Getting used to the powerpuffs
Blossom, Bubbles and Buttercup were three kindergarten-aged girl with superpowers. They lived in Townsville with their creator scientist named Professor Utonium, and were frequently called upon by the city’s mayor to help fight nearby criminals and other enemies using their superpowers. Made up of sugar, spice and everything nice, and—the mysterious substance called ‘chemical X’, never before had their world experienced these three Powerpuff girls. Imagine these pint-sized titans of justice, showing up for their first day at the kindergarten. Cute ? Sure. Intimidating for the milk-moustache wearing classmates ? Hardly. That’s how it feels for many of us entering the world of Sarkari offices, especially the uniformed divisions.
Needless to say anybody was hardly ready to witness and rhythm along with the powerpuff girls. Sure, most people will trip over themselves to help, but there's always a delightful mix of shyness (remember that new officer who launched a full-scale CCTV check drive by merely asking for their number), novelty (guess what she will wear on formal Fridays), and the ever-present, lack of a precedent awkwardness (cue conversations that inexplicably veer off course and land on the weather patterns of your town). These subtleties may not be city-crushing villains, but for a new arrival, they're like kryptonite in sensible shoes.
One of the first wisdom nuggets I was given by a senior was to try not to be friendly towards the office, lest they do not take you seriously. On the other hand, “royal” officers (you already imagined a man) often rule the roost for being kind, granting leaves, joking around their staff and celebrating festivals with them—all safely presumed as generous. Is it that a woman being friendly, even if it’s her mere nature, sends a signal that she’s the soft-skills-type and only knows these things ? Is it any wonder a woman's natural friendliness is mistaken for a lack of gravitas ? Perhaps it’s the sugar, spice and everything nice that suppresses the Chemical X ? Or maybe they’re simply petrified that friendly women will unleash their ultimate weapon: getting things done with an alarming lack of drama.
Be that as it may, women entering uniformed offices is very similar to a butterfly entering the beehive. Sure, the bees mostly mean well, but the hive is not exactly designed to welcome, much less accommodate a butterfly.
This is not to say that no female officers exist and somehow we are the pioneers. The propensity of a woman having sat on your chair before is mostly increasing. But, there is still a greater probability that uniformed government offices will welcome their very first female post-holders in the coming years. A woman might grace a post for a glorious two years, only to be followed by a decade of beard and bread reign led my men. These statistical truths obstruct the lasting of systems prepared by women for women, and hence these systems disappear on the last working day of your female officer. This revolving door situation wreaks havoc on any female-friendly systems a brave pioneer might implement.
Think office chairs—those hulking leather monstrosities designed for giants, not for a woman to ever hope of getting her feet comfortably on the ground. You finally convince them to swap it for a cute, swivel chair that does offer some lumbar support. But the day you leave? Back to the Iron Throne (chair) it goes. Nobody remembers why the tiny chair even exists.
The curtain and air freshener you heroically installed in the office restroom? It will vanish in the bureaucratic Bermuda Triangle the day you depart. Gone faster than a plate of kaju-katlis at Diwali, when the office linen will also be removed for cleaning. The next female officer who will come many years later will probably use the spare towel or her dupatta to cover the windows a few times before wondering how a man never has to think twice on these things. The staff’s memories of your fragrant revolution will evaporate faster than that suspiciously potent air freshener.
While the tailor who stitches gents’ formals is a frequent visitor and the nearby barber is well-versed with how previous saheb liked his hair cut, you will have to scourge the town on your own for a ladies tailor and a salon. And you will hardly ever have the time for that so you will most likely keep dilly-dallying. Here’s the kicker: even if you do find a tailor who can handle a woman’s blazer without turning it into a potato sack, by the time the next female officer arrives, everyone will have forgotten about him faster than yesterday’s daily report.
While all the officers in your mess can keep their rooms unlocked and keys with the security, you, the sole lady officer, do not have this luxury. Your room gets cleaned only when you have the space to delay reaching the office by an hour. You wish there was a female attendant, but even if she were there, she would be quite free when you leave except when another female successor arrives. Basically, your presence is like a blip on the security radar—a brief moment of heightened vigilance before things settle back into their usual forms.
Your male counterparts are so oblivious to these state of existences that they often end up either being indifferent or being patronising—mostly the two extremes. After all, how could it strike them that a woman’s mind might be consumed by one singular thought for at least three whole days a month: how to avoid a crimson patch on their light-coloured uniform pants ? Field work days turn into tactical missions, filled with covert glances at the wrist watch and strategically placed white pouches. You'll witness impromptu dashes to the nearest restaurant restroom, a sudden obsession with “highly important paperwork” held suspiciously behind her back, and a facial expression that could curdle milk. Light-coloured uniforms might look sharp, but they become a ticking time bomb during period patrols.
These quirks sound unique, but all the girls go through these at least a few times in their lifetimes before experience gets them sharper. It’s like climbing the Mount Everest in a sari—a whole lot of figuring things out on the fly. Yet, there is always a level of fun involved in moving things around to establish your systems. You think, you ask, you learn, you write down for the future. You make people feel awkward and you make them smile more often than you trouble them. This whole “acclimatising the system to a female boss” thing, it’s a marathon, not a sprint. You do it today, you do it tomorrow and we will keep doing these until the presence of women across professions becomes proportionate to their population. The powerpuffs are after all, frequently called upon for important stuff.