On Prothom Oprappo Chakri Maybe.

Corporate Life!

Where to start from and where to end? You see and feel things new. You start off with formals and ironed clothes only to find yourself in shabby kurtis, running your way through, to make it in time a month later.

Everything starts and ends here at luck, which again is a heartbreaking reality, except for people who are genuinely interested in the industry. For the others, if you

• ·         Do not have to pay for your girlfriend’s bills
• ·         Do not plan to marry
• ·         Do not feel the need to make your family feel proud of the ‘job’
• ·         Have parents to sponsor you throughout
• ·         Have genuine talent to make it big alone,

This industry is not for you. I have known it the day I started off with coding that this industry is not for me, yet, it breaks my heart day in and out when I see people, worse than me, just getting lucky and happy. A major luck driven industry this is!

Other than, to be very honest, it gives you fair share of perks! One ID card ad you get to enter bays, protected areas, huge cafeterias, city like office campus, 5 stars and what not. I have spent a huge amount of my two months into corporate life observing people. Observing ‘similar’ people. This similarity makes us the odds though. Also, I do not like the whole new fake level that people belong to. Here.

I remember the comment, ‘now you too are a part of the office crowd, bheer toh hobei’. That bheer makes me observe people with the same blank expressions, sleeping with the headsets plugged in. You also watch these young and thin women in trackpants, very early in the morning, waiting with their daughters for the school bus and hope that someday, you will earn enough luck and love to have a life like that. You also see women driving their way to work and secretly wish, someday!

This particular life can turn you so mad that you start thinking of quitting and living off on the money, your 40 year old Brahmin takla arranged bor would earn, till Maa comes and gives you a ‘amar meye hoye erom kotha bolchhish’ dose and you are back to career struggling. It gives you days like last Wednesday as well, when you actually stare at the screen that says 95 and for a moment, for a very brief moment, you actually cry those happy tears. After two consecutive weeks of consistent tears. Come to think of it, even the array of possible and impossible love has not given me the amount of tears that Accenture has. So corporate life has taught me public crying. Not that I am particularly happy about this wannabe-ness that I have developed.

Yet, when I see Maa flaunting the watch, or proudly announcing that I work somewhere, the guilt and long tolerated 42369 somehow gets washed off. I was thinking of writing a better corporate life note after being permanent but I have a secret fear of either resigning or being thrown away. So, today, just today, I would like to be thankful to all the gods and well wishers for this one job, which made me experience so many things together. Amidst all the trying-to-fit-in-to-the-sophistication, I cannot even begin to explain the kind of happiness the sarakchhap Vada Pao gave me today.

A clean pair of leggings and small studs are all that I can manage to work in the 30 minutes of bhor bela. Someday I would also go to work in straight hair, white face and have someone else paying my bills. Till then, I hope this job stays.

Like they always say,

‘You are an adult now. And your day has just started.’

And nomatter how small you make me feel by words off and on, I suddenly feel brave for struggling through it all. Very very brave. And I know I am!