 I, good morning, good afternoon, good evening, wherever you are joining us from. My name is Avijit Bhaduri, I am the author of the book Dreamers and Unicorns and I work as a coach. I work with leaders, I work with organizations and I also work in the area of personal branding. This particular series of Dreamers and Unicorns has been focused entirely in the area of mental well-being, well-being in general in the workplace. And one of the things that has fascinated me is that how prevalent the challenges are and how little is done about, anything is done about it. So today we are going to talk to you about one dimension where the statistic itself was staggering. And the statistic was that, let me share this with you, that every single day, women put in 3.26 billion hours, that's with a B, 3.26 billion hours of unpaid work, that's right. What would you feel like if you put on work which is not only not paid for but which is not appreciated? And yet it is vital. So if you think about any of these challenging times that when we are going through it, we often think about the people who are supporting us the most and they are the ones who are least acknowledged. But today I have for you a person who has been doing work in this particular space and she has been really trying to build this organization and not from now but for the last three years and maybe not take away the surprise. So let's just get started. Hi there Bhavna, welcome to the show. Thank you. Thank you so much. I am so delighted to have you here. Bhavna is the founder and CEO of Caregiver Sati. We will talk about what Caregiver Sati does. But I want to first introduce the audience to who Bhavna is. And so who is Bhavna, tell me about that. So I remember the day when I was introducing myself, I used to find there have been many occasions to introduce myself and I have to say it's been really hard for two reasons. One is that I don't like to be put in a box. So I think one description might not be enough. So the other is I have often wondered what would I describe myself as that I would feel good about. And one day while introducing myself when I said that I'm a restless soul, it just kind of landed very well. And I think that's really fundamental for me. There is some restless energy about me. I think I am a passionate person who has very diverse interests. I like to dabble in a varied set of things. So people are often surprised that why from motorcycling to crocheting to whatever else. So I think that's a good place to start. Okay. And I know that you are also in the Limca Book of Records. What is that for? So in 2015, seven of us women went to the highest motorable road, Manapas, which is at the Indo-Tibetan-Chinese border. And the fact that it was the first group of women to scale that height gave us the Limca Book of Records. On a motorbike? On a motorcycle, yes. Oh, wow. All right. So I'm just trying to, you know, the general stereotype is that biking is typically, most places, you know, is a male activity. And when did you first ride the bike for the first time? Okay. So the story is this that, you know, when I was growing up, my father was in the Air Force and we used to have a scooter. And you know, the right of passage to be an adult was if your, if, you know, Papa would give me his scooter to ride. And it was almost like he's trusting me with his vehicle. And like a good fogey, he was quite clear about, you know, the hoops that you have to cross. So I had to prove to him that not only could I put the scooter on stand and take it off and repair it and all of that before I could ride it and get a license. So I think a two-wheeler riding, the first one was my dad's scooter. And I rode that during my college days. You know, when I was in Excel, which is our alma mater, you remember, the shopping place was a little distant and, you know, you needed to go there. And one of the leverages that the guys in the batch would have is that those who had bikes. So, you know, they could, they could interest the women to take them to the marketplace on their bikes. And me being the person that I am, I said, you know, I don't want to ride William with you. Just lend me a bike. And, well, motorcycle owners are rather possessive, but I did have a couple of very dear classmates who indulged in me and said, So Excel is the place where I first rode a motorcycle and I just felt that it was hardly any different from a scooter that I was used to. So that was mine. Thanks. And so today we are talking to Bhavna Isar. And she's the CEO and founder of Caregiver Saathi. And this is, you know, season three of Dreamers and Unicorns is really focused on well-being in the workplace. And we are delighted to be partnering with Mana Wellness, which is one of the agencies, which is doing some really pioneering work with a number of organizations and individuals in terms of well-being. So thank you so much for joining us. And if you have any questions for Bhavna, do feel free to add them into the chat box and we will bring them up and, you know, do tell us who you are and tell us where you are joining us from. So back to the conversation that we were having Bhavna. So after Excel, what did you do? It couldn't have been Caregiver Saathi because this is a three-year-old venture. What happened after Excel arrived? You did the usual thing of going in for an MBA and then did you start working somewhere? What did you do? Or do you start something on your own to talk to me about that? So just to bring the previous conversation to an end, what came to me just now was that maybe the first time that I rode a motorcycle was before I was born or was it about to be born. So the story is that my parents decided to go for a month-long honeymoon to the Uttarakhand Hills, the Kumao Hills on a Royal Enfield. And I often pull my mother's leg saying that it is quite possible that I was conceived on that trip. So my love for motorcycles may have started at that point. So, well, that said, I actually studied to be a coder. I was a software person in college and there was just too much peer pressure or probably the phase of our life to be financially independent and the latest thing those days was doing an MBA. And well, everybody on campus was taking the MBA exam and so did I and landed up in XLRI. And I was at a point in my life where having a job was important and earning a living was important. And so I did, I joined Pepsi from campus and worked in a variety of organizations in various HR and HR related roles until last in 2011 when I was at Castrol and and I just felt that life is passing me by and maybe I hit upon my midlife crisis. I felt I must find the purpose of my life. Why do I exist and how can I be meaningfully contributing before it is too late? Is there a contradiction that on one hand there is a restless soul and then you want to find your purpose and sort of stabilize around the purpose and get guided by it? Is there a contradiction in that? Actually, there's not a contradiction. The story is this that, you know, when I was in XL and a few years before that, my dad had a terminal illness. He had a neurological condition that was really rare. And as a family, we had to grapple with that condition. And I think that for me who kind of took the role of being the elder child, I kind of took the responsibility of being the elder son kind of a little psychologically speaking. And, you know, I just felt it was my responsibility to help anchor the family after the trauma that we went through. So I think, and I have been deliberating about this for a while, but I think somewhere I made some meanings. And one of the meanings that I made was that life is unpredictable. My dad was rather fit and, you know, he was a pilot in the Air Force and he just had that illness and suddenly our life turned around. So life is unpredictable. So I think my restlessness might be partly contributed to by that as well. And because of the unpredictability, I think my dad was 54 when he passed. And I just felt that you don't know how much life you have. And what if I hit my 40s and I don't have the time to do what I really want to do? And I just needed to recalibrate and do what I want to do. And not just be the, you know, be the person who is doing a job, providing financially and the regular stuff. How can I make my life meaningful and purposeful? So this is in some sense almost like, you know, moving into a higher calling, so to say, you know, or is this something that already exists in each one of us and we are just not aware of it? Well, how do you describe it? I have been undergoing my internship and personal development journey with Sumedha's. And I have often spoken about how, in a particular lab and a personal growth lab with Raghu, who has been a very, very significant mentor to me, asked a question as to how will you lead Adharmic life? And Adharmic life is one that is aligned with the purpose or your personal experience. And I think my life experience of having been somebody who experienced my dad's illness fairly early was the one that popped up the biggest for me. One of the other things was that my grandparents had relocated from what is now Pakistan. So we don't have an ancestral home to go back to. So if I were to apply my education and professional experience and say, let's say go back to my ancestral home and do good for others who are not so privileged, we didn't have one such home. So I had to find some place where I could make meaning. And I felt that, you know, one of the definitions of the Harmic life is if you can go beyond your personal suffering and make the world a better place for others who might have similar experience. So if my life experience had been that of being a caregiver or a caregiver to a caregiver in the case of a terminal illness, then how is it that I can leverage my academics and professional experience and make it a different experience for others who might be faced with similar circumstances. So that was my apologies, please continue. But that was my Harmic question and I just think that I don't know. I think that everybody has, you know, there are different roles to be played and there are different calling at different stages of one's life. And to quote Raghur again, being a householder and being a, you know, living an everyday life is an important part of our existence as well. So I suppose that I don't know. I don't know if there is a higher calling for everyone or not. It is my higher calling or not. So one, you know, you mentioned something interesting which was that you talked about being the caregiver to a caregiver. So in some sense, a second one once removed. It's like being a second cousin to someone. So from that zone of, in some sense, being a caregiver, but from a greater distance from the source, do you think that is something all of us can leverage and build on? Or is this, you know, is there a different way to become a caregiver? Define caregiving for me. I mean, is it that we all look after, you know, each other in the family? So in that sense is everyone a caregiver is, you know, how do you define that? So at one level, you're absolutely right. We are all caregivers. Caregiver is someone who provides physical, emotional, psychological, financial or social care. Yeah. Now you could be providing care, which is you could be the primary caregiver who is, you know, helping the person with daily activities. And therefore, you know, you are, you are physically helping that person. Now you could be someone who's a family member or you could be someone who's doing this professionally. So a caregiver could be somebody who gets paid for doing this, like a nurse or an attendant or a doctor or a helper of some kind. And you could be a person who is mentally occupied with the act of providing care and is not necessarily physically doing it. So in corporates, for example, a large number of people are what we call long distance caregivers. Right. What does that mean? That means that my parents live in another city. I care for them. I provide emotional and it takes my mental bandwidth to care for my parents who live in another city. This is almost like telemedicine. Well, I think I might want to, I might worry about their safety and security. I might worry about emergency circumstances. I might worry about, you know, whether or not certain checks need to be done. We need to visit them, etc., etc., depending on the age and stage that they are at. So I saw myself as a caregiver to the caregiver for a very long time because my mother was the primary caregiver. In the early days of my career, my parents were based in Gurgaon and I was posted in various other locations. And I saw my role as that of providing support and care to my mother who was doing the everyday tasks. Actually, interestingly, it was only much later that as I was doing a lot of work in this area that I, you know, one day my mother turned around and said, don't you see that you are a caregiver too? So I was a caregiver to my dad, that is true. But I was also the caregiver to the primary caregiver, which my mother was. Which is tougher to be a caregiver or to support another caregiver? Which way is it? It really depends on your personality. So my mother has the personality. She likes to be in the thick of things. She is in the arena. She likes to be at the center of where the action is. So for a person like her, perhaps, you know, being a primary caregiver, she will do the cleaning, the taking care of, you know. So it's a personality thing. Whereas I'm probably the organizer, the person who will look at the bigger picture, who can, you know, do outside chores, etc. So maybe I'm better suited as the caregiver to the caregiver or a well-wisher of a caregiver because caregivers also need caregivers. Caregivers need support systems. They are not super human beings much as they would like to believe they are. And, you know, what I have seen in my own experience of this is the caregiver is very often, you know, the emotional draining of, you know, what it does. I mean, you also, the metaphor I'd like to use is when the car runs out of fuel, you go to the fuel pump, you know, the petrol pump, you go there and get refueled. But the petrol pump itself also needs to be refueled if it needs to continue to provide fuel to the others. So in that sense, it is just as demanding for somebody who's a caregiver to be also nourished back in some sense. Emotionally, it does need that whole process. Quite often, I've seen that we assume that the person is strong enough to give the care and therefore doesn't need anything more than, you know, an occasional pat on the back or, you know, sympathy to say that, oh my God, must be so tough and demanding for you. What has been your experience like? See, we live in a society where caregiving has been played out in a certain way. So there are two, three aspects to it actually. The first one is that caregiving is presented to us through stories and through narratives that say that, you know, there is a certain format of caregiving that is ideal. We are fed on stories of Shravan Kumar, Savitri, what have you, which kind of epitomizes caregiving and that is caregiving to the extent that you sacrifice yourself. Either you sacrifice yourself and give up your life for caring or, you know, you have these supernatural powers that you can bring back the person from the dead. Now, there is a certain attributing of nobility to the task and maybe it was right at a certain time. The second thing is, so, for example, a large number of people will say things like, it's an honor to look after the people who brought us up and, you know, there are all kinds of things that are fed to people. The second piece is the gender stereotypes. So, for example, you know, mothers are like this, women wear capes, women are better nurturers, women can multi-task so they can do jobs and do this, you know, if you need someone to provide emotional intelligence in a team, women are a good thing to have because it's just fundamentally a stereotype which is not necessarily restricted only to women. So that's the second part. The third part is that world over and especially in India, we haven't really understood the mental work, the emotional labor that care-related work requires. To go back to the statistic that you quoted, 3.26 billion hours of work, unpaid care work, is done by women and girls in India. And that's not even a word. It is from the Oxfam 2020. No. And in India, that number is truly staggering. 3.26 billion hours, truly staggering number of unpaid work and in many cases we also take it for granted. That's right. So you see, look at our homes, for example, a large number of first men can go about doing their jobs and come back to a cozy, belonging, comforting home that replenishes them because someone is doing, making sure that the meals are in place, the food is, the house is clean, the things are taken care of, even if it is done through health. Somebody is getting it done. And then now increasingly even women. So when women go out to work, they have to rely on either other women, mothers and mothers-in-law and whoever else, or we rely on women and girls from the lower income strata of society. So the whole economy is actually standing on the unpaid care work that is done in the very basic social unit of a family. And I think that the fact that it takes something to organize that, provide that infrastructure is mental work, can cause exhaustion and therefore can cause depletion or whatever. And the second part you may have heard of the placebo effect when someone is unwell, the manner in which the care provider offers the medicine can actually be healing. Now that person who is giving the sweet pill has to be in a certain sense of well-being to be able to care for the person who is ailing. And for that person to have that sense of well-being, many other things should be in place. So if for example, the main provider of the home is unwell and the primary caregiver is caring for that person and is worried about kalka khaana kaha se aayega yaa hum bachon ki school fees kaise pay karenge, then that person is unlikely to have that sense of well-being to care for that person. And that stress sometimes can be for a very long period of time. And chronic stress causes a variety of mental health issues. This is also the biggest reason that women fall off the workforce because they are the primary care providers in the home units. So a large number of women have told me that yeh wali job do humari jaayegi nahi. You know what you are really referring to is that the structure in which you know so as for those those of us who have joined in late into this conversation, I'm talking to Bhavna Isar, the founder and CEO of Caregiver Sati. And we are really talking about this whole concept of caregiving. We talked about the fact that caregiving is part of every culture that is there. And in our culture, the Indian culture, it is looked at farthest through stories, narratives, mythological or otherwise. And there are lots of examples where the person who's done that is nodded and you kind of say that, okay, that person has sacrificed his or her life for you and the purpose of caregiving, either to your immediate family members or to a whole bunch of people who are getting impacted by this whole process. So it could be that you have a family member who's disabled. You could have a family member who's disabled in many ways. You're either a long-term illness or there could be an elderly person who needs looking after. So for a multiple set of reasons, we are looking at a scenario where people and during the pandemic, so many people have had to deal with this scenario where there's a financial insecurity. We don't know whether the role is going to be there. So many people have been put off from the workforce. The employers have taken them off the roads. So the anxiety of, and we don't even know when this pandemic is going to end, you think it's ending and then something else happens. And with this entire thing, how do you really think about the importance of caregiving and what does that really do? And how are we trying to solve the problem? So I want to sort of now talk about how do we solve this? So what does caregiver Sati do? I mean, what is it that you're trying to solve for? What's the problem you're trying to solve for? The problem that I'd like to solve for is that the unpaid care related work is dignified and valued. A large number of times it is invisible and taken for granted. And we value the work that brings in money. And over a period of time, see, there was a time when gendered roles were deeply seated in our society, patriarchal or whatever. And there was a nice predictable way of running a society. Over a period of time, we have started taking this position that gendered roles is not necessarily the right thing. Because everybody should have a choice and be able to explore their own potential. And everybody has a variety of potential. For example, men can be caregivers. Men can do a large number of things or women can ride motorcycles or whatever. And if we have to allow for that, then something else has to change in the equation. So if we have to allow for women to explore their individual potential, which could be masculine or feminine or which could be in any realm, then equally, men need to be able to recognize that they have to share the load that a family unit or an organizational team or a society requires emotional labor. Through the industrial age, we have recognized an appreciated physical labor. Through the knowledge era, we have started appreciating intellectual labor and we started valuing it. However, we are still blind to emotional labor. Look at the job of a customer service executive, a waiter, someone who is providing you a service or an experience. There is physical work, there might be some intellectual work, but there is a significant emotional labor which not many people understand. You and I have been in the HR function for the longest and we know that there is an expectation from HR4 that you will be present. I should be able to come and talk to you at all points in time, for example. But what about the times that I'm depleted? What about the times that I don't have the bandwidth? What about the times that I need someone? In some organizations, you have this concept of HR4HR. What is that? That you cannot have a one-way flow and you need to recognize that any work has multiple aspects and the emotional labor aspect is an amorphous idea yet. It is not something that we have been able to dignify, quantify or value. Now, consulting or therapy, how will you value that work? There is an element of the number of hours of work that you put in. There is an element of your intelligence, your experience, your exposure that makes you different. But there is an X factor that makes some people better than others. That X factor is that presence, that engagement, that sense of connection, that emotional labor. I kind of like the way you described it as this being sort of some kind of a phase. The industrial era valued physical labor. So in some sense, hands were the primary element of it. So tangible stuff, which you can see, count, feel. And a lot of that hangover is still there in the corporate world. So which is why there's this whole obsession that if you can't measure it, you can't see it and you can't feel it, ignore it. It doesn't matter. In fact, there are lots of corporations which make a virtue of this and say, if it can't be measured, ignore it. And then you kind of would look at the evolution as computers started to sort of become more mainstream, move from the hands to the head. And sort of say that this is the era of the head where intellectual work, knowledge worker, we started celebrating that. So from blue collar work, we sort of moved to the white collar workforce and started that becoming important. And then kind of see a scenario where whether it is blue collar workforce or the white collar workforce, both of them for different set of reasons sometimes, they need emotional support, they need the whole notion of well-being, whether it's physical well-beings, mental well-being, relationships or the spiritual well-being for a variety of reasons, it needs to be addressed. So we are, I think, moving from the notion of a blue collar workforce and a white collar workforce to what I would term as a red collar workforce that it's the heart. Interesting thing. Yes, absolutely. So it is the time when we should be looking at the emergence of the red collar workforce, which is going to be really providing the emotional support of it. And you can pick the color that you think more appropriately represents it. But to me, that is what it is. And a lot of it has to do with the fact that the intangible factors are becoming more important. And I've mentioned this multiple times in my show that we are living in a time where the intellectual capability, the IP of the company, the brand, the leadership bench, all of this actually provides and makes up 90% of the firm's value. So when you look at things which you can't measure and count, I mean design, a firm makes a product which has a beautiful design and you're attracted to it, that actually has a significant impact on the firm's value. So you have to start valuing things which you can't measure and count. So you kind of say that, okay, so this is a great design, says we have to get past that mindset that if I don't know how to measure it, that means it's unimportant. And I think caregiving is in that zone. So have I got a sort of accurate summary of what you wanted to say? Yes, and I think well articulated. You know, you would have found this and when you do your work that a large number of people say organizational culture is something. Now that culture is created by a feel of the place. How do you measure the culture of a place and compare it with another place? So you need structures, you need policies and practices, you need capabilities of people and products and leaders and whatever else. But you also need that X factor of how it comes together, that culture that will make sure that innovation happens, that culture that makes people feel safe, that culture that allows for newer boundaries to be explored. And that can happen when people have a sense of belonging which is emotional labor or which is the emotional setting or the care. So in some ways, for example, for the longest people have said people leave, you know, people join and they leave their managers, right? What does the manager do? That manager could do the 12 points of the Gallup, whatever Q12 for engagement, but still there is something that is, you know, that person cares for you. You know that even if that, you know, like my manager has been harsh with me, I will still live with it. But then I know that, you know, this person cares for me and has my best interest. I trust that person. You can give me the worst rating, you can give me whatever, but I will stay because I have that feeling that I'm valued coming to care. Now that's the care at the workplace. But as individuals in our family units, the care related work tends to get relegated to women, or increasingly now men take on the responsibility of caregiving as well. But it creates a tension, especially in the sandwich generation. Because on one side, you have growing up children who have a variety of other needs. On the other side, you have aging parents or maybe someone who's unwell, and you might be in the middle of senior leadership and therefore having work related responsibilities as well. So the sandwich generation gets triangulated actually. That can cause a very significant mental health challenge for many people. What does it do to people? You know, you've seen this up front and very closely. What does it do to people, you know, managing the stress of work at home, you know, in the office, or now actually it's worse now because that work has also moved to the home. And then you of course have your younger kids growing up, you know, they have their demands. And then you have uncertainty of multiple kinds, you know, in the air. And how do you address that? And what does it do to people? What have you seen? You know, this is an example that I give very often, which is that holding a glass of water could be something that you can do for 20 minutes. But if I were to ask you, can you hold the same glass of water for two hours? Maybe. Can you hold it for two days? What if you have to stand on one leg to hold that glass of water? What if you are in a desert and you have to hold that same glass of water? So that responsibility or that stress or that glass of water is not necessarily different. However, there is that individual, the context in which that person is the capability, right? Can I shift my hand from one to the other? Can I shift one leg to the other? Can I shift the environment? So there is a context, there is the individual, and then there is the task that has to be done. So stress over a very long period of time when unaddressed can cause a variety of issues. There is something called caregiver stress that is documented as a phenomena. There is something called caregiver depression. There's a very strong correlation with caregiving responsibilities leading to issues like survivors' guilt, PTSD and things like that. What is survivors' guilt? Survivors' guilt is the feeling that I shouldn't have survived that experience or that incident or between the two of us. Why did I survive and the other person? So it's usually certainly with in people who have been in war, conflict, etc. But it could also be with illnesses. So between just like two soldiers from the same battalion, they go across one gets killed in war. So the guilt that the survivor feels, that's what you're describing as survivor guilt. That's right. Why did I survive? Why was I not the one who got impacted by this? In partners, for example, let's say one person is very unwell and one person falls ill, the other person can have this feeling that why did this happen? Why did this not happen to me? And in many cases, for example, I relate with it a lot. For example, I felt for the longest that what is it that I could have done that my dad didn't die young? Now, I know in my aware cognitive self that I did my best. But that experience, the meanings that I have made as a child or as an adolescent, sometimes stay unexplored and have an impact on your well-being. And survivor's guilt is definitely one. This is trauma, right? And illness in the family, long-term illness, watching people that have incurable conditions that are aging that you can't do anything about. So for example, COVID, we were all so helpless for so many people. Even those who had access to medical resources were simply helpless. That is trauma. And that will have a long tail on people. There were so many organizations that we did work with who said, my colleague was here and is not there now. I don't know what to do. My manager I was working with is now gone. Now, there is the presence of the grief in that loss and the unpredictability of life. And that can make you extra vigilant, that can make you nervous, that can make you anxious. And all these are mental health issues. And I don't know about you, but at least me, I certainly felt compassion fatigue as well. We all do. When you're talking about COVID, think about the fact that collectively, the whole world, we kind of initially win this whole thing of, oh, you've got to stay at home because there's some contagious illness, which has come to this mysterious illness. Nobody knew what it was. From there, you really start to say that, okay, maybe this is going to take not a week or 10 days, but maybe I think it's going to take a month. And you kind of readjust your timeframe mentally. And then you kind of say that, no, I think from what it looks like, your rate could be six months. And that itself is, you experience a self of helplessness, fatigue, and you kind of say, oh my God, how will I do this for six months? And the uncertainty, the stress, the health condition, the news of people going away and getting impacted in multiple ways. There's fatigue. And even this whole notion that I sometimes found that, especially in the second wave, that there were so many people who I knew, my loved ones, who were impacted, that at some point of time, you kind of feel that you've become numb. You know, there are colleagues and friends who've passed away. There are my relatives passed away. We sort of look at all that and you sometimes say that you don't actually feel anything because you're seeing it every single day. You know, this one hurt, this one gone, this one passed away. So the first time it happens, there's shock and there's grief. And the second time also to a lesser and then it's sort of your immune system kicks in. And you really think that, so have I stopped caring? Or is it that, you know, I'm feeling that, gosh, you know, I'm not feeling the same degree of guilt, you know, and that I think is really what can be terrible. So yeah, those are all things that people experience. So numbness is a coping mechanism, right? Yeah, I don't want to feel the pain. It is extremely painful. I am experiencing loss and I am experiencing pain or I can experience pain. And this is, I believe that, you know, I coped with my sense of grief through numbing myself. And many people do that. And that is very impactful for that is very impactful or an issue in organizations. So for example, if managers have compassion fatigue and or they have compartmentalized people and they say, you know, our emotions of personal life. How will you get the fullness of the person? How will you get the the innovative part of the person? How will you get the caring part of the person? How will you get that culture that you want to build of humanness, connection, etc. So, but numbing will happen also because people will want to compartmentalize and people will want to cope. And, you know, this is this is how we all cope. And, you know, one of the things that our viewer, Abha Sengar Joshi has asked this question that is there a way to prepare? I'm going to bring that question up on the screen. So is there a way to prepare people for dealing with the inevitable role of life along the way? I mean, and most people seem to be quite unprepared for it emotionally financially and physically. So what is the way to prepare people? What do we do about it? See, one of the things that we have invested a lot and I will go back again to that whole need of industry and economy and therefore we have invested a lot in our physical capacities and our intellectual capacities. One of the things that we have not invested in is our intuition and our emotion, our emotional intelligence and our capacity to care and be human. And perhaps it might be worthwhile for us to build sensitivity and build compassion and be able to deal with, you know, life's uncertainties, for example. Now that requires building the muscle for emotional capacity. Through our education system and through our professional lives, we build our intellectual capacity. We build our, you know, perhaps our physical capacity, but maybe secondary to intellectual capacity. But we don't invest. And I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that we in our mind and in many places I've seen that we sort of place intellectual capacity at the highest level. That's very smart person, very analytical, very logical. And we sort of look at it with a sense of awe. But a very caring person. Yeah, it's nice. But then it's somewhere, you know, in the hierarchy, it's the second rung that we look at. You know, and maybe at the same level as what where we place blue collar work. So I think the red collar work has a long way to go. Before it gets acknowledged and without doing that, I think it's going to be increasingly difficult for people to address the kind of impact that we've seen on mental health challenges and well-being in general. You know, people are unable to step out of home. So it has impacted their physical health, mental health, multiple things. See, the other thing is that, yes, there is a hierarchy to intelligences, right? There is the cognitive intelligence gets, you know, gets valued in a certain way because it is directly, it gets monetized very easily. And measured. Sorry. And measured also. And measured also, right? So we have evolved our ways of doing that. Our physical labor also we can now, you know, work with that. Now, empathy or connection or, you know, being able to relate with people is valued. You ask anyone, close your eyes and think of your role model, the person that you would like to have at your bedside at any point when you're in your last days. Think of that person that you want to cherish and honor. Who will that person be? It will not be the most intelligent person that you knew in your life. It will be the person who saw you for who you are. It'll be the person who made a connection with you, who valued you and who gave you the space to be who you are. And I think of managers that I value and love and remember with a lot of regard. It isn't the brightest of people. I have met really, really bright people, but they don't. They will not be the people that I want to at least, you know, so I think what we really need to do is to recognize that empathy, having a sense of human connection is a fundamental skill competence aspect of a person. It gets honed and it gets built in the family unit, depending on the type of experience that you have. Those individuals who are unidimensional and only career people make a certain kind of managers and leaders. Those people who have lived full lives, who have had connections, who build relationships, also bring that to the workplace. And they build a certain type of a culture and a certain kind of outcome at the workplace as well. Those are the managers that people stay with longer. Those are the managers that people want to work with. And even when you are not necessarily working in the same organization or you're not working, I mean, the relationship continues. It's no longer transactional. So you're so spot on that, you know, the people with whom it could be analytically very sharp, etc. I mean, then there is a certain transactional nature to that relationship. Whereas people who are emotionally, you know, very sensitive and people with whom you connect, that relationship stays, you know, I would say forever or whatever, you know, it really stays in your, in yourself, you sort of continue with it. And it's very, very powerful because that's the authentic connection. So in some sense, the human to human connection. You know, we did some research and people who have been caregivers and who have contended with helplessness, who have contended with helping children walk, make the best managers. So for example, a manager is expected to break down the task, allow for fumbling, allow for learning to walk. And a parent who has invested that time is likely to be able to allow for that space in the team as well. Because you've experienced what it takes to learn to walk and, you know, you bring that sort of time to wobble. So I wrote a piece in my LinkedIn newsletter where I talked about, you know, wobbling is your superpower. And, you know, and therefore, you know, some of the things that I've spoken about grief, for instance, you know, we believe that grief is only when somebody passes away, that it's grief. But grief in the workplace comes from a hundred other sources. You know, for example, you know, you are expecting a certain kind of a, you know, role and it doesn't come your way. There's grief, but we can't talk about it because it's looked at as being petty. Yeah. Or, you know, something you work very well with the person, the person leaves. And, you know, you experience grief or the person is asked to go. You know, sometimes it has happened that, and that's one of the things culturally, you know, it's fascinating how that is changing certainly in the society around us in India. I noticed that change, that there used to be a point of time when, let's say, somebody has been asked to go for performance reasons or something. The relationship with the organization still continues and the friends and colleagues still stay in touch and, you know, the person comes in and sort of connects because performance is not the only measure of that person. But increasingly, I find that when, you know, people, they are asked to go, it is the end of their connection with the organization and their colleagues. You know, so it's almost as if, you know, you've lost the right to socially connect with those colleagues. So I think that's a very unfortunate part of where we are going. Abhijeet, what has happened is that increasingly in many organizations, people have become instruments of performance. And if you are going to look at people as resources, as talent that needs to be acquired, as instruments of performance, there is a dehumanizing of the person. And by recognizing the variety of roles that a person plays, the person is not just an instrument of performance in the organization. The person is a parent, a son, a daughter, whatever else, in their family system. And they are a citizen of the country, of the society, etc. So they are a whole person with their, you know, idiosyncrasies and warts and whatever else. And until we can see them for all that they are, we might actually never explore the dark quadrant of the Johari window, so to speak, for that person. Absolutely. And, you know, so there have been so many comments that people, you know, people have mentioned that the ability to be human, to be able to wobble, unless you are comfortable with your own wobbling, unsureness, you don't tolerate it anybody else. So I think the caregiving that you are doing, you know, the organization that you're building and the vision that you have, I'm supremely impressed by that Bhavna. I must say that, you know, the board I've spoken to you about your own, you know, desire to make something happen, not just talk about it. It's extremely exemplary. And I wish you all the luck and all the power and all the resources that, and I hope that there will be a point of time when in every city there will be an organization like Caregiver Sati, which, you know, is there for all of us to reach out and connect. Because the complexity of our life is such that I think it's becoming harder and harder for people to manage everything by themselves to handle life alone. You know, so loneliness is an issue and grief is an issue and there are so many things that I think we haven't been able to. That's right. I think the important thing that I'd like to say is that workplaces are really potent spaces for social change. Organizations have, are an integral part of society and organizations not only have the power, they also have the responsibility, call it the fiduciary responsibility of creating social change. It is the purpose of the organization is to, if for example, organizations are going to encourage women to come to the workplace at different stages of their lives, I think organizations can play a big part in becoming caregiver friendly workplaces because it is not just women, increasingly both men and women will have to integrate being a caregiver. And I cannot agree more with you and I hope that all the people who are listening, who are in the position to influence that change, you know, are going to be doing that. I wanted to say thanks to Mana Wellness for helping us along in this journey and building this awareness on well-being in the workplace. Bhavna, thank you so much for spending time and chatting with us and I certainly feel that, you know, it's built in me a big takeaway is that the people who we care about are the ones who are really caregivers. So and for me, the other hallmark of this conversation was I think the shift from the blue collar work in the industrial workplace to, you know, intellectual work. And now perhaps it's the time for, you know, from that white collar job to the red collar jobs of the caregivers. So good luck with your dream and thank you so much for being here.