becomes somber, my face serious, and trying to bring out the exact cocktail of solemnity, pride and an attitude which says ‘yeah, it is a big thing, but considering my talent it is the exact job for me’, I declare “computer engineer”. The audience is obviously impressed.Then comes a shower of questionnaire regarding the company I work for, how did I achieve this position, the salary I get. And if the salary sounds impressive, the questions gradually regress to which college I went to, and finally to whom did I go for my math tuition while preparing for my engineering entrance exams.
The person who throws these questions is probably a parent of a student of class vii, and he (the parent) has already started losing sleep over the matter of which coaching center his ward should be sent to after 4 years.
But more often than not, the person is a casual enquirer with no direct motives. His only intention is to impress his co-passengers in the daily local train by showing the obtained insight to them and thereby gain some acknowledgment about his know-how of the academic world. True, in such discussions, a person who has some knowledge about which math teacher in the locality produced the student with the highest rank in the previous year, gains more prominence as a pundit rather than a real learned person who can explain Rabindranath, Omar Khayam and Shakespeare.
My answers are always given in a manner which would try to extract the maximum respect from the audience. But if the interrogator is of the former kind, I also try to be kind and explanatory and give the right answers. But if he is of the second kind, I try to make my achievement seem as much tough and make it seem to require as much intelligence and genius as I can.
When put with the same question of ‘what do I do’ in this city, the answer “computer engineer” receives just a single nod which says “Yes, obviously. I had guessed right, you are just another one of the lot.”
I’m just another head in this sea of heads, a neck that hangs one of the tags of the hundreds of companies, a soul like thousands of others that spend almost half the day inside a building made of tinted glass (a building which looks different from the adjacent one only from the outside, and inside it’s the same – cramped cubicles smelling of disinfectants).
The traffic police doesn’t show me any respect that I might deserve for working in a “big” company, the auto-drivers take me as a rich guy demanding double the fare as per his whim, to the landlord I am another cow from whom he would milk an extra-income out (and three cows like me together give him more extra-income than my own salary).
When speaking about the salary to the person back at home, the attitude that comes out is “yes, I know that’s quite a big pay pack, but I do deserve that”. And in here, I try to moderately increase my package while telling to a stranger, thinking “I hope I don’t get too less.” The salary that was royal enough to the person back home is just an ordinary salary here. That fat pay check is made lean first by the house rent that I pay, then the excessive rates of the regular day-to-day commodities, and next my phone bill. Then there is the bill of the credit card – a plastic device that I had flaunted and used the last month for those over-priced jeans, and as a tool to impress my hard-earned date at the disc. (The date no more picks up my call or replies to my sms after gulping those expensive cocktails that evening in the disc) And what remains, is just enough to scrape through the remaining days of the month.
Back at my home-town, while speaking of my job I try to deliberately put in the conversation the fact that my company provides me with a car to pick-me up for office and drop me back home. In this city, that car is a white sumo crammed with people just more than the capacity it can hold, with a music-system playing so loud that it drives you crazy and a driver in white shouting abuses to the driver of the car beside his, who is driving equally rash as himself. And that white sumo, which you can see stuck in a heavy Hosur Road traffic, is called a “Cab”, and is not a luxury or a perk to my position but a necessity for the company to get me at office for those odd-hour shifts.
Welcome to the world of the IT professionals. A young and enthusiastic generation wearing their bottoms off on cushioned seats and straining their eyes on computer screens. Right, I am a part of the crowd. And there is an 85% chance that you, the reader, graze on the same meadows as me.
We are all part of a multi-billion dollar industry, a small screw in the machine that is generating high revenues for the country and driving its progress. But individually we are nothing, an unsatisfied lot, worrying about our career everyday, waiting for that ‘onsite opportunity’, and thinking of buying that dream flat and car.
My glorious times come only twice a year, when I take that low-cost no-frills flight to go home. Then get down in front of our home from the taxi, the laptop hanging across my shoulder, I tug my suitcase along to the steps of my house, the neighbors looking out of their windows, I bend to touch my parents’ feet, and then I hear one of the neighbors telling his son, “Look at bhaiyaa, works in a very high position in a big company. Study hard, if you want to become like him” and I can sense the pride of my parents as they bask in that glory.
And it is during those small vacations that I happen to chance upon people like the one I mentioned in the beginning.
During my short stay, I go to the local chaai-shop, some of my old friends with whom I grew up playing around the neighborhood would be sitting there. Most of them have not been lucky yet to land up with a job. As they make place for me on the bench, eager to hear my story of the city-life, the equally eager shop-owner hands me a steaming cup of ‘ispecail chaai’, and starts off by asking me, “It’s a very big company that you work for, isn’t it bhaiyaa? That other day I was reading in the paper about Bangalore…”. As I take a sip from the cup and try not to burn my tongue, I am suddenly reminded of the bland coffee from the vending machine at my office, and I smile lightly.
