At the end of the day… there is night. And that is all there is at the end of the day.

It was there somewhere up ahead. I couldn’t see it yet, but I knew it was there, the peak. I was on a path that eventually climbed up to Shaali Tibba, where a small temple stood guard over the vast mountain ranges in the vicinity. The path was strewn with stones, mud, and branches. To the left, the mountain dropped into a sinuous gorge. To the right, it rose up in all its glory – dark caves, mammoth trees, and all.

In case you are wondering, Shaali Tibba is a peak in the Himalayas in India. It is about an hour’s climb from Dandi, a small village three hours from Shimla, the capital city of the northern state of Himachal Pradesh. I was on my first vacation in four years and I had headed for Shimla to visit my paternal aunt and uncle.
I have lived most of my life in a city. And I have lived most of that life among city people. And both – the city and the city-dweller – are dangerous. They are both full of themselves and do not have a vision of the world beyond the city and its life. I, too, am afflicted by this malady, which is why I had decided to run to the hills.
City life breeds homogeneity. Cities give birth to intellectual illiterates, a kind of people who are educated to perform tasks that are necessary to survive in a city and to follow the template of behavior in all spheres of life as a city dweller.
If you are not a part of this phenomenon: mourn. Mourn because you will spend your life feeling frustrated with the lack of sensibility in those around you and angry because you have to conform to such behavior to get anywhere or get anything done.
If you are part of the city-life phenomenon: rejoice. Rejoice because you will hopefully die before you realize that your destiny was to be one of the marching ants that made up the vastness of the urban human mass and nothing else. If you do realize it before you die, fret not. Fret not because that is a noble cause with a difficult path. It is often difficult to tread a trodden path because the animal within us wants to break free.
And the animal in me was right now climbing up that long trail to Shaali Tibba. It was a long climb, but I wasn’t in any hurry. The Himalayan air is sweet and it makes you hungry. The air also opens your eyes to experiences by guiding you into sights and sounds you might not otherwise notice. Like, the damp smell of a fallen branch led me to a hollow off the trail.
It was a hollow in the side of the mountain, a shallow hollow, shielded by a tangle of roots from overhead trees, fallen twigs, and branches. It was an enchanting sight that drew me in and I delved deeper to discover the graceful ferns growing in that shaded shelter. The roots and branches looked alive and it took me a while to realize that they were. Entangled among them was a large snake, warily eyeing me, the intruder. My instinctive fear and paralysis left me as soon as I realized that the snake was hoping I would go away and leave it alone. I watched in awe as it uncoiled and withdrew onto the roots, further away from me, deeper into the hollow. I drew in a long breath to taste the smell of the hollow and then stood up. The mountain was beckoning me.
The peak was up ahead somewhere. I just wanted to climb and not worry about getting anywhere. The sun was climbing, but it was still some length away from noon. I was in no hurry anyway.
I followed the path for another fifteen minutes, busy with my thoughts. So who was the shepherd and who the sheep, I wondered. I was standing on a curve in the trail and I could see a man, a woman, and a herd of sheep on the slope of the adjacent hill. “I will be on that hill in an hour or so but on the other side,” I thought to myself.
The slope was green with grass. It was a mile-long meadow rising up from way below till the point where the mountain straightened up into a jagged cliff. The walls to the cliff were gray and made of smooth rock. From the top of the cliff, it looked like a thousand feet drop to the meadow.
I stopped still. Everything was quiet, quiet in a way that a city can never be: peaceful. The green meadow met the base of that gray cliff face. The sheep looked like tiny round furry dots on the green. They were scattered all over the meadow. The man and the woman were young. They were talking and looking at the mountain and the sheep. I could occasionally hear their voices when the wind blew my way. I realized that I was now sitting on a boulder hanging out of the path – my feet were dangling below the rock. The meadow was rising up at an incline of sixty or sixty-five degrees. And yet, they were all able to stand comfortably – I thought they would surely fall. The blue sky in the distance, the dark green pine and Deodhar trees rising tall, the high Himalayas providing a comforting presence, the gray cliff-face standing unrelenting, and that beautiful green meadow where life was grazing. It’s a picture that has stayed in my mind ever since. The young man and the woman were now gathering fallen branches. I could almost smell the wood-smoke.
In a few days I would be back in the city, hammering the keys of a computer keyboard in a three square feet cubicle by day, drowning my sorrows my night, and trying to keep away from the social pass times of men and women in a habitat that was truly a jungle. But for now, I was home. And it was a sweet smelling place. I had forgotten how sweet fresh air smells when it is inebriated with a visit over wet earth. I had forgotten how the cool kiss of a sudden breeze fills you with the vigor of a young elephant at play. I had forgotten how the shade of a towering tree inspires you to climb the craggy face of lonely cliffs under the censoring eyes of a cheerful sun. I had forgotten everything but the smell of burning tobacco and the subsequent ash. Why? Why had I decided to burn my soul at the altar of addiction? Why couldn’t I smell the fresh air in the city? Okay, that one was simple – there wasn’t any fresh air in the city.
What was the matter with me? I was standing on a Himalayan trail contemplating the Himalayan air and here I was thinking about the city and its noxious smells. Sometimes I get the feeling that my daily life and its routine is a ploy to stop me from discovering the truth about life and living, and about individuals and the world. I get this feeling every once in a while that all that I do on a daily basis is not so important, that the truth is waiting for me, that I’m on the verge of it and then I’m lost again. Family, society, relationships, etc seem to be mankind’s effort to ensure survival. Individual thought seems directed at understanding the scheme. And the two clash. Individual freedom undermines the social fabric and social rules stifle individual enterprise. Yet both survive due to each other’s presence.
 
One part of me tells me to forget the three square feet cubicle rat race and follow my heart’s desire. But what is my heart’ desire? I want to make a meaningful contribution to society and to improve the lives of people and to help others find their paths in life. But how can I do that if I am uncertain about what I really want? And then there is that other part of me that preys on this indecision. It asks me questions like: Can I actually live away from a city? Can I live without the reasonably decent salary I earn? I have never earned enough to save or invest, so what will I do if I quit my job?
I tripped on a fallen sapling and my train of thought made an unscheduled halt. And I was thankful for it. One should fall every once in a while. It brings you back to the roots. Literally. I smelled the soil that was still clinging to the roots of the sapling that had tripped me. The potential tree had probably been washed down from the mountainside during a shower in the recent past. I thought of picking up the injured little tree and planting it along the side of the trail. Then I noticed that while it was down, it wasn’t out. Its roots had already made forays into the soil. And if a strong gust of wind came along, the plant might find itself standing upright with some support from that bigger plant right on the edge of the trail. Maybe I could stay here like this on the ground to see if such a thing would happen, just to find out if this little plant would triumph over its current predicament.
I came out of my reverie at the sound of gurgling laughter coming from up ahead on the trail. Or so I thought. I got up and dusted myself lest someone find me sprawled across the dirt path. Now why would I care whether someone saw me sprawled across such a beautiful dirt path? Why? Why? I doubt if anyone would think it odd, considering the beauty all around. I walked towards the sound and after the trail turned I realized that the laughter was coming from down below. And then I realized it was the shepherd and the girl who were laughing merrily as they raced down the green meadow chasing their sheep. They were still far away but I could hear the joy in their laughter – it was like the sound of water jumping from boulder to boulder on its way down a mountain gorge.
I was now almost on top of the green meadow. Another turn and I wouldn’t be able to see them because I would be on the other side of this craggy rock face. It was the same mountain, it was the same air, it was the same blue sky, but this was such a gloriously different painting that I beheld now from this vantage point. The meadow was falling away to a cliff edge and then there was a thick carpet of dark green thanks to the forest below. There were two huge peaks standing like tall pillars on both sides of the meadow and in between the blue sky climbed out to freedom. I had a great whoosh above my head and looked up to see a magnificent eagle spreading its wings a few feet above my head. It had just dived off a tree behind me and it soared down the valley like a part of the beautiful symphony composed by the wind. The wingspan of that eagle looked to be about ten feet and it had taken my breath away. I picked up the feather that had dropped off its wing – it was almost as long as my forearm from the elbow down to the tip of my palm. It was the only souvenir I needed from this trip because I doubted I would ever see an eagle that large and that close down in the city where I worked and survived.
 
But I picked up another souvenir further down the trail some time later. I was almost at the last stretch to Shaali Tibba – I would be up there in another fifteen minutes. But there was a cliff beckoning me on the left. All I could see around me was tall mountains now. I was going through a narrow pass that led the trail upwards to the peak on the right. But when I reached that turn in the trail, the wall of mountain on my left suddenly opened up and I realized I stood near the edge of a ragged cliff. I was more than 10,500 feet above sea level at this point in time and common sense said that I ought to take that right turn and continue up towards Shaali Tibba. But I wanted to stand on that cliff and look down below to see how that particular painting by God would look. So I turned left off the trail and walked towards the cliff edge. Some 20 steps on I realized I had a problem: there was a gap in the mountain. The cliff was a solid piece of rocky mountain but it was separated from the main mountain by a three feet wide abyss. So there I was standing on a solid ledge cutting away from the main mountain. Behind me was the main trail up the peak. On the left of the ledge was a sheer drop, on the right of the ledge was a sheer drop, straight ahead was the cliff edge and there was an abyss separating me from that edge.
There wasn’t really a problem. The gap was just three-feet wide and I could easily jump across. It’s just that there was only four feet space on the other side of that jump. So, if I had too much speed when I jumped, I might not be able to stop myself tumbling over that edge. Maybe now is a good time to tell you that I suffer from vertigo. Ah, yes, I think you can now visualize the real problem. You see even if I stood still and just stretched my leg over that gap and gingerly stepped onto the cliff edge, I might still fall over because it was a small edge and it was high up and the moment I looked down my head would start buzzing and the earth would call out to me, and I would feel like jumping off.
So I sat down on my side of that gap and started brooding. I love the mountains and I love climbing lonely trails and standing on the edge of a mesa or a cliff and surveying the world before me. But when I do that, the world calls to me and I feel like jumping. I feel like spreading my arms and flying into space just to feel the thrill of falling, to experience the rush of adrenaline in my loins as gravity sucked the breath out of body. So when I stood looking down to earth from any high place, the love for life evoked in me a sense of awe and fear – fear that I would let go.
The breeze was strong and it ran through my hair on its way to the other side of me. It was silent except for the sound of the wind on the trees and the cacophony of my thoughts. I took in a deep breath and closed my eyes. Everything was still for a moment, peaceful, and the world was spinning. I heard the laughter of the shepherd and the young woman. I heard the lonely cry of an eagle. Then the wind stopped and I opened my eyes to discover that I could hear the laughter of the shepherd. I stood up, and driven by the courage derived from that oneness with nature, I hopped across the gap and found myself struggling to maintain my balance at the edge of the cliff. My body bent forward towards the sheer drop off the cliff, I saw a smooth rock face, boulders, green grass, dark green treetops, blue sky and the sun. I felt the wind change and felt the force pushing me towards the fall. Then I realized it was gravity trying to pull me down. I threw my left leg far behind me in an effort to balance myself. I fought the feeling of suffocation and panic and steadied myself with my arms spread wide and then I sat down, slowly, on that cliff edge.
I was safe.
But I didn’t want to get up on my feet again. Ever. I would just sit here and meditate for the rest of my life. Some part of me drifted away, and above that mountain and became one with the eagle soaring nearby. And I saw myself from where the eagle flew: a solitary human body hugging itself as it sat on a narrow piece of rock jutting out of a mountain high above the world. It felt good to be sitting there with that mixture of fear, exhilaration, and freedom. I was free here.
After some time – I think it was half an hour – I realized that I wasn’t free here after all. All I could do was sit because I was too scared to get up and go anywhere. I felt alone and uneasy. I wanted to give up and I felt like crying. I did not know what to do. If I stood up I was sure I would fall. If I didn’t fall, I wouldn’t have guts to turn around, balance myself and jump back over the gap towards the relative safety of the trail to Shaali Tibba. There was no one to help me, no one to tell me I could do it, no one to tell me what to do. My stomach was churning, my balls felt like lead, and my head was spinning. At that moment I looked up to the sky and realized that it was a beautiful sky. I took a deep breath and felt the wind on my hair and slowly spread my arms and then I stood up. My eyes were open and I was standing on the cliff with my arms spread wide and I felt honored to be part of this glorious world. I closed my eyes and I was happy to be alone, no longer afraid. My body swayed and I smiled and then I started laughing and I laughed till I heard shouts from below and then my laughter sang in symphony with the laughter from down below. I opened my eyes and realized I was crying.
I turned towards Shaali Tibba, with my arms still spread wide and my back to the fall off the cliff and I felt wonderful. I felt scared, and anxious, and thrilled, and I knew that I belonged here, to the mountains, to this world. I turned back to face the cliff and then I sat down and then lay down on that cliff and looked over the edge and what I saw blew my notions of beauty away. I was looking down a smooth face of rock, which ran down straight for about a thousand feet and then gave way to the most beautiful meadow I had ever seen. And there on that meadow were the sheep and the shepherd and his young woman. They were looking up at me and waving and laughing. I waved back and I laughed. Beyond them the meadow ran like a young child for half a mile and then it dropped off into a mountainside framed by tall trees. Far down below I could see a stream of white water. I stayed there, prone, soaking in the sight for what seemed like hours. I was alone and I knew then that I would always be on my own.
For the first time I understood that solitude is not the lack of other people’s company. Solitude is the companionship of one’s own self. So far I had thought solitude is a great sacrifice, that it is a matter of either great heroism or stupidity, but I had not understood the nature of solitude. I guess there are a handful of people who are truly serene in their own company. Those who say they want solitude, like I had said so often in the past, are in fact afraid of being alone. If you are afraid to stand alone, you might perceive yourself as a people person. The true people person is the person people seek out because he or she is not afraid to be alone. Only when you are comfortable with yourself can you appreciate the loneliness of others. There are very few fears greater than the fear of knowing you are alone in this world. 
I looked at the world around me and I wondered: how can I be afraid of such a beautiful world? How can I think of myself as alone in the company of such an august gathering? I am but a part of the world and the world is but a part of me.
I turned over on my back and I felt a strange peace come over me. The alienation of my cubicle, the pettiness of my work life, the meaninglessness of my existence, everything ceased to bother me. The sky was still blue and the sun was very hot. I got up and jumped across the gap and started walking towards Shaali Tibba. People at home must be wondering where I had disappeared. They would start worrying only if I didn’t turn up before sun down. I still had a few hours till then. I could… I guess I was too absorbed in the peace and contentment I had discovered because the next moment I found myself sliding down the mountain side, scrapping across soil and rocks and branches. I grabbed desperately for something to hold my weight and break my fall, but I just kept going down. And then my descent came to a sudden halt as I found myself dangling from a tree that was jutting out of the rock face. I looked down – it was a long way down and if I fell from here it would be bye-bye beautiful world and all my newfound knowledge about the world and solitude and peace would add up to nothing. I looked up and realized that my left palm was clasped around a strong branch and that a much smaller branch had pierced through the flesh on my left forearm – and that had stopped my fall. I let out a small scream to release the shock of the fall and then used my right hand to take out the small branch from my forearm – it wasn’t too bad though it had made a deep gash. The blood was trickling down my arm and then it clotted and slowed down to a thick dribble. I looked at handholds to haul myself up but there was nothing except for a small sapling that looked too weak to hold itself up, forget bearing my weight.
Luckily I found a foothold on a solid rock, which rested below me to the right. I let go off the branch and moved my body to the right clutching at a solid piece of rock. The small sapling was the only other handhold but I knew it wouldn’t hold me. I grabbed the rock with both my hands and then that solid rock came away from the mountain and I felt myself falling again. I desperately grabbed at the sapling and funnily enough it held my 60 kilos quite comfortably. There was a lesson in all this but right then I was just glad that I was wrong about that sapling.
I watched the rock crumble into pieces as it hit the boulders down below. The sapling was straining now, holding on dearly to its strong roots that were embedded in the mountain. I hauled myself up and found another sapling and then a stump and so on till I climbed back up onto the trail. I looked down and discovered that I had slid down some 15 feet only – it had felt like I had gone down some 500 feet of the trail. And while I was hanging onto to that sapling I had been wondering if I would ever be able to climb up the 500 feet back to the trail.
 
I decided not to sit there and soak in the experience. I got up and this time I took that right turn up the trail and soon reached Shaali Tibba, where a stone temple dedicated to Goddess Kali stood waiting for me. It stood in the middle of the small mesa and I walked up to the temple and thanked the goddess for my good fortune. I prayed to the Goddess and then I walked around the mesa and the eagle came up to circle overhead. It landed and sat on a branch of a young tree. We looked at each other and then we looked away towards the distant mountains.
I went back to sit in the cool shade of the temple for a bit and then went looking for water. There was a tank of sorts towards the back and I slid down into the hollow and washed myself. There was a pot with cold water at one corner of the tank. I took two small swallows of the cool water and thought about the climb back down to Dandi. It would take me an hour. Then I lay down under the shade of a tree and went to sleep.
I slept for only about an hour but it was a dreamless and restful sleep. More importantly I remember going to sleep. And I remember waking up. And I remember the journey up. And I remember the shepherd and the woman and the sheep. I was home again.

I have been thinking about career, family, relationhips, work, self-identity and so on the past few days. And I’ve been trying to figure out priorities and was wondering how people prioritize these things.

I do know one thing: people do prioritize; some do it consciously, others just go with gut instinct, but there is a definite – if sometimes unwritten – order of priority.

I guess age has a lot to do with the way we prioritize, although I do know quite a few people who have been focused right from school days.

So what comes first: Family? Career? Self? Friends?

I’ve asked this question to many people and the instinctive first reaction is: famiy, obviously.

But it ins’t so obvious when you look at the way they lead their lives. In most cases, first priority is career, in some cases it is work (yes, it is different from career).

So, it’s a bit like taking a personality test where you often end up picking answers that you know will get you more brownie points.

Kind of stupid lying to your own self, isn’t it?

My top priority was me myself right through college and well into the fifth year of my work-life.

Then the next decade belonged to my work and here let me differentiate work from career. As a writer and journalist, it would have done my career a whole lot of good to have jumped ship from print media to broadcast when the Indian media boom happened. But I wanted to hone my writing and communication skills – that’s work.

The past few years family has been priority and that’s the way it’ll probably be for maybe the next two dacddes if I’m around.

And I have a feeling that towards the end of my life, it will be back to me myself again.

Well, that’s my two cents on an inane existential question.

At the end of the day: I am alone.

I miss my friends.

Some of them are right here in Pune, but they might as well be keeping my other friends company in Mumbai, Delhi, Dubai, Hong Kong, Frisco, among other cities.

Was a time when my friends were around the country, but I could write a letter to them. We would likely meet once a year, maybe once in two years, but I felt close to them.

Today I can pick up the phone and call them any time, day or night. But there’s no skirting around it: I miss them.

I miss my family.

None of them are in the same town as I, but then they never have been.

We used to meet on weddings, naming ceremonies, summer vacations. Aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents … the whole jing bang or as many as could make it. The venue used to shift like a travelling circus, so we saw a good bit of the country as well. Delhi, Benares, Shimla, Chandigarh, Mumbai, Pune.

Now, we pick up the cellphone and call each other on important occasions and send e-cards.

What is it that people keep saying? Ah yes: the world is a global village; it’s a small world; communication technology has broken down barriers of distance; everything is a click or dial away.

It’s likely that people who believe such things have probably never stayed in a village. Villages are community-oriented, close-knit.

And I love communication technology for what it’s done for us. And I hate communication technology for what it’s done to us. It’s just a click away, so why go there?

There’s a lot to be said about traditional industries – they still believe in face-to-face personal meetings. In fact, they don’t do business any other way. And that’s what gets people closer.

But I take my cellpone and Facebook just with my lunch and dinner, so who am I to be cribbing?

But that other part of me? The idiot that misses his friends and family? I fear that side of me maybe a dying breed. And when that idiot dies, I wonder what will happen to me then? 

Once upon a time, long long ago, some great person introduced me to my first existential question. He asked: “Who are you?” That question kind of stopped my train of thought and I found myself asking: “Yeah, who am I?”
This was like really way back in school (yep, I went to school) and it kind of freaked people out.
 
“What do you mean who are you?” asked my best friend Abbas. “You are you!”
“Well, yeah, but who is ‘me’?”
“You are a teenager who lives in Bombay.”
“That describes my age and location – it doesn’t tell me who I am.”
“You are a Bengali.”
“But there are so many Bengalis. How does that help me decide who I am and what I am supposed to be doing here?”
“You are my best friend and you are supposed to ask me questions that I cannot answer.”
Now how could anyone argue with that kind of logic? But we kept having such conversations over and over again. Some times Abbas asked the questions, because we all face these questions. Some times I asked the questions. At the end of the day, we were trying to figure out who we were, which in turn would help us figure out what direction to take in life.
We never did find any answers, but we explored various perspectives.
In junior college, my friend Jitu explained the ground realities of life to me.
“If you don’t want to take Math, don’t. Quit taking existential tangents just because society says Math is important and you can’t separate irrational numbers from whole numbers!”
My middle class parents were very patient with my incessant curiosity. And so, when at age 16, I went up to my parents and asked my ‘Who am I’ question, my dad looked at me carefully and asked a profound question of his own: “Is this how you are planning to get out of doing homework?”
“No, no. You gave me that book on Swami Vivekanand. Well, now answer my question: Who am I?” I asked him again.
“I told you he was too young for that book! What if he goes away?” my mom wondered. And she had reason to worry. My great grandfather had left familial ties at a very young age and taken to an ascetic way of life.
“Why do you need an answer to that question right now?” my dad asked me.
“I need the answer because it will tell me whether I should continue with science after junior college or shift to arts.”
“What is it that you want to do after junior college?”
“That is exactly what I am trying to find out!”
My mom looked at my dad and then told me: “That is a question you will have to ask yourself. How can we or anyone else tell you what you want to do or who you are? Look within yourself for the answers.”
“But be aware that it may be many years before you find the answer,” my dad added.
I didn’t quite understand the ‘look within yourself’ advice. I wanted an answer and I wanted it right now, so to say. Time was running out… my exams were over. Soon, my results would be out and then I would have to, just have to decide between engineering and medical.
My friend, Jitu, was facing no such questions.
“Let your percentage decide.”
“My what?”
“Your percentage – let your percentage decide. If you have scored enough for engineering or medical, apply to various engineering or medical colleges, you will get into one of them, and then four years later (hopefully), you can join the rat race as one of the millions of engineers or doctors India produces.”
“But I don’t think I want to be an engineer. Or a doctor.”
“You could do what I am planning to do – join a Bachelor of Science (BSc) course. That will give you three more years to decide what you want to do with your life.”
“I don’t think …”
“Yes, you don’t think!” cut in Jitu before I could tell him BSc didn’t sound like a good option.
Then there was Satya. He wasn’t one bit worried – at least I don’t remember him being worried. Satya has always seemed wise. He takes life as it comes and is contented with it.
“You think too much, that’s what I think,” he told me one evening after we were done playing cricket for the day. Satya, Jitu and I usually met up in the evenings to play cricket in our housing colony. Satya and I lived in the LIC colony in Santa Cruz, Bombay. My dad and Satya’s dad were working with the Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC). Jitu lived in the Post & Telegraph (P&T) colony near the international airport in Andheri (East). His dad worked with the P&T.
If I am giving you an impression that I was really worried about my career, let me rectify that impression. I wasn’t. I was a regular kid, very interested in sports and reading and attending college so I could play soccer or chess and hangout with my friends. But every once in a while I got this feeling that I had to decide what I was going to do with my life. That’s when I started asking questions with some seriousness.
And so, one day I went to one of those career-counseling institutions set-up by the government. The whole counseling department was housed in this grand stone building (it used to be some official building during the British rule of India). Okay, all this is happening in Bombay by the way… so far at least.
I went into the counseling department, feeling confident that they would have an answer to my question. I was put through three thousand, two hundred and seventy one tests within a span of three hours (it seemed like that many). It was a pretty and comprehensive aptitude test that checked my dexterity, muscle-eye co-ordination, logic, reasoning, artistic ability, writing skills, IQ, and what not. At the end of the test, I knew they would give me a definite direction towards which I could steer my life.
“You have a lot of talent,” the lady counselor told me.
I beamed and so did my parents.
“You can do anything you want with your life, especially in technical fields.”
I started feeling uneasy.
“Your reasoning and logic is very strong. You are good with numbers and you can also use your hands reasonably well.”
I was sulking by now. This lady was telling me stuff that made me feel good but did nothing to help me make a career choice.
“You can opt for a career in computers, or electronics engineering or even medicine. You will do very well as a marine biologist or in a statistics-related job. You can also try for architecture – I think you will be very successful as an architect.”
She gave us a long list of courses related to these broad areas. Marine biology and architecture were the only options that seemed exciting to me. I just could not see myself as an engineer or a doctor. I was sure I lacked the staying power for something that arduous.
Eventually, I ended up joining a professional college to get an education in hotel management. The three years in catering college added up to a roller-coaster ride and the hectic schedule left me with very little time for existential questions. But I found the time anyway. And keeping me company most of the time was Dmess, who was going through a similar mess about what to do with his life. We sat on the college steps and looked at the traffic zooming past on the Cadell Road below us.
“They are all going somewhere,” Dmess observed, wistfully.
“They seem to know where they want to go at least.”
“When will we know where we want to go?”
“I am not sure – and I have been searching long enough. I get this suffocating feeling every now and then. As if time is running out. I wonder what will happen if I don’t decide what I am going to do with my life and just sit at home.”
“Yeah, maybe we should do things at our own pace, without any pressures.”
“The pity is there is no pressure really, at least not from my parents. They just want me to do something.”
“My dad’s busy with his own life. I miss my mom.” Dmess’s dad was a scientist and pretty eccentric. His mom was in the United States of America, trying to build a life so that she could then take her family there. Dmess’s elder siblings were busy grappling with their own lives. Meanwhile, Dmess was coping with life as best as he could.
Dmess was very different from my other friends, though he fit right in. Abbas was shy, thoughtful, and dependable. Jitu was larger than life, robust, and he inspired confidence. Satya was calm, wise, and yet mischievous. Dmess was capable of profound thought, but lazy. He delved deep into the depths of his melancholy and confusion. And we really delved deep into our confusion after catering college.  While most of our classmates had taken up jobs with five star hotels, Dmess and I were watching MTV 16 hours a day, seven days a week – three days at his place and four days at mine. My parents were very pissed off with us. We would just lie there on the living room couch and watch MTV when my dad left for work at 8 am. We would still be lying there on the couch watching MTV when my dad returned at 7.30 in the evening. My mom spent her time fuming and reasoning with us.
Every evening, Dmess and I would go down to the park in our colony, sit there and talk about life, direction, and the like. It never occurred to us to try and find a job in the hotel industry. I guess we had made up our minds about that at least.
Some times Jitu would join us. He had appeared for his final exams and was hunting a job. Abbas had shifted to Nasik and I missed him. Satya was completing his BSc from Chennai and would be hunting a job soon. I felt alone but I was happy because I was in good company. All of us had the same problem – we could not decide what we were going to do with our lives. And all of us were dealing with it in different ways. I was hoping that one of us would get a good job to his liking and then I would know for sure that things would be all right.
Eventually, we all found jobs. I started working as a sales representative with a travel agency. It took me two months to figure out a strategy that gave me great returns and after that my sales picked up like crazy. And it wasn’t funny because I had been assigned the New Bombay area, which was then pretty much like a desert.
Another two months down the line I got bored and quit the job. Boredom was my biggest problem thereon. I took up many jobs and was really excited with all of them initially. But once I figured out what was to be done and what were the best possible ways of getting it done, I would get bored out of my skull. And so, I went from job to job while my work-life (people optimistically called it a ‘career’) tried to take off. I went into the hospitality industry, tripped into sales, got stuck with managing teams… it was quite a ride. Then one day I found myself selling ice cream and the ice cream asked me: “Who are you and what are you doing here?”
 
I decided then that this was the one question I had to answer first if I wanted to get anywhere in life. I was 25 at that time. For the umpteenth time in my life, I quit a job and sat at home, depressed. Then, my dad stepped in. While I was sitting and watching TV at home, he sent in my application for journalism school and then handed me a bus ticket and said: “Well, this is your chance. Go find out if this is what you are meant to be doing.”
For years, I had been saying I wanted to be a writer, I wanted to be a writer. But apart from the odd poem here and a short story there, I had never written anything. Hospitality was fun and had treated me very hospitably, but it was not something I wanted to do for the rest of my life because it did not define me. Sales jobs were exciting, but only a few months at a time. I had been a tour guide and I could do it for a longer period of time if I could travel distant places. But all of these jobs required something of me that I did not have: I just did not have it in me to be polite to strangers all the time.
So I took my dad’s advice and a four-hour bus ride to Pune. It was almost two years before I returned home to Bombay (and to the life I had known till then). But I guess I needed the solitude and I needed to apply myself to find out who I was. It took me a couple of years but I found the answer to the most important question that had been haunting me since my school days: I was a writer.
And that’s who I have always been ever since. Not a salesman, not a manager, not a poet, not a teacher, not a designer; a writer.
The moment I realized who I was, my life had direction. Every decision, every action, every reaction was guided by that direction. Once I found my identity, I knew my purpose and I understood my relationship with the world.
Am I a good writer? Or am I a bad writer? Well, that is for readers to decide. And based on feedback, the onus is on me to improve. But now I have a definite identity to improve. Now I know how to evaluate myself. Now I know what yardsticks to use to measure my work.
I have held three jobs in the past decade – two were with newspapers. I held one of those jobs for six and a quarter years! Imagine that! For the first four years of my work life, I held umpteen jobs, and I did not last a year in any of them. And then I worked as a journalist for more than six years at the same place, doing more or less the same thing day in and day out. And I do not remember being bored or frustrated with what I did – I eventually left because I needed to expand my horizons in a different environment.
Why is the identity so important? For me, it is important because it gives direction to my vision and provides will to my purpose. God has given me a reasonable amount of intelligence, and some natural aptitudes … pretty much like other people. Education, upbringing, and experience have honed these aptitudes and nurtured a range of skills till they have become a part of my inherent system of knowledge. So what did I as an individual have to do? I had to find my identity and thus, the purpose of my life. The way I read life, unless I know who I am, I can’t figure out what I am supposed to be doing here. And if I don’t know what I am doing here, then I can never really put all the knowledge I have been given or have accumulated to its meaningful use.
I have met and known many fortunate people who knew who they were at a very young age and who never had any doubts. I have also known many people who followed a path without question, built careers, and then they were assailed by questions of identity and purpose. I also know a few very wise people who have never been troubled by such questions.
I started searching for my identity at the age of 11. I found it at the age of 25. Life does not get any easier if you have an identity nor does success come to you as if it was predestined. The purpose of your identity is to help you relate to the world and to help the world relate to you.
Most of the people I meet start giving solutions to problems with the sentence: “Well, there are two possibilities.” The two-possibilities solution, in my understanding, is derived out of the binary method of problem solving: Reduce everything to yes or no (good or bad, right or wrong) choices. I like such clarity of thought. I like it, because I have never been able to achieve it. But my world has its own charm. My solutions begin with the following kind of sentence: “Well, there are endless possibilities.”
These endless possibilities had tormented me throughout my formative years. I never could decide which possibility to follow and ended up taking random decisions going round and round in circles. But now as a writer, I know how to deal with endless possibilities. I observe, ponder, learn, and then add my imagination and knowledge to speculate where those possibilities might lead me. With each passing day, these endless possibilities add up to a larger picture of the world and of life in my head.
I am still grappling with life and its twists and turns. But I now have a definite perspective… I think.

Third day on the wagon. Still quitting chai. No, no, I insist. Not a drop. Not even a whiff, Okay maybe a whiff. But that would amount to passive chaiing.

Life is difficult my friends when one is trying to quit something, mais, c’est la vie!

I’m trying to quit an addiction these days. I don’t know if I can do it, but I have to try. I’ve quite a few addcitions and all of them are related to some form of temptation or the other.

Like I’m a workaholic, although I’m working very hard on that. Like I used to be a chain smoker, lighting upto 90 cigarettes a day. But I managed to quit one fine morning – it’s three years now, but that’s a different story. Like I am addicted to black coffee, although I’m now down to around 6 mugs a day. for most of the last decade I’ve had close to 20 cups a day.

And I’m addicted to tea. Or rather, chai, and that’s the one I’m trying to quit right now.

It’s 8.50 am in Pune, India. I made chai for Anonyma an hour ago. And I’m not making any moves on it. Yet.

Today is the second day and I desperately want a cuppa. Or even a cutting – home-made of course.  But the chai’s got to go from my system, or my system might end up going.

Sanjay Pendse’s done it. I’ve got to try.

The other day, I met a known face with an unknown name. That face smiled at me and I smiled back. The conversation went something like this:
“So how are you?”
“Good. How are you?”
“Fine.”
A brief moment of eternity, and then…
“So what’s new?”
“The usual thing. What’s new with you?”
“You know – same shit different day.”
“Yeah I know the thing what you are talking about. Well, see you around.”
I still have no idea who that girl was.
Then another smiling face came around. No name, of course. The guy shook my hand, and the conversation went:
“Hey long time no see man!”
“Yeah I know.”
“So what’s up? Anything new?”
“Nah! What about you?”
“I am doing this new thing, so things ar a bit hectic. So I am out chilling today.”
I smiled politely and the dude went his way.

‘Thing’ is the new wonderfully enticing profound word that says nothing. Don’t people realise that when you say ‘I am doing this new thing’, or “We are having this party thing’, all you are really saying is that you have an IQ of -3000 and no imagination?
But this seems to be the trend of conversation these days. Even with friends. You meet, smile, shake hands, kiss cheeks, whatever, pleasantries and then silence. Don’t we have anything to say any more?

And what is this ‘anything new’ exactly? The way I see it, Mr Anything New is a big goblin. It takes the entire vocabulary out of your mind and replaces it with a blank. I don’t like Mr Anything New. And I don’t like Ms What’s Up either. They seem to be new-age gargoyles who eat up all coherent, intelligent thought that people have. Socialising seems to be taking its toll. The only people who seem to have something interesting and intelligent to say are babies and the older generation. In fact, these two categories of human beings hold the most enchanting courts.
Luckily, I rediscovered conversation last week. A couple of new-found friends flew in to Pune from Geneva for a business meeting and we spent two evenings talking about cultures, religion, food, a bit of business, and a whole lot about life and living.
Many people – including me – seem to be losing the perspective that conversation is an art and a science: The art of connecting with people and the science of effective use of language. Conversation comes from interest in other people; and their lives and concerns. Conversation is more than polite inane ‘thingy’ chatter. It is more than smiling at people with loud music blaring in the background. It is telling people your name and remembering their names. It is more than telling someone you’ll call. It is actually calling someone. It is a commitment. And in an age where communication stands as the single most important bridge between businesses and careers and relationships, this commitment has to be made.

And that’s the thing about conversation…

In my third year of employment, I got a shock.
I have always taken great pride in not having a heart than can be rocked by mundane matters of daily routine. For instance, it has never bothered me which chair I sat in or in which corner of the room my chair was positioned. Over the past three years, my seating place was shuffled all across the room. As a fresh graduate out of college, I started off near the door. Then someone realized it was easy to go in and out of the room if you were near the door, so they wanted that place. I went to the middle of the room. Then, to the other extreme of the room; and finally, back to the spot near the door. 

It never bothered me that I had an old beat-up computer, which shut down whenever it felt like it. It never bothered me that the table fan was never near my chair… not once, even in the prime of the summer when God set the oven to ‘stun’. It never bothered me that I did not have Saturdays off and that I was working on every other Sunday as well. Nope. I was stupid and happy coming to office and doing my bit every day. The way I looked at it, these were little things that I had to work around.

By the third year, the vigor of young love for the job had worn off. I knew my job was important only to me. I knew the management gave a shit whether the quality of work went up or down. Quality just wasn’t part of their business model. They could get someone else to do my job and it really didn’t matter to them whether they found someone better or worse. That’s the way things are in this country right now. We just want to get things done. We’ll worry about the how and how well of it when (and if) things get out of hand. All around me there were people who couldn’t grasp the nuances of good, bad, right, wrong, process, procedure, quality, et al and they were all adding to my work. And at the end of it all, I had realized that if I stopped worrying about the quality of my work and let things pass, my boss wouldn’t do a thing about it. He had his hands full with his own troubles and the company wasn’t paying him to check how well I was doing my job. They were paying him to ensure that I was doing my job. It was the same mandate as mine.

But I couldn’t let bad work pass. I tried, but the way I looked at it, if I let quality take a back seat, it wouldn’t be long before I lost the ability to do good work. Nor would I learn to improve my own work because I had a long way to go as well. Yes, my reasons were selfish.

And so I became wiser to the fact that the little things mattered because the big issues will always remain un-addressed. I knew the chair was important and I also knew the position of my chair was equally important. And when God got mad in the summer, I knew I needed that fan.

But I had gotten used to not saying anything. So I was stuck with being the shuffle-guy. Actually, most of the people in the office were shuffle guys or gals. There were just these one or two power-broker types who played musical chairs with all of us every once in a while. And I suspect they lorded it over everyone else because everybody else was in the habit of suffering their lot. That’s pretty much the story of this nation’s politicians and the people they rule. I hear that we live in a democracy and I suppose it must be true since our basic liberties are still supposedly intact. But the way our leaders behave, I am thinking we live in an autocratic monarchy, under democratic clothing. Thieves and murderers are becoming politicians. Laws are being bent, amended, and broken as and when the politicians feel like it. People above the age of 50 are called young leaders. And what is the mass of the real young doing? I don’t know. All I know is that I am tired of not having my own dedicated chair in a good corner of the office.

After six months of stewing over whether I should stake a claim for a fan since the summer was coming up, I got that shock I was talking about: Our office was shifting.
“Where are we going?”
“I hear it’s a bigger office.”
“It’s air-conditioned and it has a beautiful décor.”
“Have you seen it?”
“No, but that’s what the peon was saying. They have already started shifting stuff.”

“Where is this new office?” I asked. I did not want to go to the outskirts of the city for this spanking new office. I would have to ask them for a raise – rickshaws are getting expensive and I can’t afford to waste hours waiting for public transport to turn up and then getting my crisp, clean clothes crushed while the rattletrap chugs along the potholes towards the new office.
“It’s right in this area, in that new glass building 100 meters down the lane.”
Now I was excited. And shocked. The company was spending so much on a new building? There had to be a reason. It couldn’t be for employee benefit – that would be too much to expect.
Apparently, there was a good reason. We had bagged a big contract and client visits were going to be part of the routine over the next few years. We also needed a bigger team for the new project, and so we got a new office. And frankly, that was exciting news. I felt the adrenaline of motivation surge through my veins. I felt a renewed sense of purpose. And then someone said: “I hear they have already allotted all the good seats to the new project team.”

That was it. I lost it. In my own mind, that is. New project team? What new project team? And why should the old members be left out in the cold?

“But I hear all the seating arrangements are good. The whole office is cool and spacious. Everybody will have a good space.”

Okay, so maybe I am behaving irrationally. If everybody got a good spot, I was okay with it.

“How can everyone get a good spot?” a new voice piped up. “That’s bullshit. That’s the management’s way of selling these things to you. The reality is you have no choice. We will go to the new office, and we will sit in our new places, and we will like it.”

It was unfair. As a citizen, the government takes taxes, never fulfills its responsibilities, and the politicians do god knows what with our hard earned money. In the office, we slog and we slog and then a chosen few get the good seats. This was the last straw. I had to make a stand now.

The rest of the day went by me in a whoosh as I debated the pros and cons of standing up for my own chair. At the end of the day, I ended up staying late because I had a deadline to make and I was just not able to concentrate on work. It’s funny how an unsettled mind makes heavy work of even the simplest of tasks.

I finally left office at 8.30 and took a rickshaw home. The rickshaw driver wanted to talk. So I let him talk, while my mind churned the new office and new chair issue over and over again. At home, I switched on the television and sat staring at the images on the screen while I kept getting angrier and angrier with my lot in life. I was going to talk to my boss tomorrow. Enough was enough. Some time later I fell asleep and dreamt of plush office chairs. 

I don’t remember too many details of the next few days because they were pretty much the same. There was a lot of speculation about teams, about seating arrangements, about canteens and everybody was talking. As usual, I sat at my desk, having no choice but to listen to all this gossip, and every now and then my mind would start having its own conversation with itself. This went on for a couple of weeks. I was able to produce reasonably decent work but the effort was tremendous. I felt tired every morning. My head ached and my bones were weary. Every evening I went to sleep early but I never remembered how or when. I was too wrapped up in office issues. I always felt dehydrated every morning but I waited to wake up so that I could go to work and see if things would change that day.

I wasn’t eating properly, but I was smoking a whole lot and pouring black coffee down my throat every half an hour or so. Black coffee and cigarettes seemed to be keeping me alive. I grabbed the odd Wada-Pav here or a Cheese Sandwich there. On the whole, it was the unresolved anger of having problems I could not address that kept me going. I had decided that I would have that new chair or I would quit the bloody job. I had to have some satisfaction in life, for heaven’s sake.

Then, one fine Monday morning, we were all told to pack our stuff and move to the new office. Just like that. I had nothing to pack, so I started walking to the new office. It took my mind two hours to walk the 100 meters, but after ten minutes I was there. It was a grand modern monstrosity with a facade of black tinted glass and brown granite-like stone. The huge central doorway gave one a feeling of opulence and I stepped into the new office building with a sense of awe. The lobby was shining with brass fittings and accessories and the tiles were clean and smooth and prohibitively plush. You know those five-star hotel lobbies, which take your breath away with all the good taste that money can buy? Well, this was something like that on a smaller scale. And this was the face of most offices in the new corporate India post 2000 AD. Plush offices, smiling people at the front desk, local security guards, clean anti-septic odors, fake plants, drinking water dispensers, bright lights… and I was happy to be a part of it. Hello world! Today was the day the rest of my life begins.

In the end, I needn’t have worried about the seating arrangements. The whole office had cubicles. Every person had his or her own workstation, which came with a name sticker. I checked out my workstation – it was the corner-most in the new project room, which meant I was part of the new project. I had a new HP computer with a 17-inch monitor, one soft-board, one small white-board with a marker, two drawers to keep my stuff and a cabinet to keep official stuff. And I had a new chair. This was life!

The next month was great. Every one was smiling. There was coffee all the time. I had switched to vending machine coffee, and twice every day I went down to the Udipi restaurant next door to have black coffee. The air conditioning was cool and it worked all the time. The building had two floors apart from the ground floor. Each floor had one huge main hall in which there were some 50 odd cubicles. The floor also had two ancillary rooms with 20 cubicles each. And then there were an array of six little cabins and three big cabins.

I was in the left ancillary room on the first floor.

After the intoxication of working in a new facility had worn off, I realized that people were now working later than they had done earlier. Most days, I was in office till 8.30 or 9 pm as a matter of routine – it had become the default. We still came in at 9.30 every morning. Sunday lost its fight for individual identity and joined Saturday and the other days as a workday. Officially, we had weekends off. We got no overtime. But we got comp offs (compensatory offs), which we could, theoretically, take on any working day. Apparently, no one had informed project managers about how comp offs worked because on any given day there was scheduled work on deadline. And so, at the end of the fourth year, I had accumulated one and a half months of comp offs, which then lapsed as per company policy. I still had around three months of ‘privilege’ leave with me. I was beginning to understand why they call it privilege leave.

I looked at the soft-board on which I had pinned two email messages, a paper with some quotes, and a series of Calvin and Hobbes cartoon strips. Bill Waterson and his Calvin and Hobbes strip were my only connection to reality now. I looked at the whiteboard on which I had written the key project deadlines. Then I looked at the 17-inch monitor. Then I looked at the plywood boards that separated me from Arnika in the next cubicle. This was now my life: a three square feet cubicle. I had gone from working in a big room to working in a huge warehouse like room. I had gone from being one of the chairs in a row to being a chair of my own in a row of chairs of their own. I had gone from working and breathing in one large space to working and breathing in three square feet. I was no longer just an ant marching in sync with other ants to meet deadlines as part of a big corporate delivery. I was now one of the many alienated ants marching in pre-designated isolation to meet a big corporate delivery. Delivery. What sort of terminology was that? Apparently, the company was always delivering, but it didn’t get us anywhere. Who were the idiots taking the business calls? How can so many people be working so many hours every day and still the company stays exactly where it is?

But I had problems of my own. Two months into the new facility, and the fight for chairs began anew. And it wasn’t surprising. The new chairs did not have staying power. They had fancy designs and great visual appeal but just couldn’t take the strain of long hours. Some chairs had lost the armrests, others had lost a wheel, still others had lost a leg, and a few chairs had lost their backs. My chair was still intact and comfortable, which is why it went missing one fine morning when I came into work.

“Have you seen my chair?” I asked Arnika.
“No,” she replied aloud, but pointed to the cubicle at the other end of our row. I grinned and went to the next cubicle and the next till I reached the last cubicle.
“Bobby, that’s my chair you are sitting on.” I didn’t bother asking.
Bobby looked up with a guilty expression. “Is it? Oh I didn’t know.”
How can you not know you dumb ass, you took it from my cubicle.
“Thanks. Ask the boss for a new chair if yours has broken down.”
I took my chair back home and then the rest of the day was peaceful. My chair isn’t any different from the others in the office. It has red upholstery and black armrests.  But from the day I sat on Cadence (that’s my chair), I knew there was no other chair for me. The armrests are just at the right height for slouching. It does not squeak, it is stable, comfortable, enthusiastic… it suits my personality. Don’t ask me to explain how it suits my personality, it just does.

Cadence was missing again a few days later and this time it wasn’t Bobby, but Mythika. Mythika was one of the hubs of office gossip and most of the time she was spreading unfounded speculation, which is why I call her Mythika. She was this tiny girl, very insecure and very loud in her behavior. As a consequence, she was forever in somebody else’s space wanting to know what’s going on and trying to take center stage. I had to listen to her irritating high-pitched sing song voice chatter for ten minutes before I got Cadence back.

Some times I feel chairs have everything to do with world equilibrium. I mean, look at the facts: Basically, it’s a butt rest. But we end up resting everything but our butts on it. All around the office I see people lounging, lying, resting and leaning on chairs. Yeah, they do sit on it as well, but how long can one sit in one position?

When I come into office every morning, my back is straight, my posture admirable. Then my arms go on to the armrests, which are lower than they should be. So I slide down into a more comfortable position. By the time I switch on my computer, my back is hanging on for dear life, and my legs are dangling way out in front of the chair – I call it my thinking posture. You can tell a lot about people by looking at the way they sit on their chairs. Like if the person is sitting straight, s/he is confident and fresh. If the person is slouching, s/he has probably been in office for over an hour and is getting bored. If the person is lounging, it’s after lunch. If the person is fidgeting, it’s still a couple of hours to going home time. And so on.

The seat itself is very important. As you know, in a classroom, there are several benches available. But usually there is that particular bench that looks at you and says: You sit here. And so, every day we make it a point to be there early enough to catch that bench. In college, the days someone else got to my bench first, I would simply skip class. Now, I have to fight to keep Cadence.
 
The trouble with having a favorite chair is that you get mighty upset when your chair goes missing. There have been days when I have come into office to find Cadence not near my computer. Then I have to go searching every cubicle, checking every chair. And frankly, with the admin freaks trying to cut cost to earn brownie points with management, my chair is going to go missing more often.
 
All this makes me wonder you know. That maybe, just maybe, all the trouble that we are seeing in the world right now has something to do with people and their desire for the chairs of power. That people are suffering on the streets because someone’s chair has gone missing somewhere. That someone is going to get great grief if my chair goes missing again. That I am not liking the person I am turning into. A year ago, I couldn’t have cared less whether I was sitting on a chair or a beanbag. And today, I am writing a philosophical treatise on the impact of accoutrements on an office worker’s life.

I was pretty despondent about my lot in life and was pondering why I had been reduced to extracting petty pleasures out of office furniture, when Ro2proman called up. Ro2proman was the scourge of all software programmers and product designers in the world of Mistech, which was a giant among tiny software companies. Ro2proman was a quality analyst and he was also a good friend of mine. We have known each other since we were little children studying in college. Nowadays, children grow up by the time I would have reached kindergarten.
Anyway, so he called up and the conversation went:
“You have shifted companies?”
“Who me? No.”
“But someone told me you are working in that new mind-blowing building on the Old College Road.”
“Idiot, my company has shifted to new premises.”
“Ah, so it’s true! You are working in that new building. Okay, I am coming over right now for an on-site visit.”
“When will you be here?”
“I am standing in the lobby. Can you speak to this security guard and tell him I have come to meet you?”

Within a few minutes Ro2proman came to wonderland. And the first he thing he said was: “I want to see the restroom. I have heard great stories about your restroom. I hear you guys have wall-to-wall mirrors and black marble platforms with king-sized washing basins that dispense hot and cold water. Is it true?”
I had forgotten to tell you about the restroom. It was a marvel among modern amenities and we had recruited three talented designers from a rival company on the strength of the restroom.

Ro2proman entered the restroom in awe. It was everything he had heard, imagined, and expected it to be. The mirror was wall-to-wall and the soft natural light winked at you after being reflected off the black marble platform. There was lavender hand wash dispensed from glass bottles and there was hot and cold water. It was a big restroom and its labyrinth-like design separated waiting areas and wash areas from the stalls.

Then I took him to the cafeteria on the terrace and it further enchanted him since it was the monsoon season and the rains had painted the city green. After coffee and a burger, we got around to talking about things that mattered; like the meaning of existence in the corporate jungle and the futility of it.
“How’s your job coming along?”
“Same shit different day.”
“How long you been with Mistech now?”
“A year.”
“How long you planning to stay?”
“They’re all the same. So it all boils down to the facilities.”
“You guys have cubicles?”
“Oh yes, we are a regular factory. I work in a room that has long rows of people stacked up one behind the other. We are separated from each other by blue-colored ply-boards. We have a whole two square feet to ourselves. If I become a team lead I will get another square feet more.”
“How many people does your company employ?”
“The number keeps fluctuating but I think we are at 700 right now. People come and people go every day.”
“Two square feet? That’s like a can man.”
“Yep.”
“How many people in a room?”
“The floor I work on? We have 300 people in six rows of 50 each.”
“Dude, that’s a huge floor.”
“It’s a warehouse.”
“So you have soft-boards? And pictures on your desk to make you feel comfortable?”
“Pictures yes. Soft-boards no. But we have coffee mugs.”
“Coffee mugs?”
“Yeah, personal coffee mugs. Each employee gets one when we join.”
“What kind of coffee mug?”
“It’s like those painted mugs you get for 30 bucks in a gift shop. It comes with the company logo. HR thinks it’s cool. It’s supposed to give us an individual identity and make us feel connected to the company.”
“Are you serious?”
“Yep.”
“Does it work?”
“Dude, I think someone has spent a whole lot of money on psychological shit to come up with that idea. The only thing I relate to at work is that coffee mug. It’s familiar, it’s mine, and I feel comfortable looking at it. If that coffee mug isn’t there I go mad.”
“I feel the same about my chair.”
“My entire existence is now concentrated in that coffee mug. I am a maroon mug with employee number 252 printed in yellow font accompanied by the blue company logo.”
“I am cubicle number 1, first floor, employee number 149, chair number ABPUN 0108.”
We sat there for some time thinking about our individual identities.
“You have coffee mugs?” I asked again after a bit. “We don’t have coffee mugs.”