Bachelor Night out

Why do I only feel like writing when I am drunk? So today the weather was really nice and since it was a summer friday, I didn't feel like working at all. I left early and met up with the lone girlfriend I have in the city for dinner. It was so much fun chatting up with her. We went to this really nice coffee place after dinner and chatted till midnight. Then I took her to one of my friends place where there was sort of a mini party going on and everyone was drunk! It was so much fun being the only sober ones and watching everyone making a fool of themselves!! However, it didn't last long as we had four tequilla shots in quick succession and soon we were buzzed too. It was a lot of fun just cracking silly jokes, laughing at nothing at all and helping other drunk people lying all over the house. I didn't mention earlier that S wasn't there as he had to work and he encouraged me to go alone. I realized that I need to go out alone sometimes as though I missed S, it was kind of fun being single for sometime. There is a Europe trip I have been planning to go alone on that I have been having second thoughts on, though after today I think I might go.

Friendships

I have been thinking about friendships recently due to this post as I can totally relate to the first line - I always take my friendships too seriously. I guess since moving out of the house, I have felt slightly distanced from my family and therefore, I leaned on friends. Fortunately, I was lucky to have great people around me who cared for me immensely and were always there for me.
The first memory of making friends I have is in our colony, simply because they were my age group and lived in the same building so we spent evenings playing all kind of silly games, running all over the colony, learning cycling together, climbing one tree and fighting for which branch we will lie on, trying to eat shahtoot (don't know the english for this!) fallen off a huge tree. During summer vacations we would spent the whole day together trying to build brick bridges on puddles of water accumulated from rain, playing ghar-ghar, climbing atop car garages, choreographing various hindi movie songs (don't know why!), enacting out plays and fairy tales (I remember acting out Rapunzel quite clearly). As we grew, we studied for boards together, discussed our first crush, first kiss..all the juicy details! These are the friends I still am most comfortable with - even if we meet after long, there are no awkward silences and we can start off where we left. Recently during one of the said friends visit, I was surprised how quickly we were discussing intimate details of our lives...it is just so easy to open my heart with them.
My later school years and college friends seem kind of fleeting now - we were close then and had some great times together, however, I haven't been able to keep in touch with them. I also felt since we were all preparing for CAT, somehow a sense of competition kind of took away the closeness we shared. I also realized that if I feel betrayed by a friend, I don't forgive easily, something which I am still working on. In college, I found out that a person who I considered very close had taken offence at something I had said and instead of confronting me about it, she sort of bitched about it to someone else. I have never been really able to pick up threads from tha friendship again, which I really regret.
Business school friends hold a special place in my heart as one of the reason I survived staying away from home, dealing with the growing distance I felt with my family was them. We stayed up nights working together or just chatting, shared in the stress and misery and the exhilaration of each others achievements. I met people completely different from me and still got along. I had bitter fights with one of my friends such that he wouldn't talk to me for days, both of us completely did not and still do not get each other, however, still deeply cared for each other. This friend would drop me home in the middle of the night when we were later working in London just so I am safe even if he had to crash at a friends house and sleep on the floor. Another friend flew in to Delhi from Bombay just for my wedding even though we almost hadn't been in touch for a year. Another guy who I barely knew in b-school went on to become one of the closest friends in London. He would come over whenever I was feeling lonely and blue telling me he was only there because I cook well! He is a father now to a handsome young boy.
Which gets me to New York and how it has been difficult to make close friends. I have tons of friends here and hang out every weekend with a different set of people. However, there is none I would call if I am sad - maybe because S fullfills my emotional needs or maybe because it is difficult to develop those kinds of bonds once you are out of school. I have also realized I look for people who are fun, sport to do anything, can hold an intellectual conversation and feel there are very few people who fit that - maybe says a lot about the company I keep! I feel I now have less tolerance for people who are not courteous or don't have basic manners - am done putting up with rudeness or childish politics.
Luckily, communication across continents is easier now and I have friends sprinkled around the world from various stages of my life who are just a phone call away and talking to them always leaves me with a warm, fuzzy feeling even if it after six months or a year.

Running in the rain

We had another nice weekend and the best part was Saturday was sort of unplanned. We met Mukul for dinner at this really cool wine bar called Supper - it was the discovery of the day! We had to wait but the brick wall, dimly lit ambiance, excellent wine selection and food that smacked of fresh ingredients made my evening. Plus we had a nice chat with M about his stories of the India trip...potential plans of moving to India...sigh! No one will be left in this city soon. Anyway so after dinner some people were supposed to come over to our house for a drinks and chat session, however, it was lovely spring weather outside so we decided to go to a rooftop bar instead. We waited in line for some time but rain dramatically lowered the value of the rooftop so we ran to another bar - this was my favourite part of the evening - running in the rain!! We were 9 of us so there was utter confusion on where we have to go, umbrellas were in short supply so all of us were literally running in the rain like a bunch of kids enjoying first showers after really hot summer day!! I felt really free and reminded me of Delhi summer when we would go`out and enjoy the first monsoon rain. It was just nice to let go....and the phenomenal weather added to my exhilaration. To many more such evenings!

42 Mile Bike Tour - we did it!!

S and I are a very lazy couple. As a result we are super unfit with our annual exercize limited to running 3.5 miles in the central park for the JP Morgan Challenge every June. So this year when we registered for the 42-mile 5-borough NYC bike tour, I was convinced we are not going to finish it. We had signed up more for fun to see how it goes. We didn't get any time to train somehow and we ended up biking for 2 days before the actual. So you can understand my complete shock when we actually did finish it...in 6 hours including all the rest stops and wait times. We woke up bright and early as the line-up for the tour was supposed to start at 6:30 am. We reached battery park at 7:30 am and though waking up that early on a sunday was a big pain, once there it was exciting to be a part of the big crowd. There was a buzz in the air! We finally started biking at 8:40 am and it was amazing to bike up an absolutely empty 6th avenue, to pass west 4th - an area we frequent often but unrecognizable without traffic at that hour. We had decided that we would stop before the queensborough bridge, however when we reached there neither of us was so tired and we trooped ahead. I think the next decision point came near the Brooklyn Bridge where we again stopped and mulled over if we should stop and go back, however, since the mile marker said only 10 miles left, we decided to finish it. I am not sure if this decision was a good one as it was the toughest 10 miles of the race.

The surprising part was that though we did it with minimal training, my legs didn't hurt as much the next day....maybe am in not such a bad shape after all...

Uncertainty and Confusion

I am at a place right now where the next 6-9 months are very uncertain. I don't know how things will shape up at my job, whether I will be in this country, when will S finish his phd ... these are too many uncertainties for me to feel happy. You see, I like to plan in advance so I know when I have to do what and this is exactly the kind of situation that makes me very uncomfortable. I am stuck in a job and want to do something else, however, can't do anything about it for many reasons including visa ones. I am sure I have mentioned this on the blog as I have whined about it to everyone I know. But then I think that maybe I should be thankful that I have a job given what has happened. Moreover, since I really can't do anything about the situation, I should just be patient and wait for things to unfold over the next 6 months. In between I have a wedding to attend in Denver and a trip to Bahamas which right now feels like meh, another beach. You ask why did I plan the trip - again, because both of us need to get our visas renewed and have to go outside the country.

Btw I am still thinking about the glass ceiling issue and one thing that came to me was just because we don't see something in our immediate surrounding doesn't mean it doesn't exist. I think thats where most of my (guy) friends are coming from when they declare glass ceiling doesn't exist.

The glass ceiling - thinking clearly

Hello there - so today was one of the evenings when I had very low expectations of how it would be and it turned out to be surprisingly fun. We had kathi rolls for dinner and then went to a Scottish pub where they were celebrating Tartan day and had a really cool band with bagpipes n all playing. We were the only Indians among a lot of drunk scotts (many of then in kilts) and it was really good fun. We then ended up in a coffee shop in Times Square (long story!) and the conversation turned to glass ceiling, whether women should be paid less for maternity leave. This post is mainly to clarify issues in my head and understand how I feel about them.

Issue 1: The first time I felt I was being treated differently because I was a girl was in management school where there was almost a pre-conceived notion that girls there were mainly to fill the "quota" rather than their ability. Some guys were told by seniors not to take girls in their group as "girls don't work". These subtle notions used to (and still do) irritate the hell out of me. It is also sad that such judgements were made by educated adults about to enter and be leaders in corporate India.

This issue is interesting as I also met some great, intelligent people at the b-school who went on to become close friends and I can never imagine them being so small-minded or sexist. Maybe these were thoughts of only a handful and I generalized then as I was so mad when I heard these comments for the first time.

Issue 2: When I was interviewing with my current boss, he knew that I was going to get married and that was one of the reasons I wanted to move to New York. I heard from one of my colleagues later that he thought that I may slack off after I get married or may want to have kids and then may not work etc etc.

Obviously when I first heard it, it again surprised me that people think like this in the 21st century (yeah, I do live in my own ideal world). But then I guess first, he gave me the job and second, he has been a great boss and I have never felt any glass ceiling (maybe I am too junior to feel this anyway).

Issue 3: maternity leave - my rationalist friends put forward the argument that women should not expect the usual compensation and promotion when they are absent from work for 3 months in a particular year for maternity leave as someone else is doing their work and therefore, from an employers perspective it is totally justified to divide the proceeds according to the work done so to say.

I have issue with this thinking on many levels. I believe thinking about this issue in pure economic terms is simplifying the issue a lot and here is why -

• Talent retention: Assuming the women has been a good worker before she decided to have a baby, it is in company's interest to retain her. Measuring her purely on the basis of the contribution she made in that particular year when she had to take maternity leave and somehow reflecting this in either lower pay or delay in her promotion is discouraging her. This also assumes that she will not be contributing enough in the following year when she is back and reflects a very short term view from the employers perspective. This is ultimately not sustainable as some other firm will recognize that talent in this competitive world we live in today. I don't think those 3 months or that particular year should be the basis for judging her competence or contribution at all - remember in economics, value is always sum of future cash flows.
• I feel firms/companies/employers don't exist in an island by themselves. They are a part of the society and as a result they have some social responsibility. If somehow nature has decided it is a women who is supposed to procreate and is responsible for adding additional members to the society, then it is the company's social responsibility to help this. By creating disincentives, you are creating too much disparity between women who choose to have a baby and those who don't and this is not sustainable from a society's perspective. My friends argued that women can choose not to have a baby if they are ambitious. My point is that this shouldn't be a choice. If a man takes a months leave to look after a sick wife, could you argue that he shouldn't have married because some or the other kind of responsibility always comes with marriage??
• This is really a continuation of the previous point, but why else do employers organize family picnics, or sponsor a family holiday etc. Or even at a basic level, provide health care, in some cases housing. Because they realize that happy employees are necessary for the success of the company and firms cannot run cut and dry like machines purely on economic principles. Family responsibility is a very real part of life and though child rearing is fully the responsibility of the parents, the employers have some contribution too. Why do you have emergency daycare at work otherwise??

Issue 4: Glass ceiling - now this was interesting as most of my guy friends refused to acknowledge it exists!

I discussed this with my mother and since she is a senior manager in Railways, she has seen workplace for women change over the last 20 years. Her first response was "how do they know?"! Get me one working women to say it doesn't exists. However, this is again not a black and white issue -

• It doesn't exist everywhere obviously and it is changing. My mother told me women weren't considered for DRM (Divisional Railway Manager) earlier and that has changed completely now. It may not exist in Pepsi who has a woman CEO but it may exist elsewhere.
• I think we all talk from our immediate perspectives - at my level in my firm I feel it is absolute meritocracy and I have never felt I was being denied anything because of my gender. However, I have been to meetings where senior women complain about how my firm has the least % of women managing directors on wall street.
• The selection bias may not exist in research where I work but it may exist in trading as there are barely any women there.
• I think in most of these discussions, my point was not that glass ceiling exists everywhere but I think it is important for us to acknowledge that is does exist even if we haven't seen it in our immediate surroundings . We can hope it is now shrinking and be aware of any sub-conscious biases/stereotypes we may have. A classic example of this sub-conscious bias is when sales people call research and a women answers the phone, they assume it is an assistant!!!

Wine, music and old friends...

My childhood friend (Lets call her N) finally landed in NYC last week and I have been having a blast re-living all the memories. Me, N and another friend S who grew up in the same building spent a night chatting over wine exchanging notes on relationships, husbands, feminism, in-laws, old times, new life. I don't think I'll ever be as comfortable sharing and baring myself with anyone else but N&S. It was wonderful to catch up and realize how different we have grown up as individuals and yet how easy it is to understand each other. N is definitely the more sensible, calm person and her general sense of fairness and balanced view of the world gets maginifed against my short temper. More laidback and capable of always understanding the other person's point of view even if she doesn't agree. I realized how much I love her and missed talking to her and no one could ever replace the kind of comfort you feel when with old friends.

Last night we had plans to go clubbing with our respective hubbies, but heavy rains played truant and we decided to drink and party at home instead. Am I glad it happened as it was a memorable night with some great conversation. A&D joined us as well and after a few drinks conversation turned to religion and politics. It was so much fun discussing and arguing that I realized recently I had been missing these intellectual conversations. Everyone had widely different opinions and everyone was fighting tooth and nail to defend their's with N and I throwing understanding glances at each other and rolling our eyes at what hubbies just said. Maybe I have been hanging out with the wrong people but I had started to feel that we talk about the most inane things and I usually end the evening feeling that it was a waste of time. Moreover, some people have been really, let me say, not so polite recently and I started wondering if I need all this negativity in my life. However I digress. Coming back to N, we had a grand time last night with cocktails, music and really good company. It was awesome getting to know N's hubby a little better. I'd move lock, stock and barrel to Singapore if only to have more such cozy and delightlfully fun evenings like yesterday!