Imagine you are possessed. By a human from the afterlife who grows close to you but remains invisible to others. Cheerfully goes on to help you cope with the difficult decisions in life. Will you cherish such a partner or rush to exorcise it?

In the movie Sarvam Maya, the main male character is an atheist who turns priest while waiting for an opening in the profession that is his passion, music. He is befriended by a sprightly young girl; the same one he, as the priest, had managed to spirit out of a patient. Only he can see and hear her. She begins by being attached to his mobile. Then they go on to become very attached to each other. In the process they find closure. 

Let's think beyond the movie for a minute. What if gaining such a mystical friend were a natural part of every life? No, not to make one a superhuman with the super strength to do good or wreak havoc. Just a partner you are very comfortable with, you trust fully and with whom you can’t help falling in love, almost.

Will this make us view death differently? Will death stop being the dreaded end, but a natural stage in life?

Will we turn more compassionate towards those who are approaching that stage? Will we stop turning our head away in fear (and some element of disgust) when the body of a fellow patient in the hospital ward is being rolled away?

Once we have such a companion, will we turn more grateful to the life we have been granted? Will it make it easier for us to find true closure? 

Just as the hero in the movie reconnected with his father, found human love, stood up to the goons he used to run away from, and made a mark in music. All thanks to her. And, in turn, she who befriended him finally became aware of who she was and how she had died.

We may not be able to choose such a companion. However, chances are there will be something in common, finished or in progress. 

The movie title Sarvam Maya means "all is an illusion". Indeed, when all is illusory, why lug a grudge, why just plod along and abandon the life you truly want? That could be the path to being the true you, to that coveted closure. 

You got a job in the hospital you were born in. You took care of the trash and cleaned the patient rooms for about 10 years. Now, you are all set to work at the same hospital, as a doctor. Is this a plot for the next Munnabhai MBBS movie? No, this is for real.

Shay Taylor-Allen was born in Yale New Haven Hospital, Connecticut, US in October 1993. She was raised by a single mother of three.

She was in the top 10 percent of her class when she graduated from high school in 2010. As no one in the family had been to college, she had no clue about the college application process. Might as well start earning. 

When she got the job as a janitor at Yale New Haven Hospital, Taylor-Allen was 18. The work kept her very busy but the rewarding bit for her was the opportunity to connect with patients.

“I think a lot of patients come in with mistrust of doctors and nurses, so they build trust with service workers because they feel like they’re one of us,” Taylor-Allen told The Washington Post. “Sometimes they just needed somebody to talk to about anything else in the world other than their sickness.”

During medical school, Taylor-Allen always hoped to return to New Haven and complete her residency at Yale. A rotation in anesthesia in November 2025, solidified her desire to work there.

She could not help jumping up and down in elation when she got the big news on March 20. “I am going to Yale!”

Taylor-Allen wants "to build a bridge between doctors and other service workers”. “When I was there as a janitor, I felt like I couldn’t speak to the doctors … they were so untouchable.”

In the Hindi movie Munnabhai MBBS, the hero does not become a doctor but heals people with love, the jadoo ki jhappi, the magical hug. Would Taylor-Allen go on to combine this magic with the more clinical version of medicine practiced in hospitals? Will she build the bridge as she wants to?

May she succeed! ​

No, that was not the reason.

Yes, I had started spelling most words right. The essays were returning with fewer remarks in red. Thanks to Phantom the Ghost Who Walks, and Mandrake the Magician, I was getting more and more comfortable reading English.

The reason why I was enrolled in the typing class, to get my fingers mapped to asdfgf ;lkjhj, was the parental belief that proficiency in typewriting would give me a better chance of landing a bank job.
​
It helped that I did try my hand often on my father’s vintage Remington at home. I would manage to punch out a draft using just two fingers with minimum use of the corrective x and triumphantly pull out the paper.

Eventually, when a bank did employ me, I could not use the machine because typists were an altogether different species. And you don’t need the machine to affix rubber stamps on documents before filing those away. Even after the bank moved me to their house magazine department, where they possibly expected me to do more work and less harm, I ended up doing more writing, but the typing tools were handled by others.

Then came the stint with a newspaper where I was virtually married to a typewriter, at least the one which was available and not in use by a fellow reporter. It took me a while to gain enough confidence to bang out a report without writing it out by hand first.
​
Those days the sub-eds were very demanding. One day, the most meticulous of them emerged from their room (strategically walled away from the reporters) holding my report in hand. He loudly congratulated me because the report had no xxx (corrections) and did not need editing. It is a different story that the sub-editor had his gaze fixed on another senior colleague while he was shouting out his congratulations. This senior had made it a habit to liberally use the x-key as a loud eraser of sorts. Of course, I lost a fellow reporter friend that day, but I hugged my best friend, the typewriter. 

The next job took me to a corporate office where the typists grudgingly accommodated me during the initial days. The secretarial murmurs must have reached the boss, because one day he walked in with a portable typewriter. That became my primary tool.

Then the revolution happened. Computer! The bulky contraption that could do magic. It got a cabin for itself (the mere humans outside did not need air-conditioned comfort). Soon I was learning to juggle large OS and data floppies.

WordStar welcomed me to the digital era of writing. But not before teaching me an important lesson. If you switch off the computer because it is lunch time and you are too hungry to remember to save the document first, you will come back to zilch.

The computer made it easy to create and alter reports. I could focus on harvesting stories—from the starched-straight address of the CEO to the hesitant confession of the retiring peon that he had told a little lie all those decades ago that he could ride a bicycle. Just to get the job.

Then came one software after another. It was intoxicating. It was no longer enough for me to write. Corel had to draw magic to convert a simple word into what I proudly thought to be visually dashing. PageMaker could churn out page after page, with the text seamlessly flowing from one column to another, even jumping across pages. I was hooked and lost.

Until the day the boss gently told me to close the cabin door after taking one look at a simple draft that I had chiselled to perfection using every software I could access. This was ominous because the boss had no qualms about praising a draft he liked, with not just the cabin but also everyone's ears open. 

“Are you sure this is what you want to do?” I could sense he was close to an explosion. “We employed you to talk to people and write what they say in a manner that the readers can appreciate. We want you to understand the purpose, match the occasion and do an effective job of communicating. Which I thought you were doing well, at least so far. Now, you are lost in all this fancy software!"

I tried to mumble that these were modern tools and I was just trying to keep up with the times. 

"Exactly!" he continued. "Good tools, no doubt. Must be used when necessary to get your point across more effectively. But not because you can or because others are using these. If you want to surrender to the trend, why not leave and start a DTP shop? Then you just have to design and print. You don’t have to bother to really write.”
​
That was my wake-up call.

Fast forward to the present for a more recent wake-up call.

I had shared an important document after spending long hours with the boss and her senior colleagues. This was set to define the client's positioning in an increasingly crowded market and what they had to offer their target segment. I thought it was important to capture the values that made them uniquely human while reels roiled the social world. I requested them to put their heads together before we finalised it.

After several days came the response from someone new, who described himself as entrefluencepreneur, someone who knew "viral secrets", as he put it modestly.  “Please share the document again with keyword lists and classification to create backlinks.” Then he went on to spew more techjargon like SEO, backlinks, meta descriptions, title tags, alt attributes, etc. Everything except what we were supposed to focus on.

Of course, he was in a rush. Yet, I asked a couple of questions in response.

Do we jump into intelligent technology and let it decide what we want to say and how? Or do we first gain clarity on who we are, why we are unique and our value proposition before we rush out and do whatever it takes to catch the eyes of whichever engine? Say we succeed and the traffic pours in, is that what we want? How are we then different from the noisemakers? Or we don’t want to be different?

Obviously, the assignment did not come back.

I missed the old boss. He would have probably responded: “Are you sure you don’t want to open an AI shop? You won’t even need an actual shop. Talk to your laptop or mobile and it will instantly give you what you want. You don’t have to bother writing it. Forget writing, you won’t need to think either.”

The old man burst into tears when the doctor held his hand to check his pulse. “Are you in pain?” the doctor asked. “No, just that this is the first time someone has touched me in the last one year,” the old man said.

The old man had two sons, both working abroad. He had lost his wife during the pandemic. All alone, he used to come to the hospital for a checkup every three months or so. This was his first visit after a long gap.

This real incident came up during a conversation between Dr Priyadarshini Kulkarni and Dr Uday Nirgudkar at a recent Swayam Talk session on palliative care.

Touch. It is neither medicine, nor surgery. Yet, neither can truly heal and ease distress, except with the support of that compassionate touch.

Palliative care, a relatively recent introduction into the medical curriculum in India, has many definitions and explanations. Many, doctors included, would rather not talk about it because it is equated with imminent death, with failure of medicine as it were.

However, for those who understand all that palliative care stands for, it is about caring touch—physical, emotional, social and spiritual. Those are the dimensions that make life complete. And palliative care touches all those facets, with compassion.

When Dr Priyadarshini Kulkarni was studying in medical college, she received a letter from a friend who had suffered kidney failure and had to undergo regular dialyses. “Everything was fine. My elder siblings are fine. Why did this happen to me? At an age when I should be taking care of them, my father donated his kidney for me and my mother has to look after me because I am helpless at home all the time. I feel so guilty. One day, when you become a big doctor, please do something to solve problems of people like me.”

The letter was one of the major factors that prompted Dr Kulkarni to move from anaesthesiology to palliative care. Because it was very evident to her that there was a desperate need for that palliative touch.

When the time comes, does everyone accept the inevitable and focus on painless comfort instead of excruciating attempts at prolonging life? Are doctors taught this approach?

This is what Dr Rachel Clarke writes in her book, Dear Life: A Doctor’s Story of Love, Loss and Consolation, about what and how she was taught in medical school.
​ 
“In microcosm, the manner in which I was taught CPR represented the rest of medical school. I was force-fed facts about diseases, not people. Conspicuous by their absence were, ironically, my future patients. I may have filled my brain to bursting with names, numbers, drugs and diagnoses, but I was taught next to nothing about the muddled, uncertain, inconsistent, illogical, forgetful, fearful, frightened, doubtful, real-life flesh-and-blood people who, just like me, inhabited a nuanced world of endlessly shifting grey, not the black-and-white certainties of my medical bookshelves…. Which meant, as I approached my first day as a qualified doctor, I had no idea how little I knew.

“A fundamental challenge for doctors, therefore, is distinguishing those who can be saved from those in whom the cessation of a heartbeat is the irreversible point of death. Yet at no point in medical school did anyone discuss with us this vital and difficult task. Nor were we taught how to ensure a patient’s wishes are at the forefront of decisions concerning CPR. Nor, most fundamentally, how to conduct these delicate, all-important conversations with patients and their families. The focus was exclusively on the doing.”
​
As Dr Priyadarshini Kulkarni explained during the interview, it takes time for members of a palliative care team to come to terms with what they do. It can be very disturbing, especially when many families and doctors would rather maintain a conspiracy of silence than gently let the counsellor share the reality with the patient. Professionally, they are expected to practise “attached detachment”. It is easier said than done, even after years.

Dr Mazda Turel, renowned neurosurgeon avers everyone needs and deserves that compassionate touch, including doctors and surgeons.

“A wound heals faster when there’s someone to change the dressing with care, even if they use the wrong tape. The heart beats steadier when it recognizes another voice nearby. And patients who have someone to hold their hand recover sooner than those who have only hospital linen for company.

“We are creatures wired for connection. When that connection breaks, so do we. Machines may monitor pulse, pressure, and oxygen, but they can’t measure hope. Hope isn’t quantifiable. It’s given quietly, in the way a hand rests on another, or in a voice that whispers, ‘I’m here.’

“Technology may let us replace joints, valves, and vertebrae, but it cannot replace the presence of another human being. Machines heal the body; only people heal the soul.

“We are all caretakers, whether we admit it or not. The question is: When the time comes, will we be the ones holding a hand, or the ones waiting for someone to hold ours?”
​
Today, there is impersonal technology all around us. Noise, anger, hatred and distance rule our existence. It is time palliative care permeated all aspects of our life, of parenting, of schooling. Maybe we should call it compassionate care. The name does not matter. The touch does. And it must come from within.

Sources:
1. Swayam Talks session (in Marathi): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pvy6l4oic4U.
​2. Dear Life: A Doctor’s Story of Love, Loss and Consolation, book authored by Dr Rachel Clarke, published by Little, Brown.
3. Post by Dr Mazda Turel:  https://mazdaturel.com/the-surgical-loneliness/.
4. Images rendered by AI.

Going through a catastrophic phase in your life? Failure, disaster, pain, loss! As you plod on helplessly, do you doubt if you will ever recover?

Congratulations! You have joined the ranks of the famous who went through an equally if not more difficult phase of life and emerged with their wings stronger. And you know them.

Surely you know Amitabh Bachchan? Oprah Winfrey? Cristiano Ronaldo? Just to name three.

When someone recommended the book by Muralidharran, the title made me suspect it was yet another self-help book. When I plunged into Your Soul Wants To Win: Why Failure Is A Myth, I landed at Resilience Institute. Where FailureSync Technology “tested all humanity knew about failure, success, and the thin thread linking them across time.”

That sounded like some exciting science fiction without the fancy weapons and avatars!

Then I joined every participant in the program as each relived the past of one celebrity. Celebrities considered famous and immensely successful now but had almost never made it in their real world.

Imagine technology that takes you into the very soul of someone who once walked the path that you have now surrendered to irredeemable failure. Then you emerge from the dream as it were, shaken, dazzled and, most importantly, changed for the better, for the positive.

Like Amitabh Bachchan who was almost clinically dead following a severe injury on set that would keep him away from films, some years later found himself 900 million in debt, and then regained his fame and fortune as he became the king of the show Kaun Banega Crorepati.

Like Oprah Winfrey, who was not sure if she would be able to go to school, survived abuse as a nine-year old, became pregnant at age 14, got a job at a radio station at 17 and went on to “become somebody in the world someday” as she had once predicted.
​
Like Cristiano Ronaldo, the little son of “nobodies”, who had the ridiculous dream of becoming a footballer, was laughed at as too small and weak, almost lost his place at the academy when he was diagnosed with a heart problem, was derided for his focus on “fancy tricks” during his first game at Manchester United at 18, and went on to train late into the nights until he “could not get it wrong”.

What triggered Muralidharran to write the book was the “failures” he faced in his own life.
 
At 35, a complete financial collapse coincided with the sudden loss of his father and the prolonged illness of his mother, who remained bedridden until her passing. At 40, shortly after the birth of his daughter, a near-fatal accident left him fighting for survival.
 
He decided to put this “second chance at life” to good use.
​ 
“I decided to understand life at a deeper level,” Muralidharran writes. “This led to learning, unlearning and more research about every aspect of life. Studied with many mentors and read lot of books. As I changed myself, I realized that most of the unhappiness in life stems from not realizing our life’s purpose. Probably my life’s purpose is to give more and contribute more to this world. Hence, I decided to add value to other people’s lives through this book.” 

A finance professional all his life, he never considered himself a writer. “But I had wanted to be one since I was a 10-year-old,” Muralidharran said.

It took him five years to complete the book. “The goal was to add value to other people’s lives. Even if I could change one life through this book, I will consider myself successful.” He knows he has to be patient.
​
Presently heading the finance operations of a major corporate group in Dubai, Muralidharran has worked with multiple multinationals during his stints in the Middle East, Far East and other locations.

So, should you read this book? Yes, because there is no telling what life might have for you. Good or bad, this book can help you stay level, teach yourself to take deep breaths and stay on track.

Turn the pages just for the science that may prove to be more than fiction. Imagine technology that reads your biosignatures and seamlessly immerses you in the life and learnings of someone who was (and perhaps still is) very real. As you live that life, your own assumptions about what you are and where you stand begin to melt away. And you reemerge, your mindset reconstructed.

At the end of the book, Muralidharran poses 10 questions that give you food for thought and fuel for peaceful progress. One of those asks, “What would I do if I truly believed success was inevitable? What’s the first step I would take?”
​
Perhaps, reading this book and absorbing what it offers could be that first step?

The customer was puzzled. This was the same cheese that she had been buying from her favourite farm produce company for years. But now it tasted different, bland.

“It used to taste so good before. Just the right saltiness. Now it has no taste,” she told the manager of the outlet. The manager apologised, promised to speak to the owner and resolve her complaint. After all, she was an old, regular customer. They were friends.

During the next visit, polite conversation apart, the manager was not forthcoming with the resolution. “Now the son is running the show,” he said almost regretfully.

“That is fine, but what did he say about the cheese?” she persisted. “He said,”  the manager paused. “He said the cheese is fine. If you want you can sprinkle some salt before eating.”

She walked out more incredulous than angry. She could not resist a look at the signboard of her favourite cheese supplier. Would she have to find another source now. After all these years?

She never bought cheese from them again. Yet, she would drop in occasionally to buy other small stuff and to say good morning to the manager.

On one such visit, she found the manager missing. And again during her next visit. “He is on leave,” said the person, who now manned the counter, impatiently waiting for her to finish paying so that he could go back to his mobile.

A couple of weeks later, the manager was back. His smile was strained. No, the morning was not good, he said. His wife had to be hospitalised on account of multiple health issues. Now she was back home. “It is very expensive to keep her in the hospital,” he said and turned to attend to another customer.

Over the next few days, whenever she passed by, she noticed that he was frequently absent.

One leisurely Sunday, noticing him alone at the shop, she walked in. Not that she had to buy anything.

“Yes, she is okay. At home. Still in pain. What to do now, we have to manage. It is just the two of us.” He was clearly distracted.

They used to have casual conversations about something or the other. Just to divert his mind, she decided to try that. She picked on a headline in the newspaper lying nearby. “Look at this. Such a big company and they have laid off so many people. These days you have to be fortunate first to get a job and then not to get kicked out for no fault of yours.”

That did not trigger a diversionary response she was hoping for. Instead, his expression turned dark. He leaned closer to her, pausing for a moment to look at the camera overhead. Then he shrugged as if he did not care.

“Every day do you know how much I am spending on my wife? On food and medicines? And you know how much every visit to the hospital costs? We don’t have that kind of money. We were just managing until…”
He paused to catch his breath. His eyes welled up.

“My employer, this company, they know they cannot easily find someone to replace me. Someone who has the experience, who knows the customers well. You are talking of layoff. My boss is telling me to go to hell without really saying that. You know how many years I have been working here? And how many hours each day?”

She did not know how to react. But he wasn’t finished.

“Forget helping me or granting me leave, would you believe they deducted 10,000 rupees for the days I could not come? Knowing my wife’s condition and the state I am in? I wish I could return the compliment and tell them to go to hell. I just can’t. And they know that. So, I have to pull on till they kick me out.” This time he did not bother to hide his tears. He moved away wiping his eyes, gesturing to a junior to handle the customer who had just walked in.

She stepped out, very disturbed. She was sure the camera would have captured his words. But would they also see his tears?
​
She wished she didn’t care. Just like the new young boss at the company. Who had betrayed her expectations from her beloved cheese. And rubbed salt into the oozing wound of a loyal employee.

Once upon a time ....

My vacation job during the final years of college landed me in a building right next to Churchgate station. That did not help me because I lived where the nearest station, as it might still make rail sense to some of you, was part of the central network while Churchgate was the western suburban terminus.

Even after I joined the ranks of the commuting millions, I would often ignore the shorter route and walk straight to Flora Fountain from VT and then turn right towards Churchgate. That’s when I would pass the well.

“Strange location for a well,” was what I probably thought when I saw it the first time, nearly half a century ago. Later, I would gather that it was sacred to the Parsis, who worshipped fire in the few temples I would occasionally pass by.

Little did I know then that I would go on to learn a lot more about Parsis after I got married to one.

And just a couple of days ago, I finished reading Waternamah,  a commemorative volume to celebrate “300 years of Mumbai’s Bhikha Behram Well”. Yes, that very well.

My faith or the lack of it did not come in the way when I read the book. But it definitely “watered my faith”.

“Faith. Without it we are deadwood; even the atheist reposes faith in what he considers its opposite. Faith is at the heart of our human-ness and our humane-ness.

“Then there’s Water. Without it too we are dead. Human, animals, plants all need this life force. As does planet Earth itself.

“Faith and water. This duo is the mystic wellspring of our revered Bhikha Behram no Kuvo.”

Bhikha Behram sank this well in 1725, obeying a persistent dream and despite the scorn of all. After all, who sinks a well right next to the Arabian Sea, as it was then? Surely, he would get useless brackish water?

No! “Lo and behold, almost immediately, they hit upon an underground freshwater spring.”

Six months later, the well would save the life of Mumbai. A terrible epidemic had forced the closure of all other wells that were contaminated. This was the only well that safely quenched the thirst of half of Mumbai’s population, including animals.

Chance or faith?

As the Bible says: “Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, and the conviction of things not seen.”

One of the contributors to the book writes: “This have I learnt in all my years as a neurosurgeon: only love—the tenacity of it, the belief in it and the infinite shapes it can take—makes life more stubborn than death.”

It has taken stubborn love and faith for the well to survive so far.

In 1994, a toilet block came up within a few yards of the life-giving well. After a long-winded court battle, the threat to the sanctity of the well was demolished.

In 2004, “miscreants destroyed all the beautiful leaded stained-glass panels that adorned the pavilion around the Well.” Those were restored.
 
More recently it was learnt the Mumbai Metro Line 3 would pass near the well. In 2017, the metro authorities assured that all precautions and mitigation measures would be taken during tunnelling. “The tunnelling has been completed and no adverse effect noticed.”

Unsullied, “it has continued to slake the spiritual thirst of the community—as well as the biological thirst of everyone, irrespective of caste, colour or creed.”

If we must have wars, let those be only to quell those who are hellbent on sullying the peaceful water we need for our very life.

Then, very like this well, we shall all live ...

...happily ever after.

​Thank you for this book, Bachi Karkaria!

Two recent conversations with well-placed founder-friends left me with one question. Is two-way boss-subordinate emotional dependency healthy in today’s professional world?

She had just sold the three-decade-old company that she had built from scratch. It was a good sale. Yet her tears conveyed regret. She was sad how the new bosses were treating her erstwhile loyal colleagues.

As she put it, some of “my people” had moved out when the sale process was on and didn’t have to “suffer”. Apparently, the new owners did not find the loyal ones up to scratch and were trying to beat them into the shape they wanted.

Should she have simply disconnected after the sale?

The other founder had recently celebrated his birthday at an informal gathering that included most of his employees. They jostled to get hold of the microphone to sing his praise. The words differed but the tune was the same: “we are here just because you are”.

He was obviously thrilled but modest in his response. Was all the adulation just an attempt to sweeten his mood before the next appraisal?  Other leaders of the organization were present, but he alone mattered.

The day he decides to put his feet up (not too far given his age and health) would the decades-old organisation simply crumble?

Was it positive two-way loyalty on display in both cases? Or self-destructive emotional dependency?
​
What happens when bonding becomes an inseparable emotional crutch the boss or the subordinate can’t do without?

A desperate need for a crutch at the workplace is probably a sign of emotional disturbance, opines Lovaii Navlakhi (MD and CEO, International Money Matters). Lovaii describes both sides of workplace love. “A manager may want to be liked or even loved. But a true leader would want to become redundant. On the other side, if you have been a loyal employee for long, the question you ought to ask yourself is do you want to be a boss one day or be a perpetual follower?”

The equation is very situational. Is emotional dependency a tradition? Does the environment allow dependency? Regardless of what the emotional ecosystem is like, it boils down to the maturity of the individual employee. Are you aware of and alert to a world outside your workplace? Are you confident enough to accept a new challenge and move with the times?
​
As for the entrepreneur who let go of the company but not her emotional attachment, Lovaii feels she ought to focus on why she made the sale in the first place. What is it that you would like to do with your experience, skillset and life now? 

​It continues to be in vogue to describe the workplace as “family”. Possibly an expression HR would like to use with a view to retain and attract the talent they need.

But some owners are wary of the terminology. As long it suggests common values and goals, and, more importantly, civil relations, it is fine. The problem starts when some employees begin to take the organization for granted because the “family” will take care of them regardless of what they do or don’t.

It is up to the owners to discourage toxic emotional dependency. More often than not, HR steps after the toxicity has done serious damage.

Sunil Wariar (independent HR consultant; was head of HR at Future Generali India Insurance) believes that the “family” is the right description, provided the organization is “a collection of people with common shared goals where every member is respected for their contribution with pride and conviction to support and succeed the leader.”

It is not uncommon for a leader (or owner) to slave-drive the team, drawing comfort from obeisance, without bothering to share where the team is, where they are headed, and what is expected of them to reach where they ought to be. “When this doesn’t work,” Sunil says, “the leader brings in the concepts of emotional connect and loyalty as remedial measures, without bothering about the root of the problem.”
​
He is all for emotions in the organization, which is after all made of people. However, “it has to be such that it brings in passion, innovation, discussions and disagreements out in the open to get the best from the team. Blind loyalty and subservience with no regard for truth or original thinking cannot sustain an organization.”

Mehernosh Mehta (VP, HR, CG Power and Industrial Solutions) thinks emotional dependency at the workplace is very normal and common. While the entrepreneur who is unable to detach herself from the members of her old team even after she sold the company might be a rarity in current times, Mehernosh thinks it boils down to trust.

“For the juniors, the connection offers a sense of dependency and security,” Mehernosh observes. “Things can get very difficult at work, and one is always on the lookout for a benefactor or guide. It brings comfort and encourages loyalty. For the leaders, who are often lonely at the top, it helps to stay connected.”

It is a “healthy psychological transaction”, a give and take. But closeness can cut both ways. One can get way with the corporate version of blue murder, simply by being “close” to the boss.

Mehernosh points out, “HR cannot stop people from forming relationships. But those relationships should not turn into power centres that adversely affect the organisation. There is a difference between being aligned to the powerful and being loyal to the organisation at large. When the need arises, HR should stand up for the organisation and those who are for it, without being drawn into power tussles. We cannot have one coterie dispensing justice, taking decisions and bypassing other functions. Such unhealthy relationships must be discouraged.”

Once upon a time, it was common for a person to spend their entire working life with the same organization. Even their obituary would name the organization they used to work with. Today, things have changed drastically.
​
“While there are always exceptions,” Mehernosh says, “loyalty has become a misnomer.” In today’s startup culture, the owners are focused on recovering their investment. On the other hand, the employees are game to quickly jump to wherever the grass looks greener. 

Mohan Joshi (Strategic Advisor and Master Coach; ex-President, SCHOTT Glass India) believes “emotions do play a role but within limits.” Regardless of how long one has worked for an organisation, that work was rewarded.

“Today you are required to solve tomorrow’s problems. Owners are looking for those competent to navigate this period,” Mohan adds.
​
He believes, “Emotional bonds may have limited value; competencies matter more. And if you have moved on, prioritize your action plan, not past loyalties. Only competencies can guarantee survival.”

Human beings are emotional by default, though we may rationalize otherwise. Emotion is a good foundation to build trust on and that can become a solid structure of commitment.
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There will be departures of employees and changes in ownership. Both can bruise less if the transitions are planned well. As long as it does not lead to conflicts and confusion, the entrepreneur who sold her company is perhaps justified in guiding her old colleagues for their betterment.

No one can truly judge a new employer until you have been in there long enough. In the long run (which tends to be rather short these days), what truly matters is the kind of work you do and how your boss values your contribution.

Whether you are looking for a new job or a new enterprise what is important is to learn from the experience. You may remain true to your emotional nature but you must be dispassionate about assessing your own strength and goals.

Today when shallow engagement and quick likes matter more than deep connection and identification with an organization’s professed values, it does not matter whether the organization is called a family or not—as long as both employee and owners feel at home.

​Emotion has nothing to do with it. Or has it?