Getting laid off… Ah! The other way
;)
Quiet
uncharacteristically I woke up early today. The hands of the clock were
pointing in the North-South direction, but I seem to be wide awake. More unlike
me, I had no intentions of lazying around and I jumped out of my bed, ala a
cadet in front of his drill master. Rushing through the daily routine, I slumped
myself at the French window.
‘Aaaaahhhhhhh!’,
I heard myself sigh.
I had
been in the apartment for over 3 years, but never had I seen the sun rise over
the horizon. I may be considered a fortunate soul by the fellow city dwellers
to have such an beautiful view outside the window, but I never attempted to
seek advantage of the vantage point I had rented for a premium. Suddenly it
dwelled upon me that it might not for the proximity to my office that I was
charged a premium and the actual reason was unfolding infront of me. The
twilight was fighting a losing battle as the first rays of light were making
way through the winter fog.
I could
see a flock of birds fly across the horizon.
“Early
morning flight!” I laughed to myself. May be I had unravelled the etymology of
the phrase that many of my on-site bound colleagues had been flashing time and
again.
“Tring!
Tring!” I heard a cycle-wallah approaching the front gate. When had I last
heard that sound? I questioned myself. It definitely sounded music to my ears
and reminded me of my cycling escapade during younger days. That sound would
soon be lost in the honking of cars that would start emerging on the streets as
the day progresses.
“Oye!
Yadavji…. Good morning!” Our watchman greeted the milkman on the cycle, as he
emerged from his security-cabin cum apartment with an empty pale in his hand.
“Good...Good...
Thapaji” the milkman greeted him back as he brought his cycle to an halt
in-front of him. Alighting from his cycle they exchanged pranaams. I could hear
some murmurs making me wonder that was a gossiping session. A few puffs of bidi
ensued. Their tet-e-tete concluded with the milkman pouring a some milk into
his pale as he moved on to supply milk to the rest of the society members.
Just as
the watchman had moved back into his kiosk, the newspaper-wallah popped at the
gate on his moped. The squirling entry he made followed by the screeching halt
of his excessively overloaded two-wheeler, he could easily give the Abrahams
and Dhonis of the world a run for their money.
“Abe
Thape! Mar gaya kya?” he shouted …
“ Aaya!
Aaya!” came back the reply from the watchman.
“Jaldi !”
he screamed back.
The loads
of bundled newspaper stacked all around him as in some kinda of body armour to
protect him. Barely managing to keep his eyes above the stack and easing the
moped to an halt with his leg, I could sense why was he in such an hurry.
As the
watchman came running back, he was subject to a couple of choosiest swear words
from the newspaper-wallah. But he didn’t mean any of those as they soon lit up.
The newspaperwallah informed our watchman about what’s happening around? His
loud voice ensured that I too stand informed about the happenings of the
day..rather the previous day. But his reporting was mostly restricted not to
the main headlines but rather to thing like crime and accidents in the nearby
areas and the whats hot and whats naught of the Page 3 world.
The
drubbing of the Indian cricket team at the hands of Kenya the previous day
thankfully didn’t feature in his news-brief. In India, everyone keeps tab about
ball to ball happening of any cricket match that India is involved in, so
reporting it the next day is merely for the records. The following day and many
more are kept exclusively for critiques, discussions, arguments and things like
that.
The
newspaperwallah was ready to move on to his next stop as our watchmen kicked
started the moped. But not before he passed a bundle of newspapers from the
stack to the watchman to be delivered at the door. He slipped a note, what
looked to me like a fiver, in his pocket.
“Nice!”,
I exclaimed as I saw him delegating the tasks of climbing up and down four
multi-storreyed building to the watchman for just five bugs.
And so
the local valentine Rossi was on his way for the next pit-stop. Or is it
Naren-kartikeyan on a sans a couple of his wheels?
As I
gathered back my thoughts, I saw our watchman was on his way to accomplish his
tasks. I looked around to see a few more of windows were lit up. I walked up to
the door in anticipation of fetching my daily dose of news feed. I opened the
door just as he was about to slide the newspaper through the slit.
Totally
surprised to see me awake, his face was a site to see. He had his mouth open,
bent still he was totally flabbergasted.
“Koi
bhoot dekha kya??” I mischieviously questioned.
“Haan
saab…” He spontaneously replied, still bent over
“HUH?” I
thundered.
“Nahi
saab…” as he recovered from his trance. “Aapko kabhi itni jaldi uthate hue nahi
dekha. Toh thoda shock ho gaya.”
“Hmm…” I
acknowledged as I pulled the paper from his hand.
I closed
the door on his back as he moved to deliver the newspaper to the rest of the
tenants. I longed was a hot cup of tea but was too tired to make one for my own
self. I had a thought of going to the tapri for a quick bite but then changed
my mind.
Once
again I rested my bump on the French window and picked the ‘Times of India’.
The headlines read ‘Pink slips reaches India’. All of a sudden I was
transported from the wonderland back to the reality. Not that it was news to me
and offlate it had become an everyday affair at office. But since the time I
woke up in the morning I had forgotten about it and these headlines just
reminded me of the grim times.
Not
intending to dwell into the details of the same… atleast for now… I frisked the
following pages. The gloom and the doom was spread everywhere and how could it
have eluded this medium. All the pages talked about the recession and the ills
of it, only the extent and the severity of it differed from one writeup to
another. Some doomsayer even talked about the imminent depression. All had
mentions about the lay-offs like any other day, the thing that differed each
day was the organisation that was involved and the numbers of people to be sent
to the gallows.
I moved
to the editorials hoping to read something refreshing and stimulating. But I
wasn’t feeling lucky today. I could read titles all referring to the gloom,
albeight in more tech-savvy language interspersed with economic terms and
business jargons. Thus only the ‘lay-offs’ were replaced with ‘staff
rationalisation’ and the ‘pay cuts’ were replaced with ‘cost restructuring’.
Disgusted
I flung the newspaper which landed with
it cover page right on top and the headline still poking fun at me. What I
observed this time was a small table printed at one corner. I inquisitively
propped the cover page to read through it. It had presented the top 20
companies that have ‘fired’ its employees and the number thus in a tambular
manner. I involuntarily picked the paper back and began grazing on the data.
Almost
instantaneously it dawned upon me that top 5 amongst those were IT/ITeS firms
and totalling to 8, followed by BFSI firms figuring 6 in numbers and the rest
of the slots being filled by Automobiles, FMCG, Aviation and other industries.
I was in a fix whether to feel elated to have missed the axe although my
company ranked third amongst the slayers or feel bad for those of my colleagues
whose once promising career was abruptly cut-short, Shakti being one of it.
The
thought of Shakti sent a chill through my spine. For he wasn’t the one who’s
not only career was cut short, but life
too abruptly came to an end. The axeman had been doing the round of our centre
and quiet a few had fallen a prey to him, their employment being abruptly
terminated citing recessionary conditions and general slackness in inbound
business. Those who had been sent off gave no clue as to who were been targeted
and what being the criteria for picking them. I always personally felt that
being the laidback person that I was, I should have been the first one on the
firing line. But fortunately or otherwise I had been escaped that fate till
now.
The last
round of lay-off that happened a couple of weeks back saw some promising
careers being ripped off from the bud. There were a few surprises and few as
expected. The latter category included our “beloved” manager who went
brandishing that he was being given a ‘golden handshake’ and not being ‘laid
off’. Either ways his days were numbered.
Now very
much used to this chopping, everybody would come to office getting prepared for
any eventuality that might descend upon. On that day as I made my way into the
wing, I could see a few ladies crowding a cubicle many sobbing and rest with
their eyes wet. I sensed it was yet another employee down from our team. One
could easily identify who among the man is been axed from his facial
expression. But when it came to female employee I always found it tough to
locate who is could be? Typical to the feline gender, they get some involved in
the loss, that there exists no way of determining as to who actually it as loss?
Even the cubicle they had gathered could not provide any pointers to my
thought.
I zipped
my path through the cube–farm to my cubicle. I saw Shakti sitting facepalm.
“Man,
who…”
“Its
Smriti this time” Shakti cut me before I could complete my question.
“Hmm.” I
nodded.
I
remained silent expecting Shakti to say something back like he usually does,
more often expressing his fear of getting laid but his time he didn’t.
The
sobbing of the female folks had subsided and there was an eary silence spread
across the entire length of the wing.
All one could hear some random click of the
mouse buttons interspersed with the spurt of random hits of the keys on the
keyboard. If you are truly attentive then you really gauge that it was indeed
recessionary times from the keyboards keyhits or the mouse clicks. During the
heydays, one could hardly find some pause in the sound emaciating from these
hardware devices.
Not able
to bear the lull, I thought of breaking the shackles.
“So who’s
next?” I questioned almost involuntarily.
That was
one question I definitely didn’t what to put forth, especially infront of
Shakti, but deep within me I had that query and it simply took verbal form on
the way out of conscience.
A couple
of seconds of silence ensued and I had started getting happy thinking Shakti
has ignored it, but it wasn’t to last for long. May be Shakti soon realised the
other two selves from our cubicle were already be pink sliped and the onus was
on him to answer the question.
Or maybe
my question sounded to him as “So who’s next from our cubicle?”
“Its
Shakti Sarang, Milind” Shakti just broke down “Its me next”.
Totally
caught unaware I gazed what to do at this situation. I have faced Shakti
apprehensive about the job and expressing his concerns but never had he broke
down into tears. He put his head down on the keyboard and made no attempt to
hide his sobbing. A few of the still surviving colleagues from neighbouring
cubicle did prairie dog at us but no one was willing to offer condolence for
they few it was just fooling our own selves while doing it.
“Relax
Shakti, don’t you worry. Nothing is going to happen to us. How can CTS survive
without us two?” I tried to lighten the mood.
“Cut the
crap” Shakti yelled back.
He
continued with his sobbing though definitely the intensity reduced.
He knew
and so do I that we were just fooling ourselves and there was no way one could
be assured about the survival for the next day.
“If we
were to be hacked, it should have happened by now” I added.
“You
never know” replied Shakti, lifting his head.
“True,
but then what can we do about it? We will have to accept the harsh reality and
move on as others did” I said.
Shakti
turn his head to give me a weird stare back. I was sounding too philosophical
for my character and probably he was confirming where those words popped from?
He turned
back to gazed at his screen.
“It might
be easy for you man; but isn’t so for me” Shakti retorted.
‘Oh no,
Not again’ I thought to myself as I anticipated Shakti starting with his autobiography
and a sad one at it. I had heard about the sorry plight of his family- ailing
mother, retired father, unwedded sisters and younger brother story - many a times and each time I couldn’t resist
myself likening it to setup of old Bollywood movie. I was so bored of his
reciting the same thing that I used to somehow change the topic and even at
times tell him to stop, but not this time.
