On Business and Booze

On the day that marks the end of my first year as a professional engineer, I decided I must have an anniversary post even if it wasn’t going to be about work at all.

Wild experiences have featured in my journal over the last year, owing to the fact that my work takes me to locations I’ve had to pin on Google maps myself. If it isn’t the insane working hours, it is the elemental feeling of directly dealing with man and machine. If it isn’t the exotic places, it is the excitement of exploring the unseen. The aspects of my profession are numerous, their effect on me profound. I shall hardly do justice to them by trying to talk of everything at once. I have, therefore, decided to dedicate this post to the motto of my job and the lifestyle it has laid out for me outside of work.

There are multiple versions to the motto. Work hard. Party harder. I hadn’t really partied much before I started working - I had spent 21 blissful years in South India where I watched movies, went bowling, read books, chatted over coffee and hit the beach with friends when I had free time – so I didn’t really give much thought to the motto: Work like a man. Party like an animal. It sounded like fun, true; but it seemed to me that I was working like an animal more or less. I would work for long stretches of time that seemed like the grains of sand in a desert, extending forever with no hint of an imminent oasis. And then I would emerge out of the depths of this ocean, gasping for breath, inhaling deeply so as to survive another stint below.

Apparently though, it isn’t meant to work that way. Every time you emerge on surface, you’re supposed to soar through the skies and feel more breathless than ever before. When you’re done working like a dog, you’re expected to party like a bitch.

Mumbai is a beautiful city. Outside of the old English buildings, the road-side vada-pavs and samosa chats, the bustling trains and the crowded beaches, there is this true sense of cosmopolitan existence I haven’t really felt anywhere else in this country. The night life here is probably second only to Goa. When I landed here – in the heart of beating India, as I call it – I finally started partying. Dancing is the most splendid feeling in the world. Well, there are some things more fun to do, I’d admit, but this post isn’t about that. That brings me to what this post is really about.

I don’t drink, and I have my reasons. Everything that is noble and intelligent, has class and integrity is distinguished from everything that is small, base and vile only through a man’s mind that is able to tell the difference between the two and pick. And I fear that all that stands between me and my falling prey to the wretched life of pettiness and envy, of back-biting and bitterness, hitherto unknown to me, is the clarity in my thinking, and the will of my mind. And to that end, I refuse to lose it, albeit temporarily, to alcoholism. As far as forgetting work and anxiety for a few hours and to lose myself in a floating feeling is concerned, (touch a million trees), I’ve never really been in that kind of stress. Thirdly, I love my liver.

I know everyone that is reading this article has probably consumed alcohol in small parts or large (Those of you who haven’t, back me up here). I fathom the sincerity in wishing me to revel in drunken happiness, and I understand if the above paragraph in defense of my life-choices does not even make sense. But, I know that you believe as I do in the motto: To each his own.

So let me be. And trust me. I’m alive, kickin’ and very happy.

When superman borrowed my underwear

I hate sharing my music. I’d rather give someone money or my blue coveralls or my pillow. Last week, a colleague of mine requested, and then begged me to give him my phone’s memory card so he can copy my playlist. He was apparently bored to death with the 200 odd songs he had been listening to for a month. And I have ten favorite songs I’ve been listening to for over a year now. So he did not evoke much pity from me. I refused. (I’m not known for my politeness in these parts of the world)

It’s surprising how the time for weekly reports to your boss always has you lost in thought as to how to tactfully project those hours of sitting around and evading work as being productive. I have not done an MBA, and therefore haven’t had any formal training in this matter. But my mom is an HR stud, so I have picked up a few valuable points from her textbooks.
I was working on my weekly report yesterday, taking as much time with it as I could, frowning while at it so that I would look busy and important. The key I used most often, as with this post, is the backspace button.

You see, initially we used pen and paper (well, before that we used barks of trees, but I’m not sure if we were still monkeys then or had graduated to civilization, so I shall talk only of the time I believe spans man’s history) Then we decided we were too lazy and invented the type-writer. It allowed us to be fast and fun-filled but not fickle. It overlooked the one feature common to all human beings – boo-boo. (Curious synonym for error I found in the thesaurus, thank you very much)
Anyway, the backspace button was great till we realized that we were using it too often, almost only because it is there – and handy.

The problem was simple; precious words and noble thoughts, like other priceless things in the world, are designed to look silly when you first look at them. And so they are backspaced, without given a chance. Have you ever tried to write a story, crushed the paper, began all over again, every time having fewer sentences to write before starting all over again, simply because your brain was drained of creativity? Okay, I haven’t done that either. What about the version 1.1 to 1.10 of your resume? The first version invariably looks silly to you; you go through the process of sending it out, getting “constructive criticism” (whatever the hell that means), working on it, and repeating these steps through versions 1.1 to 1.10. You could just call your versions 1,2,3.. but what are you- Windows?

When you’re done with the whole process of “resume making” and in the end you look at your first draft, it actually looks cute and unpretentious to you: you can almost see yourself in it. But with most writing attempts, unlike the resume, we make only one draft, and the initial child-like impressions of the mind are backspaced forever.
We realized this: that is when we invented the Ctrl+Z. You can now undo your backspace. So initially we were compensating for our stupidity and invented ways to circumvent it, but now it seems like we’re celebrating it. It’s like putting your weakness out there and dancing in front of it joyfully. This is the point in human evolution that I stopped following it.

It was like the time I bought this book with a peculiar cover page. It had a picture of two kids reading the book I bought. So you realize that the book in the cover had a picture of two kids reading the book which had the cover page of two kids reading a book … I used to keep staring at the cover for a long time like a bum, trying to understand. That is what I think of the undo button. I don’t know what to make of it, but I have little respect for it when the second time I press it, it doesn’t un-do my undoing, which is what it logically should. Sometimes it displeases me a little bit. It allows me to be as stupid as I want to and that scares the shit out of me. Like the cover page of that book, there seemed to be no end to what we’ll invent so as to go on being stupid.

So I was typing this report for my boss using the backspace button as often as 6 times during a sentence, on an average. In large part, it was because I would not look at the keyboard while typing. Okay, maybe I look at the first key initially, so that I have a reference point in my mind, but any glance beyond that is an insult to 2000 hours of chat history and 10 hours of typing my undergraduate thesis.

There is a thin line of difference between being comfortable enough to work and getting too comfortable. Below the former, you’re restlessly facebooking and whiling time away, blaming it all on bad posture and not being in the "right frame of mind" to work. Beyond the latter, you’re sleeping.

I was beginning to get disapproving looks from my colleagues, who like uncivilized junkies, started peeping into my screen. So I sat up and decided to finish the report instead of fooling around. Within two minutes, my head was propped up against the table, and I was fast asleep. My colleague, as it turns out, did not behave decently even when I had helplessly succumbed to the mysterious ways of nature. He took the memory card I had denied him access to, copied my songs on to his card, and replaced mine.

When I woke up, I found nothing unusual, and indeed I would not have known of this betrayal had he not come up to me a few hours later, and started laughing like a mad man. I knew he was laughing at me. He had this air of mockery that he wasn’t even attempting to hide. I was about to ask wh- when he started singing in a loud voice, a song which he could only have gotten from my playlist, and which embarrassed me both as an adult and as a woman. He burst into laughter, along with my other colleagues, before he could finish the first line.

Oh come on, I know everyone has weird songs they listen to, so don’t give me that air of superiority. Damn you! This is exactly why I hate sharing my music. It felt like superman had borrowed my underwear.