The other part of being "Indra Nooyi"

August 15, 2006 the Indian Independence Day. The day when we all Indians keep our heads high & salute our Mother India. But this time it is different. We Indians had another reason to celebrate on that day. Indra Nooyi was appointed as the CEO of PepsiCo & the newspapers in India were all strewn with the "Nooyi effect". The media coverage for Indra Nooyi was so exhaustive that I had to I had to literally pound my head to understand that it was an Independence Day for India.

Flipping through the pages of The Economic Times edition, I understood the way she managed her work-life balance while slowly climbing up the corporate ladder. What a fantastic lady she is. Her mantra for this stupendous success is - "If you do your job, do it better than anybody else". Such a lady she is that, if she would recieve an email at 4:00 a.m. on her Blackberry, she would respond to it at 4:01 a.m. And when it comes to manage her kids, I think nobody can match her planning. On returning home from school & not finding the mom would not upset the children. Rather a Receptionist at the office is ready to take the children's calls. And these calls range from: Doing the homework, whether or not can I play Nintendo, When will momma come home & stuff like that. The work/play/rest schedule for the children is available with the office receptionist & she's is sometimes allowed to take the decisions on her own for them.
If the children want, they can even visit the office & freely chat with the Board Members for fun. The top bosses had no problems with that 'cos this is one thing which would make Indra at peace so that she can focus on her work better (which she already had been doing). This one intangible incentive counted a lot for her.

Well, newspapers wrote tons & tons about the personal life of Indra Nooyi. The way she worked & the way she managed her family. The situation is no different for many other women. Today, women cannot be confined to the 4-walls of the house. They have an independent thinking and they want to make it to the Big League. No issues at all. Every individual has the right to do it. But I have a question. When we all think of our growth targets, do we actually think of our children? Do we ever give a thought that- Am I able to devote quality time with my family & my children?

Today, we earn money...do good job...get good appraisal...get higher paychecks....do much better job....get good appraisal....and get much higher paychecks......But what are we all losing on ? It is the "Quality Time" with the family. This is too precious. I do not say this for women only, it is equally important for men too. But I would say, women have to be more thoughtful when it is a question of career aspirations at the cost of "Quality time" at home.

Go through any scientific research, scriptures, traditions...you will find that a child needs proximity to her mother till he grows up. This is important for child's intellectual growth & making him a responsible citizen. Being a mother is great responsibilty (& all the readers, please do not take this as male-chauvinism becuase I personally feel that being a father is a greater responsiblity). A child-mother bond is likely to weaken if the child feels more comfortable with the nannies. If this holy-bond weakens, it has a crippling effect on the society & we can observe that in the West where the number of working women is very large, the old age homes are equivalently larger in number. It is very easy to pay the nannies to keep "good" care of the children in parents' absence, do we find ourselves incapable to nurture the child ourselves? I think ...NO. We all are capable, but it is the personal ambitions which put us on the backfoot.

One thing is for sure, what has been continuing since 5000 years cannot be proved worthless in few years. Men have been traditionally the bread winners of the family & the women have managed the home (& not the house). A home is a part of the society & women have been an integral part of building the society...a culture. When we talk of women being "suppressed", this is just out of the mind of handful of women & the wave spreaded like anything. Ancient India has the glorious past for women. It was only after the number of invasions India faced after 10th Century, the situation changed. The invaders not only plundered the towns, but also raped the women. In the era where there were no methods to avoid pregnancy, it was seen as the danger to maintain the genes. People started keeping women inside the houses & that is how the story in India continue. These events happened not only in India, but in Europe as well.

But the situation in Africa is startingly different. Historically, there have been no wars or invasions (except the tribal conflicts) deep inside African jungles. Women in the tribes not only manage the children but also assist men in hunting. We can learn few things from those "ill-literate", "ill-mannered", "not fit for society" guys.

In the US, after the '60s call of "Women Liberation", the same generation of women calls for qutting jobs for children. They have seen it...observed it....now they feel it. It is the same generation which we once happily emulated. A society can be rich in terms of money, but it becomes poorer on cultural front if young generation does no feel secure in terms of parenthood.
My salute to those women who work only to feed their families. As an analogy I would only say that even a tigress doesn't hesitate to go out & hunt for the cub if the lion doesn't arrange for the food.

I do not say that women should not work. But when it comes to a child's intellectual growth, it is a responsibility to be shared in greater proportion by the mothers.