Sunday, June 10, 2007

When the Dream Goes Sour! (Read after you've read "Living the Dream")

Living and working in Gurgaon - albeit for 2 years already, and perhaps for several more months is very much like dreaming.. sometimes it is more nightmare than dream..but definitely a transitory break from reality.

Now for the same dream - gone sour!

The alarm goes off at 5:30am every morning. I hit the snooze bar, turn over and sleep some more..several times. Doorbell rings, persistently at 6;30 (Archana's been struggling with waking up too) and a sleepy Salyani opens the door for Archana, as I hastily change into my workout clothes. I moan and groan my way through an increasingly less taxing workout, and tell myself it is better than not working out at all.. When Archana leaves, I lay on the floor in Shava Asana and tell myself this is so I can wake up fully refreshed.

I scare Salyani who comes in with my cup of tea - cos she can't tell whether this is a really shava(corpse) that she is looking at, or me doing an asana. I attempt to revive myself, have some dysfunctional chats with my colleagues overseas, get engrossed in mail and before I know it it is 9am.

I rush through the shower and find that the 1 outfit out of about 30 that I wanted to wear, is in the wash... so I wear something else, scramble thru breakfast and rush downstairs. I have to carry my own briefcase (it wasnt packed when mukesh came for it), and my own lunch box (cos I've developed a contrary streak and want to carry it myself)

Mukesh the chauffeur comes after I call him on his cell phone - guard told him he couldnt idle that long outside the front door, so he had to go back to the car park.

Get to the office - same work, except now my ace resource comes into tell me that he is tired of India and wants to return home. The 2nd guy says that the competitor has offered him 3x the salary I pay him, he loves working for me, but not that much. The next guy comes into tell me that his team lead has called in sick with dengue. Forget about coping with new work, I am struggling to hang onto what I've already committed to do !

At the end of the day, I call my driver Mukesh, who again pulls the car to the door, and we head back home. We arrive at BPII where all I have to do is haul myself out of the car and take the elevator up. Mukesh follows with my briefcase and now empty lunchbox.

Salyani makes me hot rotli and sabji, I watch my favorite soaps while eating dinner, I worry about all the work that did not get done today, try to keep doing it until I fall asleep in the middle of composing an email. I pick myself up, check that the alarm is still set for 5:30 and retire to my bedroom.

At 2pm , I get a message that one of the critical servers has not come back up, and we cannot find a technician to resolve the problem. I wake up, make phone calls, somewhere somehow the server comes back up, I go to sleep.

On weekends, Archana or one of her colleagues, will stop by mid-day and administer what they call an accupressure massage. The rest of the weekend I hurt from the impact of the pressure.

Yes that too can happen!

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