Impact of recession on my mind!!!

Some times I feel modern intelligence is such a burden on our brain! Ignorance is bliss, rightfully said by our ancestors. There are days when I want to get rid of this facade of synthetic, acquired intelligence of mine.

Sink myself deep into Spirituality. I feel realization or intelligence which makes it way into our heart through spirituality, is like Ayurveda. Life giving. Natural. Natures nectar to main kind. No lethal side effects.

This so called intelligence acquired after some 20+ years of killing education process is like the Drugs/Modern medicine. Synthetic and harmful with lots of side effects. Totally western.

Some times it feels good to shed this mask of intelligence and look at life innocently. So please bear with me, for this completely unintelligent mindless posting.

My favorite pass time (which I find very soothing) is to aimlessly gaze out of my office window during the day. I do so while I am working on my Laptop. To keep looking at the bright blue sky and think. What's so great about that for it to get a honorary mention on my blog? Everyone does it. So???

Yes everyone does it, but how many of them write about! For me it is important to write about it. Gazing out of the window at the blue sky, my thoughts free me from the confines of the office walls and its school like atmosphere. I am a free bird in my thoughts.

Actually, it is self pity which makes me think about the bright blue sky. Fact is, I envy those people out there in the sun, on the roads moving about. Enjoying and going about something so mundane as sipping tea at a road side stall or just strolling about aimlessly. Simple yes, mundane yes....but I can't do any of that during my week days. Because I am working. As in, I am in the office. Confined to my workstation, meetings and presentations. Modern offices are so restrictive. There are CCTV camera's, IN/OUT swipe machines and god knows what all. All possible devices and gizmos to track your movement. Extremely claustrophobic. They kill an employee's creativity.

I wont be surprised if a day comes when an employer would want to know the whereabouts of each person 24X7. So they will fit a GPS device in the employees body at the time of joining (my understanding is that one large Indian Corporate is already working on a micro chip which can be fitted into human body). They will be able to trace each and every employee by just entering a code in a system and wow!!!! Just like FedEx traces its parcels.

The problem is that we all spend so many hours of each day at work, trying to do something great. But it just does not seem to be taking the organizations anywhere. See what hard working employees like us have done to the world economy. Those working with Lehman too were working hard. But look what its done to their life. And to the rest of the world also.

In my view, modern day organizations are monsters we have created and we fail to understand them. Many of them have no sense of where they are heading, I mean the organizations. Truly! They make over ambitious business plans, hire wrong kind of people to drive the business, to meet these loud business plans they design incorrect processes.......and then everything goes kaput. Give them some years and they have dug their own grave, ready to shut shop. So many of them working in the top positions truly make me sick. They have an IQ no higher than that of a 5th grader. May be that the qualification to make it to the top. The dumber you are, higher you rise. just like a balloon filled with helium!!!!!(Yahhh I am in a foul mood. It was just a bad day at work!)

Anyways coming back to my thoughts...sitting in my office, I often wonder what's happening to the world out.

People are going about routine chores.

Mothers dragging kids to the school, house wives bargaining with the vegetable vendors, teenagers/youth sitting in their college or generally hanging about in the canteen. Men rushing past in their vehicles to work, crowded buses. People leisurely shopping in malls.

So many people, so many lives and so many ways of living and spending the day.

Actually I am slightly more troubled today because it is a holiday for most people. And I am working. Wrong! My office is open.

So what am I cribbing about???Why not just walk out of the office into the bright blue sunshine and freedom.....

Well.....jobs are difficult to come through. Recession time.

"Having a Job is more important than job satisfcation" a colleagues wife (actually a housewife) pointed out to him!

Commonsense observation.

Home & alone. What a bounty!

I bet there are many like me living in this perpetual dilemma - how to get a work & personal life balance. My moronic corporate existence hits every now & then. On rare occasions when I am alone at home during the day time (usually I am night owl, a working women with 8.00 am to 8.00 pm, six days a week job), I sit on my favorite sofa cum chair and ponder about life. It is during those blank, empty hours that thoughts for this blog pour out of my tired mind. Rest of the time, for about 10 hours a day life simply passes by. Me is caught in a time machine called "Office". Start of the day to end of the day, start of the week to end of the week, cut off from the outside world by sound proof glass panes, the weather changes!!! But everything right from the decor to the temperature, to the light remains unchanged in my sophisticated air-conditioned prison.

Sitting in the favorite corner of my house, the silence and solitude has a soothing effect on me. Is it all really worth it? Outside the shadows are changing shape, the Sun goes up ans then down, the Stars appear and disappear......My body has forgotten the warmth of the summer Sun. Alone at home, I sit silent and still for hours. Coming to terms with what I am loosing. Day after day. Reflecting. Nostalgia takes over. Childhood memories of seasons, associations surface. Sounds and smells of summer spent with cousins and friends. Winter chill waiting for Diwali sweets and the wet rains or monsoons in Mumbai - time for a fresh new semester at the School.

Coming back to where I started from, the merits of a simple, uncomplicated life, non corporate life. On rare days when I am alone at home, I listen to the crow outside my window, children laughing and playing, honking of autorickshaws, a loud thuk thuk(bang bang) of hammer (somewhere close there is a carpenter working) It is all music to my ears.

No cribs. It is not as bad. I like my work. And my office is a good place. People are kind to each other. May be being away from home makes me appreciate the otherwise mundane sounds of the crow and the carpenter!!!