The Code

When you read newspapers, especially The Hindu kind, you get the idea that globalisation is not that good- most of our economic and financial newspapers are gung-ho about it, but that is understandable because they need to promote it. But the common man with humane sensibilities is more or less against it for the disparity it creates and the exploitation of poverty and that sort of thing.

But I think there are some positives from it- I will cite the case of Muniyamma, the servant-maid who comes to wash dishes at my aunt's. Her daughter- is doing Engineering, and she expects her to go to US in about three or four years. I think, but for globalisation, Muniyamma's daughter would have to be content with dishwashing. I don't know what you think about this.

But this is not about Muniyamma, of course, or her daughter Ananya. Or about globalisation and its discontents.

This is about Chandrika, her sister, and I am sharing this with you because I just finished seeing the film, A Few Good Men, and I got thinking about her.

See, Chandrika is in her twenties, and as we all know, the poor are not educated. The womenfolk have to go into being servant-maids or construction work if they are to earn anything. If there is any other job opportunity open for them, I am not aware of that.

Anyway, Chandrika was a problem, because she refused to go into either as she felt they were demeaning jobs. Muniyamma used to moan about her a lot, and the result was, my aunt helped her get a work.

The work was at a computer service agency. They didn't do much- all she had to do was attend calls from ten to five and note down the complaints. It was not a demanding job- I think may be she got five or ten calls a day. She whiled away the time there reading magazines and taking quick naps. She got three thousand easy rupees for a work you or I could do on the go with our cellphones.

The agency, for some reason, felt there should be someone in the office attending to the calls full-time, may be, they expect to get busy in the future, I don't know. Anyway, I think they were dumb people to employ a person just to take calls.

But it does not have to be that way- most of us are creatures of habit, and we rarely have any initiative to do anything out of the ordinary. Why, I don't think we even bother to do our job well enough- because if we do, we will all be as good as Floyd Lee is with his Pegasus.

I was talking about Muniyamma the servant maid and Chandrika the status conscious sister who turned up her nose at construction work, didn't I? Well, she was not really fortunate.

She went to her work for about six months, after which, one month she took five days of leave because she was sick.

When she got her pay, she found that five days of pay had been deducted. That didn't bother her, because she knew that's the way it would be.

She was indignant that instead of calculating the pay-cut on the basis of a thirty-day month, the manager of the service centre had divided her pay by twenty-five days. She felt she was working at daily-wages, it was not a proper employment, so she quit and came home. No one could convince her to go back.

Can you believe that?