What a Lie Beneath

Convenience, is a non-negotiable vice. Its a virtue, a business, a tractable nuance of luxury that has diversified across spheres which compose a gigantic framework abstracted by meticulous presentations and beguiling packaging. Convenience has an apparatus, a destination, towards whom its directed to. Its what every business plan is designed to immure, its a consumer. A consumer, like the one within all of us, having his tribulations and opinions, tastes, cultivated and acquired, preferences, natural and pretentious, has outgrown his/her own reactionary impulses. Now, we look beyond palpable consumption. There are markets and arrays of products that don't have a physical existence. New theories of products, which haven't yet materialized, yet only exist as a fad, have made as much money as a seminal bar of soap. Not replacing the bar of soap in its indispensability but creating an outlet within the consumer to obtain a seemingly higher state of satisfaction through availing it. Needs and their deliverance, demands and their supplies, these variables and economic dicta are losing their dependence as a function of the lives of people. Today, the focus is not on what people want, but what to make them want. Its an unbridled matrix of demands tabulated against supply, where the former is independent, and infinitely pliable. Surveys, researches and thesis which concentrated on how lives are can only limit themselves to furnishing what we already have, the grotesque arises from what we could want. That prediction and vision creates products that have a precarious span of gaining consent. Nonetheless, irrespective of an economic perspective, such steps have littered us with choices that we find hard, often unreasonable, but feel definitely special to make.


The service industry which ranges from tissue papers to software support provides such abstracted levels of consumer support, that what could be accounted for a bashful provision could be ubiquitous as a irrevocable need. Years and innumerable instances have enjoined within us a stupor where handkerchiefs become an uncouth ancestor of the very sterilized and hygienic, bedaubed with germ fighting serums from natural plants, the very convenient neem and tulsi, (whose names can be wantonly played around from toilet cleaners to health drinks) toilet papers. Of course, convenience rules, who could take the effort to wash stains every time the cloth is used. Toilet paper, use and throw and Voila! There goes the articulate sophistication that roams in assumed airs of self awareness, lofty steps exuding confidence of an efficient individual of the clerisy who can eat a burger with one hand perform a swift, precise turn with his car with another hand, all the while talking over the bluetooth dongle attached wirelessly to his phone nestled like a jewel in the car charger, and through all this great humanitarian circus, to keep you dry and fresh... so fresh that you can impress a female by climbing stairs when the lifts are off to reach for a multi-billion dollar meeting on time... toilet papers. What fantastic imagery, what a beguiling script, that glorifies a disposable to life altering proportions; you could miss your meeting as the lonely woman with a voluptuous appetite wouldn't have been smitten by sweat dripping even after rigorous wipes from you not so super-absorbent, obsolete handkerchief. What a sad sad business choice, you almost seem to lack vision, the basic sense to aesthetically propel your enterprise in the Forbes top 100. What a sick loser!

Look back, rewind the tape. That handkerchief, bearing your embroidered initials, that non-antiseptic sweet smell of your favorite fragrance, enunciating an individuality that could distinguish you in thousands if not millions. Isn't this individualistic article an accessory enough, that sets you apart from a boxed version of virulent existence that fawns to a master who can never be a character of repose. Ranting and demanding in inseparable syllables, invariably, this induced haste of heightening the discomfiture of a careening droplet of sweat makes an insatiable creature out of the user, who might not hesitate to wipe off his back in order to look like a postcard, grabbing the indistinguishable papers as much his fist, pandering to an illusion which insults human restraint.



This downward spiral of insatiable needs has galumphed consumerism into turbid waters of moral decadence. Indiscriminate, irresponsible and ruthless, markets now aim at not creating a man out of a suiting, but a chicken who can prance his insecurity in fabrics that could give him another skin. Day in and day out, billboards and front pages are crammed with slogans, punchlines and propagandas of brands that attempt to brand you, as theirs. What are free markets? A profligate practice of hedonism that debauches a lifestyle into a dependence, where there is no life, only style? Couldn't people concentrate more on themselves with the suit on, and not on the suit? And not like they were created to wear that, and not that it was stitched in some violated cantonment in China for them? In their temples of entreating, a family will share a trice of over fried, stale chicken tikka, maintaining their intake of calories by defiling their share of the snack to a mouthful, and returned like gourmands of classical tandoori cuisine, calling their "ma" and "pa" in tongues they were not brought up with, and neither their "ma" and "pa", who reply in a sharper articulation. Could they be more empathic and redolent of the same warmth and accord as the language in which each of these heavy waisted trophy families mouthed their first words? Sweetly sounding, seductive mothers of thirty, broadening by the minutes not so much due to the oil in homemade food but from utter sloth, stutter on 't' in "beta" and bombast sarcasm with two year olds quoting it as a practice of culture, cheaply emulate disasters, whose lives within that ambit of a few minutes are like uncooked meals that become their handicapped set of ethos, neither to be spat out, nor to be swallowed. This dilemma more than a swaggering and hip bad temper delineates a monster who is baffled at the drop of a mascara, and can with hold the mast of their ever awakening sex in this country famous more within than outside for social disproportionation, by uttering choicest slangs that repudiate the smothering shade of that very mascara that might have impressed the offender in the first place.

One such hoarding read, "Real life is so boring", and pop goes my wallet for a 150 rupees multiplex seat, again a delectable import enjoyed for inexplicable reasons. Again stacking you into units of 300, in indistinguishable seats for which all payed reverently and can bloody well show that with a sonorous monologue in well-accepted language of the ones who-come-to-such-places. This giant wave of acquisitions by a moronic refurbisher of classical cinema halls, which had that concept of balconies, which brought that individualistic pleasure of watching the movie like you could almost walk up into the scene. The halls which had back stalls, serving the slick and the more tractable crowd who frequented as a matter of routine and passion rather than luxury, are now a numbered few after losing their legendary cousins to these retouches of ubiquitousness. Outnumbered and against popular practice, they stand on the verge of a lock down.


Such factory lines sit and operate within each of us. They generate millions of insinuated impulses that arise within someone else and culminate through us. Simmering rages and random favors give out a nonplussed routine that struggles to balance itself, vacillating between the dreamy character in the movie watched over the weekend and general droll of life. In such inconsistencies, it seems more like a self preservation measure to harbor a belligerent attitude towards any intrusions into your personal sphere of physical existence. Since the reactions are so much a function of our physicality and physical being, and seeing that unwillingly shared by a foreigner becomes unbearable. It occludes our sense of well being, it further mystifies that already ceaseless task to wrestle with inner fears of being materialistically inept. You have your surroundings secured, arranged and fashioned according to your comfort, even your unreasonable whim, which you find maddening to self-debate. This awareness and control over your space gives you an authority and frees your mind to rise above this quibbling and become a creative entity, which can think and progress, build upon a security of firmness that is so ethereal because it can easily be breached by that neurosis of disturbance in your physical space. Here, the mind is a slave, it snivels on things that are immaterial because they are beyond its control. The definitions of a creative universe, an empyrean oblivion are misled in this groping for comfort and objectification of satisfaction. Perhaps thats why love is such an enlightenment. There your subject, your romance exists in thoughts, which reside inside and there is no possible intrusion that can disturb that stream of unconscious obsession. And seeing this, finding this super invulnerability we feel secure, and hence the curves on the forehead are bewitchingly substituted by the curve of the lips.



Such factories sit in cubicles in my workplace, such species of quibbling stooge over little glances of attention and praise, and feel like children given ice creams of just being the sons of man. Compliments and good natured smiles work just magically fine there. But its hard to smile, to lie every time. Sarcasm saves me. "Hi. A very good morning. What an imbalanced psychotic prick you are!"

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On Beautiful Duties And Dutiful Beauties

What left me in the lurk till now were these intervening couple of weeks of countless hours of lethargy poised in suspended gestures of resolve and feigned concern. I have gone through various postures, defining, in aggravating degrees, the intricacies of thinking, vapid ruminations, and in consequence, opinions and decisions that have an absolutely impractical basis. But somehow they were essential in being unrepentant today, as it is just today that matters. The things that are incumbent incite much speculations and arguably consume a lot within us. The present is the dwelling, which is best exhausted productively without the anxious onus of tomorrow. The tomorrow, in foresight comes as an indirect and masked benefit, the assurance of which, couldn't be more jeopardized in its quibbling in the present. Following such self-gratifying spasms, I delved into Utopian frames of unblemished references, that idiosyncrasies and impertinence carved unreasonable niches of imagined comfort. Whether its positioning my book and myself in a certain setting, or its the length of drapes covering the windows, not to miss, in this intimate oblivion, the lighting of the space around me, my efforts of finding that perfect comfort by vacuities like these kept my mind and in effect, my efforts, shuffling repetitively.

The task was to be abreast of the implementing languages that I would be working on, when I get back in that flawless mansion of fevers, horrifying and awesome, where the ethics inside were of someone completely opposite of what fickleness reigns me right now. Adrift in slumber, one afternoon, Vikas, the bearer of the watery eyes, calls me. In a shallow yet anticipatory tone, he spoke of a possibility, that materialized in the advent of this training, so longed now than dreaded. Airs were noiseless, the civilized voices of the staff intoning, controlling pitch and exalting bass, engaged in a technique of almost artistic finesse, of seeming composed to enshroud their true emotions from 'strangers' around, but in contrast to the plaintive visage, trying to modulate voices to convey what they really feel. This superficial incongruity epitomized how meaningfully were all the professional stupors adopted within the basic reflexes of these people. Unattended by such bindings, how the others carried themselves around here, at which I am dazed when its only for a day, appear as a grace perfected after years and months of straitjacketing impulses. Induced by self-consciousness wringing me further by the air-headed churns of my head, I was attending an organization for the first time where its not about thousands of rupees, but millions of dollars, not for yourself, but of a client. However, during a conversation over lunch with Amit it was a reassuring surprise, that HCL in fact was one of the most employee-entrusted companies in the industry today, to the extent of quoting it as a "retirement company", improvising employee amiability with pleasingly flexible policies, which to a capricious evaluator like me, are more satisfying to the conscious than to the purse. On the flip side, its even worse outside!

My first day was unfolding in a typical way, or perhaps it is typical of first days to unfold this way. Conferences, interaction sessions, into which I was left between full-ordered employees, out of pure indecision about staying back or leaving. Nonetheless, I interviewed team leaders, grilled a few by punching out sarcasm to their aging mental agilities, attended a few seminars I wasn't meant to, and bunked the succeeding sessions after being poked at by Vikas, "You're done?". It was a part of the flimsy interactive exercise by their HR monkeys to let "people know each other better, so that when you pass in a corridor, you at least wave a 'Hi' to each other!"....Sigh.... I was about to fall in love with such a philanthropic heart, give or take a two, I could've easily given her greeting cards on calender days, but faces led me away into being what men usually want to be, men of high, though undeserving, tastes. Coming to faces, the place does crawls with fine women. Perhaps the intrigue of female-abstinence doctrine so rigorously practiced by my college, has heightened this uneasiness of 'exposure', but in my own hall, which, by the way is called an ODC*, eyes linger on, and hang for a moment or two on one of the few fine crafts of physique or genes, or a toothsome both in some cases. If, in moments of ambivalent darkness and directional ambiguity, which come often, and I decide to covertly take a break, I ponder on the ponderous and estimate the gorgeous. Categorizing beauty, into natural, acquired and nourished, there arise fine points, which even though out of materialism and unintellectual perceptions, seem to further refine the immaculate statement, "You're Beautiful".

Its easy to deprave from abbreviations and terminologies, avoiding desultory glares from the languorous team leader, lounging on his seat, here I lounge on mine, getting all abstract, non-technical, so to say, in contrast to the hunched backs and frowning countenances, engrossed in unintelligible errors.

Emerging from the first day, the understandings were still embryonic, unfinished to be generalized into a behaviors. Acquiring one of the seats among the cubicles which brought surreal human-farms into my mind on the first time, I am an audience to this one big circus of working, in the process learning, committing, taking flaks and outshining peers. Some uncovered and falsified my views, which were jejune to start with, and some introduced interesting clauses into the legitimate ones. Faces remained the same, but their collection of expressions has expanded into the real world now. Seeing Vikas, Amit, and the others, with whom knowingly and unknowingly I share my ways with, in their new roles, which they have been performing for years now, they attribute to their roles and the surroundings a certain strain of character that contributes to the whole picture, and is an occupation in itself for errants. Each day, I am a witness to a new quiddity of each of them, revealing and resolving their personalities by their effects on other entities, which is whole existence themselves. Vikas, is not so sad after all. There is this informality about him that puts you at ease, and which also lets you misinterpret that subsiding droll as melancholy, and in more staid terms, desecration. Amit looks more of an autocrat and self-oriented than a fraternal functionary. Although, he has his own reservations, on a personal basis he stated the behavioral guidelines that tangentially affect your appraisals, and in the long run affect your conversion rate immensely.

Formally, I am in now. Though surrounded by substantial inexplicableness, unacquainted technologies and hopes for an exodus to reality, there are no colleagues. Just a tacit and serious contract employee, who has been a enlightening help and will continue to be, considering the incubating period of grasping the new knowledge, perilously subjected to my own inefficiency, and a firm, unwavering eye around the gauche arrangement of black fibrous mounds of sitting ducks, pretty, porcine and passable, peeking over the heights of their cubicle walls, their patterns of change, and their affinity to certain other black fibrous mounds. Of course some reserve special attention, the permed hairstyles, neat appearances, mischievous smiles and telling signs of intentions, coquettish and unperturbed, its heartening to find brio and gallant ones amidst all that soundless jazz...



*ODC - Overseas Development Center, (the name itself is defiling to patriotic fervor...). The Inside Scoop: Actually, in the I-Cube (Implying In Introspection) Protocoal (more on the deliberation later...), its: "On Demand Chootias, that's On Demand Business from HCL..."

Dramatis Personae

As a purposeless youngster, as an inconsiderate student of engineering who is less than twelve months away from joining in a flesh and blood race of money, politics and positions and most irritatingly as a capricious and frivolous holidayer, my guardians in a vicious tandem with my parents ensnared me in a training program with another one of those Business Standard ranked, Business Week lauded and treacherously conceived companies, an IT Major, and a place where I really woke up to the real world, HCL Technologies, with capitals where it shall suffice to pander to its super sized multi billion dollar ego.
Stepping into climate where what I do and speak would actually have an impact on my surroundings, in an unforgiving way, I was brain-fed and wounded mentally in the attempt, that how the picture inside would be and how essential was it for me to wear a formal pant, which like handkerchiefs has been a sartorial rarity since school. In my peculiar, Indianized and partially dysfunctional household, there is an acute quagmire when such important events arrive in any of the family member's life. This one was officially tagged, "my first day at office". At this juncture, everything and anything I do is contrived around some traditional and now insignificant facts since morning, that "I will be late on my first day", "that they will know what a mistake they have made" and above all, "you have defeated us in grooming you". What adds the Sharmas at No. 42-6 touch to this is their own constant hankering since morning after me. Dad was late for office on purpose, getting the son ready for this momentous occasion. Mom, though she has her holidays, administers her own barrage of admonishments with the characteristic lilt of a teacher, and as an unsaid rule, nobody, and its never came to her explaining to us that, Nobody forges sarcasm from that. Under such grueling does this XL sized clown gets ready for his first trip down the aisle. I felt like a bride this morning, cheers mommy, cheers daddy, you've been great!

Now, that the pen was in its proper place, the shoes could see me clearly and when it was getting too hot and they decided it was enough marination requisite for the first day, dad's car with of course dad in the driver's seat, dropped me off at their building. A silent, breathing and internally displaced creature. The place had a light brown - cream exterior theme to it, the receptionist had a cute voice that had many males lecherously attaching an 'h' with it. How cute! The reflecting floor tiles supported a world where "what's to be done", and "how its to be done" and most importantly", "there is always a proper channel", were the guiding undercurrents. Professionalism in its truest sense, leather shoes clapping noiselessly with the floor carrying quarries each unique yet so ubiquitious, Spanish designed dustbins that could easily double up as centerpieces for your drawing room, twin tone upholstery and whispers ran the ODC wing of HCL operations. The essential elements remaining the same, it beamed upon me what do people really mean by "the feel" of the company and "the soul" of the organization, that every center, every BPO, every treadmill like this where millions from semi rural India flock each day towards employment hubs like Noida, Gurgaon etc has its own culture, just like a cornered civilization incorporating their unique work culture and pace at which work progresses. Again being more microscopic, I could infer that each center differs from the other, whether its the lively lunch hour or the "I mean business" clacks of the boots on the spotless marble floor, this spirit enthuses something more than an attitude in you. You become guided, a complex mixture of your ethos, self awareness and work. Every person to cross my vision had a work to finish, a job to do and whether its my own imagination due my own feeling of being out of place, everyone had to leave, soon.

As my contact, a motivated and efficacious personality, Amit Srivastava led me into this labyrinth of unspoken communication where "you-oughtta-know", my entire career flashed past my neurotic and myopic foresight. If not half true, I realized what it meant, to work for someone else and to work for yourself. He straightaway whisked me for a coffee, a very quiet area where busy, engrossed people were taking a dire break to read the headlines on chest high tables strewn with every daily in the market. With five kinds of beverages to choose from, Amit told me about the extra perks and facilities that came with being a cow. A gym, company-monitored bill paying facility, and an ATM diversified across all banks. We had just taken the coffee out of the Nescafe dispenser brewing a host of hot beverages, and then follow the code, whispers. While fleeting down the glistening corridors, there was a large poster of their current client, Comverse, who handles more than 60% of the voice mailing facilities across the world. Hortatory facts and laudatory accounts followed when I asked about this "other company's" billboard sized hoarding within the offices of a cabalistic industry. Through his intricate references to OSS and ODCs, I learnt where my feet are going to tread within this manhole. All this within two or three sips of the dispensed coffee, a haggardly individual, sleeves folded up, as if to bely the impression that the weight of the world was on his shoulders slipped behind me, sifting paper cups quickly and keeping them under the nozzle. This seemed second nature to him, brisking towards this refreshment center, dispensing coffee, nodding to a couple of people around him, the choice of that being random and a function of the load of the day. Through his swift motion, he looked at me with one eye, sensing the unmistakable stench of fresh meat, and asked me my name, "I'm sorry, I forgot your name...". I tried to be courteous and self confident at the same time, although the cup was still coming down after my fourth sip, and said, "I'm Ravi...".

In an officious manner, he asked me to come inside. Where? I didn't know. Amit beside me, guided me to their 'hall', or so it seemed. Like an impervious mule, I followed him, with the coffee still in my hand. A wry smile on his face, beaconed my misdemeanor. "Throw it!", he fired under his breath. And without a look ahead, I hurried back to one of the Spanish designed dustbins, throwing the cup, a long stream of the drink spilling due to the fall, with a couple of drops adorning the shirt of a "fellow" worker. In this weird haste, the abundance and insignificance of these perks became clear, it is, after all strictly business! Amit and me separated ways as he swiped his card for access in the hall, guarded by two giant and thick glass doors. I was now under the jurisdiction of the Republic of OSS, and my reporting commander would be Mr. Handler, I still don't know his name though, but he seemed to be a pretty accommodating and tolerant individual. Standing on one corner of the air conditioned expanse, the array of cubicles seemed like harvest fields, where you were a vegetable and creative juices were to be extracted dry from your head. The high ceiling held luminous lighting, soft for employee comfort and copious for bright visibility, if at all you go numb with work and antipathy and bang your head on a broad pillar smack in the middle of the hall. When all this surreal imagery was just beginning to bloat, Mr. Handler appeared and directed me one of the conference rooms on the left. Amit was nowhere to be seen, he would be, I thought, catching up on his quota of work hours, ensconced in his chair and plugging back the suction pump to his ears.

Inside, he began, as I try to give him all my mental shrapnel, while I was sitting beside the glass door, etched translucent to the chest level, so that whenever you could see an attractive bust pass by, you have to stand up to see her face, or in most cases be glad that she wouldn't know as you approximate her. On the other side, superimposed on a clear white board, with tired eyes, he asked me about my alma mater. With an odd co-incidence, good or bad, is still yet to be unraveled, he was also from the same lineage of institutes, the one from Haryana, and from this came my first clue about the man with the tired eyes. A little check list was created, about what all should he assume that I know. I wasn't exactly an irresolute wimp, or was I making an effort not to be so, wasn't clear, when he wrote NIT below REC on the board, and then corrected by writing NIT on top, and I made my over whelming comment about the irony of the precedence, that in some cases the degradation was the reality. He shrugged it off as a perception, but that wasn't entirely my point, was it? My two seconds of fame were over.
Asking about my fluency in one Java, which is not a drink or an island off the coast of India to the uninitiated, I shrank like a callow novice, basking as I did, banking cheekily on the novelty factor, presenting a hopeful picture about how assuredly I am catching up on Java and how confident was I with core Java. All through this while, something wasn't the same. The conference room had all the essentials to equate it with a class room, but it didn't feel like one, the markers were their, the duster was there, the chairs were there, but I had changed. The loose jeans wasn't there, the unstrapped sandals had been supplanted by the more civilized pair of shoes, and I couldn't smile for no reason, be there, attentive and scrutinizing to everything volleyed at me. This was not one of those interactions with a new tuition teacher, this was workplace. A new outlook generated out of thin air, that of respect, that within all these hankering beings around, who so dreaded an extra hour at work, maybe a handful respected what they do, and what all code is scrapped and compiled on those monitors really made a difference to someone somewhere around the world. For once, those furrows on the forehead of Mr. Handler reflected not a grinding mortar of work but the tension of sincerity about maintaining a server that handled voice mails of half a million people of Israel.

He left me for myself for a said fifteen minutes, where in the meanwhile he would get in touch with the HR department for putting an extra sack of fodder and I would resort to more imagining. Unencumbered by my inhibitions for a while, where I wasn't supposed to be directed, for the first time ever, I had a window into the eternal humdrum of a corporate world. Knowing that I would be reporting to Mr. Handler, a Project Manager (PM for me), I could sense what would be between me and him for the ensuing 60 days. A special courtesy, a superiority out of position and out of sheer gratitude would always have to be an underlying caveat whenever I would object to him, whenever in the following couple of months he would disapprove and I would make an interesting remark. This man with tired eyes, would be looking after my progress, without any previous commitments and this weighed upon me as a cornerstone of self analysis. The very fact that what he was doing was what he was supposed to do, precluded his acceptance to add one more furrow on his forehead just because of my follies, and like all trainers, he expected the worst.

A half an hour later, of which each second seemed like freeze frames from a sting operation I surmised countless sizes and saw several faces, tensed, confused, mocking, sarcastic and in general, work oriented. What their lives could be outside this pillory, what were their likes and dislikes, how much time had they spent here, all such vacuities made no distinctions once they were inside, everybody looked the same, behind the same task, with unanimous force. In between, a undiluted observer of my thoughts had been a friend of mine in Chennai, a call to whom had brought back some circulation back to my mouth. My handler arrives, and in a non committal tone, asks for my preferences for the joining date. To be a part of such a surreal environment was both challenging and soused with high skepticism for me, and even as I said as soon as possible, I could imagine me rushing down these hallways, abreast with other more acclimatized people and imbibing these values within myself, circulating the wheels of life to another destination to which I shall be late, where I would misbehave, screw up and perform. I wonder what the good days and bad days amount to here. Knowing well I have to hold on my own, how readily or how reluctantly would this place accept me with all my anomalies as an inconsistent human being vis-a-vis the uncompromising environment was the biggest question that stands above all else.

When I came out of that room, Amit appeared as he rises from his seat, revealing his sanctum in this sea of plastic and machinery. Mr Handler takes another route, pausing for a brief second to exchange a nod with him. A complete cup of coffee followed after that, garnished with more inspiring technical speak from Amit, gloating how essential was his part of the code, and how Japan secretly went a loss of millions when a week ago a server got shut down. Being at an abundance in Noida, HCL has seven offices, between which cabs shuttle regularly. On the huge iron gate at the entrance, one guard enquired with him about the timings of the gym. He had two missing molars and a huge feathery moustache, the standard intimidating look. Some enlightening conversation later Amit told him about his routine just to familiarize him with the gym. "I take a jog there, though I don't lift weights!". The guard responded, his moustache quivering as he spoke and making a circular motion with him arms, "How big is it?". Gauging the misunderstanding, Amit clarified, "There's a machine!". To this the guard was hardly surprised at the magnitude of his misunderstanding.

Getting inside a cab, HCL emblazoned in big blue font on its doors, was another departure from the carefree life so far. The cab dropped me off at a branch near my house, even though I tried to put forward my convenience indirectly. The driver's irrational response made it clear, and as I got down at this other branch it became clear. As soon as I got down, within the buzz of officers around, five come forward and board the empty cab. With a start, it smokes away to some other office. There is no time. Schedules have to be attuned to be as efficient as clockwork. In this corporate private methodology, work is paramount. Personal comforts are bearable as long as it does not have a conflict with your performance. Around me stood other office goers, half of whom probably weren't even a part of HCL, visitors, relatives on hold, interviewees and maybe trainees. I felt like a part of a system, glimpses of which will bring forth strange tangibilities, and to which I have to submit, one day or the other.

Although. I'd love to differ.





All characters and incidents mentioned above are not concoctions and imaginations. They are accurate descriptions of real world situations and events. Any claim of resemblance can only be corroborated with the above testament. Hence, the author encourages empathizing with his cause, although which is entirely for himself. He apologizes and expresses helplessness at being such a self centred bastard.