MY FIRST DAY AT WORK

With the holidays coming up, I am averaging less than twenty five emails a day and feeling kind of unemployed – thought it would be good to give other people some reading practice.

Some years ago, I completed 25 years of service life and wrote small piece on how I started off on my first day at work. The piece is reproduced below for your reading pleasure.

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“A quarter century of service life;

Full of surprises, fun and strife.

Has it come too early or late ?

Need to sit and contemplate !!”

To give a sort of background to the uninitiated, I had got the job through a campus interview during my final days at the Engineering College. They had selected 16 people from our batch, but I was the only fellow who finally joined the construction company. Never got to know who the other 15 were. 

Koraput district of Orissa (in India) is sometimes referred to as the “Kashmir of the South”. Most of the district straddles the Eastern Ghats – a long range of mountains and hills covered in dense forests, with gurgling streams and pristine natural beauty. The forests were home to bears, wild boar, cheetahs, pythons and the most dangerous of them all, wild dogs. (I hope those animals still live there).

For the anthropologically inclined, these forests, to the North and East of Koraput town are the fabled “Dandakarnya” forests mentioned in the Ramayana.

When I landed there back in the early 80’s, the local tribal population were the only people around. They had a wonderful openness about them – simple-minded, trusting people, ever ready to serve you food and help in any way they could. They spent the evenings dancing and drinking “handiya” as the local hooch is called, with one significant difference – after a bout of drinking, more often than not, it would be the men-folk who would get beaten up by the wives and thrown out of the house, thus being forced to spend the rest of the night at their own doorsteps.

Between July and September you got to see nature at its most furious – violent storms, rains that continued for days on end without letup, ending in terrible flash floods. It is also the coldest period then, with night time temperatures hovering around the 5-7 degree Celsius mark.

There is a broad-gauge railway line starting from the sea-shores of Waltair (Vishakapatnam), climbing into the hills and rolling on to the plateau beyond, up to Kirandul. Semiliguda, on this line, was once the highest broad-gauge railway station in Asia at about 3600 feet, till the Sino-Tibetan Railway came into being in China. The railway line itself is an engineering marvel, with about 50 odd bridges and 67 tunnels taking the line from sea-level, to 3600 feet over a distance of about 21 miles.

Araku Valley (or Arku) is just beside Semiliguda, where all the migratory birds from Siberia come for the winter nesting. Between the months of December and March, you can barely hear yourself speak in this valley.  It is a wonderful place to go for a first honeymoon or a repeat one, especially during the winter months – between December and March.

***

My hydel project was somewhere in that Koraput district in southern Orissa. The place was not to be found on any map – only the nearest railway station, Koraput town, was shown as a tiny dot high up in the Eastern Ghats. My only guide was the appointment letter stating that my “project site was about 54 Kms from this town”. Remember, India was then a relatively “phone-free” country.

Day One : I boarded the Coromandel Express from Howrah to Vishakhapatnam, accompanied by a suitcase and a bedding (or “holdall” as it is known). I do not know why, but in those days, a bedding seemed to be an integral part of everyone’s luggage.

Even though I was in the first class compartment (I do not think they use them these days anymore), my sleep was rudely interrupted at regular intervals throughout the night by coffee vendors… The jarring sound of  “ey – Kaffeeee” emanating from their throats, like someone polishing a hollow metal bucket with sand paper was enough to keep one awake for a long while.

Day Two : Reached Vishakhapatnam at about five in the morning. My train to Koraput – the “Waltair – Kirandul fast passenger” – left at about 10 in the morning, and almost immediately started its climb into the hills. When we started, there were about 20 odd people in the only first class compartment on the train.

Halfway through the journey, there were just three of us, all going to Koraput – no wonder they called this train “the fast passenger...” And to top it all, those two gentlemen who lived in Koraput, had never heard about my project. The journey through the hills was indeed scenic, but bereft of food and water supplies; had biscuits and tea for lunch. And then more biscuits and tea... When the thirst overpowered me, I would get off at some of the innumerable stations on the way and partake of a pale, reddish fluid that dribbled out of the “Drinking Water” taps.

The train reached Koraput from Vishakhapatnam, six hours late, at about 11 o’ clock at night. The only food that was available nearby consisted of stale dosas, and some violently sour sambar. No one had told me it could be so cold at night in what is almost southern India.

Had to spend the night alternating between shivering and paying urgent visits to the loo – the dosa turned out to be murderous…

So here I was, a greenhorn fresh out of college, about to enter service life, 1000 Kms away from home, shivering on a dimly-lit railway platform high up in the hills in the middle of nowhere, with the geographical location of my destination undefined, while that assassin of a dosa continued its assault on my intestines… If I wanted to turn back, I could only do so two days later, when that “fast passenger” train would wind its way slowly down the hills once again...

Day Three : Emerged from the railway station in the morning, bleary-eyed and still shivering. Visited all the tea-stalls trying to figure out a way to get to my destination. No one seemed to know where my project site was. A huge Sardarji at one of the tea-stalls took pity on me, told me he was a bus-driver, going to a town called “Jaipur”… (I always thought Jaipur was in Rajasthan at the other end of the country), and perhaps, my site was near that town… (Much later I came to know this one was called “Jeypore”)

I boarded his bus, a typical red-and-yellow contraption belonging to one of the state transport corporations, where the windows on the side had rolled up canvas sheets instead of glass, and the whole vehicle made more noise than five hundred baby-rattles put together. Sat on the first seat, right beside the engine, parallel to the driver’s seat. He kept up a steady chatter, but the engine was louder, so all I could hear were certain words or snippets of the conversation he was trying to make. He slowed down at every road sign on the way to allow me to identify the road crossing that would lead to my project site. My co-passengers were a mixed lot – goats, vegetables, with people in tow.

After about an hour or so, when we were so deep into the forest, that sunlight could be seen dancing only on the treetops, we came upon this sign saying “Upper Kolab Hydel project – 15 Kms.”  The Sardarji jubilantly stopped the bus, helped me to get out with my suitcase and my bedding, and set me up on a small concrete block beside the road, that, I think, was once used for survey purposes. He told me I would definitely get some vehicle to reach the project site. And then the bus left for Jeypore.

It was about 9:30 in the morning. I was stuck in the middle of a dense forest now, with my suitcase and my bedding, and a lot of invisible chirping crickets for company, unable to move forward or return home. And that dosa of the previous night was not yet done with me, even after all those visits to the loo. Any thought of trying to walk that distance was quietly obliterated from my mind by that huge bedding sitting beside the suitcase…

The sound of crickets chirping was presently overcome by a huge tractor – trailer combination hauling cement bags. As it came closer I could see five people on the tractor, apart from the driver. I waved it to a stop and asked if they were going to the project site. They said no, but also said that I would not get any vehicle here, I needed to go to the next crossing, as that was the road used by the project people.

The only option was to get on the trailer. They helped me, my suitcase and the bedding on to the trailer, and we were off again…. “Some progress” I thought to myself.

They dropped me off at the second crossing, some 7 Kms and thirty minutes later, but still deep in the forest. My suitcase and bedding were white with cement dust, and I could only imagine how I must have looked…

The sign here said “Upper Kolab Hydel project – 10 Kms.” “I’m getting closer” – I thought.

This crossing had a small hut with half the roof missing, which perhaps, served as a roadside tea-stall once upon a time…. There were a couple of logs set up as benches, and a decrepit mud oven, in which a cat had made its home. Well, I at least had a cat for company now, as compared to the previous halt….. The cat woke up, viewed me disgustingly with half-closed eyes, as only cats can do, and went back to its slumber.

A couple of hours later, a white Ambassador car came along and slowed down as it was turning into the road that apparently led to the project site. The driver looked at me, then stopped, and asked if I was supposed to go to the project site. I answered yes and showed him my appointment letter. He cast a disbelieving look at me, helped me put the suitcase and bedding in the hold, and then laid a towel on the seat, saying “You have cement all over, please sit on the towel.”  I asked if this was a company car and he said yes. That was a comforting thought, indeed.

Well, after an uneventful 10 Kms, I reached the Project office, was greeted with incredulous looks from the people around, and taken straight to the Project Manager. He took one long look at me, drew a deep breath and asked, “Why did you not come in the car I sent for you?” 

 “Which car ?”, I asked.

“It was waiting for you at Jeypore bus-stand since 10 in the morning, and returned a few minutes ago”, he replied. “Never mind, now go to the officer’s mess, wash up, have lunch and come back.  I can barely make out your face through all that cement.”

It dawned on me that had that enterprising Sardarji just allowed me to stay put on his bus till it reached Jeypore, my travails would have been that much lighter…

In all my travels thereafter, I have never ever carried a bedding with me again, and I make it a point never to have a dosa for dinner either – their benign façade can sometimes hide a vitriolic backlash.

I have also always steered clear of enterprising bus-drivers ever since.

***

I am so lonely

This is from my archives.... composed April 17, 2012

***

I am so-o-o lonely

Road surfaces like scrambled egg on toast –

With random speed-breakers, sans traffic lanes;

Crazy signal sequences and harried cops trying to make sense of it all,

Who will tell them how roads and traffic rules should be ?

Who will explain what is disciplined driving ?  

I could, but they do not ask…. I am so-o-o lonely….

Walking along the streets watching people young and old,

Glassy looks, plastic smiles or a frowned brow with downcast eyes…

Blue-toothed boys and ear-plugged girls,

Cocooned off from the world they live in now –

Who do they talk to ? What do they listen ?

My phone remains silent… I am so-o-o lonely…

Evening parties all over the place,

Weddings, anniversaries, birthdays and other pricey dates;

Formal suits and brilliant dresses, sparkling jewelry and all

Women measuring other women carefully, while the men too,

Keep looking at them intently;

No one looks at me….. I am so-o-o lonely….

We created Time, and got enslaved by it;

A perfect continuum of life chopped up into pieces

Of pre-defined periods where work is ordained and one cannot rebel;

Life has become a clock-work; you live by the minute,

And dreams too, lie like a fractured mosaic within those boundaries…

With time came the realisation…. I am so-o-o lonely…

You feel the same ?

***

Flying the grand old airline

I have been plying, or should I say, flying, the domestic routes in India for well-nigh three decades. Back in those days there was only one carrier option and fixed price tickets for all sectors. They served food, which almost always made me sick, and the tea or coffee that was served, tasted the same – like dishwater. Cabin crew comprised of saree-clad aunties – remember, I was significantly younger then – who were quite curt if one complained about anything.

The aircraft kind of creaked and wheezed as they took off, forcing the most atheist among the passengers to look up to the sky at least once in a while... Some of these flights had screaming babies too, who started and stopped their routine along with the engines, with desperate parents trying to hide themselves.

The pilots frequently went on strike for one thing or the other, stranding passengers and upsetting schedules all over the country. An exasperated management roped in retired Indian Air Force pilots to make things work. With flying skills honed on fighter aircraft, this breed handled the creaking passenger planes the same way. It was like asking F1 drivers to run a city bus service.

Most runways back then were more suited to racing cattle than speeding aircraft and we poor passengers bumped along them for a while before taking off at a forty-five degree angle to meet the clouds, engines screaming. Landing was equally traumatic – most often it was on left pod, then right pod then nose wheel, before coming to a shuddering stop – the way they landed fighter planes loaded with bombs. There was thin, very thin, line between crashing and landing… Many atheists among us those days turned outright religious – we were always this close to meeting our Creator.

And then the skies opened up to private airlines – who offered cheaper fares – and one of them pioneered the art of serving alcohol on domestic routes !! It was a paradigm shift for a populace that till then, were deprived of almost all the good things in life and were used to long queues for purchasing anything, from food to two-wheelers.

It was hilarious to watch executives in ties and suits gulping free alcohol on an early morning flight and then being taken out of the plane at the destination, on wheel chairs, too sozzled to even stand up. God knows what happened to their days’ schedules.

It was immediately obvious that this could not continue, and the grand old airline, which was losing business to these upstart newcomers, went crying to Uncle of India, who put a complete ban on alcohol on domestic flights. The airline that started it, also passed into history, planes, bottles and all, and a new breed called “budget airlines” entered the scene.

These newbies really cut out the frills and offered cheaper tickets, seats with hard… I will be condescending and call them “firm” cushions, food for on-board sales, served by attractive young ladies in skirts (no frills there, either), but most importantly, brand new aircraft that did not creak or wheeze while taking off or landing.

The advent of these players was a welcome change for many, including me…. But as time went on, they added more rows in the cabins, reducing leg-space to the point where you wish you had penguin-feet, to be comfortable. I really pity the six-footers who travel on these planes !!  The windows are rarely clean – they fly these like buses – with no time to clean the exteriors….

***

On one recent occasion – the one that prompted me to write this piece – we found that the full-service ticket of the grand old airline was actually cheaper than the “no-frills” ticket of the budget airlines that have hard seats designed for penguin-feet.

I took this flight on the grand old airline after a gap of almost fourteen years. What a welcome change !! The aircraft was fairly new, the seat cushions soft, the leg-space adequate to push a hand-bag down below and sit comfortably, the air-conditioning did not leak water (did I mention that before ?) and the windows were clean.

The cabin crew comprised of air-hosts – (I know they are supposed to be called stewards, but prefer to call them what I did) – glum-faced men in white shirts and red ties – and the aunties were gone !! The food was nothing to write home about, but I did not fall sick again. We did not have to buy it either, they served with grace.

The best part was that we left and arrived on time !!!

Over the decade-plus period of budget airline travel, I have rarely arrived on schedule. The carriers not only fail to apologize, they have the gall to lecture the suffering multitude about the “virtues of being on time” !! The delays are never “their fault” and on the rare occasion that they serve complimentary refreshments to irked passengers, they make sure that the menu on offer is enough to turn away all but the ones deranged with hunger.

The classical Indian mind of double-think, double-talk, and double-speak…

***

Dear Readers, next time you fly, check all fares – the budget airlines are beginning to take people for a ride – other than the planes, I mean…

***

The Age of Deletion

Email entered my life about twenty five years ago…  For those of you who are familiar with the computers of that era, we wrote our stuff on VT220 or VT320 terminals. The snazzier ones among them had black screens and amber/gold characters….  Nevertheless, most of the work was still done over phone, and emails were used to record the conversations, at best. Then came the GUI – or graphic user interface and the mouse, and our lives changed forever.

Over time, particularly in the last decade or so, mobile phones, internet and emails have invaded – (I was about to say improved, but will stick with “invaded”) – our lives, to point that it can be called pollution, or technically, e-pollution. As we keep moving “forward” with our civilization, banks, mobile phones, identity cards, email accounts, shopping preferences, brand preferences, dietary inclinations, and perhaps medical records will become inextricably linked like an unholy mass of spaghetti topped with some gooey sauce. One will need to find one’s way through that, putting to shame all the adventures of Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn, Indiana Jones.

Now everybody and “everything” have begun to send emails or SMS. Auto-mailers, alert systems, “human-free” marketing campaigns, digital signatures, “green initiatives” eliminating paper, location-based services (LBS) on phones mean that one is bombarded throughout the day with some message or the other. Like persistent rain that refuses to intensify or go away…

Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Whatsapp only serve to add to the total confusion with messages, videos, links, and comments from the entire bunch of people you have come across in life, and would not necessarily prefer to be in daily contact, as also from people who are contacts’ contacts of the people in your contact list…. Like a bunch of trees in a forest that have all chosen to intertwine their branches. You can very well imagine what will happen to the forest floor.

The upshot is that you have to learn the art of deleting. I have followed a simple rule on emails for very many years : F-A-D, or File – Answer – Delete, on a daily basis for all my email accounts, both personal and office. Now that is spreading to my mobile as well.

As mobiles become smarter with larger storage capacities, the capacity to store any and everything has increased, while operational stability has not. Thus to keep the mobile in basic operational health, one will have to keep removing stuff on a daily basis. Of late I have been deleting about thirty videos and fifty-odd pictures along with countless messages, each day. And then Google automatically backs up your phone on the cloud – which means you need to go up there clean that space too !! Sometimes I wonder, why does one need to share a selfie ? We know how you look !!

If you switch off the Wi-Fi, there is no respite. They will be crouching like tigers in cyberspace, to flood your phone with an e-vengeance as soon as it is connected. Happens every morning and after every flight.

I have realised that we have reached THE AGE OF DELETION !!

We do need to read, or at least skim through before we hit the delete button. And it takes time !! We are beginning to spend the better part of our waking hours reading important / unimportant messages, baseless trivia, unwanted information on people’s vacations and daily chores, and then deleting them, or worse, forwarding them to others, to spread the clutter.

Of late I am averaging about two to three hours each day deleting messages from my multiple inboxes and mobile phone, and by the time I am done, there are some more lined up for the next day !! We need to build an app for that – one that will skim through the incoming avalanche, filter stuff according to my preferences, and automatically delete the rest.

What is happening ? As we get enmeshed in this digital world, the plethora of passwords, videos, pictures, messages – both genuine and contrived are becoming a burden on the average mind and memory. There is no time to “stand and stare”; no time to contemplate, no time to look within….

***

From the dawn of civilization, we have lived in the “age of creation”.

Shakespeare wrote about thirty plays, one hundred and fifty-odd sonnets and some more poems in his lifetime. Wordsworth wrote more than three hundred and fifty. R.N. Tagore composed two thousand plus songs, seven dance-dramas, set up a university and became an institution by himself. Nazrul Islam composed about three thousand poems in a short span before an illness rendered him speechless and partially paralyzed.

I wonder if any of them would have been so prolific with their creations if they had to spend the better part of their days deleting stuff that they did not want in the first place….

No wonder we do not have great, original, contemporary thinkers….

Now that you have finished reading this, let’s go back to deleting stuff… I have started already !!

***

"D" in Discipline

A short story written by my son the other day....

***

"D" in Discipline

Long ago, but not so very long ago, I was a kid.

"Discipline e abar D?", (Another "D" in discipline ?") my mother sighed every time. 

It was easy. All you had to do was stand as dumb as a dolmen, wait for people to share their piece of minds, a few crocodile tears and you'd be done with it.

"Discipline e abar D?"(Another "D" in discipline ?"), the lady sitting beside me sighed, admonishing her child. 

I looked up.

"Ei dada ke dekhecho? Kirom shanto?", (Look at him !! What a nice and quiet boy he is ?) she went on. 

The kid glanced at me. I glanced back. 

I tried saying something. I couldn't.

I smiled. I couldn't help it.

Maybe for the first time in his life, someone didn't have a problem with him getting a D in Discipline.

After a moment of silence, he smiled back.

***

Flight of a Goddess

Sunil was just another kid with a bright and happy face, abundant curiosity and enough energy to outlast all the elders in his family. Within a few days of joining kindergarten he was easily the most famous kid, with his constant pranks, quick learning skills and his winning smile, which made the teachers think twice before admonishing him for something.

He picked up his first pencil and started learning to write during Saraswati Puja that year. Saraswati, the goddess of learning and knowledge, was revered in his community, and one day each year, she was worshipped with much fanfare across the land. All students, teachers and those associated with academia, participated.

Things were fine till the first parent-teacher meeting. The teachers explained to his parents that he was the naughtiest kid since the dawn of civilization. And then things started to change… slowly, but surely. His parents, in their desperation to get him to conform, tried all things available – love, anger, punishment, limiting his friends, and so on… But Sunil’s free spirit reigned supreme.

About a year later he gained admission to a well-known school in the area albeit with a bit of persuasion from his parents and a hefty down payment. “You see, there are so many kids, and we take only the brightest...” was the common refrain across the four schools that rejected him !! His father kept wondering for years after that, how a school judged “brightest kids” among a bunch of bright and inquisitive, fidgety four-year-olds.  “Brightness” was linked to the down payment.

Four years later, Sunil began to suffer from pain in the lower back. It was diagnosed as being caused by the weight of his school bag. Most of his classmates had similar problems. His Mom started carrying his bag to and from school.

Sunil loved to play – simply running around with friends or hitting a ball with a bat or simply kicking it around … and that was the hardest thing to do !! If he wanted to play cricket, football, table-tennis or tennis, he had to enrol in a coaching camp or a class. If he wanted to simply run around and play catch, there were hardly a couple of kids available to play with. All the others were busy at this class or the other – drama, music, singing lessons, you-name-it.  He often asked his Mom, “Why does everything have to be a “study” ?”

During the early years, Sunil’s class performance was above par on all counts, except “attentiveness” and “not talking in class”. At one such parent-teacher meeting, his father asked the teacher, “Ma’am, these kids are sitting side-by-side in class for six hours a day, and two hundred days a year… And you expect them not to talk to each other at all ?” To the astonishment of everyone, the teacher answered, “Yes !!”

In class 5, he was asked to write an essay on a sudden unplanned holiday trip. He wrote about a sudden trip to Singapore along with his parents that he had undertaken the previous year. The teacher rejected his piece saying that she wanted real experiences not fantasy. It took his mother to come down to the school to explain that what he had written was fact. Sunil never could figure out what he had done wrong.

By the time he was in class 7, his marks began to falter, alarming his parents.  The class teacher suggested tuitions. And thus began a ritual – school, five days a week– tuitions, four days a week – music lessons, one day per week – cricket camp, two days a week;  there was simply no time to “play”. And his marks improved. His talent at field games and music flourished. But the goddess, Saraswati, had a worried frown.

That year they went on a holiday trip during the Puja break, touring parts of North India from Simla to Kulu-Manali and Delhi. By the time they returned, Sunil’s school had re-opened and he had missed two days’ classes. His father put in an application as a formality, stating that they had not been able to secure travel reservations in due time, causing Sunil to miss classes. The application was rejected by the Principal and his father was called. He was asked to put in a fresh application stating that Sunil was sick. It also had to be accompanied by a medical certificate !!  His father had no choice.  Sunil learned for the first time that one needs to “officially lie”.

In due time, he cleared his first High School Board exams with decent marks in the first division. But again no school would admit him in the Science stream at the Higher Secondary level. His parents repeated the cycle of his first admission – multiple school applications, multiple entrance interviews, and finally a hefty down payment for a seat.

Everyone advised his parents that Sunil should enroll for tuitions immediately, else he would not clear the two years of Higher Secondary level studies. His parent tried home tuitions – the first teacher made them buy seven books, taught for a couple of months and then disappeared!! He simply did not answer the phone thereafter. Those books were worthless – they had very little relevance to the course he was supposed to follow.  The next two teachers were highly erratic and did not even cover the first few lessons in the three important subjects. Sunil failed in all three at the half-yearly exams six months later.

As a stunned Sunil emerged with his report card from the school hall, his Maths teacher handed him a brochure, urging him to join the coaching center he owned. Most of his then current teachers taught there too. He did. The very next day.

The marks showed a dramatic improvement in the subsequent exams. The huge monthly pay-outs to the coaching center were working. Sunil was happy, but his parents were alarmed. They kept telling him to prepare for the Higher Secondary Board exams on his own. But where was the time ? School and tuitions consumed all the hours. Everything else went flying out the window.

The Higher Secondary Board exams were upon him in due time, followed by numerous competitive exams for admissions to different colleges. Once again, he scored decently, at the Board exams and in some of the competitive ones, but admission to a college was determined by yet another down payment.

Four years later he was a graduate, with a degree, and set out to make his place in the world. He carried a lot of angst and the irreverence for his teachers was almost total. He was what he had become in spite of them, not because of them.

It remains to be seen what kind of professional he will turn out to be.

***

Was Sunil a “good” student or a “bad” one ? Your guess is as good as mine.

***

There was a time, not very long ago, when teachers were revered as another set of guardians alongside the parents. They labored for the development and improvement of their wards. The wards, in turn, held them in awe throughout their lives.

There was a time, not very long ago, when acquiring knowledge was fun and challenging, when thirst for knowledge was supposed to be blessed by the goddess Saraswati, in all her manifestations.

There was a time, not very long ago, when those in academia viewed children as budding flowers, full of untapped potential. Mentoring was the order of the day.

All that is history.

Somewhere along the line, the goddess of learning had taken flight, taking with her the fun and frolic of Sunil’s youth and those of his peers.

The value system that she embodied lies in a shambles.

***