A Saturday Well Spent At The LLOYDS SHEROES Summit 2016

Ever since the details of the LLOYD SHEROES Summit, 2016 was out, I was contemplating on whether to go for it or not. The topic came for discussion amongst a few like-minded friends, yet none of us were sure. Then, a blogger invite came by mail, and that made me consider it seriously.  The final push came when I got a call from Raba of Sheroes, asking if I would like to participate as a blogger. And that's all that I needed to make up my mind. I made plans with a friend who had already signed up for the Summit (this was her 4th time and she has attended all the SHEROES Summit so far!) to go together. The event was scheduled to happen at the Lalit Ashok in Bangalore and we reached the venue by around 8:45 in the morning. After the registration process, we were greeted by Sairee Chahal herself, the women and driving force behind Sheroes.

A few of us with Sairee Chahal

The theme for this year was Work Life Bank Balance - quite an interesting theme considering that usually the talk always revolve around the Work Life Balance and the Bank Balance part is something that is never spoken out loud. After the introductory speech and presentation was made, the event started with a 'fireside chat' by Sairee and Harsha Kumar, who was the AVP, Products at Ola Cabs before she moved to become Principal, Lightspeed India Partners Advisors. The half an hour chat revolved around her experience at OLA. Harsha spoke about how career planning requires a lot of self awareness. She spoke about the startup culture and how working in a startup means living and breathing your company. When asked what it takes to work with a startup, she summed it up in two words - zero excuse! Her mantra for striking a work-life balance inspite of working 24*7 was to focus on your priorities at any moment. At times, you have to put your foot down and it requires a balance where both parties need to compromise. Her outlook to work was inspiring in many ways. What struck with me the most was her statement that every challenge that comes your way is not a problem, but an opportunity; once you realise that, then everything else falls in place. Reaction to anything that doesn't go your way is to find another way. This is so true - the power of finding solutions, the power of taking things positively!

The CXO Panel

Next session was the CXO Panel discussion and consisted of Amit Somani (Managing Partner, Prime Ventures), Anita Kakar (Company Secretary, Lloyd Group), Saroja Yeramilli (Founder, Melorra) and Narendra Bhandari (GM- Developer Experience and Evangelism, Microsoft India). The discussion revolved mostly around getting back to work after taking a break and combatting the problems that comes with it. To me, the star of the show was definitely Ms. Saroja Yeramilli, who has worked with Tanishq, quit her job three years back to help Nandan Nilekani with his election campaigns before starting up Melora, her jewellery venture through which she wish to reform and disrupt the jewellery industry. Sensible jewellery is what she is aiming at to bring to the public. My favourite piece of her advise was "think of your career as a marathon and not a sprint"! She emphasised on the fact that never let anyone tell you that you can't take career breaks and cannot come back - "When I quit my job, I enjoyed that as well". In fact, Mr. Amit Somani too shared with us about his two breaks in his career and how he utilised it to his benefit. He also quite aptly mentioned how the biggest problem in India is that we feel apologetic of the breaks and sabbaticals. When the panel was open to questions and discussions, a very prominent question was raised as to how everything seemed glossy when they spoke about their careers and to give insight to the failures they experienced and how they tackled it. Mr. Narendra Bhandari pointed our rightly about how it is not rosy always and how each person has their share of struggles. To which, Saroja added that you need to think of failure as a challenge and everyday there definitely is going to be a challenge to overcome. A valuable lesson also came from Ms. Anita Kakkar who said we need to decide what we want to do and we need to choose the kind of pressure that we want to handle. The post panel discussion with the audience revolved mostly around how it was difficult for most women to cut through the HR call to get a chance at the interview round once we mention that we were on a maternity break, no matter how good we are at our job. The best answer to this came from Sairee herself, who closed the discussion with a "chances are that the job you need comes out of a conversation. It may not be there out on a job portal. So keep networking and put yourself out there!". Very true!

Future Of Work Panel

After a short tea break, we were back with a Future of Work discussion with Sakshi Vij (Founder, Miles), Sampad Swain (Founder, Instamojo), Srivatsan Chari (Co-founder, Cleartax), Kavita Chowkimane (VP - Sales and Marketing, Portea) and Dhanya Rajendran (Founder, The News Minute). The discussion, for the most part, revolved around the option of work from home and how feasible it is. The keyword for future of work is flexibility and remote working. Ms. Kavita pointed out how the future of work needs to be a mix of technology and people's attitude. While there were arguments about how work happens best when you are at office and not home, a person working from home may not yield the best result and a boss would prefer her subordinates in front of her when it comes to getting work done, Mr. Srivatsan rightly pointed out that we need to see effort as directly related to output. As long you produce the desirable output, it doesn't matter where you work from. There were concerns from the attendees about how disconnected they felt when they were working from home while their peers were at office, how they missed out on appraisals. Mr. Sampad stated a valid point where he said that every organisation needs to define their level of flexibility. To me, the rockstar of this session was not the panel members, but the emcee, Shreya Krishnan who pointed out exactly what I had in my mind - you need to set out your work space, no matter where you are working from. Work from home doesn't mean you do the housework at the same time as you are working. Your work time needs to be set, no matter where you are working from. And regarding the peers at work, who raise their discontent about people working from home, you need to look inward and not outwards and corporates need to shut such thought process. Sairee topped it off by saying how work from home may not be the optimal choice, it may not take you to the CEO's chair but it will definitely enable you to stay connected. With this, we broke off for lunch and some networking before the noon session started.

Lightening Pitches

Post lunch we had the lightning pitches where we had two women entrepreneurs pitch their business. The first pitch came from Ms. Hemlatha who started the 49to499.in, an online retail store where you can find everything under Rs. 499. She spoke about her plans to scale it up, her marketing strategy and in general about how her business worked. The second pitch was by Anusha Bhushan from smoodies.in, where she talked about her product, the first packaged smoothies. Her mantra is commoditising health" and her drink is a combination of fruit and juice. She brought six drinks to distribute, and the super cool emcee, Shreya conducted a fruit quiz and the winners got to taste the smoodies. There was time for one more pitch and we had Mr. Swapnil, who operates the Hindustan Motorcycling Company, a premier adventure travel company providing a variety of adventure holidays. I am so in love with their moto - "Go humble, come wise"!

We got one too!

The lightening pitches session was followed by an amazing dance therapy session by Ranjani Santhanam (Founder, Palindrome Concepts & Solutions). This was an amazing, energetic session where she had everybody grooving to the music. I'm sure that none of us wanted this session to end and all I could see by the time it ended were smiling faces around me!

Ranjani Santhanam

The LLOYD SHEROES Summit 2016, came to an end with the Good Girls Show by Vatsala Srivastava (Director, Bindi Bottoms). Vatsala is the founder of Bindi Bottoms, a platform designed to use stories of women to map how India is changing with time. She shared two such stories with us and she is one of the best story tellers I've met in my life. She took all of us along with us deep into her tale and it felt like we were experiencing the story than listening to it!

The Good Girls Show

If I was asked how was the summit, I would not say that it was an eye opener. But, I had an amazing time, meeting wonderful people, sharing stories and discussing women and work. Though I felt the 'Bank Balance' discussion left out of the Work Life Bank Balance, overall, it was a well-organised, enriching summit. Also, I must add, apart from the SHEROES team, there was one more person who rocked the entire summit - the emcee, Shreya Krishnan. She was a crowd puller be it with her five minute belly dancing teaching session or getting the crowd on the feet and making them bond with the person next to them with a back rub and even standing her ground and making valid points when some of the points from the panelists were not resonating well with most of us across the stage. She was indeed a rockstar!

One last pic!

While before the meet, I was contemplating whether I should leave after the morning session, I'm glad that I stayed back, because the post noon session was out of the world. It left me energised, happy and recharged, most of all. It was definitely one of my best, well-spent Saturdays!

It Takes Time To Make A Place Home!

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I came to Bangalore in 2010 as a newly-wed, all set to start a new life with my man. Though struggling with work and life, we enjoyed our times together, valued our privacy and loved our life in general. Yet, Bangalore never meant home to us. At every excuse that I had, which was almost every month, I rushed to Trivandrum, where my parents were. Every long weekend was eagerly looked forward to, to rush back to the place where I grew up and spend time there. Bangalore was a temporary arrangement, where work wanted us to be, where we wished to spend our initial years together. Nothing more. It was never meant to be one where we would settle down forever. 

We weren't locals here, we didn't know where to get the best bargain, we didn't know those nooks and corners that hide those age old shops where you get whatever you want at the best rates. We, in fact, didn't know anything about the place. We were strangers in this place, trying to fit in. We stayed here because we had to, not because we loved to. Those times when I was asked if I liked Bangalore or Trivandrum, I knew from heart what my answer was. Most of my pregnancy days were spent in Trivandrum, simply because I had my people around me, help was at finger's snap, the doctor knew me by name and more than anything, it was my comfort zone. Post baby too, we kept going to Trivandrum at every possible opportunity. Each time B's work took him outside Bangalore, we left for Kerala. I wasn't comfortable staying alone in Bangalore with Adhrith. I felt insecure to say the least. Each time Adhrith fell sick, I wanted to rush to Trivandrum because I felt at peace only with the doctor back home. Also, life revolved around just the three of us. We had friends and family scattered across Bangalore but no one that we met frequently, no one to make us feel assured about being nearby.

Soon, we shifted to a beautiful apartment near B's office. We slowly started making friends here. Friends whom we would meet daily. Friends with whom we went for mundane, household and grocery shopping. Friends who accompanied me to take Adhrith to the doctor's just because they didn't want me to go alone. Friends who made sure that I need't depend on the husband to get house-related work done. While Adhrith made friends with whom he wanted to spend every waking minute with, I got an amazing set of friends myself. We started settling down in the truest sense. We found an  amazing paediatrician nearby, to whom I rush to atleast twice a month, who, along with her staff knows Adhrith by his name, who takes an extra two minutes off her consulting time to play peekaboo with Adhrith or talk to him about spiderman or chocolates (it means a lot, especially when I am terribly worried about my baby not being well!). Once school started, while the boy made himself comfortable there, I made friends with a couple of amazing mammas there as well. 

Now, after all these years, slowly, Bangalore has started to feel like home. So much so that, last time when we went home, I was eager to come back soon that my folks back home was wondering what fell on my head, trying to figure out what was happening. This time, when B had his overseas travel scheduled for two weeks, I stood my ground stating that Adhrith and I will stay back in Bangalore. I fought with him and my mom, both of them wanting someone to come from Kerala to give us company until B was back, and I, fighting to stay alone with Adhrith alone here. For the first time in my 6 years of Bangalore life, I felt home in Bangalore. I felt secure. I knew help was right there at my doorstep with the friends I've made here who have become like family. And they proved it rightly so. Each time, we went out alone, they made it a point to check on us and ensured we reached back home safely. On those days when I was too lazy to cook, we had food brought to us. I was never made to feel that I was staying alone with my little boy. We had fun going out, roaming through the streets of Malleswaram (yes, now I've found places where I get good deals too!), doing play dates and having dinner outings. While we missed Daddy, we enjoyed our two weeks so much so that when B was back, the first thing he told me was how I seemed to have enjoyed the two weeks since I was glowing with happiness! :D

And I realised, it's not the house alone that creates a place home. It takes the people around you too. People who go out of their way to treat and make you feel like family, who makes sure you are safe and comfortable even while you are alone at home with your baby. That's when you start feeling at home. When you would rather be nowhere else, because it is here that you are at peace. And that's how Bangalore became home to me. After 6 long years!

Let's Be Human!

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Two days back, an Emirates plane from Trivandrum to Dubai crash-landed at the Dubai Airport and caught fire. Soon after this, a video went viral of the chaos inside the flight - people panicking, trying to push their way out and in between this, there were people trying to take out their luggage and laptops from the overhead cabin. This drew lot of flak, with people even stereotyping Asians, Indians and Malayalis, going to the extent of even calling them an 'untameable bunch'.

It's always easy to come up with criticisms or blame others for their actions, but do we realise this could have happened to any of us as well? Do we really know for sure how we would react in case of any emergency? As much as we profess that material goods are not important, we've always been told  over and again about how valuable our expensive mobile phone is, the laptop that carries all our important data including work stuff or the wallet that would have contained the passport and money. We do not know how the human brain would react to an emergency and no one can guess. It is an instant reaction and I'm sure for those grabbing their hand baggage, it was as much a survival instinct as saving their life. 

And if we are blaming them for grabbing baggage and risking other's life, then what about us who are being insensitive and forwarding jokes about the crash? What about us who are making the video viral? Have we thought about the family of the passengers who would be seeing all this and having their heart in their mouth, or those passengers who would rather not relive that moment again? Aren't we being insensitive towards them? Shouldn't our behaviour too be blamed then?

Instead of blaming the human behaviour and tsk-tsking about how people behave in times of a crisis, we should be applauding the efficient rescue system that was in place, we should be whispering a silent prayer for the firefighter who lost his life. There is no right or wrong when it comes to life. People behave in a way that they think is best for them. We do not know how we would have behaved when we see death this close. So let's not judge. Instead, let's be empathetic. Let's be considerate. Let's be kind. Above all, let's be human. That's the need of the hour, more than anything else. 

Once Upon A Honeymoon

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We were together for seven years before we got married. We never lived in the same city until marriage and hence, marriage was something we looked forward to, to spend time together and be with each other. Once the wedding date was fixed, we got busy with the preparations along with other stuffs to sort out like finding an apartment, household items shopping and other boring chores. In all this chaos, we forgot to plan our honeymoon and by the time we realised that, we were too tired to think about a getaway and add the bookings to be made for the honeymoon in our already overflowing list. 

To our surprise (a very pleasant one!), we were gifted with a honeymoon package to Udaipur. I jumped up to the offer, extended my joining date at work by one week, booked our tickets to Udaipur and all of a sudden, out of the blue, we were all set for a honeymoon - one that we never got to plan. Packing done, itinerary set, we were off to the airport for our honeymoon. We had a 3 day 2 night stay in Udaipur and I was all set to explore the place. I absolutely love travelling and when I get a chance to visit a new place I wish to explore the place inside out, even if it means being outdoor the whole day, walking, driving or even, having lunch on the go. So, it was with this hope and dream that I reached Udaipur. We had the hotel car waiting for us at the airport and from there, we were taken to the hotel, which was situated on the banks of Lake Pichola. The property, in itself, was stunning with orchards and gardens and everything about the place was picture perfect. We had a duplex suite room waiting for us and it was beginning to feel like a fairytale honeymoon.

And then it started. I wanted to explore the whole of Udaipur and if possible, the forts and other cities nearby.  He wanted to just chill in the resort and take a break. Each plan we made for the next hour ended with cribbing and fighting. The only thing that could calm me was a book and this time, for the first time as far as I can remember, I didn’t carry a book with me since I was on my honeymoon and who would need a book when you are taking your first getaway with the love of your life. Ha, the illusions of life! We tried accommodating both our plans but if we were going out, he would end up being irritated and if we were spending time at the hotel, I ended up sulky. Our perfect getaway was just not going the way I imagined it to be. Until then, I was made to believe that honeymoon was all about love, romance, holding hands while exploring the city and being happy. The whole glossy picture I’d painted in my mind of a honeymoon couple was totally shattered. Instead of holding hands and walking dreamily like newly weds, we fought and walked with a mindful distance between us. All in all, neither did I get to see the places properly and have a beautiful memory associated with it nor did he get the rest he dreamt of for his perfect honeymoon. Our first trip together, and we did each other’s dream trip and the idea of a perfect trip. 

Looking at it now, the trip did indeed give us memories (we are yet to decide if it’s good or bad) – memories of realizing our differences and letting us take our first step in adjusting and compromising to be the couple that we are today. We learnt to rather keep our expectations low and be overjoyed than be upset because nothing is working out as we dreamt.  We still joke about our disastrous honeymoon trip and now, rather than being haunted by how it went wrong, we laugh about it. It was indeed the best counseling we could ever get as newly weds.

Now, 6 years of being married to each other, we’ve learnt to understand each other better and learnt to live life midpoint where both of us sacrifice a part of our happiness for the other. There have been a lot of adjustments and compromises and that has surely made our life smoother, trips memorable and with that has come a lot of happiness. Yes, since our honeymoon we’ve been to many trips together and each trip has been better than the one before.And yes, we redid our honeymoon on our 5^th wedding anniversary. This time, though, we had a little boy accompany us and we went to the Andamans. We had the perfect getaway, we enjoyed each other’s company, reassured of our love for each other and we didn’t want to come back. There was no cribbing or grunting of any manner and we spent three days as honeymooners (or honeymooning parents?). And, I fell in love with him all over again!