A year since I wrote...literally a year since I jerked those literary senses in my grey cells, if any remain after what has been a crazy year. What inspired this rejuvenation you may wonder...well it was a letter (email - for we have all forgotten how to write letters) to my sister in Boston. Probably the biggest e mail I have written in a very long time apart from the 'e-missiles' I write at work occasionally. When I read, what I wrote, before hitting send...exactly like in the bollywood movies memories of my blog and forgotten fans (if any) came gushing back....and I remembered I had not written in a while...a while that was 'One year WHILE'!!
What took me away from my literary endeavour...probably the only PQ (passion quotient) I have discovered in 31 long years on this planet....was it the struggles of living a life...the chaos called life, as it deserves to be termed and has become in India now.
A step back and I see, 2010 is the year I have traveled the least on work...and this is probably the year I have spent the least time away from Bengaluru, my home city, and is the year with the least time I have spent at home as well! Surprising, yes very surprising to me, shocking in fact....I have spent on an average 12 to 14 hours in a glass box, termed as a comfortable work place - temperature controlled, hi tech seats, phones, cuisines from around the world at subsidised prices, toilets cleaned by the hour, vending machines for magazines to the best beverages on earth, pop corn, boiled corn, roasted corn....and I get paid huge sums for punching keys in a world as this. Why would I want to go home?...OR can I go home?
The fact is, whenever I traveled my wife and I have been lucky to be together on most cases...probably not going to be the case going forward...cause she moved from a company that made her work round the clock, but offered the flexibility of working from anywhere to another of those temperature controlled corporates. This is probably the case of atleast half of the approx 80,00,000 employed by the "corporates" in my country today.
This is not an attack on them...this is not to demean all my colleagues and friends who love working here, this is not to say I hate or despise my job.....Thank GOD for IT and ITES, else even I would probably have been an unemployed Indian for a long time or my brain would have also drained to one of the "First World countries" like my sister's. This article is simple a literary picture of my country today and how it reflects on the lives of common citizens as myself. The STRESS of LIVING is simply gone to crazy proportions of late....lets take the case of a guy who works in a mid size company in a yet to be METRO city like Bengaluru.
Krishna or Krish ....always wished it was my name :-)...an average bloke working in a reputed company...wakes up to the alarm on his cell phone@ 6 AM...its upto his will power now to go for a walk/jog/gym. He has already paid Rs 15,000 to the nearest fancy Gym for a years subscription and who promised will make him look like Hrithik. He turns off the alarm...takes a pee...washes his hand or maybe not....and goes back under the blanket...his self pity of having stayed awake till 2 AM last night puts him back to sleep. He is woken up at 8 by his neighbour's car which plays an annoying noise on reverse gear. Has his cup of tea....hears a jeering comment from a family member that he missed walk/jog/Gym again. Reads the newspaper...which nowadays is best unread to avoid "Morning morning depression". It talks of a chief minister blackmailing the centre leadership that he will wash dirty laundry if they ask him to step down. Next page talks of a fight in Mumbai where 2 neighbours fought over a guest who kept the lift open for too long while they bid farewell....and both landed in hospitals. Next page talks of bollywood affairs...and which movie star's son or daughter got paid 1 crore for the next movie. the next page shows the brilliant performance of Indian sports...and yet being on 8th position among Asian countries....about Captain cool whose team won another cricket match and a dejected sardar with a hockey stick. Krish throws the paper away cause he realized it was already 8:45....and he needed to be in office at 10 and its a 1 hour drive. He rushes to the bathroom...now occupied by his sweet wife who also has to leave at the same time....Krish is now ready at 9:30....skips breakfast and chooses to go by the 2 wheeler to save time. Its a pleasant 29 degrees, but he has to wear a jacket else his shirt is going to be black and dirty by the time he gets to work on his bike. All through the way the top speed he hist is 10 KMPH....flyovers being constructed for traffic capacity of 5 years ago....signal lights turned off and no cops to control the speeding cabbie who forces his way, a driver almost spitting red paint on him....escaping maniacs driving like they are just out of the "Well of Death" in Jumbo circus...he curses sweats under his helmet, barely misses 2 autos, and being run over by public transport...makes it to work by 9:58....as he rushes towards the elevator he finds a huge crowd in front of the lift and his work place is on the 9th floor...too much to climb up and be all sweaty in the meeting. While he waits for his turn...well not turn opportunity to get into an elevator, others who came after him just push him aside and walk ahead into a lift and he has to wait for the next one. God....we need serious lessons in courtesy. Finally on his floor at 9:05...a full 5 mins late....he swipes his badge to open a door and sees a lady behind him so holds the door ajar out of courtesy and she just walks across as if it were her right...."Thank you is probably a good word" is running in Krish's head....and lo, he finds 4 other fellow Indian citizens also walk through the door...turning poor Krish from a manager to a door boy. He finds the meeting room and walks into a dark room...probably a presentation is on he thinks, but finds no one there....so he turns on the light and realizes well the others are late as well...late-r rather. The rest of the day rambles on....his hunger pangs trouble him at 11, so he has a chicken roll....and then Chinese for lunch and then Colombian coffee in the evening....pop corn at 8...and all this while punching keys and speaking accented English on the phone with clients and bosses in other countries. After endless conference calls and emails...he heads home at 9:45...with a report yet to be sent...for which data is to come from another guy who is yet to finish work....reaches home after another forgettable death ride on the road and catches the end of KBC on TV.....a programme he wishes he can see everyday. Finds some food on the table, which he eats as if he were eating it in a jail...cause its simple home food and not the world class cuisine he gets at work....puts on his laptop and again starts punching keys in front of the TV and chatting up with his sweet wife. Finally at 2 AM the couple are ready to sleep....of course sleep, you think after such a tough day you there is any energy left to make babies!! and then the cycle repeats. On Saturdays he is busy catching up on pending work and completing domestic tasks he couldn't do on other days....and so are 1,00,000 Krishs like him doing it on Saturday so every place he goes is crowded as hell, taking an hour to cover 8 KMs on road and so goes all the Saturday plans down the drain. The corrupt official who wants Rs. 2000 to change his house water meter, turns him off since it made him feel helpless. All Krish can think of now is to go home....order in food and have a drink...but then the family wants to go out.....so again it depends on Krish's will power to drag himself....and after the outing again he sleeps at 2 cause he wants to catch up on a movie he missed on the week....so how much of Sunday do you think he sees...well I leave it for you to guess.
Now when I think back....the years when I travelled the most, I spent the most with my wife, cause I got home on time in those countries, never found it stressful to go on holidays or on outings....and always had time for exercises and blogging! Cause the stress of LIVING a LIFE doesn't seem to pull us down but instead inspires us to put more on our job...and that's true...I have got the best reviews on work in other locations....is it because we are so competitive we don't appreciate each other's work...I doubt it, its probably cause I have the ability and opportunity to put in my best.
I don't blame all the millions of NRIs like my sister who wouldn't trade their dear life over there even for an economic downturn, better opportunities in India, missing their families or racism down under....cause life seems to be what happens before and after work. So to every Indian..a humble request to atleast be courteous to each and everyone and atleast smile when you see each other, for that's probably the easiest thing we can do for now else we will continue to see several Krish's giving up and wanting to move out inspite of India being a hotspot today...where a US Prez comes and finds 50K jobs for his country men....I hope our kids...whnever we get the time to make them...see a better India.
What took me away from my literary endeavour...probably the only PQ (passion quotient) I have discovered in 31 long years on this planet....was it the struggles of living a life...the chaos called life, as it deserves to be termed and has become in India now.
A step back and I see, 2010 is the year I have traveled the least on work...and this is probably the year I have spent the least time away from Bengaluru, my home city, and is the year with the least time I have spent at home as well! Surprising, yes very surprising to me, shocking in fact....I have spent on an average 12 to 14 hours in a glass box, termed as a comfortable work place - temperature controlled, hi tech seats, phones, cuisines from around the world at subsidised prices, toilets cleaned by the hour, vending machines for magazines to the best beverages on earth, pop corn, boiled corn, roasted corn....and I get paid huge sums for punching keys in a world as this. Why would I want to go home?...OR can I go home?
The fact is, whenever I traveled my wife and I have been lucky to be together on most cases...probably not going to be the case going forward...cause she moved from a company that made her work round the clock, but offered the flexibility of working from anywhere to another of those temperature controlled corporates. This is probably the case of atleast half of the approx 80,00,000 employed by the "corporates" in my country today.
This is not an attack on them...this is not to demean all my colleagues and friends who love working here, this is not to say I hate or despise my job.....Thank GOD for IT and ITES, else even I would probably have been an unemployed Indian for a long time or my brain would have also drained to one of the "First World countries" like my sister's. This article is simple a literary picture of my country today and how it reflects on the lives of common citizens as myself. The STRESS of LIVING is simply gone to crazy proportions of late....lets take the case of a guy who works in a mid size company in a yet to be METRO city like Bengaluru.
Krishna or Krish ....always wished it was my name :-)...an average bloke working in a reputed company...wakes up to the alarm on his cell phone@ 6 AM...its upto his will power now to go for a walk/jog/gym. He has already paid Rs 15,000 to the nearest fancy Gym for a years subscription and who promised will make him look like Hrithik. He turns off the alarm...takes a pee...washes his hand or maybe not....and goes back under the blanket...his self pity of having stayed awake till 2 AM last night puts him back to sleep. He is woken up at 8 by his neighbour's car which plays an annoying noise on reverse gear. Has his cup of tea....hears a jeering comment from a family member that he missed walk/jog/Gym again. Reads the newspaper...which nowadays is best unread to avoid "Morning morning depression". It talks of a chief minister blackmailing the centre leadership that he will wash dirty laundry if they ask him to step down. Next page talks of a fight in Mumbai where 2 neighbours fought over a guest who kept the lift open for too long while they bid farewell....and both landed in hospitals. Next page talks of bollywood affairs...and which movie star's son or daughter got paid 1 crore for the next movie. the next page shows the brilliant performance of Indian sports...and yet being on 8th position among Asian countries....about Captain cool whose team won another cricket match and a dejected sardar with a hockey stick. Krish throws the paper away cause he realized it was already 8:45....and he needed to be in office at 10 and its a 1 hour drive. He rushes to the bathroom...now occupied by his sweet wife who also has to leave at the same time....Krish is now ready at 9:30....skips breakfast and chooses to go by the 2 wheeler to save time. Its a pleasant 29 degrees, but he has to wear a jacket else his shirt is going to be black and dirty by the time he gets to work on his bike. All through the way the top speed he hist is 10 KMPH....flyovers being constructed for traffic capacity of 5 years ago....signal lights turned off and no cops to control the speeding cabbie who forces his way, a driver almost spitting red paint on him....escaping maniacs driving like they are just out of the "Well of Death" in Jumbo circus...he curses sweats under his helmet, barely misses 2 autos, and being run over by public transport...makes it to work by 9:58....as he rushes towards the elevator he finds a huge crowd in front of the lift and his work place is on the 9th floor...too much to climb up and be all sweaty in the meeting. While he waits for his turn...well not turn opportunity to get into an elevator, others who came after him just push him aside and walk ahead into a lift and he has to wait for the next one. God....we need serious lessons in courtesy. Finally on his floor at 9:05...a full 5 mins late....he swipes his badge to open a door and sees a lady behind him so holds the door ajar out of courtesy and she just walks across as if it were her right...."Thank you is probably a good word" is running in Krish's head....and lo, he finds 4 other fellow Indian citizens also walk through the door...turning poor Krish from a manager to a door boy. He finds the meeting room and walks into a dark room...probably a presentation is on he thinks, but finds no one there....so he turns on the light and realizes well the others are late as well...late-r rather. The rest of the day rambles on....his hunger pangs trouble him at 11, so he has a chicken roll....and then Chinese for lunch and then Colombian coffee in the evening....pop corn at 8...and all this while punching keys and speaking accented English on the phone with clients and bosses in other countries. After endless conference calls and emails...he heads home at 9:45...with a report yet to be sent...for which data is to come from another guy who is yet to finish work....reaches home after another forgettable death ride on the road and catches the end of KBC on TV.....a programme he wishes he can see everyday. Finds some food on the table, which he eats as if he were eating it in a jail...cause its simple home food and not the world class cuisine he gets at work....puts on his laptop and again starts punching keys in front of the TV and chatting up with his sweet wife. Finally at 2 AM the couple are ready to sleep....of course sleep, you think after such a tough day you there is any energy left to make babies!! and then the cycle repeats. On Saturdays he is busy catching up on pending work and completing domestic tasks he couldn't do on other days....and so are 1,00,000 Krishs like him doing it on Saturday so every place he goes is crowded as hell, taking an hour to cover 8 KMs on road and so goes all the Saturday plans down the drain. The corrupt official who wants Rs. 2000 to change his house water meter, turns him off since it made him feel helpless. All Krish can think of now is to go home....order in food and have a drink...but then the family wants to go out.....so again it depends on Krish's will power to drag himself....and after the outing again he sleeps at 2 cause he wants to catch up on a movie he missed on the week....so how much of Sunday do you think he sees...well I leave it for you to guess.
Now when I think back....the years when I travelled the most, I spent the most with my wife, cause I got home on time in those countries, never found it stressful to go on holidays or on outings....and always had time for exercises and blogging! Cause the stress of LIVING a LIFE doesn't seem to pull us down but instead inspires us to put more on our job...and that's true...I have got the best reviews on work in other locations....is it because we are so competitive we don't appreciate each other's work...I doubt it, its probably cause I have the ability and opportunity to put in my best.
I don't blame all the millions of NRIs like my sister who wouldn't trade their dear life over there even for an economic downturn, better opportunities in India, missing their families or racism down under....cause life seems to be what happens before and after work. So to every Indian..a humble request to atleast be courteous to each and everyone and atleast smile when you see each other, for that's probably the easiest thing we can do for now else we will continue to see several Krish's giving up and wanting to move out inspite of India being a hotspot today...where a US Prez comes and finds 50K jobs for his country men....I hope our kids...whnever we get the time to make them...see a better India.
