Thursday, January 21, 2010

2009 A odyssey Year

Unlike any corporations, i do not maintain a profit and Loss account of my life year by year rather i have never followed any particular year so closely and have never realized so many upheavals with tempting aftermaths. A tumultuous year; An eye opener; A check with realty; could be the ideal ways to describe 2009 for me. For the first time I would like to dissect, the last year among so many of my life in search of some soul piercing occult ideologies of life.

For more focus and better evaluation, i would divide it into four quarters.

Jan-Feb-March.

The clamour of deadly recession knitted with stupefying silence gutted me like many others. 2009 was ushered in with pessimistic anticipation to reinforce some of the blurred big dreams. Every morning newspaper of January bought in the stories of grater plight of economy spreading like contagious epidemic; but it also catered some respite to me knowing that the best of the bests churns has also been tore apart by the sharp edge scalpel widely known as recession. All my sent mails had a word doc attachment to it, but my inbox was scantly cluttered with all sorts of advertisements other than job. I was never counting on Feb given its size but it was a friend of mine from a job consultancy who zeroed on me only because we are friends.

7th of Feb: Early morning around eight i was on my way to Alipore road. From Hazra i hopped into a Kiderpore bound Auto rickshaw. Intermittingly i was taking out the piece of paper from my pocket, which had the office address and the name of the building. A colour smudged face with befitting scarlet lips, the end of the sari tucked under the black petticoat inviting stares into her naval pith, waiting on the railing of Kalighat bridge. Some time back i had read in a local magazine that the thorns of recession have not even spared these unfortunates, so she doesn’t even have time to allow her mutilated body with some rest after a forced night. Therefore, she was all ready at her venue for business and i was on my way to it. After several rounds of interview and medical check-up i was given the offer cum training letter by Glaxo smithkline for the role of Medical Representative.

Glaxo Smithkline breached the obnoxious jinx with events which made me feel like a countess, for training i went to Mumbai for the first time in a three tier AC, was booked at a posh and pompous four-star hotel in Juhu for twenty odd days. By the mid of March i reported at my headquarters in Kolkata. In the all India, training programme i was a significant performer but that was just a sliver of the greater task ahead. I was licked by the new system but i was not a formless lump of flesh thus never surrendered to the new dice to put the cast on me. So i ended the first quarter with substantial profit margin derived out of the pragmatic doctrines.

Apr-May-Jun.

With the onset of one more fresh and glowing summer, i felt clammy. It was like one of those humid days; when you long for thundershowers but that longing does not cramp you from excising your mundane rituals of keeping the uneasiness at bay. Therefore, every morning with the cult bag by my side i made towering promises without giving any wild thought to the underprepared foundation. Whereas on one side i kept on anointing all those baseless promises which never got emancipated but on the other side i never ceased dreaming about my own targets which apparently looked magnanimous but not invincible.

April being the start of the second quarter and the first for me on the job i was given some very modest targets of calling some leading dermatologist in my defined territory and doing the rounds of chemist shops on daily basis. Although it looked simple given the brand with which i was associated but i kept on failing and the only sole reason for such a debacle was my alienation from the job. Where my fellow cotemporaries were hitting both the field and the sales targets regularly which bought them some early accolades in the form of praise and appreciation letter; i was making my life miserable with unnecessary pressure. My perturbed manager went on enquiring about the problem or the problems i was facing with my job. He was all there to play the mentoring role but what can the mentor do with a subject, which is all distorted with aspirations’ and is practising Anthethesis mode.(though i have realized his noble endeavour recently)

Even “May” was no better than the preceding month; i was regretting for the hasty move but then what could i have done, for three months i was jobless before this happened and there was no looking back then. I wanted to relinquish the very profiting job but then what next; and to make it worse i was bleeding emotionally(blood was oozing out profusely but the clotting material was never seen). So stood there transfixed gaping at the vocational option which could have offered in loads but surely not in the way i wanted to have it. Situation was such that the luscious jobless condition wilted under the atrocious flame of obsoleteness or i was never of any use to her; it was just my feeling of being the new thing in her life.

9th June i was just sure that few decisions of life which are made in hurry or in false perception can never sow wonders but can give you insightful lessons which might facilitate in the long and tedious journey of landmark success. I whole-heartedly accepted the fact that my decision to embark on a Sales Marketing profile job was never correct; probably i would never enjoy something like this. At least the unyielding job guarded the copious flow of emotion for sometime in a day but now it was my turn to wade through some of the agonized feelings without any stoppages; just the way some of my acquaintances have done in the past with due credit to me.

So finished the second quarter with one of the most coveted learning of mortal life “What goes around that comes around”.

Jul-Aug-Sep.

Now every know nook and corner had an unknown sobriquet with fear all around; fear of running away from my own dilapidated shadow(how can one live disowning its own shadow). Thoughts clogged my dilated lungs and formed indelible wrinkles on my body. “Arko” was no more just a colleague; even he had left his job and now we made a great combo. Given that, particular point there was number of things in common between us and thus we gelled standing rebel to the signature theory of science that “Like poles repel each other”. ( Skew between pure science and behavioural science). He was god’s apostle sent for me who allowed me to puke the most irritating memories on him and never asked questions about the stains; appeared upright with a single summon pampering all my dogmatism; sufficed me with all the crude suggestions wrapping it with the transparent muslin which never restricted my sight from reality and the softness gave some relief to the existing scars.

The dark heavy cloud was dishevelled by the omnipotent rays but the threat of overcast loomed by the sideline. The harbinger of godly charm had already descended on earth to give face-lift to all possible sorts of grey numbness. The city was roaring to go; (while whitewashing the wall few streaks of split go unnoticed later on the same streaks evolves into lethal cracks). I ambulated in the gala crowd but couldn’t form a admixture with it; just as water never does it with oil no matter what is the percentage of ratio. By this time, i had some very clear indications that this state of emotional indifference is here to stay; there is not much i can do on my own and was desperately seeking for a solitary hibernation mode during those four days in which this city wears its most courteous apparel and platters the best hospitality to the lady with ten hands and her children. As they say every cloud has a silver lining to it; probably she saw one of her son in sublime desperation and agony and thought of gifting him with a job in disguise of engagement.

So just before DURGA PUJA i had a job of my own and this time every possible nuances of my life was at stake (it was like a branch hanging over the sticky quagmire which had gutted me to its bottom; i tried clinging to it but then was pulled back by the creepers of heartbreaking memories, My conscious effort to hold the branch was there and one day my nervous fingers showed solidarity towards my state and endeavour to change it and i left the bottom and raked my fragile torso from the pool of quintessential emotion contaminated by rage).

This quarter i befriended few souls irrespective of age those who tendered the empathetic treatment over phony sympathetic diagnosis.

OCT-NOV-DEC.

Like the catastrophe hit dwellers of the coastal region who after mulling over their never changing sorry fate plunge into erecting edifice with intermitting gusto only to realize some better days in life; i was also there sweeping the debris and recollecting some of my serious wishes which i had left in the midway due to sheer ignorance.

This job gave me a sense of back to normality; i started to reckon that all would be well in sometime. The treatment had just started and i was recovering but then the relapse rate was also quite high. Surprisingly even after being dumped which made me feel like an obsolete i could manage to slip in with my new acquaintances in office pretty well. Couple of my old friends even complained the way i looked; according to them, my behaviour was not exuding my kind of individuality and if i continue to be like this then they would not mind calling me a NERD. Here in office nobody complained about the way i looked but at times became inquisitive about my everlasting frown. Some said i keep on shuttling between few moments of high and eternity of low (yes you guys are right i was never like this; probably in some time i will strike a ideal balance between high and low and then again be high on high).

In the mean time, i did not enact any act of reconciliation with her but made countless silent prayers for a miracle. I thought it to be a test of patience and perseverance and never wanted to lose hope; every night i went to bed with some sort of eagerness to see a new morning which would have something miracle in it. Slowly that eagerness fizzled out because now i bought in extra baggage of fatigue everyday from my workplace. This lady whom i knew now for almost some years; yes at least three odd. No not the same one about whom i have been hinting above for so long.

It was the last day of 2006, the man in the Vodafone kiosk was punching my number for easy recharge and there she stood taking a correct note of the same by eavesdropping. Since then we kept on exchanging few texts; starting with the anonymous ones followed by pseudo identity. Ironically, it was me who pounced on her without any invitation every time through wee hour phone calls, buzzing her on the street during unscheduled trysts because we lived in adjacent locality. I was never perturbed by her disgusting ignorance because i was having more muses for rowdy passion. I lost her number so did she (actually both of us pretended to be careless) but this muse never passed away in the oblivion as four eye balls caught each other very frequently through adrenaline rush rendezvous. Time went on but i could see no apparent amendment in her gestures towards me; so she was there in the loop of lust but was cornered by few more numbers.

Now i met her by chance and this time she greeted me lot more gracefully something, which was not very much expected out of her. I was no more a jumping jack ready for the plunge, more of the docile kind. Was lacking the coherent mannerisms of charm and failed to latch on to the signs of truce. Gradually our proximity increased and the same girl who could have been one of the muse now tendered her uncompromising vastness in an endeavour to make optimum space for me where i could dry the scars and start concocting joyful moments.

We started meeting almost regularly without any reinforced pretexts and by now, she had started jutting out unambiguous vehement prospective signals of availability but still i managed to put-up a sincere indifference to anything and everything. But as they say “only a woman can downsize the pain given by some other woman”.

In December she made a unceremonious foray into my tumultuous realm and proclaimed better pragmatic changes over ephemeral high-rise. She projected me right at the forefront so that nothing remains hidden behind the aisle and simultaneously ignited the latent vigour to face-off the blatant fact. She was now the “Omnipresent SHE” in my life and once again, i wanted to start afresh.

This has undoubtedly been an eventful year and it has indoctrinated me with the small secret of how to gain calm in the most delirious situations; hopefully 20-10 would teach me how to maintain calm when good times will confiscate me gracefully.