Statutory Warnings:

1. Post may seem disastrously out of context. But there's a sequel coming. If you miss that after reading this, well, what can I say really. I can say 'sex without orgasm', but that would be a little crass, wouldn't it?

2. Post may seem awfully long. Don't bear with me. Honestly. If you can't stand this one, err... there's a sequel coming. Go, hide!

3. Post may seem repetitive. I am reading Catch-22, and I don't bother to mask that fact. The literary style seems to have rubbed off a bit.

4. Post may seem to have a long-ish introduction. It is just to test your patience. If you think you can endure beyond this, think again! Good luck!

Young man J is fresh out of the rigour of what Bombay University calls a Bachelor of Engineering program. He is now an IT professional – big words, those – especially after coming perilously close to them KT monsters. ‘IT Professional’ has a nice zingy tone to it, and it’s bound to get better too, because young man J is going to be joining a fast-growing super-happening IT company. And young man J is pretty happy too, mostly because he’ll finally be able to put the ghosts of engineering college to rest. He won’t be the shy young man brooding in the corner saying nothing, talking to nothing and doing nothing. He’ll go out and meet new people, make new friends, learn new things. Most importantly, he’ll pay for his own fuel. Out of his own pocket. From his hard-earned money. There’ll be no pangs of guilt after driving a few kilometers more than he should have.

Somewhere in the background, David Gilmour is singing ‘Coming Back to Life’.

Corporate life beckons; young man J now prefers to call himself ‘Big J’ – weird names with ‘Big’, ‘Snoopy’, ‘Puff’ are the in-thing these days. P Diddy Combs has changed from that silly name to the decidedly sillier sounding ‘Puff Daddy’, and then back to ‘Puff Diddy’ and then suddenly to ‘Sean Combs’, or something to that effect. The good thing is that JLo seems rather impressed with his inclination to change names he responds to as frequently as the Big J bathes. And he bathes everyday, mind you. But that is besides the point. The Big J is ready for corporate life – with all the snazzy new half-sleeved t-shirts and crisp, wrinkle-free cotton trousers. The future beckons with a shiny, shimmering glass-and-aluminium building. The Big J is dazed. It’s not easy dazing the Big J remember, because, err…well because he’s so big. But the building is bigger, shinier and more awe-inspiring than anything that the Big J has seen before. It holds his future in its resplendent glass façade.

Two months have passed at the shiny building. The Big J has been soul-searching with 89 other similarly-aged, similarly-ambitioned things. After weeks of looking inward, the Big J thinks he knows what he wants in life. He thinks most others do too. But two-months of ‘talking to oneself’ is really pushing the envelope a wee bit too far. Most of his batch-ies are itching to get working on real technology. The Big J, meanwhile, is shuddering at the thought. He is content drawing sketchy sketches of weird concept cars that he someday hopes to build. And sell. And make some money.

A tryst with technology is inevitable in a software company. Unless one is in HR, in which case, one gets to bring fresh new ‘talent’ onto the deck of a rapidly sinking ship. Or one is a vice-president, in which case one gets to go to the beach with the freshly-recruited young ‘talent’. Or one is a team-leader or project-leader, in which case one gets to bark orders at the freshly-recruited young ‘talent’. Or one is a Project Manager, the biggest and most important pillars on which the performance of the company does not depend. In case one is a PM, one gets to develop incisive managerial skills managing project accounts on Microsoft Excel, and do nothing else significant. Except pester freshly-recruited ‘talent’ of the female variety. Tch tch, quite a shame. Actually, if one is anything but a freshly-recruited ‘talent’ – isn’t that starting to sound like a ‘freshly-plopped heap of cow dung’?? – one can avoid technology. There’s not much effort or brain-power needed. Probably the equivalent of about 32.548% of Bush’s total grey-cell count, and you’re through. Put that percentage of your brain to work, and the very next day, you could be sitting in Bush-land, with nothing to do. Except drive Yank muscle cars on eight-laned superhighways, eat the fattiest chicken burgers dripping with mayonnaise and sleep in five-star comfort. Err, strip club once a week, if company finances permit. Eh, none of that applies to fresh cow dung, because that is what makes the company go around. No, it doesn’t work on gobar-gas fuel, rather, these young energetic recruits are the only ones who know a little bit of techie jazz. Most of them so good, they can’t write a program to print all prime numbers from 1 to 99. The Big J, as you must have guessed by now, falls in that category too. In fact, the Big J can just about manage to write a program to list all odd numbers between 1 and terrimetabuxillion.

A few months’ worth water flows under the bridge, and the big J has just about satisfactorily managed to pass his time earning enough money to fuel his car by creating pointless reports to be used by a haggled manager somewhere in the US – undoubtedly himself worried about how his teenage son, now addicted to coke and Mary Jane will get through high school. Soon, the project comes to an end, and the Big J, much like a (big) volleyball is tossed around from project to project, bay to bay in search of his next destination. There’re too many projects, he is told quite enthusiastically. He thinks he can detect a hint of affected optimism in their demeanour. The Big J is despondent. He knows he should be playing around with car engines instead of tuning Application Engines. But the future seems bleak.

Three more months have passed with nothing to do. Nothing except boring breakfasts, dreary lunches and endless coffee breaks. The Big J has developed a liking for sadistic songs of the Pink Floyd genre. The Big J hums his favourite line very often nowadays – “And you run and you run to catch up with the sun but its sinking. Pacing around to come up behind you again. The sun is the same in a relative way, but you’re older. Shorter of breath, one day closer to death.” Everyone looks at the Big J as if he has lost his bearings. The Big J, meanwhile, smiles a knowing smile.

A few more months go by. The Big J sees people all around filling time-sheets with fictitious working hours to fool the client into paying the company more money. And people who don’t fill time-sheets for the client, fleeing before office hours, getting their attendance cards swiped by a cooperative partner in crime; all of it in an attempt to wring out that last paisa from the company for the work that they never did. Or never had. Who’s bothered, really. Finally, the Big J is on a real live project; needless to say, he’s really happy. Day one sees him looking at two thousand lines of sickening code that must be cleaned, optimized and rewritten. At the end of day one, the Big J wants to return to the comfortable confines of his cabin with nothing to do all day. There’s something about ‘green grass’ that strikes him with the ferocity of a cricket ball that only a silly point fielder knows. Day seven sees the Big J smiling a benevolent smile. What is the matter? While the rest of the project team runs frantically in all directions to meet unimaginable deadlines, the Big J is as serene as a Himalayan sage. Frustrations have given way to jokes so bad, they make everyone laugh. A jeer and a sneer have made way for two dimples on the fat face. On the fatface, rather.

The Big J is basking in warmth of the knowledge that soon, he shall be out of this dastardly place. Soon, there’ll be no Application Engines to optimize, only real car engines to test. Soon, there’ll be no Structured Query Reports to code; the only structures he’ll think of will be the monocoque structures of rugged SUVs, the only queries would be the ones the masses would ask the Big J about their next car; and the only reports would be road-test reports.

Somewhere in the background, David Gilmour is singing ‘Coming Back to Life’.