Tempting FATE

                I just turned 25 this year. It's an important milestone in one's life. It's when a sense of maturity hits you (or at least the world expects it). It's that time in life when you start wondering "What Next?" Generally the thoughts would be “Either I need to do my Masters so that it helps my career or I jump to a high(er) paying job so that I can be financially stable by the time I turn 27-28”.

These thoughts still persist in my mind and believe me thinking about these for a long duration can drive you nuts. Higher education’s damn too costly and I am not the greatest fan of taking loans. Add to that the pressure of constructing a house in the next year or 2, it just doesn’t make sense. Having already jumped twice in my career in 3 years, jumping to a new company might hurt me in the long run. I’m enjoying the responsibility at my current job, but the hikes the current job promises scares me. I work for a small start-up who pays salaries from revenues earned and right now our revenues don’t make for a good figure.

Too much running in my mind, you think?? I wish these were the only worries; I could manage them any day. But there’s a bigger, sillier yet scarier nightmare in my head driving me and few others like me nuts. Wanna know what it is? Read on..

I come from a semi-orthodox Brahmin family. Growing up, I had few elder cousins whose marriage alliances weren’t going as expected. In both cases, the girls ditched my brothers for their lovers; this after committing to the marriage. Naturally, aunts and grandmothers were always saying to our ears – don’t believe girls of your generation; stay away from girls from your class; they’ll fool you; they’ll spin a web around you and trap you and many more such concocted stories would be fed to me. I grew up to become an obedient son/grandson/nephew and kept girls at a safe distance. But the world around has changed so much over these past few years!! Inter-caste marriages, love marriages and live-in relationships are the norm. I’ve had loads of marriages to attend this season and it’s all love marriages.. Guys getting married at 25! Really feel happy for friends that they are getting to choose their partners and are not being forced to go through the interviews of arranged marriages ;-)

But where does all this leave me? Having told myself that i’ll go for the traditional arranged marriage, I see nightmares now – no girls around to marry: D. I’ve always wanted to marry a girl from our community, which is pretty small. I have a cousin, 3 years elder to me, whose mom is finding it really tough to find decent girls around. The decent ones don’t have the jataka/kundli matching. My parents have already relaxed their conditions – “if you really want to go out there and find yourself a girl, make sure she’s a Brahmin”, they say.. It’s much easier said than done. Inter-caste marriages have their own problems, even if it’s Shivites v/s Vaishnavites. I’ve seen an ex-colleague have problems with in-laws even before her marriage. And with my less than average looks(it’s debatable) , I feel I have a better shot at an arranged marriage.

Ideally at 25, I shouldn’t even be thinking about this. I am supposed to have a good 2 years of independent life J . But sometimes, when I’m lonely I just can’t stop thinking about this stuff. The only thing that I can do is earn some good money in the meanwhile and tempt fate expecting it to be good to me..              

Penned a long time ago.. for a close friend :)

There was a time when a Rupee a Msg didn't stop us from msging all the time,
There was a time when we could just go on chatting without caring for time,
There was a time when we talked everthing under the sun ,
Now, the msgs are free, but we don't hav the patience to type ,
Now, we're always online, but there's nothing to chat ,
Now, there's nothing to talk about,but just the awkward silence ,
Damn! I just wish I could stall TIME!!

I wish... No, I don't!!

                It was a lazy Saturday morning. I picked myself to get up and go the office as usual. Working on Saturdays had become a part of my routine over the past few months. Weaving through the Bangalore traffic, I reached the office in good spirits. I hadn’t worked on the project the entire week and now I had to cram for 8 hours and do something productive to cover for the entire week. I was asked to work on a project that had been dumped a month earlier for another project. The girl sitting next to me greeted me and I reciprocated. And as was the norm, she flooded me with doubts soon after. This was part of my work – to train and help her become a developer. I quite enjoyed the role, but I knew I hadn’t succeeded at the rate which I would have liked. She was still struggled to code, but had learnt the configuration part of the work well. My employer would generally come around for an hour or 2 on Saturdays and it was usually around noon. So, I was quite surprised when she came in early this Saturday.

            Flash forward 2 hours – the girl sitting next to me couldn’t control her emotions and started crying. There was no one around but me. I am so bad with girls generally and this one was also crying!!! Groping for words, I shifted my gaze on the computer right in front of me and started consoling (mumbling words). What had happened in those 2 hours exactly? Well, I was laughing those 2 hours, but it did strike me later in the day.

                We were fired/ let go off/laid off in those 2 hoursJ. The girl had gone in 1^st into the adjacent room on the employer’s call. The employer- a nice, sweet lady, had given the girl her 1^st break. The girl had struggled for 2 years to get into the IT industry; she had joined this firm sometime last August and was the only employee (Me an employee?? – Later). My employer was not from an IT background, so both were finding it difficult to get work done, both trying to learn at the same time.  Now, she had been let go.

                I had no clue at the time why the girl was called in. She came out of the room after being in the room for around 45 minutes. I didn’t notice any expression on her face at the time. I was busy working!! I was called in, and my employer was sitting on her newly furnished couch, smiling at me. I went in with no clue whatsoever. She started the conversation lightly, asking about the start-up where I had given an interview in the past week. My potential employers had asked me for a reference from her and she had happily obligedJ. We were discussing about that and she asked me the reason why I was keen on leaving my current job. Let’s be honest – it’s a well-paying job, nice perks and benefits. But I still badly wanted to leave, because I was STAGNATING badly.

Time to clear the air – The employer I was talking to, was my part-time job employer. I was stagnating at my well-paying job last year too; I thought I needed the experience and started to look for part-time opportunities and was fortunate to have found one in September last year. I worked my ass off after coming back home, working 3-4 hours every night and on Saturdays to complete my part-time job commitments. This went on till January this year. Then, slowly, over time, I didn’t have much work here too and worked only on Saturdays from their office.

Coming back to my conversation with the employer – I said I was stagnating and that was the reason for my decision to look for a job. She hung on to the word “stagnation”. She picked it up from there, and said the same thing was happening here. The projects I did for them here weren’t seeing the end of the day because the directors had other commitments. They were basically businessmen who entered the software domain just to explore if they could mint money here. One excuse kept following the other – the tenders from government will be evaluated only in May, financial year-end problems, registration with a govt. firm is still pending and so on. I wasn’t overly agitated because I was still developing things. But, I was sensing trouble to come soon. This model of work couldn’t have worked for long - paying 2-3 resources for projects which would never see the light. She was distraught at the directors’ apathy. She had hired a full-time employee, and now had to let her go, so that she could find a better future. She had worked so hard on these projects; being from a non-IT background and being an UK expatriate, she had worked hard to get things moving here. She had some good vision; all the projects that I was working on were for government sectors; to curb corruption using technology and to help students/parents evaluate their performance in a better way. And now, all the work was going to waste!!

I was still laughing at being fired! To me, frankly, it didn’t make much difference financially. If my potential employers offered me a job, then I would have lost all the time I had travelling and couldn’t have worked here anyway. So, it seemed that all the pieces were falling into place now. I felt bad for the girl and discussed how I could help her find jobs. It was easy since I myself was on the job hunt. With this, I bid her goodbye and she left. The girl was in the room outside and it was then that she started crying. She was much closer to the situation; she was working here 6 days every week, seeing no progress happening in the past 2-3 months. She had decided in her mind to quit on her own terms, but was waiting to complete 1 year; for the experience certificates. And now, she was let go.

I tried consoling her, promised to help her out. I intend to it as well. I thanked few people there at the office; the cook who made awesome ‘pulav’ J ; the admin who paid me on timeJ. I wished the girl good luck and rode back home. On the way back home, few creepy thoughts started coming to my mind. I was wishing in December last year that my well-paying company fires me; they fired 70 odd people at the time, I wasn’t one of them. Now, having experienced a lay-off, that wish seemed a very stupid one. I reached home and started laughing about it with my mom.

But I am really grateful that what I wished in December didn’t come true; this is one experience that I don’t want to experience EVER AGAIN!

The Other side of ME ;)

As my blog name suggests -i strictly dunno what i'm doing here... i hav seen ppl using blogs to share info, experinces (good ones most of d time ), their cretive writing skills etc.. But as i'm writing this post i can think of nothing good .. i see this blog as a medium to vent my frustration only :D

Hopefully as the days progress i can contribute something pleasant n effective here :)