19 December – The Wednesday Meeting

Yesterday was the “Wednesday Meeting”. (Internet wasn’t working well enough yesterday to post – and that’s another thought, isn’t it?) It used to be the “Friday Meeting” but was changed to Wednesday so the name had to change! This is a meeting of all the staff (though they don’t all attend regularly) and even the part-timers must attend once each month and report.

It was my fourth meeting as I attended on my first week to say Hello and introduce or re-introduce myself to all that staff, many of whom I knew and also many I didn’t. Manuradha from the Registration team was swotting mosquitoes with something that looked like a tennis racket and sparked when she hit one. After the meeting she promised to get me one and a day later I was the proud possessor of a similar device. We still have the smoke sticks, of course, which Nandkishore makes every week or so but they just discourage the mosquitoes and they still come into my room.

There are three particular things that I really like about this meeting:

Firstly, there is no table, apart from a small one in the middle for the chair and secretary, so no barrier between people. It is held in the meeting circle which has a low wall and roof apart from which it is open to the air. So it doesn’t get stuffy.

The only table in the room

 

Second, every member of staff has to chair it at sometime and there is a rota which goes in alphabetic order through the entire staff. And I do mean EVERYONE, from the most junior or least paid to Sathyu. And no matter whomever chairs it, everyone has to indicate they wish to speak and be invited by the chair – even the doctors and Sathyu must follow that guide. And they do, willingly.

Third, it is a very equal meeting. Everyone can have their say and is listened to politely – though conversations can get robust and people upset  when there are disagreements. And people are certainly told when the meeting thinks they should have thought of some aspect they forgot before putting it to the meeting. In the ‘west’ we tend to think always of India being very unequal in terms of women’s rights. Well here they are definitely equal and the really important part of this is that it is quite naturally so. There is no ‘special effort’ to be so. That is just the way everybody acts and behaves.

Maybe some of our business meetings could look at these ideas?

But the mosquitoes seem to know when I have both my hands occupied with a patient and when I have the electronic tennis racquet in my hands. I think they must be highly evolved sensory beings.