‘You know, we should share all these experiences that we go through during work under an anecdotes
section next time we update the website’, said Priya; thus was born this section. We encounter some very interesting people, experiences and situations through our work and
recount the same endlessly among our friends and associates. There is or has been no scope to include these in formal documents but there is something to be got from these anecdotes - humour, learning, something different?.... Here we share a few of them.
We welcome you to share your own.
During travel
Recent amusements during travels, by Ram – ‘was at the Hyderabad airport last week waiting for a flight back to Chennai. Announcements at the station were rather loud and persistent. ‘Passengers for flight ___, this is your final call, please board the flight’ went one. A co-passenger in waiting suggested that the next announcement will be for the missing Mr. Gurcharan Singh, sure enough the announcement followed, that day it happened to be Mr. Radheyshyam who after getting his boarding pass for some strange reason decided to disappear in the small waiting area of the Hyderabad airport in the early morning small crowd! How does this happen? How do people disappear in airport waiting lounge? The airlines go on announcing forever and ever before they decide that some unknown animal has gobbled up Radheyshyam and take off without him! Meanwhile at the airport, the next announcement started, ‘this is the last and final boarding to Chennai for the flight _______’ went the sleepy announcer.
September 2007
Is it humourous or is it mediocrity?
Priya's encounters with bloomers in documentation content and language -
"There are numerous outcomes of walking through documentation with hobnailed boots and a sickle; these
include the LumpyThink, CapitalCrazy and SpeelChec among others. These are especially true of the NGO
world that we work with. Don't get me wrong, I understand and empathise that many of these reports,
minutes and rapid assessment notes etc, are put together under great pressure in the middle of a
hundred other activities' that our NGOs do. But today the world offers a whole host of easy-interface
technologies, service providers and whatnot so that we can get rid of the boots. Maybe. Here, since
I mentioned "activities", I am
just going to share one instance of LumpyThink that will tell us clearly what this "activities" constitutes
of. About ten months after the 2004 tsunami, I came across one report without a beginning or end.
It just said "ACTIVITIES", top centre of the page followed by bulleted sentences that included communication
to staff (short, crisp commands), communication to funding agencies (bending backwards tone), information
for volunteers (dry and neutral), the proposed work for the next 6 months (ambitious), notes from
a field visit (could have been God visiting, one can never be sure), acknowledgement of support (tone:
should have given more), a draft summary of the proceedings in a function that took place in one of the villages that
this group is working in (believe me, it could not have been the final version)...you get the picture?"
September 2007