Usually, I write about my opinions and experiences. Sometimes, grave and sometimes funny. But this post takes a very different route as I feel creative this week.
So tune in your expectations while I take the creative liberty to bring forward a clothing style that I like to call “The Crow Collection”. 😛 Inspired from the Crow, some of these designs may seem sharp and eerie.
1. Emily : The American CROW
This one is an American Crow. The sharp black edges at the top resemble the beak of the crow.
Her shoe styling complements the sharp edges of the top!
Overall Style – Sharp & Cutting
2. Annisa : The Indonesian Crow
This one is a bright Crow. I call her an Indonesian Crow as she looks somewhat Asian and reminds me of the beautiful sunny beaches in Bali.
Her beautiful curly hair are contrasted by sharp geometrical edges of her clothes. The bright yellow color of the clothes gives her a casual look.
Overall Style : Colorful Casual balanced with geometry
3. Freya : The Nordic CROW
I call this one a Nordic Crow as the color of her clothes reminds me of a Scandinavian country.
Her top is grey with pipe like structure and resembles the wings of a Crow. Bottom is a long black, devilish looking hem.
Her hair looks neat and she wears a goggle representing the cool & calmness of Nordic countries. (in stressful times like these).
Overall Style – Modern and Cool.
4. Zhang Xiu Ying : The Chinese Crow
Well, I like to call her – a Chinese Crow. She could as well be a Japanese, Korean or some other Crow but I like to stick with Chinese version mainly because China is so much in news that it’s on top of my head right now.
Her clothes are designed in shades of grey with sharp dividing lines. The close shades symbolize the many close varieties of a Crow.
Overall Style : Transitional and sharp
5. Menaka : The Indian CRow
Now, I call this one as an Indian crow, mainly because of the colors and design. Her attire reminds me of hand woven clothes and embroidery in India. If you look at her top, it resembles a flying crow.
Overall Style : Colorful traditional with a hidden crow.
So, that ends my “Summer Crow collection”. I hope you had fun watching it. 😉
Do you like any of these? Then cast your vote and maybe we can call out a winner. 😀
Few years back, if you were to ask me about North Korea, I would tell you – it’s just some country in East Asia. I didn’t know then about the totalitarian regime in North Korea and how distinct it was from South Korea. Neither did I know, how life in North Korea differed from rest of the world.
Last summer, when I read a book titled ” A river in darkness – One man’s escape from North Korea, I uncovered the mystery of life in North Korea. It painted a picture so deep in my memory, that I still find myself thinking about it some days.
This book, is a story of its author – Masaji Ishikawa, who moved to North Korea when he was just thirteen years old. Before moving to North Korea, he lived in Japan with his parents, His father was originally from South Korea while his mother hailed from Japan. After their marriage, his parents moved to Japan, where his mother earned little wages from menial jobs and his father grappled with discrimination. The story is set in 1960s, just a few years after the Korean war.
Somewhere around that time, the government of North Korea launched a propaganda to attract millions of Koreans from Japan. They desperately needed laborers to rebuild economy after the Korean war and luring back Korean immigrants seemed an easy option. North Korea was promoted as a land of opportunities with jobs, free education and food for all. Masaji’s father, who was brainwashed with these false promises, convinced his entire family to move to North Korea. He didn’t know then, the stark differences that exist between North and South Korea(where he hailed from).
Masaji remembers the first meal he received after the long journey to North Korea. It was rubber like chewy & pungent smelling meat from remains of an animal. Hungry and tired, he quickly ate whatever was served to him but felt deeply disgusted once he learned it was a dog. He did not know then, that food was a privilege in North Korea and not everyone slept with their stomachs filled. Anything that was alive was deemed edible and people felt grateful to be able to just eat.
Upon their arrival, Masaji and his family were taken to a small village and granted a small hut. All their personal luxuries were either stripped off or stolen soon. Anyone who dared to speak against the government officers, disappeared overnight. Equality existed in the neighborhood in sense that everyone was poor. And if anyone, managed to afford any luxury, the government made sure to rip that off and beat him to death.
Masaji describes how his schooling tamed him in North Korea. He arrived there while he was young and learned to obey like all other children in his school. They learned to sing praises for Kim II sung – the ruler of North Korea. Their teachers made them regard Kim II sung as their holy father. It was natural to grow up as a blind devotee and loose any independent thinking.
What I found moving in this book was the constant description of hunger. Masaji and his family starved for months on rations that were meant to last for few days. They were forced into hard labor and their combined earnings rarely sufficed to buy any food. They woke up every morning, thinking about food and slept on empty stomachs, dreaming about food. Most of his family members died of hunger year after year while Masaji somehow survived in North Korea. He had no money and no connections which made it difficult for him to escape the country. He ended up spending thirty years of his life in North Korea.
And then one day, he finally managed to escape the country, alone. I thought his agony would come to an end after his escape from North Korea. But unfortunately, that was not true. Masaji never managed to bring back his family to Japan and lived the rest of his life worrying about his wife and kids, who were stuck in North Korea. He could also not make a decent living in Japan as he lacked education 7 skills that were deemed crucial for most jobs.
After I finished reading this book, I felt restless. The emotional torment of Masaji’s survival was devastating. He escaped North Korea in 1990s. That does not seem far too behind in the history!
I wonder how North Korea has changed since then. Very often, I hear strange pieces of information about North Korea – Threat of nuclear attacks, disruption of all communication with South Korea , military escalations and so on. I wonder what people living in North Korea experience ? Do they still suffer? Are there more Masajis, whom we must rescue? And if yes, who will own the responsibility to establish their rights and freedom?
The day my blog went live, I remember being super excited, wide awake in the night. The idea of this new venture, that was my very own occupied my mind completely. I imagined myself as a writer, a blogger and a budding author! My mind raced through monthly, quarterly and annual plans. And then feeling content with the exhaustive planning, I dozed off to sleep.
My first blog was live and whatever the heck I wrote, was out in open.
WEEK 1 : Welcome to my BLOG
Facebook, here I come!
The first week after my blog went live was a “hello world” moment for me and I was excited about people reading my blog. I turned to one stop for all audience – Facebook.
I joined umpteen communities in a day, all dedicated to writing, reading and blogging. Naive and hopeful, I shared my first blog post with all the groups at once
Within minutes, my phone started buzzing with numerous notifications. Excited to see what the members thought, I jumped to see notifications. What I saw next was completely crazy!.
The starving members of the groups saw my post as an opportunity to advertise their own blogs. Nobody cared what my post was about and everybody instead shared their links, requesting me to visit them. I was so frustrated that I thought I was probably better off without Facebook. I gave it a try a few more times only to discover no new outcomes.
Tired, I decided to give up my brief stint on Facebook.
Twitter, here I come!
Disappointed but still determined, I tried another hot spot – the Twitter. I chose my best post and crafted a catchy punchline. Meticulously, I selected the most trending hashtags and sent out my first blogging tweet.
Within seconds, came a pile of new tweets on top of mine and mine literally vanished from the screen. I scrolled through the window endlessly but could not find my own tweet. It garnered no likes and no comments and shamefully brought zero blog visits.
Discouraged, I dozed off to sleep that night.
WEEK 2 : HELLO WORLD – take two!
Instagram for beginners
I imagined week two as another start and decided to explore Instagram.
Few clicks here & there and my Insta account was setup in minutes. I gathered modest following within a day, mostly including my friends & relatives. I followed people who were deemed “Influencers” & dedicated their profiles to food, travel or Art. And soon, my Insta feed was filled with images of clumsy dishes to child like paintings to amateur travel videos.
Realizing all content garners engagement on Insta, I became optimistic. I drafted my first post – a photo from my blog with a smart caption & link next to it. And there it went live – My first Instagram post!
To my surprise, Insta didn’t recognize links. It was only tailored for pictures and videos. I felt dumb for not knowing this before and I tried a quick fix by re-posting link in comments. And, when it still landed as text again, I simply deleted my first Insta post.
I mourned for some days until the week finally ended. Week two was a take two and yet another failed attempt in promoting my blog.
WEEK 3 : I’m going NUTS
Did you try Reddit?
I was tired after two weeks of this rigorous regime that got me no where with my blog’s visibility. All popular channels, I knew, were already explored, used and discarded. My blog visits remained stagnant and I wondered if I had any more options.
It was then, I read about Reddit. It seemed to be a discussion forum where many communities existed & surprisingly, they all showcased two way communication. I strolled through some interesting communities and joined all of them. I drafted my first Reddit post and pushed the submit button.
I was shocked to see when nothing appeared on the community pages. A message popped open, saying “I did not meet the karma requirements”.
I wondered what Karma meant and who invented these strange terminologies. In gruelling anger, I deleted Reddit from my phone.
Let’s not forget LinkedIn
Two days passed in fury and resentment and then it dawned on me that I did not try LinkedIn. Now, I was fairly active on professional networks and wondered where I could share my blogging posts.
I scrolled through pages of relevant groups and quickly dropped in a join request.
But many of those groups already had thousands of members and no longer accepted any new members. So, I was left stranded on their waiting list.
WEEK 4 : Back to Square One
What everybody says on Word Press?
Exhausted from my previous attempts, I finally looked up – what Word Press had to offer. I was amazed to see thousands of posts about blog promotions. Many boasted about using plugins and I thought – Maybe this could be it!
To my dismay, all plugins came with paid plans and the price of those made me anxious. I wasn’t thrifty but I wasn’t a spender either. So, three weeks of my agony couldn’t push me into buying anything. Instead, it pushed me to stop looking before I go nuts!
So, in a bid to remain sane, I decided to stop thinking about blog promotion anymore.
Let’s start Writing.
By the end of the week , normalcy started kicking in and I started regaining my focus again.
I felt unburdened and somehow relieved by not having to think about viewership.
And then, I started writing again – writing with the sole purpose of writing.
Growing up, I watched umpteen horror shows, each portraying a different flavor of Dracula. Sometimes they were blood sucking bats, Sometimes Vampires and Some times just monstrous undead. I always wondered – “How we came to believe in the existence of Dracula?”
Last winter, I visited the city of Brasov in Romania. It was then, when I heard about the Bran Castle, also known as -“The Dracula Castle”. Curious to uncover the mystery of Dracula, I visited this castle.
According to a legend, “The Original Dracula” stayed here in the 15th Century. He was a notorious prince named ‘Vlad Tepes’, who had a brutal reputation of a murderer. He took over the name ” The Son of the Dracul” – dracul meaning a dragon, in Romania.
In 19th Century, the first novel on Dracula was published. (by Bram Stoker). Deemed to be inspired from this prince, the novel set its background in this castle.
The climb to the castle was a bit mountainous and it had plenty of wind from all directions. I visited this in a cold winter and it seemed pretty dark and daunting then. The outside of the castle was old and more like an ancient fort. When, I went inside, I was surprised by its cozy interior.
It looked very modern with wooden furnishings in every room. I understood later, that the castle was renovated in 19th Century by the last residing queen of Romania – Queen Marie.
The castle held an exhibit in a room called “The torture chamber”. It demonstrated several tools of torment used in earlier centuries.
The gory stories of the past reminded me of the “Original Dracula” – Prince Vlad, as he employed several methods of torture and mutilation to his enemies
A story goes that he did not shy away from boiling or skinning his victims alive but preferred to drive a wooden stake through their bodies, leaving them to die of exposure. Some particularly gruesome accounts also claim that he liked to dine among these impaled bodies and would dip his bread into their blood.
Yuckk! I felt glad, having not witnessed that century. No wonder why the Dracula still invokes fear.
Some walls in the castle also shared the tales of Dracula. They set a vibe of this historical connection.
After strolling through the castle for around an hour, I discovered from a guide that there is in fact, an entirely different side to this story. It could be – that this is no Dracula Castle at all.
Some evidences suggest that Prince Vlad never set a foot in this castle. Bram Stoker, in his novel – Dracula, wrote about a castle but also, never set his foot in this castle. A lot of people, therefore doubt if this indeed is the house of Dracula.
For what is still interesting to know, is the fact that Dracula captures its essence from prince Vlad (the son of Dracul) who lived in a castle in Romania. And this is perhaps the only place that fits all descriptions of that Castle.
So, I like to believe that I’ve been to the house of dracula.
One morning, I woke up to my iphone notification. A screen popped open and I saw a report of my week long productivity. It displayed my screen time and categorized my usage neatly. On an average , each day, it declared, I was fruitful for barely a few minutes. And shamefully, that number was lower than the previous week.
I was surprised and anxious with this new discovery. I wondered what it meant and if I needed to improve my “productivity”? I turned to google to solve my worry. The search returned a gazillion results and I was amazed that the topic garnered such popularity.
AND THEN I DISCOVERED THE CHASE OF PRODUCTIVITY
Over the next few days, I received Linkedin feeds with tips to increase daily productivity. Good reads recommended self help books and Youtube suggested “Efficiency tips for all activities”. I felt chased by this whole new industry that was thriving out there and feeding on my worry. The need to be productive was packaged and marketed with several success stories. It was hard to question this need when everyone offered a solution already.
SO, I SEARCHED THE ROOT OF PRODUCTIVITY
I looked up further and discovered the history. The origin of productivity went back to 18th century. When agriculture couldn’t produce enough surplus, we devised the term -“land productivity”. It measured the yield of crops per hectare land and served an indicator of agricutural output. The idea was simple and implied improving material efficiency.
Then came the industrial evolution and productivity became an indicator of profitability. It measured the units of output produced per input cost. Labour was a cost. And in our bid to increase productivity (& thereby profitability), we started focusing on labour efficiency.
AND HOW IT EVOLVED TO HUMAN PRODUCTIVITY
The need for labour efficiency gave birth to the concept of human productivity. We became result centric and measured all activities in terms of productivity.
Our desperation to be fruitful, narrowed our choices. We pursued all actions that guaranteed an outcome and spent little time in self discovery.
Productivity equals success equals self worth became the idea and we tuned our minds to this assembly line thinking.
AND THEN I STOPPED WORRYING ABOUT PRODUCTIVITY
I decided, I no longer needed to be reminded of my productivity. I couldn’t let an industry thrive on my vulnerability.
I snoozed my iphone reports so my mind wandered free. I felt unburdened and suddenly relieved.
That’s when I started writing my two cents on productivity.
Europe has always amused me as a child so I was really excited when my boyfriend (now spouse) asked me to join him in Netherlands. I was young, in my 20’s (head over heels in love), and quickly agreed to move to Netherlands.
My first year in Netherlands is what I call -” The Honeymoon Period”. I was in awe of the picturesque landscape of this country. On my way from airport to home, I saw windmills, cows and pastures. The cows were so white that it seemed they were painted and I remember clicking photos while the bypassers stared.
We were headed to live in the most popular city of the Netherlands – Amsterdam.
In my first month, I stumbled over countless bicycles that always came with lightning speed. It occurred to me later, that I wasn’t supposed to walk on some roads – the cycle paths. The centre of the city was densely populated and we strolled neck to neck on shopping streets. We spent weekends discovering cafes, bars and clubs.To my surprise, I saw weed and Marijuana sold on street outlets – named “Coffee shops!” . Beer was sold in supermarkets and people relaxed on boats in canals, while sipping Heineken and soaking the sun.
It was unlike any other country I’ve been to and I imagined if this was what they meant by paradise!
YEAR 2 :Take me back, please!
The honeymoon period was over soon and I started taking notice of my surroundings more. In the months that followed, I became grumpy old woman who constantly cribbed and announced to go back home. I hated the weather which was so unpredictable and kept questioning which season it was? I walked to work, drenched in rain and fought the wind to get back home. Most weekends, there was no sun and I laid on my sofa watching television.
Months went by and the boredom peaked. So, I decided to undertake a mission to socialize. Beginning with the closest proximity, I approached our neighbour. – Ms. Linde. I stopped by her door while she muttered in Dutch. I waved my head while I tried to listen. She smiled at me and I just felt dumb. It seemed, I needed a hearing aid coz all I could hear was “Ghhs” and Hello.
I tried my luck with the next the two floors, ringing their bells with quite some hope. Neither responded so I came back home and switched on the T.V ,once more. Tired and resentful, I announced again – “I will go back. Would you also come?”.
YEAR 3 :A Ray of hope
Soon, new year arrived and I made new resolutions. I remember, this year was “A Ray of Hope”. I decided to master Dutch, so I joined a language course. Learning from basics – the alphabets, numbers and months, I felt being back to the primary school. The good thing though, was I met more expats who shared my plight and reckoned my struggle. We formed a cult and I booked our agendas so my weekends were no longer dull.
At home, I displayed my brand new skills and babbled dutch words every day. I became hopeful and my happy self, relieving my spouse from new complaints.
YEAR 4 :Orientation Completed
My training, last year, infused Dutch culture and I found myself in between crossroads. I celebrated King’s day and also Diwali. I couldn’t miss Easter or Sinterklaas either.
At home, things changed too and we changed food menu. We bought a book to cook dutch food . My spouse split bills and I split chores. We bought new cycles and rolled through the city. I crashed some tourists , who walked wrong roads.
I was shopping in the market, when they all flee, Saying, “death by corona will come to thee” I stopped by my friend, who would not see me Saying, “We are quarantined, My wife and me” So, I sat down in a restaurant, But they did not feed me Saying, “ We are closed Until further decree” Alas, I reached home & switched on T.V. Watching lock down news while the dead counts spree.
(The Coronatime has made me either creative or crazy!)
On the evening of 24th March, India announced a nationwide lock down starting midnight. Back then, I was on a vacation in India so the news brought some stress and worry. Domestic flights were shut. International flights cancelled. Theaters, restaurants, shopping malls, public transport and e-commerce were put to a grinding halt. My return to Amsterdam was suddenly unpredictable. All I could do was wait and watch, in hope that the normalcy would return soon.
That was the time when India had registered close to 300 corona cases and seven deaths. It was hardly comparable to the plight of Italy and Spain. So, I wondered if the lock down was due pandemic or panic.
As it turns out now, it does not matter which one it was, for either reason could have not have changed the outcome – The soaring number of deaths in this country.
There exists no right way to lock down a nation that has the second largest population in barely 2 percent of the world surface. In India, close to 64 million people (almost the size of Italy) live in slums. Mumbai hosts the largest slum of Asia which is so congested that no man can live in more than 2 sq mt space. It is the saturation like this that makes social distancing unrealistic. Hence, many people get infected and some die in spite of a lock down.
While some may die of Corona itself, many more die of its Collateral damage.It is estimated that more than 300 million workers (including landless laborers, self-employed and daily wage earners) are on the verge of losing their livelihood in India. This is owning to the lock down and the subsequent job losses. Most of these people, live hand to mouth and are unable to sustain on their meager savings. Government surpluses can help them buy rations but the surge in black markets keeps supplies out of reach. Cash subsidies can help them survive but since most don’t own a bank account, their fates remain unchanged.
Apart from above two, there also exists a third category of dead in this crisis – People who die in the name of God’. Religion is bigger than science in India. It is for this reason, amidst lock down, thousands gathered in mosques and temples and god knows how many other holy places. The paranoia following these incidents not only spread the pandemic and raised death counts but also queues riots after corona.
Over a month has passed now, watching this existential crisis in India. The country has now more than 70000 cases and close to 2000 deaths. (and numerous unaccounted Corona Causalities). All of this, in the period of lock down. It is not certain how and when the crisis will finally end. Neither can we rely on any predictions. It is also not certain how the country will look in the aftermath of crisis and how normal our lives would be. For all we can do now is – wait and watch, while this alters the course of our history.
Close to 75000 species become extinct every year. This is nearly 1000 times the natural rate. (Thanks to the human intervention). We have 8.7 million species today. At this rate, all of them will be extinct in 116 years. A Stanford study estimates that our civilization might collapse by 2100.
Doomsday theories are so prevalent that our minds are on auto pilots to tune them out. There are more than 300 movies about apocalypse and we still haven’t run out of ideas how humanity will cease to exist. As ridiculous as they may sound, the underlying message that someday our species will disappear is not untrue. This certainity is not my belief but an obvious conclusion based on our historical performance. To digest the idea one needs to understand the key to our performance – Human behaviour. So, lets look at it in a very simplistic way.
Humans are lazy by nature. We invent to live in comfort. Think of agriculture for example. Humans were wanderers before this invention. We were on a constant move in search of food. When we found out how to grow wheat, we settled around a farm to live a comfortable life. With more time at hands, we found pleasure in procreating, producing more hungry mouths than we could feed. To feed them, we found technology, fertilizers and pesticides. We cut down forests to farm new lands. We learned to domesticate animals and made their lives miserable.
When crops did not suffice, we switched to meat. Animals were bred, fed on farms until they were ready to be shipped for factory slaughter. More forests were cut for animal grazing. More animals cut to produce more meat. Water, trees, birds and animals perished, creating a deadly imbalance in nature.
It is this imbalance that started the mutilation. So, the ozone is now damaged, the Arctic is melting, the temperatures are soaring, the mountain glaciers disappearing. Hurricanes, tsunamis, earthquakes and pandemics are appearing out of the blue. More than 50 million people die every year in these natural disasters. All of this started with agriculture, that we discovered to settle down and save ourselves from the labour of hunting.
Being lazy might have turned out bad but being intelligent, even worse. Humans use their intellect to solve problems at hand. While, we solve one, we create many unforeseen that are worse than the original problem. Back in stone age, we were glad to build stone arrows for hunting animals. In the years following, we improvised to swords and axes. Pistols and machine guns were invented to kill in an instant. An atom bomb was built to wipe out a town. A nuclear bomb could take down a country and biologically engineered virus can perhaps, take down the whole of humanity. Today, more than 1.6 million people die of violence caused by the weapons. (The ones we invented originally to hunt deers).
Inspite of all this, we live in constant fantasy to explore. You shouldn’t be surprised when someone ate a chimpanzee, only to discover AIDS or when a scientist inventing blood transfusion died in a transfusion or when radiation killed the one who found it . Living in this world of unknown, we cannot fight the desire to explore, to be smarter and find more comfort. It is often our bid to do better that backfires and keeps us constantly bandaging the wounds. With our persistent efforts and a megalomaniac vision, we sure will take our breed to grave one day.
Do you wonder why things are not looking good at work? Why does your hard work not pay off proportionally? Why is it that Tom, Dick & Harry got promoted while you are stuck here (reading this post)? Maybe it’s your first time experiencing this disappointment? Or may be you have had this frustration before? When things don’t seem good constantly, there may a reason underlying it.
In 1969, a psychologist named Dr. Laurence Peter came up with a principle – The Peter Principle that explains how an organisational hierarchy functions. It drills down the cause of why things really go wrong at workplace. While It may seem quite old, I found his wisdom relevant, even today. In fact, they even teach this in several management curriculum.
Why are some employees so Incompetent?
Do you ever wonder why you are surrounded by incompetent morons? (well, you may have at least one around?). Think about it this way – The skills required to get a job often have nothing to do with the job itself. This, is relevant in every job and every industry.
Consider Presidency for example, the skills required to run and win a political campaign are quite different from what it takes to do the actual job. Trump lives this example. Similarly, there is nothing about being a great surgeon that prepares a doctor to run a hospital. So by this means, a lot of people who shine bright in interviews might lack the skills to perform their job. No wonder, why you are stuck with them! 😕
And why are they getting promoted?
Speaking about promotions, there is a simple theory to this much coveted phenomenon. Everyone in an organization keeps on getting promoted until they reach their level of incompetence. At that point they stop being promoted. So given enough time and enough promotion levels, every position in a firm will be occupied by someone who can’t do the job.”
How do we let this happen?
The truth is, employees in a hierarchy do not really object to incompetence. They merely gossip about it. Question is, how can an employee move up the ladder when blocked by someone who has reached his level of incompetence? The answer – he can’t. Neither by his efforts nor by the help of a patron. This is because demotion is a rare phenomenon. The only way to rise up the ladder is to move into a promotion channel that is not blocked. In reality, this is often visible when people change departments or leave companies.
What happens when you are super competent?
If you are a supremely competent employee surrounded by idiots, you probably should be worried about your fate. 🙄 In most hierarchies, super-competence is more objectionable than incompetence. Ordinary incompetence, as seen, is no cause for dismissal: it is simply a bar to promotion. Super-competence often leads to dismissal, because it disrupts the hierarchy, and thereby violates the first commandment of hierarchical life: the hierarchy must be preserved.
Then, how do we get the work done?
If everyone eventually gets promoted to reach his or her level of incompetency, do you not wonder who really is turning the wheels at work? 😳 Well, we rarely find such a system where every employee has reached his level of incompetence. Work is accomplished by those, who have not yet reached their level of incompetence.In most instances, something is being done to delay their progress, so the hierarchy can still exist.
What does this mean for you?
Now you know why things don’t go well at work. You may be the one causing it 😉 OR perhaps you are just a victim of Peter principle. Question is, can you change your situation? Maybe. this is easier said than done.
Most organizations, these days, employ techniques to avoid the pit falls of Peter Principle. They attempt to flatten their organisational hierarchy. Be it by being agile or be it by sharing 360 degree feedback or be it any other mechanism. The truth is, while this might work for some, in most cases it just brings a false sense of accomplishment. (we aren’t all competent to steer this change)
So, going by the record, the Peter principle is here to stay, We can’t really get completely rid of it. Perhaps, it just helps to know that it exists and that’s why things go wrong at work!
If you haven’t heard of Auschwitz, Imagine a slaughter house (not for animals, but forhumans). Imagine a place where millions of Jews were confined for years, tortured to death by hard labour, thirst, extreme hunger and suffocation. The reason for death being- neither Crime nor War but the belief in a superior race. Imagine how humans could be responsible for more than a million deaths in a place this small. (in the name of saving humanity from other humans – Jews). Auschwitz is not old history but very much a part of recent century. Nazi Germany master minded this extermination camp (and many others) during world war ii with the sole aim of systematically eradicating the race of Jews.
So last year, when I planned my visit to Auschwitz, it was not unusual for people to ask why I would choose to go there? Wouldn’t it be depressing? In my defense, not visiting this place, merely excuses us from reality, hoping we forget it someday. There is No history book that can convey the happenings of this place to a degree that it instils your memory.
Somewhere inside Auschwitz, I found this quote that sums up the reason why people need to see this place.
I cannot deny the fact that this place is downright melancholy. You would be standing in the site of holocaust witnessing Exhibits of the dead (millions) piled on top of one another. It has a room full of belongings that were stripped off from the inmates before they entered the camp. A room full of gas canisters that were used to suffocate them to death. A room full of human hair that were shaved off from their dead bodies before being burned by the Nazis.
A guide will take you around the camp and tell you how a typical day looked like for these prisoners. You will see the laboratory that was used to experiment on prisoners, inducing them with deadly diseases. You will see the kitchen that has some paintings that the prisoners drew to keep themselves hopeful. You will also see the punishment cells, gas chambers, the shooting wall and a room fitted with body sized ovens. If this does not melt your heart, a thousand photo frames mounted in a large corridor showing the victims, their age and survival span in the camp, definitely would.
By the end of this visit, you are loaded emotionally. Some cry, some hold back tears. Some ponder how humans could be capable of this act. How could some still hope to live in this situation. How strong were the people who survived the camp? Does the trauma impact their free lives later on?
This wasn’t over for me yet. I was feeling restless. A visit to Auschwitz raised some very fundamental questions about human nature, survival and our relative mental strengths. I slept on these questions for days following. Later, I learned about an Auschwitz survivor, a psychologist – Viktor Frankl. Viktor was one of the fortunate ones to have survived this place. He says, “Those who have a ‘why’ to live, can bear with almost any how “. For Viktor, the why was a hope to finish his book about logotherapy. He wrote this book after he was released from the camp. What was supposed to be psychology theory, turned out to be a truly personal account of his survival in Auschwitz detailing how the camp impacted the inmates psychologically, why some survived while others didn’t.
His book “Man’s search for meaning” was published in 1946 and became an instant bestseller. I read it a month after my visit and regard this as a closure to my quest for Auschwitz.
P.S – The photo at the top, shows the gate of Auschwitz in scripted as ARBEIT MACHT FREI” meaning work makes you free.
Paradoxically, It was death that made these inmates free.
