Friday, November 8, 2013

Finding my footing

Returning back to work after a long time is a strange feeling because (as expected) people and things seem to have moved on - without me.
  • People have become used to not having me around 
  • Ways have been found to get things done without me 
  • Some others have taken over stuff I used to do
It's business as usual for everyone else. It's me who needs to find my place again amongst my team - where can I bring value (if so)...it takes time. After all, its true that nobody is indispensable.

"No such thing as bad weather..."

One of the first things I heard from my German friends and colleagues many years ago was, "there's no such thing as bad weather. Only bad clothes."
For someone coming from India where complaining about the weather is a pass time, this was a thought provoking statement. As I spent time in Germany, I even started to see some truth in this statement.

Recently I was back in India and spent many months - spanning multiple seasons. Now I can say,  I do not quite agree with this statement. People start terming a certain weather 'bad' based on multiple factors - their own preparedness to deal with it and how prepared their surrounding environment is to deal with it. Clothes play a very minor role in this. In countries like India where there are serious infrastructural problems, weather is commonly perceived as bad because it starts impacting a person's ability to carry on their day to day chores. Condition of the road, electricity, water shortage etc get seriously hampered with different weather patterns.

Right clothing for weather is something that does not even occur to people.
So, 'bad' is a valid perception of weather indeed!