Work-Life Im-balance

My profession lays great stress on the elusive achievement of work-life balance: an equilibrium even Buddha would be proud of! Blogging weaves an interesting catch-22 around this unending quest for peace of mind and wallet: work hard and I won’t be able to blog; blog and I will be hardly working! However, blog I shall, even if it means destroying a delicate balance and as the title suggests; this one’s about anecdotes from work, my life and the resulting imbalance when the two clash!

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Location: Sydney, New South Wales, Australia

Tuesday, May 17, 2005

The room with a crow-view

People often compare and find similarities between one’s first job and first love affair. I agree. I think both (the job and the affair) bring with them a bundle of expectations and uncertainties that excite us. Uncertainties always have a seductive charm about them: the mystic and the occult; however risky and treacherous it might be is still so much more alluring than the mundane and the run-of-the-mill.

The bigger attraction around one’s first job or love, I think, is the curiosity to find out how one would behave in these untried situations. In the days when I was single, I was amazed by the silliness of the behavior demonstrated by couples in love. ‘Losers’ I used to say, ‘I’m sure if I fall in love, I’d stay away from all that mushy, romantic shit!’ I always wanted to know how “dignified” a lover I’d make: not because I was unsure, but because there was a point to be proved to the world and the responsibility of doing that lay on my shoulders! Almost two years into a relationship, the results are not very encouraging. I don’t know if I made a “dignified” lover. I just realized very quickly there was no point to be proved. After that, I didn’t really care to differentiate between the silly and the dignified.

But I have digressed; the theme of this piece is not love. It’s a crow! So like my first love, I was waiting, bubbling with excitement for my first job to begin. Training was a drag; I think that’s precisely what trainings are for: to drain fresh enthusiasm out of people and replace it with equanimity, a more balanced view of things so that if (and when) expectations crash the fall is not too hard upon the knees. So the day training ended and we finally received our seating plan, I eagerly scanned the plan to see if I had a corner that faced the sea. In my office, each of the cabins accommodates four people in as many corners. These cabins either face the sea or the concrete jungle of Mumbai. The corner allotted to me faced the concrete jungle. Damn!

I faced the situation with a generous dose of training-provided-equanimity. So what if life was a bitch, there were more significant things to look forward to; like my first case (in consulting parlance specific to my firm, we refer to a unique client problem that we strive to solve as a ‘case’). I set out in all eagerness trying to understand the problem in all its complexity. My first week on the case, I spent most of my time at my desk, poring through presentations, documents, etc. It was on the second day of this week that I noticed it. My eyes were weary from staring at the laptop screen. As I looked outside through my window, there it was, perched on the steel frame that held an air-conditioner in place. A dark, black crow. ‘Caw!’ it greeted me, staring back. Damn! Damn! Damn!

I’d like to clarify that I have neither love nor disdain for any bird. But a crow is no ordinary bird. I mean I wouldn’t have cared if it were a sparrow, a parrot or even a peacock. But a crow is not exactly the most pleasant of things to look at when you are tired of staring at presentations and need some relief for those weary eyes. And if you have read ‘The Raven’ by Edgar Allen Poe, you’d definitely agree that a raven (which is a cousin of the crow, I guess) or a crow is the last thing that will soothe tired eyes.
Dammit, I thought, it will soon fly away and turned my attention to the presentation. But it did not fly away. Every day, every time I looked out, there it was: hopping stupidly on the iron frame; mostly cawing and sometimes flying out and returning with a twig in its beak. Every morning, afternoon and evening, it would greet me with a throaty caw whenever I cared to look out. Sometimes it collects twigs for a nest that I can’t see; other times it just hops nimbly on that frame giving me company. It’s been over a month now and the crow is still there. I’m sort of impressed by its constancy and its fidelity for the iron frame and my window. I mean I’m sure the blue skies and the vast expanse of the shimmering sea would be quite a temptation for the crow and yet it chooses to spend most of its day perched up against my window. I would never be able to see if its nest is complete or not but I can see that irrespective of everything, it’s still there and I don’t loathe it anymore. I’m sure I’d be concerned if it flew away, never to return again. My crow-view seat, as I proudly proclaim in my office, will lose its name and significance.

My girlfriend dismisses my narrative as bullshit. “Crows don’t build nests! Concentrate on your work.”
Caw!

2 Comments:

Blogger Amber said...

Hey Kanishka, I guess the "dignified lover" topic would have made more interesting reading :). Anywayz enjoy consulting....

9:43 am  
Blogger Abilin Mukherjee said...

brilliant piece... most of the time we romanticize things that do not need any but the ability to do that to the mundane is truly commendable

10:09 am  

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