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Resenteeism: Why people are hating their jobs?

After the Covid 19 pandemic, the job market has undergone lot of changes. Companies are facing challenges in reopening offices. Employees are demanding greater flexibility and some companies haven’t developed models to meet the increased employee demands. This seems to have created a sense of disenchantment among employees. Resenteeism is a word that describes this phenomenon.

Girl attacked with machete in Pune

In a horrifying incident, a girl was attacked in broad daylight in Pune. The locals intervened and saved the girl. The attacker was apprehended. The incident has drawn comparison with a similar incident of Delhi, where the girl unfortunately died.

Here are some reactions of people:

Titanic Submarine Casualty: Reminder that we all are human and helpless

Twitter was flooded with messages about the casualty. Following are some tweets:

Top tweets for Adipurush

Singer Choi Sung-bong dies by suicide

To win the world cup, India should look carefully within

The first match of the Ashes made us fall in love with test cricket again. It was test cricket at its best. Both teams were a match to each other in terms of skill and patience. I wonder why India could not put up a similar fight against Australia in the recently concluded World Test Championship. I also wonder why this upcoming world cup is not a cake walk for India. Here is my conclusion:

India team is overconfident

To be honest, India largely derives confidence from its performance in IPL. However, what is important to understand is that IPL is not a domestic league. It is an international league that has foreign players too. The match winners, more often than not, are high value foreign players, winning matches through their performance. Though the league helps build Indian talent for the T20 format, it does not do a great deal to hone local players on technique, temperament, and patience. It is simply making young batsmen throw their bat at everything. The bowlers are also trying to save runs rather than take wickets.

India team is overrated

This is a truth that is hardly spoken but is as true as it can be. Indian team has some great cricketers, but we tend to make them much bigger than what they actually are. Though the records suggest that we are right at the top, but those records have always come on extremely friendly pitches. Extremely batting friendly pitches for one dayers and super spiny tracks for Test matches put us at a great advantage while playing under home conditions. Not that we shouldn’t utilize the home advantage but playing excessively under such conditions only makes our life tougher when we travel abroad. More importantly, it is the overconfidence that we carry from these wins, that affects our game outside of India.

BCCI only bothers about money

BCCI with its politics and misplaced priorities has only made matters worse. There must be something grossly wrong in the board if a former test captain of the Indian team resigns and give statements in the media to contradict BCCI. It suggests that not all is well within the team.

How England groomed a T20 team is a very good example

Everything is about priority. I still remember how few years back England was purely a test playing nation. They weren’t up to scratch on one day and T20 format. They invested in T20 cricket and now we see how strong they have become in the format. India needs to follow the same strategy to improve its performance in One day and Test cricket. Having different teams for different formats and grooming players accordingly is a good way. Resting players when necessary is needed. Most importantly, we should stop creating superstars that we want to see playing every format and BCCI should understand that making money is not the only objective it should be working towards.

YouTube is keeping us hooked, and we are losing it because…

It pains me greatly to see how the youth is squandering time on social media platforms particularly on YouTube in the lure of some easy money. When I see the kind of content and the number of views some videos garner, it amazes me and makes me question ourselves. We are gorging on sub-standard and dreadful content with great delight. I wonder if our consumption is an indication of our standards and choices. If it is, then I guess we cannot stoop any further.

I am not against consuming content for entertainment. I understand that entertainment comes in different forms and shapes and getting entertained is one of our core needs. But since YouTube is an open platform, it serves you any kind of video that its algorithm finds best serves your needs. Most of the content that is served is below par and obnoxious to say the least. The content is served to you and most of the times you go with flow and tend to watch the video. It is very difficult to suddenly unwatch something even if you want to. That is what the catch is.

When I reflect after watching such videos, I feel that a precious amount of time of my life is wasted. Most of the times, I don’t derive the entertainment or learning that were my initial goals. The videos are extremely below average and cringe-inducing. It feels disgusting to have spent time on the endless scrolling and binge watching.

YouTube with its platform can be dangerously addictive. So much content, carefully or uncarefully crafted in videos, most which are extremely poorly censored, is enough to drive you mad. You have so much to consume, that you don’t know where to stop. This greed of consumption is a great motivator for filth creators who know they can create anything and that anything has the potential to be consumed. The platform is where the magic happens.

This huge consumption opportunity incentivises young people to jump on this bandwagon creating a deadly cocktail of huge consumption and creation. Precious young talent is being wasted on this platform. It is laughable that being a Youtuber is considered some sort of a job.

I am not suggesting that the platform has only degraded the quality of our youth and people in general, it has done potential when it is correctly utilized. But who the hell cares about how it is utilized when the money lies elsewhere.

I am also against the rise of cringe content and the creation of celebrities riding on the success of that. Many cringe creators have become successful and such people are increasingly being celebrated. When your success, popularity, love etc. is determined by algorithms and measured only by money, people will do anything to achieve these metrics. Can YouTube create algorithms that measure decency, respect, quality, humility, and humanness? Until and unless we create algorithms that measure the fundamentals of goodness, we will only be creating poor platforms that will create poor content and poor creators.

Why is the movie Adipurush doomed to fail?

There is a lot of hoopla around the movie Adipurush which is going to release on the coming Friday. The initial trailer of the movie had greatly disappointed fans leading the film makers to delay the release. With the improved VFX, the film is slated for release this week. Many celebrities are doing mass-bookings and the film seems to be riding high on all the positivity that it exudes. However, I feel that the film is going to come crashing down on the box office once the initial hype gives way. Here are the reasons.

Extremely poor VFX

Though the VFX is told to have been fixed, but it is hardly up to the mark. To be honest, the VFX is dreadful. Prabhas who appeared flawless in Bahubali is appearing below average. It is the VFX that is making him look so ordinary. All other characters are also not very pleasing to the eye. Barring Kriti Sanon, no one is looking the part.

Poor Writing

The writing of the movie seems to be very average. The holy epic whose every line is considered sacred cannot be presented with weak writing. The dialogues appear very weak. When I saw the original Ramayana for the first time, the heavenly voice of Arun Govil swept me away. I was so enamored with the voice that it kept looping in my head for a long time. Such was the casting and attention to detail in the original Ramayana. Here, Prabha’s voice appears more of a great warrior but as we know lord Rama is as much an embodiment of goodness, humility etc. as he was of courage and strength. It seems the movie is rushed through and is not given the time and attention it should have been given.

Poor Casting

The casting looks weak. Laxman’s character in particular looks very weak. Also, Saif Ali Khan, I believe is an overrated and a very limited actor. He is good in few genres only and he has already done lot of such movies. He enacts evil with being clownish. His character in Tanhanji was a classical example of a casting goof up. He appeared a person who is forcefully trying to be cruel. With him, everything appears forced and structured and not natural.

Initial hype is PR made

I get a feeling that the filmmakers have accepted that the movie is going to flop. PR has been set into motion to give it a massive opening before the true feedback comes out in public domain. That is why I believe the movie can open well but the content will bring it down sooner.

Why India lost WTC final?

Underperformance and Mediocrity

It is fair to say that we lack talent. Yes, to be honest, Indian cricket team is not as talented as it is made out to be. All the runs and wickets under the belt of our cricketers have come under home conditions. We are tigers at home and will always be. Our superstar batters and bowlers are actually human. More so, in foreign conditions where their superpowers vanish.

IPL

Yes, it is overly cliched, but IPL has destroyed everyone as cricketers. The easy runs and easy wickets have made us technically and temperamentally week. It’s not easy to switch from a casino style of play to a more sensible form of cricket. It’s all about adjusting your priorities. We seem to have prioritized the money-making IPL over all forms of cricket. In the process, we are degrading our cricketing heritage. Regardless of what people say and believe, IPL is not cricket.

Can IPL and other forms of cricket co-exist?

This is what the cricket pundits would have us believe. It all begins with co-existence and eventually since everything is driven by money, we will be told that IPL is the future. We will be told that we choose it over one-day or test cricket. To an extent they are right. It is our fascination with T20 cricket that has led to the downfall of other forms of cricket. IPL is all about entertainment, money, booze, party. It is hardly a sport. If we are genuine cricket lovers, we should stop our fascination with T20 cricket. We should not turn everything into and about entertainment and money. There should be a larger purpose for preserving a pure sports culture. Arts, sports etc. should be preserved and performed for greater goods and causes. It is a social responsibility of every one of us to ensure it happens.   

Why I want to work from office now?

As a person from IT background, I have been working from home for past few years. I have forgotten how a regular office going culture feels like. Though my organization has reopened its office, I am still hesitant to go to office on a regular basis. It feels that I have become used to working from home. Frankly speaking, working from home is no fun. It is just something that I am finding hard to get over.

  • Working from home is doing something to my psychological health. I don’t enjoy company of people anymore. Though I am more productive working from home, I don’t derive great joy in a collaborative work environment now. I feel more comfortable if I get to work independently. Earlier, I used to thrive working in a team environment. I am not sure, if working independently (or in silos) is the future of work. I feel work must be a collaborative affair and people working a job must feel happy doing/creating stuff together. I feel this sense of “enjoying your job” is increasingly diminishing in a WFH set up.
  • With such less interaction with people in a WFH setup, a sense of boredom is creeping in life in general. Never earlier did I feel the importance of going through the rigors of the day. I mean things such as commuting to office, working with a team, having lunch with a team, managing conflicts within a team etc. looked so ordinary. Now, I think that they are vital for our ability to live, work, and thrive. What appeared problems earlier now appear essential rigors for a healthy life. I think we are meant to solve certain problems to live a happy life. If we eliminate those problems, new problems would sprung up, which are often harder and costlier to fix.
  • I know we are growing, but I don’t think that we are growing in the right direction. We are obsessed with solving problems, however we are not defining or identifying problems correctly. The objective of working jobs is not only to create wealth, it is an endeavor that helps shape society in some manner. We all are shaping and contributing to our future by working the jobs that we do today. So, we should be careful of the precedent that we set.
  • A sense of belongingness is what I feel is most important in a job. It is the cornerstone of my productivity, loyalty and commitment to the organization. In a world where everything is increasingly becoming virtual, I want to invest in real human interactions. I feel, as a human being, it our primal need to be among people and work together. We all are designed to work that way, I think.
  • Though I am a big proponent of working from office, I don’t want it to be a rigid affair. I know a section of people are lured with the concept of working from home. They think it is the future and in some way they may be correct as we always define our own future. At the end of the day, it is always a matter of choosing what future we want. And I think, a future where people are prioritized above everything else is what we should choose.