Good news is no news

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Good news is no news
Shefali Tripathi Mehta, June 7, 2015, DHNS

The elders’ reprimand to keep quiet if I spoke during the news on radio is an abiding childhood memory. News was timed — morning and evening on the radio; the local morning newspaper; and the national newspaper that came in the afternoon by train in the city I grew up. News was not as easily accessible as it is now. If one missed it, there was no way of checking it immediately. If ignorance wasn’t bliss, it was at least less overwhelming. Now it seems there’s no getting away. We are drowning in information.

Twelve-year old Sana was looking forward to visiting her grandparents in the summer vacations. When the family decided to do the long journey from Bangalore to Delhi by train, her first reaction was a worried, ‘What if the train meets with an accident?’ Train accidents were all she has seen and known of train journeys from watching news. That was her immediate recall. All around us there is news of corruption, scams, killings, abductions, rape, poverty, negligence, injustice. It does not help that news doesn’t ‘come to us’ like it did about two decades ago, but we ‘go’ to it. In our Internet-enabled, connected world, we are constantly being bombarded with news and very often rumour, scandal or expose in the garb of news.

Breaking news — and all of it is breaking — comes streaming to us as it is unfolding. If it does not update in two seconds on our phones and computers, we refresh and reboot, panicking about what we may be missing out — a catastrophe worse than any tragedy we may be following on news. The FOMO or fear of missing out makes us compulsive news seekers.

In the past few years, I have seen many friends trying to shut out news completely by not subscribing to newspapers or watching it on television. Though how one can insulate oneself thus in times when news has a way of getting to us and not the other way around, is a wonder. How are the readers and viewers coping? What keeps their hopes for a better world alive?

Choose & filter

Girish Ananth, a software professional, says he would gladly rid himself of the habit of reading news online and offline that lead to a nagging sense of despair and depression, but he is addicted. That his job keeps him in front of an Internet-connected computer at all times makes the escape impossible. But he has gradually learned to read between the lines and recognise at a glance whether a news item is sensationalist or agenda-driven or deserving of more attention.

Tisha Srivastav moderates a closed group called ‘Lifeistan’ on Facebook. In the group description she states, ‘I will delete pointlessly negative comments’. A former journalist, Tisha rejects opinionated accounts in favour of field reportage. She believes that people are cynical because they are passive receivers of news. People must exercise what she calls the ‘powerful choice of rejection’ of news. So does Varun Pai, interaction designer, who disregards stories that do not present the ‘other side’ that allow him to put things into perspective and form an independent opinion for himself.

Reading news is part of her job as publication and advocacy officer with the World Health Organization, and Vismita Gupta Smith who was recently in Kathmandu to report the relief operations says depressing as it is, she cannot switch off from news because of her need to stay informed. Marzia Ibrahim, young student and staunch nationalist at heart, wonders how much news is too much. She supports the freedom of the media to report stories, but feels strongly about the ethics that they must follow so as to not infringe on the rights of the people who are part of their stories. Sensationalism and public shaming needs to stop, something that has spiralled out of control with the rise of social media, she rues.

Remedy & recourse

We are moved by make-believe; we cry and laugh while watching films. How is it possible that real life events that give rise to fear, anger, frustration or anxiety will not affect our moods and consequently our psychological health? Writer and life coach, Eshwar Sundaresan, says that negative news impacts those already depressed and he has sometimes advised depressed clients to avoid watching news or reading newspapers till they feel better about their own lives. 

I asked Sapna G K, a senior counsellor, how despairing news affects people’s overall perception of life. Her response was matter-of-fact, “If one cannot control the events that happen in the world, and if there are more bad things than good, then that is the reality of the situation, which we need to come to terms with.” She says, “If it bothers you to the extent that it’s affecting your personal life, you can choose how much news you want to take in or not at all. Otherwise, do something to make the world a better place in the ways you can — like volunteering and helping others.” 

Girish too believes that all sorts of unpleasant things happen over which we have no control, “The world is not a fair place, so why get involved emotionally? Why not just work on our own ‘circle of concern’?” He takes recourse in classical music.

Sandeep Bekal, entrepreneur, is a regular newspaper reader who tries not to get too perturbed over bad news because he believes there is a lot good happening too which does not get reported. Spiritualism helps him keep his hope that things will change for the better. Kahkashan Ahmad, mother of teenagers who works with an NGO that helps with the education of underprivileged children, comes across very inspiring stories of the potential and talents of these children, but regrets that such uplifting news has no takers. Volunteering keeps her hope alive.

Editor and translator, Keerti Ramachandra, often shares on Facebook stories of human kindness that she encounters — a passport officer or a cop who goes out of their way and sometimes beyond their call of duty to be helpful. She says that generally news makes her angry and frustrated by its content, but when some act of kindness, some generosity from an unexpected quarter comes by, she is moved enough to believe in the innate goodness of human beings and is immediately hopeful. 

Immediacy of sharing

The same items pop up on our newsfeeds again and again. We share easily on social media. Many-a-times it is not the need to inform, but a need to show our stand which drives this. In hindsight, a lot of what we share and say may seem unfair or reactionary. A lot of the sensational news on social media remains unauthenticated. Displaying poor taste and discretion, tragedies are laid threadbare for the sake of TRPs because we have become voyeurs of mourning. This adds to a sense of collective gloom and hopelessness. Tisha is very clear in her approach to news consumption — to witness and not react. She says she’s always careful while sharing — never sharing while witnessing, always later. But such a sagacious mindset is not easy to sustain on social media which comes with readers’ reactions. Everyone has a say and it is not always pleasant or thought out. Most responses are not just lacking in sensitivity, propriety and grace, but are often caustic and unfair.

Over the last two decades, the line between news and news features has blurred with news becoming not just emotionalised, but ‘tabloidised’. Our reaction to it is consequently, emotional. Lapses of judgement are not on the part of the media alone, it is a reflection of the reactionary mood of society today — our hurry, our frailty of speaking too soon. These are our failings. We have fed the monster.

Close to the immediacy of sharing comes what I call the ‘immediacy of caring’, an irrepressible phenomenon that has burgeoned out of the quick, cheap and easy means of communication — Internet and mobile phones. My daughter was at school during the serial bomb blasts of July 2008 in Bangalore. My phone began to ring within minutes of the news breaking on television and well-wishers from all parts of the country began to ask if I wasn’t going to fetch her. It wasn’t closing time yet, so I was sure she would be safe in school. I trusted the school authorities to ensure the students’ safety and had no reason to worry as long as she was inside the school with the rest. But pushed thus, I began to panic. The television news was showing the same clips over and over, there was fear of the phone lines getting jammed. Many in my situation would have felt compelled to venture out themselves and create more panic and confusion when there was absolutely no need.  

Exploitive and yellow journalism creates scaremongering in the most harmless situations. Film Editor Amitabh Shukla says his father calls him every time it rains in Mumbai. The TV shows everything in the city submerged, without clarifying that it is in pockets. His family’s entire perception of Mumbai floods is based not on what he tells them, but what the TV shows.

A paradigm shift

Sometime around the 2010s, some people began to feel strongly about showcasing positive, inspiring stories. These soup for soul stories quickly caught up the imagination of the readers who were desperate for stories of courage and motivation as a foil for all the depressing news they were surrounded with. The reach of digital media provided these new news websites a comfortable foothold, and gradually, mass following. These social media-supported news websites like the Better India and Love Hindustan were able to start an alternative news medium and stick their heads out of the media clutter by carrying positive stories alone. 

‘We feature positive news across India, celebrate the successes of unsung heroes and change makers, showcase the little known good things about our country...’ Better India declares. “We believed despairing news could not make people contribute and change,” says Dhimant Parekh, founder, the Better India, that started as a two-member team. They began by linking positive articles from various publications on a blog, but it was difficult because there were so few positive stories. Then they started covering feel-good and motivational news themselves and as more people joined and volunteered, the articles became more varied. Today, the Better India has more than 1,00,000 followers on Facebook and about 20,000 followers on Twitter.

Love Hindustan too is a news portal exclusively dedicated to giving readers ‘the other side of India that everyday newspapers and websites don’t’. They link positive news articles from other sources and do some stories themselves. The Logical Indian is another much-followed news website that focuses on bringing to its readers social issues that according to them ‘often miss the limelight in the traditional media’. They have a following of over two million. They have not limited their content to positive news stories alone and prefer to call their work, ‘efforts for good’.

Striking a balance

“We need the media to highlight failings of government bodies, injustices, wrong doings and social problems to create awareness and get people moving towards positive action and hold the government agencies accountable,” says Keerti. 

This is exactly what Satyen Bordoloi feels. And there are many like him who are okay with despairing news because it tells them how and where they can channelise their efforts. An activist and documentary filmmaker, Satyen does not want to receive only feel-good, uplifting news. If there is despairing news, it only means he needs to ‘pull up my sleeves to try and do something about it’. He considers all news positive because once reported, all misdeeds and malpractices, corruption and scams can only lead to corrective and positive changes in the society.

Also, news may be upsetting because distressful news sticks to us more easily and surely than feel-good news, says game developer Anando Banerjee. If there were two headlines, ‘India jumps up five places on the Global Happiness Index’ and ‘People die in wall collapse’, we are likely to read and remember the latter better. There is no doubt there is a kind of voyeuristic pleasure in others’ misfortunes, but there is also a sense of relief that ‘it didn’t happen to me’, he adds.
 

As with everything else in life, we need a balanced dose of news — with the not-so-good must come the good. News media should make a consistent effort to report uplifting news along with the disturbing headlines that cannot be ignored. Political analyst Prashanth Potluri is of the view that newspapers should ensure that at least the front page always has positive news so that people have a good start to their day. 

News media gives us what we sanction, it runs on our choices. We have to stop feeding the monster we have created by rejecting sensationalism. Mountain-out-of-molehill news would have to stop if we didn’t consume it. It will seem unthinkable today, but on April 18, 1930, the BBC had no news for the evening and it announced, “There is no news today.”  The announcement was followed by piano music.

The Invisible Workforce

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Shefali Tripathi Mehta, March 15, 2015, DHNS

A friend related how at a government-run health clinic where he was required to take shots before travelling abroad, he was exposed to untold risks at the hands of health workers who went to the extent of breaking open the injection vial with a scooter key lying about.


We can get angry, fight, complain, but why is it that these things never change? Why is it that the lady cleaning the corridors leaves patches of the floor unswept and dirt in corners? Why is it that the nurse is callous while doing a dressing? Why is the clerk in a government office unwilling to settle a small issue sending one into a spiral of red tape? 

They seem indifferent and difficult. But what about us who only notice them when they slip or are ‘absent’ from work? If the garbage collectors go off work for a day, we cannot breathe as rubbish piles up at street corners; in many metros, as in Bangalore, lives come to a standstill if the water tanker suppliers’ wilful demands are not met; in homes, we cannot seem to function without the help of maids, drivers and istriwalas. 

Yet, we look down upon their work; resist their assertion of rights, forming of unions, even a group to protect their rights; grudge them time-offs; expect them to wear our old clothes and shoes; buy off at half price our outdated appliances; and feel let down when they decide to move on in order to improve their station in life. 

We would like not to engage with them and yet want them to function with machine-like precision so our lives may run smoothly. They are the invisible people who we treat with apathy and often, much disdain, but whose services we cannot live without.

We may posture as liberal and unbiased, but we remain at core a classist society and whatever we may say to counter it, in our minds we still hold people in their ‘correct’ social places so that the jigsaw of our public life does not appear jumbled. So, when a street kid enters the world’s largest fast food chain, we don’t know what to do. 

The doorman, unsure of which side of the plate glass doors that he holds open, he himself belongs, scampers to save his job, and does what he thinks best to keep the area ‘sanitised’ for the privileged. Wasn’t that his job in the first place? The unspoken responsibility his duty demands? Why else do we have doormen if not to keep ‘certain’ people out? Isn’t that what ‘right to admission reserved’ really implies? 

When the woman who has accompanied the kid inside cries foul, the social media goes into hyper drive to roll eyes and condemn. Each one of us feels obliged to involve ourselves with the issue even though we know it is commonplace. Our five-minutes of dinner time eyebrow-raising changes nothing. Things stay as they were — status quo. Except, perhaps, the bewildered doorman may have been reprimanded or worse, shown the door.

Recognition & appreciation

I remember an incident from early childhood when a family friend visiting from the US was returning. She was leaving our small town by train and there was a gathering of people come to see her off. As the train began to chug away, she stood at the door waving at us.

Noticing the driver of the car that had brought her and some of the party to the station standing a little away, she waved out to him. I still remember the elders talking about it days later. They thought it amusing and somewhat wanton. Drivers are there to drive cars and not to ‘engage’ with the employers in other ways. Their presence need not be acknowledged.  

Studies show that it is not the fear of losing job but appreciation by the bosses that motivates employees to work harder and better. The top reasons why people are bored with their jobs are because their jobs are not challenging enough; they need more responsibility; and seek opportunities that will allow them to grow. So it is hardly surprising that this section of people have little motivation to do their work well when no one seems to recognise or appreciate their efforts.

When we see a garden blooming, lovingly cared for, we take pictures to share with friends — our friends, people in our social circle. Do we ever go to the gardener and tell him what a wonderful job he is doing? We only complain and report him when we think he is not. When do we send out a box of mithai to a clerk and not their boss when our important work comes through? When do we ever return to thank a nurse who has extended care beyond her call of duty during our time in hospital? Regrettably, we don’t even know them by their names. 

Most parents teach their kids to address elders with respect. So we have them call elders ‘uncle’ and ‘aunty’. But we never squirm when little children address this workforce around us as ‘watchman’, ‘driver’ or ‘maid’. When a plumber, electrician or carpenter is unable to fix our problem, we feel cheated and frustrated. Do we stop to consider that maybe the problem isn’t with them, but with us who want to pay these handymen as little as possible? For the money we are ready to part with, these workmen or the agencies that hire them for us do not find training economical. So we have an army of half-skilled, unmotivated workers that expose our lives to unnecessary hassles and risks. 

The rights of this section of workers are not protected by law and they are most often not entitled to any employment benefits like paid leaves for sickness or maternity, job security, pension, health insurance or opportunities to grow. It is not surprising that ‘trade/workers unions’ have become a frightening word for the people on the other side and there is resistance from the employers to let workers organise themselves thus. This makes them retaliate in ways big and small to wield their power when they can. When a clerk, frustrated with his job that neither fulfils his needs nor his heart, sees how we’re at the mercy of his assistance, he shows us who is in command by making things tough for us. 

Dignity & humility

On a sweltering summer afternoon, we were pulled over by a traffic cop. Irritated because we knew we had not broken any rule, I rolled the window down only to be asked if I could give him some water to drink. How we fume at the traffic policemen when they hold us up. We can never appreciate their tough working conditions — constantly on the alert in the midst of dust and smoke in harsh weather with no water or washroom facility for hours together. 

Many drivers and house maids have no washroom facilities in swank apartment, commercial and office complexes. The thought does not cross the minds of those that build nor those of us that live or work here. It is not economical to invest in such. Their everyday needs are beyond our reckoning. A house-help told me about how dirty the family she worked previously with left the dishes for her to wash. Smeared with gravies and leftovers that turned putrid by the time she cleaned, she was often left nauseated. Would we leave them so if one of us had to clean the dishes? These things happen all the time and we stay smug in our pocket of indifference. 

In any service or customer-facing enterprise, the customer’s feel-good factor is critical. It is the attention to detail that mainly this staff takes care of that makes all the difference to our experience. It is this workforce that creates the first impressions of a place — the house-help who opens the door to greet us, brings a glass of water with a smile; the obliging receptionist at an office or hospital; the attentive waiter at our restaurant table.

I was amused to see the remains of a price sticker clinging to the bottom of not one but two glasses at a luxury hotel. Millions can be spent on facilities, but the customer can be put off by ill-mannered, uninvolved, untrained and unskilled staff; by negligence in small places. To keep them motivated to do their jobs well, we need to treat them with dignity and humility.  

Every talk on dignity of work begins and ends with us citing Mahatma Gandhi’s advocacy to clean toilets. Those were the days of manual carrying away and cleaning of the chamber pots. Gandhiji advocated it because that one task that made a whole ‘class’ untouchable, strips one completely of the ego. Modern day flush toilets, quite often one per person, do not demand any such exertion of the ego.

In a more democratic set-up where the social lines are blurred on the surface although they may run deep in our minds, according dignity to each person doing any work that we may consider ‘lowly’, and treating each with humility, is how our egos will be kept in check. There are people trying to make a living at street corners by handing us pamphlets; asking us to fill questionnaires; or those that come knocking at the door at three in the afternoon selling four-for-the-price-of-one encyclopaedias; sanitary napkins; home-made pickles and hand-embroidered bed sheets. 

Most often, they are irritants in our ‘on demand’ living that stipulates that the service that we need reaches us when we want, and without-hassle. The ‘without-hassle’ would imply among other things that it should not involve dealing with people whom we consider below our station.

Treating the lowest labour at work with humility and allowing them to improve and acquire new skills and grow is according dignity to labour. The cook in the house wanted to learn to bake a cake, but the cautious neighbour sounded the bell, “Don’t teach her that! Next house she goes to work in, she’ll ask for more money saying she can also bake.” And, why not? Hasn’t she acquired a new skill? Doesn’t she deserve to do well? How can we deny them what we want for ourselves? 

Persistent paradoxes

‘Tolerance’ is a nasty word used most annoyingly to assert our liberal outlook. Why should we tolerate people, differences, new ideas, a fresh perspective or changes? We need to do better. We need to embrace and support these wholeheartedly. In a democratic society, everyone has the opportunity to thrive and succeed; and they have the right to not be judged poorly for what is beyond their control like their socio-economic background or status.

 “A daughter-in-law is to be treated as a member of the family with warmth and affection and not as a stranger with respectable and ignoble indifference. She should not be treated as a house maid. No impression should be given that she can be thrown out of her matrimonial home at any time...” This, according to media reports, was the observation made by the country’s top court while sentencing a man for torturing his wife which led her to commit suicide. 

What does it mean? How ‘can’ a house maid be treated? Can she be thrown out of the house anytime? This is the disadvantage they live with. Our prejudices run deep. We reveal our constricted mindset in subtle and not so subtle ways. In a face-off between a house maid and an envoy, is it a surprise that the nation sides with the envoy even before the details of the case are before us, even before the maid’s side of the story is heard? Our preoccupation with ‘our’ class has us fuming over the injustice done to ‘one of us’. 

The stereotypical mindset believes that the maid must be at fault because we have imbibed the notion that ‘these people’ are conniving and out to cheat us. Just as half-hearted and slipshod work is rejected with reprimand, every effort to improve and excel has to be recognised and appreciated. 

It may cause a slight societal still surface disturbance when we step out of our sanitised bubbles to tell the kitchen help that the cup of coffee is the best; thank the liftman and smile at the lady sweeping the corridor; reply to the doorman’s greeting; and ask the courier guy if he would like some water. It is time we started noticing those standing in the sidelines, those that we would rather not see or hear. It is time to feel with sincerity the work they do and accord them recognition and appreciation.

I’m still thinking of this piece as I step into the food court of an upmarket mall. Seated next to me is a family of four — young parents and teenage daughters. The girls are holding in their intricately nail-arted hands elaborate swirls of coned ice-creams and licking away nonchalantly as a maid — a girl also their age — sits a little away smiling away her awkwardness. No, she’s not having an ice cream. Should I take consolation in the fact that she’s allowed to sit at the same table?

Disclaimer: The paper chose to change my headline to: ‘They are one of us, too’ which goes against my arguments in the piece; completely defeats the objective of the piece; and is discriminatory.

Whose life is it anyway?

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Shefali Tripathi Mehta, Jan 11, 2015, DHNS

When I gave my daughter, then ten years old, a cell phone hidden in a lunchbox (cell phones were forbidden) to carry to school each day because she was the first to get into the school bus and the last to get down, and no teacher or attendant’s presence was stipulated by the school, it was for her safety, so she could call us in an emergency.

A decade later, a mother who has just got her 14-year old a cell phone, is enquiring furiously of others on Facebook for recommendations for an app to monitor the kid’s cell phone activity. A cell phone is no longer a safety gadget; it has in itself become the source of anxiety for parents. Parenting grows tougher by the years. If you know how many times you have given in to an impetuous response on social media and have regretted it later, you will understand how easy it is to slip. How difficult it is to have the World Wide Web in the palm of your hand and not get sucked into the virtual world.

Of all the challenges that we face in our current expeditious, technology-driven lives, the challenge of bringing up children must be the toughest. Relationships have evolved with time and not necessarily deteriorated. It is imperative to embrace change. Those who refuse to move with the times will be left behind.

In simpler times, the foundation of family rested on a simple principle — parents and elders loved, cared and provided for the children; children in turn respected and observed complete obeisance to them and followed their wishes, demands and expectations. The world view was limited. All this has been radically updated. The process has been gradual and there is no reason for parents and elders to have not evolved with the times.

Last October, in a small town in Karnataka, a 14 year old girl died mysteriously. Whether it was a suicide or a killing is mired in uncomfortable questions with communal undertones. But the overwhelming question is why a life so young that is yet to attain fruition worth only this much — to live or to die to uphold a vague idea that societies impose mainly upon women — honour?

If reports are to be believed, is it fair that a child so young be sacrificed to save a family’s social face? Knowing that this is not a stray incident, the issue begs much soul searching. Why did the child have to die? Why parents who do much to bring a child up cannot tolerate the child’s fleeting impetuousness, a little veering off the toed-line? Why is it that they prefer to lose their child forever than to guide them gently through their tumultuous teenage and after? There has been an alarming rise in suicides among children.

Burden of expectations

The younger generation has discovered a completely new world of independent thinking, learning, living that they are covetous of. Their thinking and world view is being radically modified by the plenitude of information they receive and the awareness that comes with it. Parenting is no longer a one-way street. Parents cannot impose their ideas and decisions on their children without considering their point of view.

According to a United Nations report, about 5,000 women die every year in honour killings perpetuated by family members. Rigid, hollow and meaningless social norms are upheld, especially in smaller communities, for fear of social boycott, but they are not unheard of across all social classes and religious communities.

In December, according to media reports, a girl studying in class 4 left a suicide note in which she said, “Amma, I didn’t go to school for over a week. Please forgive me.” Bangalore hasn’t forgotten the horrific incident where a 13-year-old boy committed suicide because he was made fun of by classmates for failing to make it to the NCC. Earlier last year, a 16-year old girl who was allegedly reprimanded several times by her college principal for speaking with a boy, consumed pesticide and killed herself. Before she died, she wept and said sorry to her mother.

Why do children have to die over such trivial matters? Who are they shaming? They are shaming us as a society for our inability to reach out to them when they need us; for our lopsided view of what is important in life; for our failure to recognise that all children are not the same and do not have to be physically or intellectually on the top to matter; that they are good only if they obey elders unconditionally, unquestioningly.

It’s a tough life

Bullied or stressed; physically or emotionally abused, how is it that parents don’t come to know? There is brouhaha in support of quality time. Every difficult, hesitant conversation in the world needs time — no one begins to talk of their problems in measured hours. Children, with who we also have an age gap, have to be observed, their moods gauged, their problems coaxed out of them gently and with sensitivity.

On the one hand are parents reluctant to liberalise their parenting style, and on the other, those that think children these days are smart enough to ‘manage’ on their own. Parents and children live under one roof only so children can be provided for until they become financially independent and move out. It is a fact that children today are smarter and more ‘aware’, but there is a lot of learning that comes from life that they haven’t experienced. Also, knowing a lot has little to do with maturity of the mind. Haven’t we seen maturity elude older people? There are no cookie cutter minds — some children learn early and some late. It would be unwise to expect them to grow up without any guidance from elders. In fact, with the kind of challenges growing up demands today, gentle, non-intrusive counsel and direction from elders is imperative.

In a lot of cases the hurried, harried parents of today, when called upon to deal with a child’s problem, either over-react or slump into denial. When a child comes to them with a problem, parents either dismiss it as nothing, or provide a ready solution. In the first case, parents have lowered the child’s self-esteem, and in the latter, by failing to discuss it, they have left the child with unanswered questions. But parents seem to have neither the time nor the patience to discuss, gently guide, provide insight from experience and knowledge, listen to contrary points of view; and help children arrive at decisions that they find acceptable.

In these times of convenience-consumption where everything is just a click away, everything is also remote and distant. We lead private, lonely lives. Technology isn’t bringing people closer as we falsely believe. Buying online, learning online — everything is convenient, but has removed and minimised human interaction. Hyperconnectivity creates a sham of friendships. Children may find it easier to reach out to ‘friends’ on Facebook and unburden themselves of their worries than to ask their parents in the next room. What makes them trust a large network of shallow, superficial connections? Can these ‘social connections’ replace family and true friends? Living their lives as they are at breakneck speed, and consuming unprecedented volumes of information that children may falsely believe is crucial for them to keep up, the FOMO — fear of missing out, the virtual world begins to seem more real than the actual.

What happens when a child fails? On social media, everyone seems to be living a fairytale life — everyone is happy, excelling in studies and sports, getting awards and recognition. Anyone who is facing disappointment or frustration is bound to feel the pressure of having failed more keenly. Also, others can be rude and insensitive. It all makes coming to terms with one’s failures extremely difficult. It is the parents who have to take charge and stop making setbacks seem like catastrophes and help them build perspective.

There was a news report of how a 22-year old woman from Lucknow and a boy of the same age from a Punjab village became friends on Facebook and married in court without either family’s consent. Fearing family censure, they immediately filed a writ petition in the High Court demanding protection. When the boy was threatened by his family, he snapped ties with the girl. The girl tried remonstrating with the boy and his family, but failed. Rejected and humiliated, she hanged herself.

What are families for if not for offering unconditional love and support, especially when the going gets tough? Parents and families form a circle of protection and security within which a child is nurtured and nourished. There is much truth in Robert Frost’s words: “Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.” If these children who chose to end their lives instead of seeking parental help were assured of their family’s support, would they have still chosen to die?

At home, at work

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Shefali Tripathi Mehta, Dec 13, 2014, DHNS:

VOCATION time 

Do you wear flip flops? Can you cook and take a conference call simultaneously? Working from home is certainly not for everyone. Shefali Tripathi Mehta debunks myths associated with the phenomenon.

Have you noticed how men don’t get asked “Are you working?”, like women do. While an office-goer replies in the affirmative, the rest shake their heads, half-embarrassed, like most homemakers seem to be, even when they are doing the important work of caring for their families. But, *in society, it does not qualify as a job; it is not paid for. The whys and wherefores of this is another debate altogether. Between the working and the non-working, there is this fuzzy field of those ‘working from home’ – neither this nor that; difficult to explain and defend; and even more difficult to sustain.

People have innumerable preconceived notions about this arrangement. Most think if you are working from home, you have an ‘inconsequential’ job; that you must not be important enough for your organisation. 

So if one’s not careful, guarding this work space and time can become a challenge. When people call someone at office, they politely ask if it is a good time to talk, whereas a working-from-home person is plainly asked, “What were you doing?”  One needs to be ready at all times with excuses to fend-off random work-day requests for movie or lunch, because everyone thinks you can always do your work later.

Most often, we are ourselves to blame for how casually we take our work from home arrangement. It is like if one doesn’t have to go to office, it directly translates into a lack of schedule and working while lying **in bed with your pyjamas and unkempt hair.

When I first told my boss I was quitting my full-time job to work from home, he was incredulous. For him, like most people, it meant I was retiring from work. But when he realised I was in earnest about ‘working’, he gave me the advice that has stood me in good stead through years of work, that could have easily tumbled into a disorderly heap of frustration and disappointments. “Wear work shoes and sit at a table,” he said to me. I did not wear shoes and did not sit at the table at all times, but I did beat myself up into a strict routine, and stayed reasonably groomed even though no one saw me all day. To stay at home and get work done is the ultimate test of self-discipline.

Drawing out a timetable

The basic requirement this sort of arrangement demands is a punctilious routine of starting work at an appointed hour each day. Having a dedicated place to work – a corner, if not a home office, is mandatory. Next, one must aim at clocking a certain number of hours every day, even if the work requirement is qualitative and not quantitative. It is a great morale booster to look back at the day’s work and know that one has not whiled away time. Most people are able to work effectively only for five to six hours daily. Those that are working for themselves, will soon realise they need more hours to do all that they want to than what a regular office-goer puts in.

 In a familiar, relaxed, self-owned set-up, it is easy to lose sight of daily goals. So it is crucial to create and maintain a sense of urgency. It is imperative to monitor one’s progress at the start and end of each day. Making to-do and check lists for oneself are not just helpful in monitoring one’s progress, but also very gratifying.

This arrangement is ideal for those who work alone – digital artists, translators, programmers, writers, editors, those running home businesses, life coaches and counsellors. If one is working for an organisation, one needs to maintain the delicate balance between timelines and deadlines.

Things are more difficult for those who are doing their own work and those that are doing creative work that cannot be quantified. Loose or non-existent deadlines require tremendous self-motivation.

When one is working from home, it is inevitable that you will get sucked into the one million things that you had always wanted to do ‘one day’ – the irresistible need to rearrange the bookshelf; sort the closet; wash the windows or try baking those oatmeal cookies – everything you thought you would do if you didn’t work full-time.Remind yourself – you are working full-time. So you still have to look for after-hours to squeeze in that wish-list, unless of course you are extra efficient and find yourself some well-deserved free hours.

That’s the other important thing for self-motivation – rewarding oneself. A pedicure, a walk, some therapeutic cooking, music or reading as time out, whenever one completes scheduled work on time and satisfactorily. It helps to keep the heart in the job. Do this guiltlessly.

Boosting your morale

Other family members have to respect the personal work space the one working from home needs. Expecting family to and making it clear that they contribute by keeping their voices and TV volumes low, should not gnaw at one’s conscience.

Lastly, my favourite peeve – people grudging my time on social media. Considering this is our only connect with the ‘real’ world out there, how about giving the virtual workforce a little leeway on this? It’s like office-goers stopping by at the desk of someone for a howdy, having a teeny-weeny water cooler gossip or an extended lunch. We do miss that, you know. We are denied the delights of buying a new dress because we cannot wear it to work the next day. We need double the encouragement to get those new fuchsia hair highlights.

On a serious note though, this arrangement is clearly not for the loosely motivated. Those that need to minimise their Candy Crush or Vigil Idiot windows when the boss chances by may please stick to the time-tested office going rigour.

DISCLAIMER:
* Not mine;
** in your PJs
The making-little-sense subheads