The digits on the cell phone lying next to me showed "07:26 AM". Yes, it was a cell phone but it also worked as a watch, alarm clock, camera, an instrument of slavery and a million other things that I had no clue about. The alarm was supposed to go off at "07:45 AM" but the tiny streak of sunlight through the curtains over the window woke me up. The maid usually came at around 8:00 AM and rang the freakishly loud door bell which, despite hearing it everyday, never failed to startle me. On the other side of the bed, wife was still lying deep in her sleep, completely oblivious of living and non-living things around her. She looked like an angel, "but only while sleeping", I thought and sniggered. I decided to get rid of the alarm in the cell phone cum watch cum camera cum alarm clock cum an instrument of slavery cum a million other things I had no clue about. With my gaze fixed on the ceiling fan I began wondering if I should get up now or wait till the maid came. My mind raced hard but couldn't come up with a reason that could motivate me to get out of the bed. My thoughts revolved around my life that mostly comprised of my job, my co-workers, my wife, my parents and the weekends of socializing with the other 'couple-friends' who loved singing karoake songs and discussing problems related to the schooling of their children, of which even I too was forced to be a part even though I did not have any children and I sang horribly.
At my work place, I was surrounded by people who were worried more about rising interest rates of the home loan and constantly whining about the traffic than thinking about work, which by the way, was nothing but a glorfied service shop of an intangible machine called 'software'. Sometime somewhere some smart people had created this machine that supposedly improved human lives (which I still don't know how) and for which they got to charge a bomb resulting in the creation of a global enterprise. Sensing a money making opportunity, many other equally (more or less) smart people followed suit and that resulted in a competition war. Then there seemed only one way of winning this war by means of pricing and to reduce the pricing came in the concept of 'outsourcing' (or offshoring) the non critical and dull yet necessary functions (like servicing) to a location where there was cheap labour. Over the years the word 'outsourcing' became kind of a derogatory term in the corporate world and hence got replaced by "captive units" or "R&D Center" but it merely reflected a change in the name and nothing more. Thats where my job came in. The non-critical, dull, global cheap labor. But it paid well (thanks to the economics of currency difference) and, most of my professional peers actually lived and genuinely believed that the world was resting on their tiny shoulders and what they were doing was extremely important. Actually, even the society viewed them in the similar esteem. The popular media coined a fancy sobriquet called "techies" for people like us.
If you leave aside my over-critical nature, none of it was egregiously bad and I could live with most of it except for one thing which was that my life was turning into that of a slave. Slave to a system that comprised of my parents, my wife, my society and my employers leaving absolutely no room for my independent thought process to sustain, survive or grow. I was always doing something or the other to make one of these happy and in turn I kind of forgot where my happiness lied.
The broadening streak of sunlight diverted my attention from the celing fan to the drapes on the window and just about the time I was getting lost in observing the colloidal solution of freely suspended dust particles along the rays of the sunlight and amidst the thoughts of god, life and death, I heard a defeaning noise.
"DING DONG".
"Fuck", the first word came out of my mouth and began my day.
I opened the door for the maid who thursted the news paper in my hands (even the maid found it hard to treat me with some respect) and got to her work with amazing alacrity. I knew her trick was to get done with the cleaning and leave before my wife woke up. Maybe that's why she came so early. Knowing how annoying it is to have a nit-picking boss, I fully empathized with her and sometimes even felt sorry. I carried my thoughts with me into the loo alongwith the newspaper which had an interesting dichotomy in its articles. Almost every page was filled with news about businesses, jobs and wealth getting created and new technological gadgets getting launched and how 'this one promised to make the world a better place'. Almost every other page was also filled on the prevalent corruption, poverty, crumbling of social order by increase in crime, decline in family values and a rate of divorces never seen before. Ignoring the boring sections of the newspaper I jumped to my favorite colored section that carried the gossips of entertainment world and pictures of upcoming item girls.
Glancing at the colorful pictures while sitting on the pot, I realised how merriful I felt in the loo. Infact this was the only place where I felt my efforts and actions could control the outcome. The only place where I felt 'I' was in control of my destiny and no one else.
"Mmmph", I made a gruntling sound followed by a sigh of relief as the thoughts flowed through my mind and the toughest of the lard pooped out of my body and fell into the waters of the commode with a plop making it easy for the rest of the softer and warmer leftovers to come out. Human intestines worked quite like a ketchup bottle where the hardest part is to get the first few drops of the ketchup as it solidifies and clogs the opening but once that is done the rest of the ketchup follows with no effort. I knew that this was the highest point of my day and I savored the orgasmic moment for a while before looking down the pot to marvel at my performance. I felt so free and light that a poetry started to form in my mind, "Poopey, Doopey, you are so Loopey"..Of course before I could finish the poem, the realization hit me that I couldn't be s(h)itting here the whole day.
The rest of the morning was just how it had always been. A quick shower, getting dressed, a bowl of milk and cereal for breakfast, grabbing the laptop bag and a struggle to locate the wallet and the car keys. Somewhere during this struggle is when the wife woke up.
"Why the hell do you have to make so much of noise in the morning? Can't you be sensitive to someone sleeping?". Her day usually began with a tantrum for me. Come to think of it, that's how it ended too.
"Good morning to you too, honey", I replied with a smile.
"We are running out of groceries. I will message you the list so make sure to pick them up on your way back", she said.
"Ofcourse dear", I said. "I should be heading now. You have a great day", I said with the smile still on my face. I almost added "bitch" to my sentence but my brain was smart enough to stop the word reaching from my mind to lips. After a lugubrious drive through roads full of traffic I was half dead even before my work day began. I don't know why but everyone on the road always seem to be in a hurry to reach their office and thus trying to jump a light or break the lane or whatever and adding to the chaos of traffic. I always wondered why but then I thought just because I do a meaningless job doesn't mean everyone else does it too. Maybe those 'tiny shoulders' actually carry the weight of the world and if they lose a few precious minutes, well, who knows the world might collapse.
Funny as it may sound but the day at work usually began with a 'break'. I, with some of my colleagues, spent about half an hour discussing (oh I already told you that) rising interest rates of home loan, problems of global economy, technological features in the latest smart phone, traffic and how our bosses kept us overworked without even leaving room for little breaks. The rest of the day was just like any other day in a slave's life, except that I was not shackled in chains, I could drink free coffee and browse porn on internet but my movements were limited to a small cell, which the corporations had give a fancy name called a 'cubicle'. My boss wanted the estimates on the new project that was about to start. Since I didn't even know what the project was all about so naturally it was kind of hard for me to figure out how long will it take to complete it. Yet, my boss was insistent that I come up with some numbers. It need not be accurate and of course it will be get 'refined' as the 'project matures'. My boss then went on a rant on how numbers are important in project planning while I felt like shouting "You dumb idiot, how could you plan for something when you don't even know what that something is", but like always I admired his visionary skills and a pro-active attitude that formed the essence of his managerial personality, smiled and politely told him I would send him the estimates by 'EOD'. For some strange reasons, the number '27' looked particularly beautiful that day. I broke down the number 27 in little numbers so that I could fill in all the boxes in the colorfully designed spreadsheet for estimates. The rest of the day was as uneventful and unexciting as the day of an animal in a cage. A few social calls (mostly from my family where my dad recanted again on how useless a son I had been because I could not teach him how to download attachments from an email and my mom once again complaining about my dad and his idiosyncrocies) and I pretended to be extremely busy and hard pressed for time. Although, by the end of the day, I did learn from my colleagues that the new LCD TV is being sold at 49,560/- at Croma and 49,440/- at Big Bazar and that SBI was giving home loans at 8.5% in comparison to UTI Bank's 8.75% although they had much stringent requirements for documentation. With this load of knowledge and the list of groceries in my cell phone message, I struggled through the evening rush hour and reached the MegaMart that sold everything at 5/- less than their competitors and like every other slave of the consumerism and crony capitalism, I too went there even if it meant dealing with long queues at the check out counter. I wondered if all these scanners and electronic registers actually accelarated the check out process or made it slower. Back in the days when we use to buy grocery at our local 'mom and pop' store, the man at the counter would compute the total just using a pen, paper and a calculator but it sure was much faster. What more, he even delivered at home on a phone call.
"We are becoming slaves to technology", I thought as I stepped out and could not believe who I just saw.
"God, is it?", I thought. There were few doubts because he looked even thinner than what I recalled of him but that faded jeans with strands of fabric coming out of its ends, holes on the knees and that long hair.
"Hey..God?", I shouted, and he looked towards me. He seemed to have taken much less time in recognizing me. With that familiar seraphic smile he looked at me, waved towards me and we started walking towards each other.
Mathu Rao Godbole, or more popularly known as God, was my college mate. The sobriquet he earned was not only due to the shortening of his name but also due to his attitude. He was probably the only genuinely fearless and happy alive man I knew of. Right from the days of ragging to the final semester exams, God did not fear anything. No college senior or sadistic professor could take away God's smile from his face when most of us literally peed in our pants in the similar situations. God was 'God'. He did what he wanted and when he wanted. His daily activities (even the simpler ones like bathing, eating etc) were not a function of the time of the day. If he wanted to play guitar or watch a movie or smoke a joint or eat or drink, he did it when he wanted it no matter when , even if the next day was a final exam. His breakfast time (or could be his dinner too) overlapped with our lunch timings. Even with examinations he had a similar policy. He took them if he wanted or else skipped. Thanks to his overly sharp mathematical brain and an extremely lenient education policy in our college, he managed to graduate along with the rest of us but he was definitely not cut out for a formal education system. He was not a rebel. Infact he was anything but a rebel. He was at peace. He was not in any race, rat or otherwise. He did not have anything to prove to anyone and he was free. Most of us pretended to be cool and carefree but deep down in our hypocrite heads we all had fears of grades, jobs and reputation. But not God. He was genuinely fearless. Such people manage to win hearts but not the minds of recruiting managers and naturally God did not find any takers for him at the end of our college when almost all of us had more than one job. His showing up for interview in slippers and a knee-torn jeans hardly helped the matter. Although God did not seem to bother but I remember how we all felt sorry for him. Sometimes I wonder if it was a blessing in disguise for God that he stayed away from real world. At the end of the day what matters is if you are happy or not. God seemed happy with what he had and the 'real world' is known for sucking happiness out of the strongest of all. The combination might not have been very pleasant.
We hugged each other outside the MegaMart store. I had 2 full bags of groceries with all kinds of exotic packaged and organic food in them and God had a couple of Maggie and Parle-G biscuit packs with him. Our conversation started with the usual way two friends talk when seeing each other after a long time. I got to know that he had been living in the same city as I did for some time now. I asked for his cell phone number but he did not have one. I offered him a ride back home. He did not live very far from where I lived. It would be wrong to call God's abode a house. It was a single room on the terrace of a house with an attached bathroom. The kitchen/bedroom/living room, all of it was the same room. A small stove with few basic utensils defined the kitchen area. A small chair with an even smaller table defined the living section. A mattress and random things including clothes, an ash-tray overloaded with cigerette buds and assortment of many empty wrappers of maggie and parle-g filled the rest of the room. It seemed that these were the only things he survived on. The only expensive items in the entire house hold was a six string hobner guitar and an Apple iMac. Teaching computer programming and music was the source of his 'irregular' income. And there was no source of regular income. He proudly showed his possessions to me and by any stretch he did not look stressed, worried or complexed. He still carried the same happy and contented look that gave him his nickname.
"Why didn't you take up a job?", I asked. "I am sure any IT company would have gladly hired you".
His smile turned into something more than a smile. "I tried and did attend a few interviews but no body hired me. Then I found this teaching gig through a friend which turned out to be pretty cool. I really learnt a lot myself about music as well as programming. And then I created new stuff with my students. Oh boy, it's really fun. Now I get students every now and then. It pays for my food and rent for the house."
"Well, its kind of hard for a company to hire you if you show up as if you are going to a Jethro Tull concert?" I said with a smile and then added on a serious note "You have to butter things up to sell yourself. This is how this world works. No one cares how good you are. What people care for is how good you appear. Carrying a perception is more important than reality."
He continued with his smile. "I will try", came his response but I knew it was just a casual one. He might have wanted a job and a regular income but I knew that he did not want it that bad to cause motivation in him to bring about changes in his attitude. His motivation came in doing new and different things, not repeating what everyone did mechanically. Perhaps I too did not have any motivation in doing what I did but I had 'fear' of being a non-confirmist. The fear kept me a slave to the system but Gods know no fears.
"Wanna smoke a joint?" he asked as he started strumming his guitar and threw his slippers in opposite directions.
The memories of the last time I had gone home after smoking pot came back to haunt me. I could only recall the vague details after getting high and when I reached home and wanted to listen to the Grateful Dead CD I recently got. Wife had a tough time accepting the situation where I was slumped peacefully in the chair with my walkman and not talking to her. She came and started talking to me about something very seriously which obviously I couldn't hear and understand. For a while I just stared at her blankly but then I started to have visionary hallucination (damn, the pot) in which she morphed from a human into a grotesque human eating alien coming to torture me. I found it extremely funny and scary at the same time and all hell broke loose when I actually told her about my 'trip' and started laughing. Marijuana amplifies every emotion the brain goes through. The next emotion in line for me was that of fear and an amplified one. Oh boy, my weak heart can not take that again.
So, with live jamming of a talented musician going on, tempting that his offer sounded I had to decline. I spent some more time with him cathing up, helping him make his dinner (i.e. maggie) while he smoked the joint and continued to play guitar. Sensing it was getting late, I bade him bye promising to meet again very soon. I can't deny I had a great time with him but it was a week night and I had to go to office tomorrow. Clearly none of these rules seemed applicable on God as he continued with his guitar and rolled another joint.
Driving on my way back I began comparing my life with God's. I had a car, a clean, well maintained apartment in a plush condominium, a job that payed well, had an educated and respectable woman as life partner and silk ties that I could wear. It was in direct contrast to what God had which was a rented shit-hole kind of a place for a house and no money. Yet there was something different I felt at his place. A sense of 'freedom' in vague terms that was not governed by any conventinal rules. I felt like the bird who got the best of the meal every day but was trapped in golden cage while he appeared to be the one that flew in the wide open skies.
As the days progressed, I found myself spending more and more time at God's place. I was getting addicted to the sense of freedom and escape from the regular life, in his little den. I would slump on the floor without getting bothered about the stains it might get on my trousers. I would smoke and throw the buds on the floor. I, too, would play guitar and then listen to whatever music I wanted. I would eat maggie and parle-g but it tasted much better than any other meal. I did not care if my cellphone rang or how many missed calls it had. And then I would get into conversational jamming with God on topics ranging from music to philiosophy to mathematics. He still was so exuberant, free and vigorous in his thoughts which I felt I was not even capable of anymore. I can't recall when was the last time I spoke so freely or the last time my mind was so challenged and exercised to think on its own and having followed orders for such a long time I forgot what it was capable of. I could feel my creative side re-surging, which I thought died long back. At home I lied to my wife about me having to do overtime for some critical project. People show amazing empathy and sympathy if you manage to portray yourself as being overworked and tortured by the system. Maybe because deep down we all know what it is like to be that slave.
But for me, spending few hours at and enoying the freedom at God's place gave me the much needed fuel to survive in the real world of slavery. I was becoming an addict. I wanted to spend more and more time in his little 'shit-hole' where thoughts could freely flourish, no rules to follow and activities had no bounds. I met his students and they all loved learning from him. I think if he wanted he could have made decent money teaching but then he wasn't teaching because he wanted to make money in the first place. He was just teaching because he liked it. Most of his students came from really humble economic backgrounds and ironic and disappointing as it may sound, they all wanted to be like me i.e. in a safe plum career and thought of me as a successful achiever, when infact the right role model of success was in front of them, the doyen of free thought. I realized how easily can material glossiness can sway our mindsets.
God had his share of downs, if one can call them downs, although I wonder how he felt about them. His girl friend, Rashmi, had left him as she got tired of paying the bills all the time. He never said it but I sensed that he really missed her. At the end of every month, I could see him struggling to gather up the money for rent and I couldn't help feeling sympathetic for him. And it was out of this sympathy that I committed the ultimate faux pas.
A friend in a big software company owed me a favor. I convinced him to hire God in his company. I told him to discount God's appearance and his bohemian attitude. I told him to give this guy some free space of his own and let his creativity come out into the work force naturally and that the company would immensely benefit in the long run. Despite his immense resistence (which increased manifolds once he actually met God), my preseverence finally paid and he agreed to hire God. Trying to convince God was the tougher part. The idea of a routined life and that too where the routine was controlled by someone else did not go very well for him. I tried telling him about flexi hours and a no dress code culture to tell him about the liberal work atmosphere but deep down I knew I was lying not only to him but myself. Finally I shot the weapon of good money and a secure future. I told him about the benefits of money that he could save and the possibility of his getting back with Rashmi once their material gaps got bridged. After a pensieve moment, God finally agreed. I think it was due to the possibility of getting back with Rashmi. Afterall, he was also human.
God's entry into corporate world was anything but smooth. To begin with, he misssed his orientation program itself. Then he would come in to the office and leave for home at his choice. Yes, the company had flexi-hour work culture but his hours were a little too flexible. His dressing was a little too bold to be worn in the hypocritical 'liberal' work atmosphere. My friend, who hired him for his team, was obviously not happy about it and kept on complaining to me about God. I would always have to play the pacifier and I did my best to calm him down. My ultimate weapon was to tell him to challenge God with problems at work. God himself wasn't exactly ecstatic to be in the corporate world till came the first pay check. I could see the visible gleen in his eyes on looking at the hefty amount. In the following few months, he had moved into a new apartment, bought a bike, got a blackberry cellphone that his company gave him. On top of it, he started to wear clean clothes and had got back with Rashmi. In short, he had acquired a life style. He also enjoyed working on the new research project his company had put him to. We still did our usual jamming at his place, smoked and drank every now and then although the frequency had gone down and we didn't throw the cigerette buds wherever we wanted. . Although I personally hated the fact that we didn't jam as much as we did earlier but I understood that now he had a job and a steady girl friend that too needed his time. Everything seemed hunky dory and I felt happy for him that he finally got his due from this world.
Shortly after I had to leave for USA for a few months. God had come to see me off with Rashmi and some of his new friends from work. It was great to see him in the immaculate white shirt with a smile on his face. Little did I know this was the last time I was seeing this smile. After I came back, I had to call him half a dozen of times before he actually answered my call.
"I am so sorry brother, we are in the middle of a release and I want to make sure we get it right. I have 2 patents and two thousand dollars riding on it. It is also a part of my quarterly MBO", he said.
I was amazed at his language. The God I had known was a man of extremely few words and none of them resembled words like 'release', 'patent' or 'MBO'.
I asked him if we could meet in the evening for a jam session.
"Sure but Rashmi doesn't like me smoking at home. Oh ya, I didn't tell you we moved in together and last time I smoked at home we had this big fight and now she .."
"Ok, ok, I understand", I said. "Let's meet in a bar".
And we agreed to meet in a bar. Of course I did not like the idea. Meeting with God was not a meeting in a bar for me. It was a special part of my life that gave me the necessary fuel of freedom to survive.
God was late by a good 45 minutes and whined about traffic as soon as he came in. I had a hard time recognizing him and hearing him 'whine' was even more suprising. He had all the fancy clothes that included a silk tie but no smile on his face. Infact he had lines of worries. Every now and then I saw him checking his e-mails on his blackberry.
"Sorry huh..this one is a little important", he kept on saying everytime he replied to an email.
It was not only the email that kept his blackberry occupied. Every now and then he recieved a call on it and every call left more lines of worried on his forehead. One particular call that caught my attention was perhaps from his banker as he was busy arguing with him on why the interest rate had been higher than what was offered to him.
"So what if the 'Base Prime Lending Rate' has gone up, I had made the deal before that", I heard him shouting on the phone.
I was in complete shock for the God I knew didn't even know how to worry or how to use the words like "Base Prime Lending Rate" in one single sentence.
"Rashmi says we should buy a house", he said feigning a smile that cleary appeared fake. That his smile was fake on mentioning about Rashmi became clear to me when her phone came in and all I could hear was them arguing. I am not completely sure but I think I heard "bitch" after the call was done.
"Dude, I got to go. Rashmi is hosting an 'antakshri' party at home. I can't miss it or she will get angry", he said and left.
I saw him leaving and ordered a double large drink for myself but I knew I would never be able to forgive myself and drown my guilt of taking away the smile from the face of the only genuinely happy man I knew and turning him also into a slave of the system.
