Work and Apathy

I am writing after a long-long time. Now S asked me to write something for a weekly newsletter in her company. Well, its difficult to start without a clear purpose in mind—PURPOSE, as everyone who’s seen the Matrix series and claims to have understood at least some dialogues would understand, is the single most important entity that rules our lives, without who’s existence our own existence loses its soul. So I chose to speak about anything that might concern the company as a whole.

My friend recently had a session in her company—Product Consciousness Training. It called for, among other things, a feeling of ownership for your product, taking initiatives in the teams and owning responsibilities. To draw upon an analogy, it’s like raising your child. If she is wrong somewhere, it’s your own responsibility and you don’t (and you can’t) blame others for that. You got to take initiatives and devise ways of correcting it. But we are talking about your work here and hence, in this article I won’t say anywhere–you MUST develop all that; for such a frame of mind, like Boyle’s law, exists only under ideal conditions. We live in a real world (though I don’t deny the inevitable but rare events called ‘Exceptions’).

So looking from the ‘real world’ point of view, a person ‘wanting’ to nurture such a consciousness would naturally expect the world around him to do the same, be honest to others and to themselves. But in the real world, things aren’t really that rosy. And its not easy to change them because if one’s dishonest to others, Buddha and Gandhi can change him; but what about those who’ve ceased to be honest to themselves, in other words ceased to be dishonest “consciously”???

To move further, the training was in fact very different from most others, my friend gives credit to the presentation skills of Mr. X and also the person who conceived and designed the training. But the bottomline is that even such training has to have a PURPOSE, and it is supposed to fulfill it. Did it? Did it not?? I am not a judge for that and I don’t propose to probe in that direction. But the direction I think I can safely probe into is whether and to what extent such training CAN meet its purpose in my friend’s workplace.

I am strictly against all forms of presumptions and so let me go by facts. And here comes to my help the “Internal Employee Satisfaction Survey Findings” of her company that my friend shared with me. Her third mail in the series doesn’t deserve much of my attention; it contains all goody-goody signs and good things don’t deserve any comment except DON’T GET COMPLACENT!!!

So I prefer to look more carefully at the second presentation, which incidentally is not so goody. There’s so much in that presentation we can talk about, but allow me to choose the slide titled “Interesting facts on Commitment”, I must say, appropriately named. This slide contains some information that struck me as the most “interesting” stuff. It hints at the APATHY of a significant chunk of voters there. Safely assuming that the survey properly represents the overall views of the employees, it might look a little disturbing when you see that averaging over all the questions 36% of voters haven’t taken any stand at all. Only 2 major possibilities exist:

• Employees are not frank, and/or




• they haven’t decided on these issues

anymore? Can PhyDoc suggest something?

As for the first one, why shouldn’t they be frank? I can’t think of any reason (were they asked to write their names on their response sheets, no way).

I personally want to drop the first option, so assuming the second one’s true, I come back to the APATHY of the employees towards the organization and this link takes me further back to the fulfillment of the purpose of the “Product Consciousness Training”. So after this long-long prelude, I ask you this—can the concept of Product Consciousness coexist with Apathy???

Am no authority on psychology, but my understanding of human nature says, that the two concepts are poles apart. If more than a third of your employees are apathetic towards the organization, and just exist here because life has brought them here; I don’t think they’ll ever come forward to claim the work, or their faults or…anything. Its like bureaucracy, you care about nothing save the 1st of every month and your bank balance. Talking in terms of the analogy I talked about earlier, it’s like raising someone else’s child—you just don’t care what becomes of it. And if a significant number of people with such an attitude exist around you, trying to use you to serve their apathy, I wonder how long will it be before your mind gives up the rigors of treating your work as your own child.

I want to write more, but time and space, though endless, still are the biggest constraints you always face. Never mind, as far as the PURPOSE of the article is concerned, it’s solved—to raise a question. Let the policy makers think about it, and if they care to ask for my suggestion, I would say you are dealing with group of grownups of 21st century, who as I understand have a great deal of confidence on their thoughts and on their ways. You expect them to change by a two-hour session? I’ll say—don’t be so naïve. It takes more to motivate someone. Let the concept of product consciousness expand itself to assimilate the “Team Consciousness” and “Organization Consciousness”. Let it flow like water—downwards. Set examples, and let me feel I am following someone who’s truly superior to me. How you do it?? That’s your job.

LIFE and DEATH

I was getting laid in those days. It was good, after years of drought, the rain felt very, very, very good. We had finished with one round some fifteen minutes back. I was reading Amitav Ghosh; she was trying to sleep off. But the bulbs just above the bed wouldn’t let her sleep, and “The Hungry Tide” was getting too interesting to be left at that point; switching the bulbs off was out of question.

You can’t suppress too long a girl who just has had sex. Soon she was all over me, kissing and caressing, closing my eyes with her soft hands, creating a “jheena purdah” between me and the book with her hair, begging me to leave the book, switch off the lights and sleep with her. Now you can’t expect a guy to disregard such a strong overflow of sensual expression who just has had his first sex of the day. Though I still tried to concentrate on my book, her every wet kiss gave rise to a wave starting somewhere below my right ribcage, traveling diagonally below and ending just above my right testicle. Yes, it was a wave, like the ones you feel in a bathtub full of warm water; that tingling sensation of the wave going down to your groins, and like the ripples in the water, reflecting back in all directions and sending tremors to all parts of your body. As the waves struck my extremities, legs got entangled in hers, hands went around her pressing her hard against my body……feeling her skin with my palms and fingers, as if for years you’ve stood alone in a rice field, and looked up at the blue sky, that canopy stretching above you—so enchanting, so appealing, but yet unreachable, untouchable, the higher you go the higher it grows above you; and then one day you suddenly knew just where to extend your hand to reach out and touch it, to feel that blueness against your palm.
The wave came up, up and reached my throat, constricted there as in a bottleneck; and I could almost feel that a lump has stuck in my throat, just like the one you can feel when you’re shit-scared and gulping your fear in; of course this time the movement of the lump was in opposite direction. Keeping the book aside, I raised my face upwards to give it a straight pathway up in the head. As the wave traveled up, my eyes closed involuntarily, lips and tongue started responding to hers, the head went in for a twitch.
I knew I couldn’t have waited another second to be inside her, when I realized that I used up the last condom I had in the previous round. I was scared of AIDS no more; I went for it without them. But just as I was about to enter, her hand held my organ and she said a firm ‘no’. there was no way I was to do it without condoms. I pleaded, I begged, I argued, I forced, but nothing could budge her. At that point my mind strayed off from sensual side to a more philosophical side and wondered “What is she so scared of?” Two answers came to my mind—AIDS and pregnancy. So different but still having the same affect!!! While AIDS meant a death, pregnancy meant giving a life. Then what’s that intersection of these two opposite ends of human life scale? I decided to look for an answer in the girl’s mind itself…

MY LAST DAYS

You ever got that feeling of understanding something without experiencing? It’s actually nice. I can imagine how it will feel to resign and wait for the relieving day. Detached from your work, from the files and folders you spent your years and hours with; you don’t want to look at them anymore coz you know that you won’t be around to see what becomes of them. When I sit back and start thinking too much in the moments like this one, I can almost feel the same (without actually experiencing it), lekin yahaan zara zindagi aur maut kaa maamla hai.

Started watching Philadelphia yesterday, couldn’t finish. I can’t, am too damn scared—so scared that I don’t even want to get a test done and know things for sure. Fact is, I am not sure how am I gonna face the truth if the truth is ugly. My one night stand in Bangkok, my first ever and first ever with a hooker; has left me with a deep sense of—not guilt, not satisfaction, not pleasure, no……nothing at all. What a waste! I just know that I can’t get the Elisa test done. Its hard to face that you lost the chance to live a lifetime with your best friend, to see him marry the girl you helped him get, see him have (shote-shote) kids, see him fighting to find time for you between his post-MBA job, wife and kids; and its hard to face that you miss all these same things happening to you as well and let your friend see it.

It’s hard, it’s too damn hard. I can’t imagine how am I gonna take it if I have indeed f*&ked up my life. Assume for an instance that I am done, I am doomed. This best friend I am talking so fondly of, will stop seeing me. My parents, my sisters, my cousins and relatives who have so idolized me; what do I become to them—I can’t even begin to imagine. I am sure I really can’t say anything without underestimating or overestimating their affection for me. Although I do understand that I will be a shame to everybody who has ever known and loved me; but what I don’t understand is how I become a rotten, a fallen human because I slept with a girl who was ready to sleep with me for some money. How come all the deeds of a lifetime be lost to one moment of ……..call it “fallacy” if you like. Now if I kill or rape someone, a finger pointing at me will have a shape, it will have a whole body behind it……a body borne out of my guilt and the wrongness (<What is right?>) I inflicted onto another human. I could have seen the body with my eyes, I could have touched it; and shivered. But I dint do nothing like that. My one moment of …whatever ………………
Why do you hate me so much? Wat can I say, I am just too damn scared.