Part 3 – A special pillion
A fresh day brings a fresh reason to start afresh. Every day, the feeling of getting older creeps a little closer, but my mind knows what my body refuses to believe, that my spirit is as fresh today as it was on the day, 25 years ago, I cried for the very first time. Fresh, fresh, the spirit of life never ages, and on that note, I will leave for my office and try not to spoil my mood. Today, I am confident that I will enter the office, for a change, with a happy outlook and an excited mindset. I ask myself, why should I not be happy? I have a job which pays well, I have a house which I can return to and I have a life which I can still count on to survive.
Today, you will have to ride with me on my scooter, and I will show you exactly what it is that thousands of office goers face each day on the streets. Let me walk you quickly through the route that we will be taking today (even though none of it will make sense to you because you are not from Bangalore); First we shall cross Chinnaswamy Stadium, then we will cut through Indiranagar and then comes Marathahalli and then finally we reach the lifeless part of Whitefield. Google maps is saying that there is a massive congestion already, near Maratahalli, but I know a few shortcuts there and we will reach in under 1 hour 45 minutes most probably. If you think you will get dizzy from all the smoke, here is a 3M anti-pollution mask that really helps, and if you think your ass will get roasted from sitting for so long, here is a cushion to alleviate some of the pain, although the pain never truly goes away and you just get used to walking with a throbbing in your ass all the time. And lastly, here is a napkin to put over your head so that the helmet does not ruin your hair for I see that your hair is having problems of its own as it is. Let us leave shall we?
Sweltering heat, simmering roads and reckless drivers all around, it feels like a battle ground every day. Only, nobody knows what it is they are fighting for and I cannot seem to understand why everyone is so angry with one and other. So much impatience on display, as if everyone is on a great and urgent mission to glory, only it resembles how street dogs always seem to be in a hurry going in specific directions but never seem to know why and where.
Two hours and three minutes pass, after what seems to the pillion rider an eternity and what seems to the driver, another day in his life, as they reach Whitefield to enter the massive tech park where he works.
Everything suddenly becomes calm and beautiful and neat when we enter the tech park. The same people who honk, spit, and cuss on the streets outside, yes the same people, suddenly become decent looking and calm and professional when they enter the tech park. That is something that irritates me, constantly.
You remind me, once again, not to spoil my mood and I agree. Fresh day, fresh chance, I say to myself from under my sweat dripping helmet. When we park and remove, finally, our helmets, the cool air that greets us in the parking lot, is a bliss, almost an orgasmic event. Phew! Here’s the thing, I have a couple of meetings and calls, so make yourself comfortable and walk around the complex, you can hang around in the food court or the arcade area if you like, and I will join you in a couple of hours. Cya!
I went up, up and up, and up and up, until the elevator dinged on the 29th floor. I lied to you earlier, I had no meetings nor calls. You very well know, that all the meetings are scheduled later in the evening or later in the night (which I usually will have to take from home) because that is when the US team is ‘awake’ and fresh in their morning time zones. I lied to you because I did not want you to see that I had no work in the morning, all I had to do was wait, and wait till much later until the US team was online. When I entered the 29th floor today, there was nobody there save for a few of the regulars whom I see are always engrossed in their work, pounding away ferociously at their laptops (I like these people even if I have never interacted with them). None of my team mates were in, and you know where the manager was.
I sat at my desk and began thinking about my life, about my worth, about my value in the team. My company boasts with so much pumped up fonts from the billboards on the streets, that they value their employees, but I began to wonder yet again, just how untrue that was. What else could it be? Everything the team in Bangalore did was adjusted to sync with the time zones of the US team, even though the real development happened here in Bangalore and the US team was only in charge of sales and marketing. Why then, should we stay up at night (sometimes even during dinner) to take their calls? Why can’t they stay up at night and take our calls when it is morning for us? After all I just about almost always defy death to even reach office every morning (as you saw). I do not yet know a single team in all of Bangalore’s Silicon Valley which makes the US team adjust to Indian time zones. Silicon slavery at its brightest.
These calls, half of the time, or most of the time, no useful information is being exchanged. And I, listening in on the call, just to pass some time, I make note of the frequency of some of the words being thrown around. These are some of the most frequently used words and phrases, Core competency, S.W.A.T analysis, lots of moving parts, leverage, scalable, robust, out of the box, and finally, it is what it is. I have no idea, even till date after sitting in on hundreds of such calls, what some of these phrases even mean, yet I join the mob and throw them around when it is my chance to speak. I say, for example, ‘After the S.W.A.T analysis we built a scalable system and our solution is robust and out of the box.’ Our solution would be none of these things. And I quickly suppress the guilt without remorse, after having to lie on such a robust, scalable and out of the box level. It is what it is.
Anyways, like I said, I began to wonder about my worth and value in the team. And having no immediate task, I strolled around the floor ruminating about these thoughts. Soon, I was near the desks where the previously mentioned, hard workers always sit and work with heads buried in the blue screens. These people, although few, are always as I have observed, already there when I come in the morning and are still there when I leave later in the night. I wondered when they would leave for some respite. It was evident, to me and to everyone else, that the constant work and contribution from these few hard workers were the only reason keeping our whole team, and probably the whole office, afloat.
Seeing them work like that, I returned to my desk filled with envy. I wanted to work like them, I wanted to involve and be so distracted that I would fail to notice all these blatant hypocrisy going on around me, but I had no task to work on, nothing to put my mind to. I began to wonder once again, about the likes of me in the office, who spend each day without even utilizing a tiny bit of their time’s worth. Why is my company wasting money on people like me? And, I know I am not mistaken, there are hundreds, if not thousands like me in the building, who are under-utilized every day. Why not fire all of us, and keep those hard workers? Or, how about this, why not utilize us? Which master, do you know, had slaves he did not fully utilize? Apparently, the masters of the Valley.
And thus, on these notes, I came down to the cafeteria to see you hogging on some pastry. I demanded that you buy me one and you bought me one. Then we played Table Tennis in the game room and we played snooker after that. The day was a good day as I did not spoil my mood. Strangely, but not surprisingly, I had to ask you this,
‘Being my manager, why don’t you have any time pressing tasks for me? Why don’t you have tasks yourself? Why do you while away your time away in the cafeteria every day like this? I showed you the amount of stress I go through each day just to reach office, then why not utilize me? Why are you always so dispassionate about all this? Am I the only one with all these questions?’
You did not say anything except,
‘I was also like you once. Questions to which we have no answers to, and yet I am a manager now. The trick is to stop questioning. Let us have another pastry?’
In my mind I said,
‘What a waste it was, showing you, my manager, my travel route, and just how foolhardy it is to ride the traffic every day, and nothing has changed, and you, fucker, want another pastry?’
But out loud, I said,
‘Okay.’
Part 4 is out!
