Export Quality

I usually don’t sleep during the afternoon. But I have observed that whenever I force myself to read something in which I’m not interested in, at that point of time, I tend to sleep due to unexplainable fatigue. This time it was Dostoevsky’s Notes from Underground, which I was reading for the second time. I don’t remember exactly when I started reading and when I slept. I observed a strange phenomenon while I was sleeping this afternoon. It was a bright afternoon and my windows were open, as always, so that I could overhear the people going up and down the narrow dirt road in front of the window. This road connects the outskirts of the city with one of the nearby villages. This is normally a silent road spared by sound of motor vehicles. You can hear sounds – which are never intruding in whatsoever way – of bicycles, roosters, goats, people chatting in low voices, etc., etc. It has happened to me quite a few times that while I am having a bad dream, I somehow become aware that I am in a dream, and therefore I use immense force to wake myself up, and I succeed only after a few back-to-back unsuccessful attempts. This afternoon it was a bit different. I was again having a bad dream which I don’t remember. The first time I forced myself to wake up, I found myself in the apartment in my hometown where we lived while I was in school. I looked at the walls of my room it had the same chalk white paint. I soon realized that I was still in a dream and made the second attempt. This time I woke up in my college hostel. I lifted my head and wanted to touch the wall beside my bed to ascertain whether I was still in a dream or was it a reality. But before I could do so, I was asleep again, until I was finally woken up by an advertising phone call.

This is my third year since I graduated and joined the global labor pool. Weeks before joining the company, for which I am working for, I was travelling in the villages of Bengal. It was the month of August. It used to rain a lot. If you would have traveled Jharkhand, Bengal or northern Orissa during this period, you would know how it feels like when you pass through the lush green forests dipped in rain and covered with dark clouds. The entire landscape looks so fresh as if somebody has cleaned up and revitalized the whole environment. I felt the same greenery within me. I had borrowed a bicycle from the caretaker of the place where I stayed and everyday in the evening raced through the small hamlets, contemplating over various things. When your heart breathes more than it normally does, you see solutions and possibilities coming up from all directions. I was thinking of ways to escape my destiny. I use the word destiny not in the mystical sense but in the pure materialistic sense. Even before joining the job I was planning to quit. I had figured out various exit gates. I was ripe with all sorts of alternatives, I wanted to do filmmaking, I wanted to do journalism, I wanted to do research in Politics, I wanted to do anything but what I am doing now. It took me almost two years to realize the fact that you can escape everything but it’s very difficult to escape the economics of your situation, and this is what shapes your destiny. I was running away from everything. Everything seemed incorrect to me. I ran in all directions but whenever I was about to reach the place I was headed for I turned back and returned to the place from where I started. Most of the happy people with happy thoughts would find this incomprehensible and would call it a useless rant organized to disguise my failure, my inability or lack of determination to achieve whatever I wanted. I would not entirely reject this accusation but over the years I have made it a habit to refrain from getting involved in arguments with the spiritually uplifted men of action, the saviors of the lost conscience. This is also a part of my inactivity. The important thing that I realize now is that you can switch jobs, you can switch professions but the same economics apply everywhere and you can’t switch that, you alone can’t change that.

Is it difficult to find your place in the society? No its not, because you can’t find it. It’s the market that finds it for you. For over two years into this profession, I kept myself detached from my work. I looked down upon it. I derided it. I was least involved in anything that went on in the office. I used to read, watch films, in the hope that I could still break away from this nauseating atmosphere. I kept away from the crowd and looked down upon people who worked hard, were happy with their jobs and enjoyed their lives. It may be difficult to believe, but its true that over my three years stint in this profession, I have met people who didn’t know where Patna – which happens to be my hometown – is, who presumed that Kolkata is only an hour away from Bhubaneswar by train, who use the words communism and communalism interchangeably (although it was heartening to know that they are at least aware that these words exist in English), who feel sorry when they ask me how many CCDs, McDonalds, malls, multiplexes are there in Patna and I say there are none. This I’m talking about graduates from universities in India that claim to provide world class education. Of course, there are people here who are quite knowledgeable and aware of things happening around them, but from the examples I have given you can get an idea of the average mass that surrounds me day in and day out. Anyway, after the initial few months I got used to it, my expectations were set. I had found out places to kill whatever minimal time I spent in office. It was not at all difficult for me to sustain in this manner because it’s quite easy to fool the people you are working for, at least in my profession. This is what I thought at that time. But I was wrong. I was not able to understand the mechanics on which this system works. It gives you enough time sit idle without any work until you are bored with your idleness and take up your work as compromise with your situation. There is a human instinct that forces you to be productive, that forces you to work, even if you can’t find any sense in what you working on and for whom you are working for. You can’t suppress this instinct for a long time.

I still remember the first time I arrived in Bhubaneswar, around two and a half years ago after my five months training in Mysore got over. It was love at first sight. There was a sultry sadness in the air that filled the city. Like me she was also afraid of the future. The locality where I used to live during the initial two years was an industrial area in the suburbs of the city. My office was a five minutes walk from my residence. Everyday while walking up to my office in the morning I could see trucks full of laborers going in different directions. These are mostly tribal people from the neighboring districts of Bhubaneswar. If you happen to come to Bhubaneswar, the first thing you’ll notice as soon as you step out of the airport or the Railway station is a massive billboard carrying Vedanta Aluminum’s CSR campaign with a smiling tribal face in an elegant black & white and the slogan “Mining Happiness. For the people of Orissa.” Many such hoardings are studded at strategic locations in Bhubaneswar as a testimony to the fact that our lives, our happiness, the reason for our happiness, our thoughts, everything, is designed and controlled by an all powerful force. I used to spend the weekends, and most of the free time everyday, in my room. I had a good collection of books and movies. I buried myself in them. Sometimes during the twilight, I went up to the terrace and looked around. I could see small huts in green fields with smoke rising up from the mud stoves on one side, laborers working at a construction site on another side, a primary school on another side, and my office campus on yet another side. This city gave me the much needed time and space, at least for a few years, to think, ruminate and retrospect. It was a state of coercive tranquility. We slept together arm in arm, lip-locked turning our face away from the reality. But, you can’t sleep forever.

Since last two or three months I feel like as if I have become a different person, a stranger to myself. People who have known me over the years are astonished by my behavior. I am astonished too. I have started spending time in office. The last month, for a couple of weeks, I worked for over fourteen hours, at a stretch, every day. The worst thing, I have started taking personal interest in my work. I no longer find it repulsive. I have even started to take clandestine pleasure from it. I have started to respect my colleagues. I laugh at their silly jokes. When they join together to discuss the measurements of the girls around them, I also sit there smiling. I no longer spend time with my old friends, most of whom have already forsaken me because of my sick behavior and those who are still there don’t care much about it. I have almost stopped reading and writing. However, I still watch films. This is something which will not be easy for me to give up. My new friends find me lazy. I don’t know what they think of me, but certainly for them I am someone who has nothing to say on anything, who prefers to rest his head rather than opening his mouth. They wonder what I do when I am not in office. They assume that I sleep out the entire day. But really, what do I do when I am not in office? I get overwhelmed by a tremendous feeling of estrangement. When I am not sleeping, I watch movies, documentaries, conversations, listen to interviews, read from here and there, and I keep on asking myself why I am doing so. Why do I watch Monsieur Verdoux, why do I watch The Seventeenth Parallel, why do I watch Subarnarekha? Why should I read Dostoevsky, why should I read Pablo Neruda, why should I read the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844? How does it matters to me what is happening in Gaza, Iraq, Afghanistan, Mexico, Nicaragua, Haiti, Zimbabwe, Indonesia, Bastar, Dantewada, Lalgarh, Jagatsinghpur, Kalahandi, Adilabad, etc. etc.? Or, how does it matters to me what has happened in France, Russia, China, Cuba, Vietnam, Bengal, Bihar, Telangana, etc. etc.? I have no answers. Then why do I force myself to do things that are of no use, no application. I sometimes feel like a dustbin carrying useless information, useless thoughts, useless ideas.

Although I’ll always deny it, nowadays I prefer to spend more time in office and keep myself buried in work. That way I feel as if I have put my head in a freezer so that it remains inactive and is prevented from any further decay. I don’t know what will become out of me in the years to come. I am not worried. I am not terrified. But yes, I am certainly not prepared for it. The processing that started three years ago seems to be successful. I have become a useful commodity which seems to have a good market value. For the Indian economy, I am now an export quality product.