Learn-Develop-Grow

[This blog is dedicated to many people, but the picture alongside is courtesy a post and comment on Facebook by Ninad Vengurlekar, one of my thinking buddies of yesteryear - not to mention the exquisite Bombil Fry at Gazale we enjoyed together.] So, I am going to answer the question that was posed in the last blog, " Why did you give up teaching? " Literally, thousands. The first of many answers is the simplest - Money!  As the lady alongside exemplifies, even in the land of overflowing milk, honey and orange hairdos, the teacher is still one who is at the top of her class in what she does and close to the bottom of the economic pile when take-home salary arrives. Yes, teaching was literally for thousands ... I willingly took up the profession in 1977 with a consolidated pay of Rs 350 a month in one of Calcutta's Premier Institutions.  I have the appointment letter to prove it too. Things improved in a few months when I accidentally landed a job at St ...

Teachers' Day Revisited Clearly Larry Hartnett's doing, this.  He posted on Facebook today, musing about Teachers' Day tomorrow, and I got to wondering if I should answer the oft-popped question, Why did you leave teaching and join corporate life? But before we go there, allow me a comment on this whole concept of Teachers' Day. For one thing, it's the punctuation that often gets me, especially in the greetings cards that are so lovingly and painstakingly directed by the parents of those ever suffering kids. The term has been variously misspelt: Teacher's Day (only for that ONE special teacher?) and Teachers Day  (all of them, no possessive case).  So I thought it might be a good time to reiterate my obsession with the proper apostrophe, seeing that it's part of my name. So, three cheers for all those kids (and adults) who write Happy Teachers' Day  on September 5th this year and every year. I miss it, for sure, every year.  Those fabulous...

These were the first three questions when I began my brief workshop at the British Council today. The workshop was titled Essential Skills for Young Professionals and I opened with, "Do you have any questions?" Asked for it, literally! How young is young? Someone said 20-30 years, someone else said it's the ability to change, be flexible, adopt new technologies. As expected the one liner, age is just a number,  you're as young as you feel was popped up. So, I used my facilitator's shield - I don't know the answer, ask yourselves why you have come here. To me it's really not important to define the word 'young'. It's more important to recognize that these people attended a workshop with that title to learn a little about skills considered essential to the workplace. What are skills? This was easy. Anything that can be learnt and practised. So while the group recognized that there are some people born with innate characteristics, the rest ...