Grateful

Last year in April I rescued a dog near my daughter's school. In Qatar, I have seen many dogs on the streets, lost and running around and have managed to rescue whenever I could manage to catch them. This was a little difficult and after following her through many streets, finally caught up with her and with help from few others managed to get her into the car. From there she went straight to the vet and got a clean bill of health. Now I boarded her at the vet for a few days while I actively posted her case, looking for a foster or a good permanent home if she might be that lucky.

I also asked a couple of neighbours if they would be able to foster short term until I had a better solution as boarding at vets is quite an expensive affair. One of my neighbours who was barely an acquaintance said he would think about it. Now he was a newly separated, single parent with two young kids and I was mildly surprised when he messaged me the next day saying he will give it a shot. A first time experience for the family, but they handled the new responsibility very well. The kids were wonderful as well and easily settled into the routine of additional responsibilities. The dog, now named Pepper due to the colour of her fur, settled in well and was happy with all the kids and families always around her in our compound. It was much later that we discovered she was pregnant!

Although I can write a lot about Pepper, this post is more about my neighbour deservingly. In spite of all these challenges thrown his way, he never once complained. He was well within his right to ask me to remove the dog from his care as he did not sign up for this. He surely was not equipped in terms of experience and resources to handle a dog and her new born pups, but he did not hold me responsible for any of this. When the pups arrived in June, it was night and we both were with Pepper. She delivered three beautiful, healthy pups.

We lost one pup due to unknown reasons the next day and he handled that simply with a prayer and burial in his yard. Pepper started developing behaviour issues and chewed on furniture, gates and doors. She was always an escape artist and had to be caught and brought back many times. While I was informed, he never gave up on her. He found a home for a male pup and ended up keeping the female named Pearla, with him. At a certain point late last year he had decided to adopt them both! I was happy they had a good, loving and secure home.

This year threw more challenges at us with COVID and my neighbour faced the reality that he had to return to his home country. We tried our best to do everything needed to get the dogs to travel and go with the family, but the costs and processes were just so ridiculous that we had to drop the idea. By some luck and lots of hard work along with another great friend and founder of an organization that helped so many animals, we found a perfect home for Pearla in Canada. She is now in a foster home in Qatar, waiting to travel. Mom Pepper is fostered by another family, found by my neighbour. The story thus goes on, but this year has changed my neighbour from an acquaintance to a friend whom I respect very much.

His thoughtfulness in handling so many issues have continually amazed me. His personality that is so optimistic and relaxed has taught me much. Today he leaves with his family to his home country and they are in the airport as I type this post. I am going to genuinely miss him and his family. The world can do with more such positive, useful people and will be grateful for it.

Farewell my friend. Until we meet again.....

One or two?

For a while, a phase in life, all I did when I met fellow parents was try to ask them about the number of kids they had and if they were happy with this number. If I already knew how many kids they had, I had to know if they were happy with their decision. If they had one, I wanted to know if they wanted another and their opinion in the matter. All this was not because of my inquisitiveness in other people's matters let me assure you. I am quite a private person and appreciate decisions that people make for themselves. I do like the mantra 'mind your own business' and live by it. Why then did my personality undergo this sudden change for a while you may ask......well, I had a child and was not sure if I had to have one more!

For all practical purposes, I was done. I am an environmentalist who firmly believed that I did not need to populate this earth anymore. I had wanted to experience motherhood and I was quite happy with the one continuing experience. To plan yet another pregnancy, to face everything again, I had no interest in it. But my little girl, being a very friendly, talkative child, showed all signs of wanting a sibling.

So, I started asking people how they made the decision. I was not interested in people who just had more without a thought process or it being a conscious choice, but people who made a decision after deliberation had interesting thoughts. I did my own case studies on people who were only children to see if they were happy. I reflected back to my own childhood to imagine how my life would have been if I had not had a little brother to fight with, plan games with, scheme plots without my parent's knowledge and of course to generally take care of. I did not like the thought much. While I was still musing, my daughter helped us to decide by beginning to randomly adopt kids in school as her sibling! We had no choice and the decision was made for us.

Over the years there have been times when I have regretted this decision (gasp)! Of course it is extremely difficult to manage two kids, work, home and a million other things. Many times I wondered whatever possessed me to do it! How much easier it would have been if I only had to deal with one child who had been relatively easy to bring up in the early years in many ways.

To top it all, the second one we had fooled us initially by being a quiet, observant one. We thought we had a calm thinker. Boy! Were we in for the shock of our lives! Once she could move and grab things, we were punished and how! She did everything late this one, after she teased us for a while with worries and then did it better than her sibling or contemporaries! She was infinite times more active than her sister and had a mind of her own. Actually, I don't think she listens to her own mind most of the time and her actions are uncontrollable even by herself. She just can't seem to help it! She is the opposite of her sister in so many ways and it is hard to believe I am the common mother of these two kids.

Her sister has by now, over the years, admonished me for creating such a monster and tricking her when all she had asked for was a nice sibling. She expected me to take her back and bring another nicer one for a while, but soon understood this was not an option and was doomed for life. But slowly, somewhere down the line bonding started that lasted for more than five minutes. They could understand each other better and succeeded in making me the common enemy, a major step in sibling bonding.

Now with COVID-19 crisis and all of us forced into our home all the time, their bonding has also expanded. They fight and play all day long, especially since the little one is not old enough for school work yet. Their playtime has now have gone beyond structured games and is in full invention mode. Much like my own childhood (from ancient ages as they would say), anything they see is converted into something they could play with. Pillow forts are built and guarded throughout the day. Of course it is not doing much for the sanity of adults, but I am really glad to have two of them to keep each other entertained. As with most relationships, theirs is blossoming and this time had been a blessing to set up a strong foundation. Although my elder daughter answered in her school survey form "My sister is my biggest problem" for the question "how do you think we can improve your online learning experience", I know she would not have it any other way :)

Their personalities deserve posts of their own.

A woman as supreme leader?

The title said it all in this headlines yesterday: "Kim Jong Un's banished uncle may overtake his sister to rule over North Korea because he is a man". This is in this modern century, into the third decade of it! A banished, old uncle has a better chance of being the ruler next in line than a young, energetic and not banished, direct sister. Sad world indeed.

What can you expect when a great nation like United States of America has not yet produced a woman president? The conservative people even chose to vote for an African American, but not a woman! The lesser said about the current president the better......

Although not really interested in North Korea, I will keenly watch the news in coming weeks. As mother of two beautiful girls, what else do I have but hope!

Work from home for India's largest IT service provider

In the news today, I was reading about how Tata Consultancy Services, India's largest IT service provider implemented the work from home admirably.

The Indian government did not give much warning to its population before implementing, rather efficiently, the 21  days (then, now extended) lockdown. TCS was forced to implement moving of vital operations from secure locations to employee homes with not much benefit of time. Senior officials have thanked those that lived in their office to make this possible. Any organization should be very happy to have such displays of loyalty and work first attitude! Any special reasons for such happy and dedicated employees?

The COO, N Ganapathy Subramaniam has said that they moved mountains in the six hours after lockdown was announced. I completely believe him, knowing my country! While most of us worried about stocking provisions for home, this does seem a completely different kind of commitment. The complete difference in the model of work from home and the complexities that it brings for sensitive work can be overwhelming to the employees to say the least. So, the onus was also on the company to make the transition as seamless or at least as easy as practically possible.

TCS apparently had done everything from convincing customers (national and international), letting employees take their desktops home, staying of key teams in office for a whole week to set up secure systems to enabling security clearance from all customers, including Government customers.

The company has also expressed hope that government as promised will postpone liabilities if the situation continues. I think this is pretty much the same hope that every business owner, however small or big is banking on at the moment. But in the long run, how is this going to affect the tax payer and every inflation facing customer? Only time will tell. Better sense seems to prevail when it comes to global companies, industries, banking sectors and the like, giving us hope. But then Facebook did a great job of showing many videos today of people opposing the lockdown or the idea of staying safe at home in the US. It makes you question everything including common sense, which as they say is not really common!

The positive seems to be that most industries look at this as nothing more than economic slowdown, not a global financial crisis....yet. It is weird how economic slowdown has taken place because people are now only buying essentials!

Due to their efficient handling of the crisis, TCS are certain at this point that they do not have to layoff staff and can honor job offers made in the last year, although promotions, increments and new hires are on a freeze. But the model is so efficient, that they are considering extending the work from home even after the lockdown. This might well be the future as more companies realize that this is more cost efficient in terms of operations.

How is everyone else doing with work from home? Any other success stories?

Women leaders in the news

I came across this article by Avivah Wittenberg-Cox in the Forbes site and am a new fan! 

It is a well written article regarding countries with women leaders and how they have handled the response to COVID-19 most successfully. The words empathy, humane, simple, innovative, originality, clarity and decisiveness jumped out at me through the article.  

I also loved the way the write-up ended. The author wrote "there have been years of research timidly suggesting that women's leadership styles might be different and beneficial". The word 'timidly' seems like a small word, but actually means so much. Why are we afraid to recognize that women have different styles of leadership and that is ok? Not just ok, but even quite successful? Why can't we agree that both genders can learn from each other and yet have differences? Why can't we agree to disagree and see that it is a good thing? It is indeed time to recognize this and elect more women to various corporate boards, decision making committees and even government offices throughout the world. 

Full link here for people who want to read the article: https://www.forbes.com/sites/avivahwittenbergcox/2020/04/13/what-do-countries-with-the-best-coronavirus-reponses-have-in-common-women-leaders/#50e087883dec 

Technology and Parenting styles

I saw this headline today in NPR news and froze - "A must for millions, Zoom has a dark side and an FBI warning".

At home these days, I have my husband and elder daughter using zoom for meetings. My husband can take care of himself but I worry about my little one and her friends!
I have already been secretly monitoring her Zoom morning meetings daily this week for several reasons. One, I needed to hear from her teacher as well on everyday summary of lessons and feedback, so I know how things are going and if my daughter is coping. Second, this is still new for my daughter and I wanted to be around if she needed any help.
I realized today that I need not worry about my second reason, as she was handling the technical aspect like a pro. I chided myself for becoming one of those parents and the term 'helicopter parenting' came to mind. I told myself that I should probably not be as involved from tomorrow and let her have more privacy and then I see this in the news :(

Well, back to square one. Her safety is more important than her privacy. Zoom has promised to work more on security measures and I will continue to work on such measures from my end too!

These thoughts led me to do more research on parenting styles. Apparently the old Baumrind styles are of four types and I think I fall under the authoritative style. Do read up more; I do believe knowing our style helps us to understand the pros and cons and improve on areas where we could. Parenting is daunting at the best of times and the dilemmas parents have to face daily may not be understood by 'non-parent' adult friends! Do we protect our darlings from all the ugly things in the world or do we let them learn the hard way sometimes, so they become smarter?

One source I really liked to learn about the styles of parenting:
https://www.brighthorizons.com/family-resources/parenting-style-four-types-of-parenting 

Another good site if you think you might be a bit more involved than necessary sometimes:
https://afineparent.com/be-positive/helicopter-parent.html

More to learn and reflect everyday :)

Hello again my blog and readers

I have missed writing. Yes. But life got in the way and I did not make writing a priority! I was thinking of starting a new blog, but then saw that I still had readers for my old posts! So, I plan on starting to write again in this same blog. If anyone is still following me, thank you!

I hope everyone is surviving this COVID-19 safely. For me, this has been a great experience. A time to reflect, to spend with kids, learn how to survive with my spouse and enjoy the small things. Worked with a friend to rehome five pups! Been cooking more. Of course I know we are lucky if we can consider this a good time. Praying for the many people who are in the frontline of this and others who may have to plan their everyday lives with great difficulty in these circumstances. However, we will survive this.

While we figure it out, please do keep an eye open for abused kids who might be stuck at home, animals, especially starving strays etc., and try to help when you can. Please do not ignore if you find you can help. Sending love and positive thoughts to the Universe!