Scenario - I
More than a decade and a half ago, my close kins had once taken me along to meet one of the monks of R K Math, outside Bangalore, at which time the good monk was revamping an existing charity hospital of the Math and was in need of a house-keeping lady. He was very particular and emphatic about what was needed out of that work. As I reproduce it to the best of my memory, he said "The floors of the the wards, the bath rooms and the toilets have to be spotlessly clean all the time. Floor mopping has to be administered atleast four times a day. The staff ought not to be absconding at any given time. Must be active, healthy and energetic"
One family friend who had accompanied us, immediately volunteered to outsource such a candidate, who was thought of being fit for the job. Eventually, Swamiji posed some basic and formal questions about the candidate, candidate's family etc and once again insistently enquired if the proposed candidate fitted the bill in terms of competency required. To which the friend reassuringly added, a bit exuberantly " Oh yes Swamiji, she is a very decent lady"
Swamiji immediately snapped sharply replying "It is okay even if she is not decent, are you sure she will do the required job to the efficiency level required here for this hospital?"
Stunned by the sharpness in the Swamiji's tone, the friend was barely able to utter a "yes".
I later understood that it was not to be misconstrued that decency, in whatever form or definition, was not a matter of priority to consider the person's credibility. On the contrary, the perspective of Swamiji's emphasis was about the clarity, efficiency, dedication and expectation of the job profile. May be, if I am not wrong, Swamiji's notion was that decency as a person's characteristic, need not be a default validation for a particular job profile, as a priority of the hour.
But ofcourse being a naive youngster then, I had indeed gathered a very narrow idea that people who work around the Math with the likes of Swamiji have to be exceptionally decent enough to be standing apart from the general mainstream masses. At that point of time I failed to understand and even shocked as to how Swamiji can allow "indecent" people to work inside the Math premises. This delusion and narrowness was destined to be broken years later, in a harder way. :-)
Scenario II
Back in my corporate days, as a part of the mid-managerial protocol, I underwent a so-called 360 degree feedback, which requires evaluation by peers, subordinates and superiors. To my utter heart-break, I had scored low on 'Approachability', since one of the appraiser felt that my demeanor was too traditional and conservative to score a high on corporate professionalism. It was even mentioned that I was never seen wearing a jeans anytime! :-)
Earlier to this incident, in another event, I was denied selection for a plum project though I had faired excellently, for the reasons that I was too conservative to interact with elite, top-end US clients. Funniest part was, my scoring was done by an American trainer and the over-riding of the scores was done to de-select me out of induction, by our very own wannabe-american Indian ! :-)
The project being a voice-process, obviously the American evaluator was remotely scoring my test performance since the evaluation was based on voice and communicative abilities over the telephone, and so perhaps the American being a typical professional couldn't care less even if I were an orthodox hag, where as for my own wannabe-American Indian evaluator, it was a grave issue since she felt that "looking" conservative would obviously somehow "sound" conservative too and hence the deselection. Anyway, whatever happens, happens for the best, though heart-broken at that point of time, since a promotion came my way within a year's time in another project, which otherwise may have not happened due to the tough competition that existed in the plum project.
Apart from the above, there were various instances of being ignored not acknowledged amidst a high-end bohemian corporate crowd, for not being boisterous enough to be 'one among them' or for abstaining from corporate parties and such likes.
Sometimes, had to endure the ordeal of counseling to quite a few young colleagues fresh out from college, who came from a very homely and a fairly domestic background, and who couldn't nor knew how to take in the sudden cultural shock. Some showed resilience, some were embarrassed of thier conservative background and thus gradually felt that expressing a sense of shame was an effective way to convince the "owners of corporate sophistication" that they are a progressed lot among thier clan, became sycophants, suffocating within, but trying to be "liberal" externally, some lost thier innocence, turning brazen, just to fit into the herd, out of a sheer fear of corporate-alienation etc etc
Have seen young girls, as beginners, who used to look so homely and innocently beautiful in thier simple salwar kameez, doing a 180 degree turn in a few months time, wearing thin spaghetti sleeveless, plunging necklines, tight jeans, above the waist T-shirts etc etc. Not that wearing apparels of one's choice and liking ought to be considered as "out-caste" against one's conservative background but choosing to wear such apparels out of a sheer herd-pressure to "fit in" is the sad part.
In the current times, the highly sophisticated and an exhaustively defined HR policies of the corporates, talk highly about protecting the individual ethnicity of an employee, but it feels like a paradox when it comes to an employee's choice of maintaining his / her individual status-quo wrt to be rooted in regional conservatism. As long as professionalism, competencies and individual ethnicity are mutually unaffected by eachother, why should this even be an issue ?
It is but natural, that my personal experience propels me to stoically take a stand against such kind of hideous liberal forces that attempts to scuttle and corner Conservatism. Conservatism is never a stone-age culture and corporate extrovertism is not necessarily an elevating liberalism .
