The Web of life.

For a change Anuj woke up before the alarm. There was a spring in his step as he got dressed. His very first day at his very first job!

As he got into his beige trouser and half sleeves t-shirt a twinge of guilt at the money his parents had spent on it hit him. His dad was already waiting for him when he went in for breakfast. This was his moment of pride, having breakfast with his father and leaving for work with him. It was delicious, this moment of achievement.

As the red bus traversed the dusty roads of vadodara, anuj’s excitement grew. Dad wanted him to be independent and it was a joint decision that he would travel by bus. He didn’t mind the journey; he was carrying a book along to pass his time. The heat was a killer as it is in May and by the time he reached his workplace he was drenched in sweat. Thank god for deos, thought Anuj!

A deep breathe in and he plunged into his new office, which was in a residential complex, a normal occurrence with small IT companies in Gujarat. Proudly he marched in; it was no small feat to join as a junior software developer in a leading IT company.

He waited in the reception with a sense of trepidation as Sunil walked in. Sunil, with his hair nicely combed no nonsense attitude, cold stare and cryptic voice looked scary. Hi, I am your PM and you will be working on B & Z client said Sunil as he shook hands. He led Anuj to a workstation and directed him to his desk. Anuj was still staggering behind a bit bewildered at how fast things were moving. As Anuj’s spirit kept ebbing Sunil kept talking.

The first 8 hours of his work life left Anuj bewildered. There had not even been a proper induction. The client coverage specifications had been dumped on him; Sunil spent 20 minutes on each and briskly explained their business. And then he asked Anuj to read the specifications and come up with queries. The drudgery unknown to Anuj had begun.

6 months later
Anuj’s slim frame was hunched over the meeting table (a common term used for the place where meetings with client generally happens). It was 7:00 am in the morning and Anuj just couldn’t concentrate, he had changed 3 rickshaws to reach work as buses didn’t play till 8:00 am, had missed breakfast and his back was killing him because of long hours in front of the computer. But he couldn’t afford to delay. Sunil, his devilish boss would be in anytime and if the prototype (a demo for software) wasn’t ready he would be yelled at, yet again. Last evening he had thrown the mouse pointing the specification at his desk because the UI was looking dirty! Now how could that be his fault, it was the client’s mistake they kept changing the screens and shooting emails as they did not know what they wanted, and clearly the specification had not been updated by the so called boss.

Sunil stormed in at 8:30 am and yelled saying how come prototype is not matching the client’s requirement. Anuj quivered and shifted from one foot to another. He tried explaining that client had not been available to make a comment, but Sunil never listened. The office boys were looking at him with pity. Anuj broke down that day and his confidence was in tatters. He was dreading going to the desk again, it couldn’t be avoided. As he reached his desk he saw a completely new UI’s print-outs and Sunil crisply told him, that the UI’s needs to be completed by tomorrow morning 9:00 am. Anuj stammered as he said Sunil I already have 2 complex pages to make, why don’t we get new developer team (a separate web designing team) to do half of it. Sunil quietly said, I have done this for 5 years as well, and it’s doable. I want the UI’s tomorrow morning.

The bus journey back home was traumatic. The hot August air did nothing to ease out his stress and tension. Nothing in his college days had prepared him for this. Whatever happened to algorithms logic, codes, C++, DFS, database? All those pages full of assignments, OR (maths), Assembly language, MIS sounded like a dream, a lie, a waste. All he did was sit at his desk and connected pen-drive to his machine and started his work. That night Anuj made up his mind, he had to leave. Drudgery at work could be acceptable but constant humiliation was not.

6 years later
Ajay walked into his new organization, his first job, Anuj came out to receive him. As they walked in, Anuj handed Ajay a specification, his induction doc and told Ajay that though they would work together, Ajay’s “buddy” through his induction period of 3 months would be another colleague. Only after spending 3 months in an in-house training program would Ajay be introduced to actual work. Ajay loved his workplace and by the end of 3 months was eager to jump into work.

It was a windy January morning and Ajay and Anuj were headed towards a client meeting. Ajay had been in the organization for 6 months now and loved working with Anuj. Anuj was a dream team lead, patient, knowledgeable, supportive and stern when required. That morning Anuj was particularly chatty and as they got talking Ajay mentioned that his elder brother had been in IT as well and had worked for X IT company. Anuj curiously asked him, what’s your brother’s name? Sunil, replied the cheerful Ajay.

Anuj stared at Ajay and then burst out laughing. Oblivious to Anuj & Sunil’s association and bitter parting, Ajay joined Anuj’s laughter. Their playful banter continued till they reached their destination.

Anuj never let Ajay know of the dreadful time Sunil had given him. And Ajay was awarded the best employee that year.

The world might call them brothers, I call them thieves

It was a carefully laid plan which couldn’t have gone wrong. The 3 brothers were very well placed and highly connected. And the 3 sisters married into poor homes were helpless and 2 of them widowed. It was their mother's 1st death anniversary function and the 3 sisters (60+ in age) came to the venue after a long journey of over 4 hours. They were tired with bodies aching and mind clouded. As soon as they entered, the 3 brothers surrounded them with a piece of paper and asked them to sign it. With the place swarming with relatives and their minds tired with the journey they signed the paper. Little did they know the folly of this simple action and when the picture got clearer the enormity of the situation hit them.

The father of these 6 siblings had not left a will and after the mother’s death ideally the property should have been divided between the 6 siblings equally. But the brothers plotted and chose an opportune moment - the death anniversary of their mother when the house buzzing with relatives would deter the sisters from creating a scene. They then got their 3 sisters to sign a paper which said that they would never claim a part of their father’s property. The property worth 2 crores rupees or more was solely the brothers’ inheritance. The entire conspiracy was planned with immense precision, there were clerks from the court present while the paper was being signed to act as witnesses and stamp the paper so that no one could challenge it.

This is a true incident which has unfolded within my own relatives.

I was amazed and saddened when I heard of it, how can your own blood siblings be so heartless and cruel? Does the love for money blind you to such a great extent that you are compelled to cheat your own sisters? Whatever happened to sibling love, sharing and caring, a so called part of our “culture” and “tradition?” Or is the "maintenance" of culture and tradition only a task to burden women? The sisters could have challenged the piece of paper but in the small town that they lived in, their influential brothers would have made their lives miserable and moreover they didn’t have the will or stamina to run around courts at the age of 60.

The incident is appalling not because of the enormous amount of money involved. It is disgusting because of the manner in which the whole plan was executed in cold blood. Have you ever seen one of the Nat Geo series where they show a tiger silently watch its prey and then strike at the right time? The attack is aimed straight at the neck and it kills the prey in one shot. That’s what this whole incident reminded me of. These brothers resemble animals in the jungle sauntering around, on a lookout for a helpless creature to satiate their greed and hunger. On second thoughts, maybe even animals won’t attack their own brethren in this manner.

In spite of their prestigious degrees, high posts and enormous bank balances they are nothing more than petty rogues who hoodwinked their own sisters. I wonder if they wish to carry the money to their funeral pyres, I wonder if they can still sleep at night, I wonder if they can look at their reflection in the mirror without shame and if they have any respect left for their own self. The world might call them brothers I call them thieves, not because of the wealth that they conspired to snatch but, because they looted their sisters of trust, love and faith.

While an intervention by law might solve issues like these, it is heartbreaking to see how gender colors and disfigures sibling relationships as well. The brothers are ready to share the wealth among themselves but not with the sisters, an obvious discrimination based on gender. When married women have to face prejudice within their own families then what can one expect from the families they marry into?

AJ’s Bijli Bachao Andolan…

AJ is paranoid about wastage…be it food, water electricity or even time! He can’t stand wastage (uncannily like my mother)…and he is always on a no wastage andolan.

On saving electricity and water his conscientiousness borders on becoming an obsession.

Since, I can be quite careless about such stuff I keep getting constant sermons on the need to preserve electricity & water, how some people in India survive in less than a bucket of water and no electricity and people like us waste etc etc. He does make sense so I keep my trap shut and hear him out (not necessarily listen and implement).

Most people would consider AJ’s habit praiseworthy (try living with it) and I do tend to agree….well ya sometimes. But there are instances when AJ overdoes it. For example if am reading a book in the room and go out to get some water and he happens to venture in and notice that the lights are on, he switches the darned lights off. So by the time I come back in approx. 5 minutes, the lights are off…now this in my opinion is a bit extreme. But since it doesn’t cause me much inconvenience I don’t exactly react.

But yesterday AJ was in true form!

We were to go out for dinner and I had rushed from office to get ready. As soon as I entered home, I switched on the geyser (yes I have a hot water bath through the year, even in June when it’s scorching) and then went about doing some work.

After 15 minutes I returned to see AJ filling in buckets and stacking them and the geyser was switched off. Before I could get over my bewilderment and react, AJ said, “You left the geyser on in the morning!!!” And then without giving me a chance to blink an eye lid he added, “Yes as usual! So I switched it off and since I don’t want the geyser damaged (apparently hot water for too long in the geyser spoils it, that’s an AJ tale) am storing all the hot water in buckets which can be used later.”

Usually in a situation like this I would have burst a nerve and lost my cool…

But the sight of him standing there filling in buckets was so hilarious that I cracked up!

And then of course I had my pound of flesh when I told him that I had switched the geyser on merely 15 minutes back so that I could have a bath. The look on his face was so incredulous that am still laughing…

So now, AJ akka. Mr. Conscientious has instructed me that I should inform him every time I switch the geyser on, so that he knows and can keep a track. And I dare not disobey because when it to comes tobijli and paani the man is always on a mission!!!

The Break-Up

She had never agreed with Tennyson’s “Better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.” Losing love hurt, really hurt and it remained with you forever and as she packed to leave she felt every bit of that pain tear her heart into pieces. Though this wasn’t the first time this was happening to Suhana, it still hurt. Five years was not a short time.

As she looked around the place which she had called home her eyes filled up and tears threatened to pour down. The photo frame, the newspaper, the early morning banter over the newspaper, it would be so difficult to take it out of her system.

Take hold of yourself and don’t create a scene, no one will ever understand your feelings Suhana, she reprimanded herself. The whole thing had been a mistake from the beginning; she had never wanted to get into it. But she had been convinced otherwise, the entire period of wooing her had been so heartfelt, she had felt so wanted. And then when it all began she never once doubted her decision, for 5 long years everything had been so perfect.

There were days when she found solace only in her love. It had protected her from everything, from bad days to jealous relatives to inquisitive friends. The four walls made every hurt disappear; they eased out every worry, soothed all the pain. She could enter here and be lost forever, in her world of love and passion.

Just as she was about to trust, believe and give in her self completely it happened! The love suddenly started to disappear and was replaced by questioning. It had not been sudden - cold vibes, funny looks, accusative tones; they had all been there, only that she had been blind to it. She ignored it all, till it hit her in the face, questioning her integrity, dedication, passion and sincerity! After 5 years, what more could she have done to prove her love! She tolerated it for sometime, almost 6 months, and then she just couldn’t take it anymore.

It was breaking her heart but she knew there was someone else involved and not just one. And it was their presence which had caused the dissonance. The last nail in the coffin had been when she was questioned on something which she had not been responsible for. That’s when she decided that she couldn’t stay on and bear the humiliation, the suspicion and the disdain.

She knew her letter would create a furor and it did, so many people tried to convince her, to give it another shot. But she knew it wasn’t genuine it was just being done for the heck of it. It was being done because she had become furniture, because her leaving wouldn't be good for public image.

Suhana took a last look around at what had been her second home for such a long time. She went to each room and recounted the memories. The lunch room where she and her team had laughed and worked like crazy, the kitchen where mid-afternoon Maggie could still be smelt, the balconies where chatting and complaining sessions would go on forever, the reception where she had waited for her interview, the boardrooms where so many client wins, birthdays and anniversaries had been celebrated.

It had cost her everything, her personal life, her parents, friends and now it was time to break-up. She wished circumstances had not been this bad and they had had the guts to stand by her but in the end they decided to stand by the client…

As Suhana packed the last carton full of her stuff she also packed in her self respect. She promised herself that she would never give herself away so completely to anyone or anything.

It was a lesson that she had learnt the hard way but she wasn’t complaining because she was headed towards a new beginning. Maybe Tennyson was right afterall!