I have always wanted to write a book
and i started writing also way back in 2009 right after I read a book written
by a friend Ankush Saikia“ Jet city woman”. I fell in love
with his writing and the way he connected me to the surroundings both Delhi and
Shillong was beyond my imagination. The words he chose and the feelings i thought
came straight from the heart and that’s when i decided that i could also
write a book about my life which is more like a roller coaster ride and maybe
some of my close friends might just go to a book store to buy a copy out of
sheer pity..:)or like I know them pick one for free..:)
I started on a cold January night in
2010 and by the next three days i had manage to pull together 6 pages..I
thought wow! This is an achievement maybe in another two more months i might
have 60 pages and will end the book when I reach the 100 page. But my writing
stopped after i fell in lou(love) and it became a yesterday’s dream.
Now i am back and i feel more like a hypocrite coz I am back to
my old love that’s Music and writing and have come to realised that it gives me
more pleasure than cleaning my house which I thought i was best at...funny but
true i am a cleanliness freak!
So i am not sure if writing a book is
really what i can do now .Therefore I have decided to share it here on my blog
the little that i wrote. Please excuse the vocab and the words i am just a mere
graduate but I hope it makes sense and hope that you guys like it.
Here it goes...............
Years of struggling to know who i am
and what I really wanted in Life, Today I realized that there are something’s
in life which are better left unanswered.
It’s been a long time since I left my favourite
place, the place that has given me a name an identity, my birthright. My home my Mom and everyone else also my late
grandmother whom I so fondly remember every day. I was waiting for my final
year result, innocence in the mind, though off course have had many silly
relationship encounters but taking out a job in the real world was definitely
not in my list of priorities.... A job is not a backstreet boy love ballad
which you learn to by heart the lyrics in one hour and sing the next time you
see the song on MTV.
A job????? Do I really have to work??? .
It has never crossed my mind that one
day I would need to work hard and try to bring my ends meet.
Growing up and watching too many
English movies thanks to the discovery of cable TV. Our small town Shillong has
been privileged enough to be in touch with the western world thanks to our
parents for encouraging us to watch a lot of English channels. This indeed
improved our pronunciation skills as every kid almost knew every dialogue of a
movie that was aired on the most favourite movie channel Star movies…. And a
routine was made in every home to watch MTV and star movies.
I grew up watching Doordarshan the
Indian television network which means reaching out ….. It actually reached out
and I remember the time when we had our first television (Disco-the brand ) our
small living room was filled with known and unknown faces and even our windows
were clogged with faces from the neighbourhood; I remembered an incident that
my friend told me that their bed broke when there were too many people sitting
together watching the live telecast of the funeral procession of our Late PM
Indira Gandhi.
Indeed as years passed by a TV was no
longer a luxury but a necessity. I realized that every time I go home and pass
by villages along the narrow winding road, I can see that the dish TV of
various Co’s sticking out of the tin and thatch roofs… and I wonder is there
anymore simplicity left in the world.
The first time I was offered a Job was
in Shillong when a BPO Co along with its smartest chosen Hr’s came and
recruited 20 odd English speaking people to add more heads to their business in
the capital.
The day finally came when the world
anointed me the chosen one, the warrior against all odds I was no longer
considered a baby in the family, I was for the first time in my life considered
an adult a bread earner.
I could see the look in my mom that
she was losing her favourite daughter the love of her life to something called
a Job.
She knew that I was finally a grown up
and would be far from her sight and her mentoring, though she has managed to
maintain strict scrutiny all the while through the best mode of communication
called the mobile phone.
I was on my first flight alone without a
family member and was out there to fend for my own life with 25 k in my pocket
I was left stranded in my own world…..Like a compass without a pointer and was
very scared at every step that I took.
I was with a bunch of these grown up
wannabe’s and the twinkle in our eyes said it all that we were so looking
forward to march forward and trample any damn obstacle … The scared and anxiety
look was soon masked with the “Yes we can do it” look… and it so reminded me of
the famous poetry by Lord Tennyson “Half a league Half a league Half a league
Onwards all in the valley of death rode the six hundred”. Little did I know
that when would set foot on the grounds of the capital I would have to live two
lives? Like the star sign of the Gemini
…Funny but it’s true.
When the Plane finally Landed I was
welcome by a strange sense in the air the hot air was blowing against my face
and I said to myself if this was not hell then where would hell be I was
referring to the climate not knowing that in fact this was the entry to the
real hell which I was going to stroll for a long time
I was not really acquainted with the
metro life because I never travelled much as a child and when I was growing up
the only place we would often visit was Calcutta which was very close to my
home.
The d day finally arrived when I
entered the Premises of my workplace and we were asked to sit and wait till the
HR people would come and take us to our respective training room. After an hour
long wait a familiar face passed me by
and I realized it was the handsome hunk HR who recruited me and had asked me
out for a date during the interview back home, reason for asking out not my
looks or my physique but for the traditional attire that drape around my thin
and frail tiny structure. He smiled at me and then said are we all ready??
There were more than a 100 strange faces all lost in their own world however
masked by the excitement and the joy of being told that we were a bunch of
Lucky people who have been chosen to do the job of solving big problems of
Uncle Sam’s own people.
Day 1: We were taken to a hotel
conference room and soon the room was filled with people of different genres. I
was more busy checking the many people in the room and a friend of mine who
came together from Shillong ,we were discussing at look how all these people
from various states and background have filled the room and yes I must agree
there was a lot of stench coming from the room not the smell of socks but the
stench of racism ….
There were these Top shots from the Co
who were there at the platform and a woman started taking roll calls of all the
people and asking each one of us to introduce ourselves.
When the Orientation that’s what they
termed the boring session to be was happening I realized that I was in the
midst of an ocean of heads nodding to whatever the baldy bear was blabbering with a fake American accent . I was more lost caused
I never realized that Indian Citizen residing in India were also allowed to
speak in a foreign accent. I was in awe of the entire situation and could not
believe my ears and eyes a Brown man without an NRI (Non resident Indian) tag could
form words and then spit them out in long sentences along with an accent Wow!
The first day got over with a lot of
joy and more excitement…..and also the thought of getting paid at the end of
the month for just sitting and being introduced to new things in life what
could I have asked for. Wow I thought
this is life…the hot weather did not bother me because the excitement was more
than the thoughts or the feel of the heat.
I come from a place that has never
used a fan forget an air-conditioning device… We were blessed with natural ac
the cool breeze the soft sunrays that touch your feet in the afternoon the
green hills and trees in every corner. The capital was a tandoor a furnace.
The best part of a BPO is the one
month training period which in their term was also known as the honeymoon
period. The first day of training was spent in a beautiful clean room with a
batch of 18 people thankfully I had 3
guys from my same town and we were very excited. and Suddenly! a small built female (our VnA
trainer ) walked and with a very thick American accent said Yellow everybody
wassup! I almost fell off my chair . and we smiled at her and said fine thank
you ma’am. The moment we said ma’am she raised her voice and said common no
sir’s and Ma’am because in the YOU-ESS we address each other by names or last names it makes the working
environment more relax and transparent . That was another thing I learned about
the American culture apart from the prom nights culture or the one night stands
that we saw in movies. I thought yes this is where I want to be … Being cool
and speaking a foreign accent as if it were another scrabble game which I love
to win
To be continued.....
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