the second floor. Besides, an 18-year-old building could also not be without its construction and structural flaws.

So I let my head rule over my heart, and I said goodbye to the house on THE lane. Yet something already tells me that this is one ‘head over heart’ decision that I will always be very happy to have made!

Location: Da’Costa Layout
Price: 35 lakhs (and going up!)