A single page

As part of a  C E N S O R E D  process, I was quickly scribbling down a brief history of where I've worked - names, places, designation, duration, salary, etc. I have most of it scanned and ready, so didn't take too long... but somewhere, that page started getting heavy. 

It carried over a decade of my life - why wouldn't it feel heavy? Every figure, every word on that page came with days, weeks, months worth of history. The salary negotiations. The resignation dates. The pitifully short breaks between jobs. The names of reporting managers - good ones, bad ones. Months that gave up years' worth of excitement, fun, learning, hard work, heartbreak, drama, action. Years that simply faded away into the ennui of repetition and and boredom and left me with a few months worth of stuff happening. 

Every shift was literally the high point of the year - the reasons that would lead me to quit, the bitter, voluble daru sessions that preceded it, frustrations coming to a head, the interviews, the final offers, the quitting, the new places and people, the learning curve... 

It's just in the last few years that Life has had more to add and contribute than Work. More stuff has happened outside the Office than inside - and I remember the times when the Ofiice was literally all there was, and home was a place to crash and drink, and weekends were for catching up on sleep, getting smashed, recovering from hangovers, or putting in overtime. And maybe the occasional movie. There was no TV, no gaming, no interior deco, no family stuff, no quality time. 

There was, however, the ubiquitous, all-powerful cig break, the glue and the cornerstone of Office life and growth. There were the industry parties and the outbounds. All your friends worked where you did, and traveled together, so there was no 'commute', just extended timepass. Bosses could be angels or demons, but you always had less to worry about than them, more spare time than them, no matter what they did. Little things would be HUGE - road trips for a special tea or dhaba or snack. A weekend trek. A visit home. They'd sustain you for weeks. 

And the learning curve. Everything was new. The admin staff, the networks, reports, presentations, fieldwork, data entry, cold calls, warehouses... it was all a mysterious new world filled with drama, excitement, and above all, something new to learn every day. 

Then you shifted, and suddenly your world fractured into new and old. Then into Work and Personal. Then Work, Personal, Family, Friends, and the To-Do List. You feel sliced thin now, spread out over too many shifting textures floating on an unstable sea, pulling together the drifting loose barrels under your raft. It's more stable, bigger, but... there's something missing. Like a stage-one rocket, the first few career years drove you howling into space, and now, drifting in the silence, you miss that drive. It consumed you, that pillar of fire, changed you, took you into a place you never thought you would reach... but sometimes you wonder if the journey cost you the destination. 

It's strange how all that can fit on one page. 

Ben Parker's Law of Corporate Management

"With great power comes great responsibility" defines Ben Parker's last lesson to Spiderman, establishing the moral code and sense of duty with which he would come to accept - and exploit - his superhuman abilities for the greater good. It implies a sense of light and dark, a checks-and-balances system that would temper what set him apart and raised him above humanity, and would restrain him in situations where other restrictions no longer applied. 

In corporate life, however, the two are not in such equal balance. At work, it's safe to say - 

The desire to evade responsibility outweighs the lust to gain power, every time. 

In any situation, the desire to have control, to manage any task, however fun, attractive, interesting, and career-enhancing it might be, always comes with the fine-print examination - if it goes belly-up, what happens to me? The corporate world is then divided into people who read this fine print and who didn't - and the ones who didn't, are the ones standing there when it does go belly-up. And this is at all levels. 

When you set KRAs, accept leadership, take on a profile, keep an eye out for this fine print. Similarly, when you define someone else's role, or need inputs / help / cooperation from anyone else - junior, peer, or senior - make sure this is burned in foot-high letters in your mind. No matter how good the benefits look, if you haven't seen the costs those benefits imply, expect the shine to wear off real fast and foot-dragging at every stage to follow. 

Auto strike. Ahahaha.

Andheri Station at 8:30 a.m., peak rush hour.

Believe it or not.

An auto rickshaw strike today in Mumbai and Life Is Beautiful. The streets are empty, traffic jams are a thing of the distant past like a bad dream, it takes a grand total of seven minutes to reach the station... Why can't life be usually like this? When I return to home tonight I have every expectation that the streets will be equally clear.

Hopefully, this should make people realize they don't really need so many autos. And the suburbs will be as pleasant as Town, henceforth and forever... I wish.

zoning in

only way to describe it is, it's like runner high.

remember feeling this way... more than a decade ago, in my XII boards. and Macleodganj.

a moment of perfection, when everything works. not hungry, not thirsty, not tired, not sleepy. your head, your whole body, trembling with an energy so frighteningly abundant you can feel it barely contained.

everything coming together, at the right time, the right place. synapses, situations, reflexes, thought, hands, the world around you, in a perfect ballet where you can't go wrong. in some extraordinary way, you have reached a level where you can actually make the world behave the way you want it to - or where it doesn't matter how it behaves, you can handle it. easily.

like a dragonfly climbing out of the husk of the nymph it used to be, and spreading it's wings for the first time in it's like in the sun. the world just changed forever, and it's a wonderful, exciting place to be in. where there are endless possibilities, everything is - not easy, but fun. you look back at what you were, and you marvel that you could have felt like that, lived like that, once...

it's also lonely. when you try to describe it, you come across as - you can't come across. it's such an intensely personal experience, it can't be communicated. the other won't understand. at best, you can be boring.

it's an interesting thing... this is probably what someone on serious amphetamines, or in a high-altitude climb, feels like. but from outside...

Claims, investments, bills, proofs, receipts, and other such blots upon the world

Rent receipts from an absentee landlord who squeals at the thought of any trackable transaction.

Medical bills from a shifty-eyed chemist's assistant who acts like he's selling you stolen russian nuke warheads under the table.

Insurance premium receipts from a company which is still convinced you live 3 moves in the past, and will unfailingly send you everything you needed precisely 1 day after the final deadline.

Banks that want you to change login passwords, transaction passwords, One-Time passwords, secure PINs, phone PINs, CRNs, DoB verifications, all via brain-damaged, abysmal imps of CSRs that were thrown out of Hell for being too obnoxious.

Salary slips, more lost than the key to the Rosetta Stone.

and over and above everything, fluttering like Hitchcock birds, like blurred, smudged passenger pigeons, are the forms, forms, forms...

Aaagh.