Staff Canteen (April7, 2006)

It is a Sunday morning. I am between flights at the Hyderabad Airport. My connection to Bhubaneswar is a good two hours away. Rather than sit inside the airport listening to the monotonous overhead announcements, I decide to step out and explore. Outside, it is a pleasant 22 degrees. As I look around, I see a sign towards the far right, beyond the alighting point for passengers. It reads “Staff Canteen”. I follow the sign. Barely a minute’s walk from the terminal, a little beyond an unauthorised temple where the only attendant is a white goat, is a big peepul tree. Under its shade, there is a make-shift asbestos roof. Below it, with its two sides half open, is the Staff Canteen. A few overhead fans and sad looking tube lights are the only elements of comfort here. The place has a dirty floor. Everything here is makeshift. The furniture is hammered out of welded steel frames with hard laminated surfaces. There are two counters, one selling biscuits, cigarettes, paan and mints. Next to it, beyond the crates with empty bottles of “cool drink”, is the dosa and coffee counter. In another place, a tap is protruding from a heavily stained wall with the sign “drinking water”. Mercifully, no one seems to be drinking out of it. Next to it is the rusting, retired frame of a bench. Currently the resident “Chhotu” of this place is using it to hang the mopping cloth. There are the blackened gas cylinders and assorted utensils here and there. Lord Hanuman looks down on the place from the dirty wall. Alongside the Lord, a State Bank of India calendar and a clock in working condition remind the staff members to get going as soon as they can. Next to all this is an open dustbin where empty water bottles, discarded cellophane wrappers and associated garbage play host to the local flies.This place is a melting pot. The ill-clad Airport Authority employee, the tired Indian Airlines loader, and a shabby traffic cop contrast the pretty Kingfisher and Jet Air ground crew. They are all sitting together for the breakfast they missed at home this morning because they had to report to work at probably 3 or 4 or 5 AM. A transistor radio is blaring some pleasant Telugu music. Quite unmindful of it, the men and women are busy with their food, occasionally getting up to collect their coffee or tea, coming back again to light a cigarette or to quickly return to their stations. Away from the sophistication of the air-conditioned terminal building and a world of induced polite conversation, professional briskness and glamour associated with air-travel, these people look real. I see them come and go, immersed in their own world; the conversation is centered around flights and cargo and schedules and manifests. The Staff Canteen is the only place, despite its current shape and state, that can give them a few moments of relief from their high-stress work place. Why must this Staff Canteen be the way it is? Why could not these men and women eat at the Airport Restaurant that, though not a fantastic place, is certainly better? If we cared enough, I am sure we could find ways and means of making it happen. To me, the stumbling block is a larger, almost national mindset when it comes to dealing with the needs of our people who run our organisations at the ground level. The workplace perpetuates the East India Company syndrome of making a distinction between the people in power and the natives. While the East India Company is long gone, the syndrome lives on. In many an organisation, there still are separate eating places, toilets and parking lots for different levels. Whatever may be the reason, one thing is certain. Unless we treat our people with sensitivity, respect and care, we cannot expect them to extend the same to our customers. People who are raised in darkness do not lead with light. When I was small, my second brother joined the Indian Air Force as an airman. His annual home coming was a big event. The Air Force used to send him on a second-class train warrant. After many years, he eventually became a junior commissioned officer. This time around, when he came home, he alighted from a first-class compartment. Proudly, he announced, “If you want a guy to do a first-class job, get him a first-class ticket.” At the time, I did not fully understand what he was saying. But now, sitting under the peepul tree’s shade, under the cob-webbed asbestos roof of the Staff Canteen, I wonder why no one is telling that to the bosses at the Airport Authority or to the airlines you and I fly in our jet-set world! Source : http://digvijayankoti.blogspot.in/2009/04/subroto-bagchi-speaks-all-articles-by.html