Fathers rock: another true story Again it was TCS in 2000 at Hyderabad. I got a call from one beleaguered Project Leader to de-allocate a lady employee from his project ASAP. Reason given: she was unwilling to travel to the client site outside the city limits and also not to work after sunset. When I asked the reason, he said that was for the HR to find out and he tried to wash his hands off urging me take her off his project. My first reaction was to call this guy to my office and teach him the rudiments of leadership , which unfortunately is barely adequate amongst these PLs and GLs of the IT industry. Strangely they put the suffix as Leaders but continue to function as managers! Next was to meet this young lady. Our first meeting was very curt and dry. I asked some direct impersonal questions about her unwillingness and she replied in monosyllables . We were going no where. Then I decided to don the fathers hat to make an entry into her emotional domain. It took me some time and finally I could break the barrier. Then gradually her side of the story came out. She was a graduate engineer from NIT, Warrangal. Went through an arranged marriage to a clerk in the IT dept, and had a Lalita Pawar inspired mother-in-law at home. Within six months she discovered the vagaries of the wedded life in a conservative Telugu family which though was ok with the added income coming home but which detested the idea of a working bahu. Such dilemmas are not uncommon in the Indian families. The husband who was just a plain graduate from some rural college and who was used to his govt office routine, could not appreciate her late hours of working and demanded her to stick to a 9 to 5 routine! Secretly he was not very comfortable with the salary difference either every time her salary got deposited in her account, his pride depleted a little. The MIL on the other hand insisted her to do the complete household chores in addition to her job for she had given birth to her precious son and thus deserved to relax and rule after his marriage. Poor girl could not cope with the demands of home with that of the workplace. She thought it might improve, but her work-life balance was topsy-turvy. Soon the anger at home took shape of constant verbal abuse and physical threats. And one day when she came in an autorickshaw accompanied by a male colleague late in the evening after work, who only was escorting her for safety, all hell broke loose. The enraged husband charged her with infidelity and violently beat her up. Then such beatings only increased. In one of the meetings, I noticed on the back of her hands some brown spots and in teary eyes she confessed these to be burnt marks from the cigarettes stubbed on her bare skin by her husband! Then were my counselling sessions. Although the people who needed counselling were her husband and MIL, I had no access to them and perhaps that would have made matters worse. On the other hand I thought how I would have tackled this if she was my daughter. I thought that her passivity has to change. She should retaliate by igniting and unleashing her nari shakti. I shall skip the details. We agreed to start an experiment and together discovered the villains weak spots, which a young woman can exploit. She went about it very algorithmically as if she was writing a program and in about two months, things started improving, when she leveraged from their dependence on her and how she twisted them with her little finger through the power of denial. Then there was no need to take her off the project. She continued to deliver and keep her head high both at home and in the office . Later I learnt that she had done pretty well in her profession and moved on to few prestigious overseas projects. They had a kid and perhaps are living somewhere happily.
Posted on: Mon, 31 Mar 2014 01:59:58 +0000
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