It’s yet another pleasant and sparkling Monday morning. The wife had an early start with a project meeting at 8 am, and reminded you of all the things that should have been done on Sunday as she left. You can’t find the spiderman costume for your 6 year old ( though the intellectual age seems to be approaching 26) son’s fancy dress costume competition.
The boss called for a
budget meeting at 9:30 am. Your team member has just sent you a BBM that he is
unwell, which means that he is sozzled and won’t even pretend to come into
work. This would also mean that the powerpoint presentation would now need to
be completed on your drive into work, which you would have normally palmed off
to the hapless but now inebriated subordinate. The statistical correlation
between him having a fatality in the family or becoming the first victim of an
outbreak of the bubonic plague ceases to amaze you.
The sales numbers came in
on Sunday evening, and you are now desperately trying to concoct a correlation
between the Greek debt crisis and the decline in ice cream sales in
Uttaranchal.
The HR head has scheduled
a meeting with your team at 11 am, to take feedback on your managerial skills.
And this, after a Friday, when you cursed their ancestors and immediate loved
ones on an hourly basis.
The finance head wants
understand how a dinner with the distributor at a Michelin star udipi
restaurant titled Night Lovers could be counted as a promotional expenditure.
The new legal head has
realized that he has insufficient lines to fill up his year end appraisal and
has decided to review all your existing contracts over a working lunch.
And, then of course, the
wife wants you to pick up her maternal grandfathers’ third cousins’ second
husband’s ex wife’s fifth niece from the airport at 4 p.m. That’s a breeze.
And your mother has just
sent you a text message enquiring on the rapidly receding and greying hairline
she has just witnessed on the MMS message sent to her by her grand son. Your
dad has just called you at 8:14 am dishing out an intriguing sermon on the need
for work life balance and the significance of keeping a rein on one’s material
desires.
You reach out into your
jacket pocket, your fingers search for the blood pressure tablets prescribed by
your alcoholic doctor, but your sagging eyes veer towards the dark walnut
veneer liquor cabinet as the fine Mexican tequila, gifted to you by your Lamborghini
wielding ‘Valley’ returned Internet options laden classmate, tempts you with
its sensuous curves.
And then...in a rather
Arthur C Clark’esque way...it all comes to a freezing halt. The BB stops
buzzing, the bell doesn’t ring, the child doesn’t scream, the wife doesn’t
wail, the boss doesn’t brawl, the team’s not throwing tantrums, the laptop
doesn’t need charging, the budgets don’t need to be hacked and the bills don’t
need to be paid. It just stands still.You’re taken back to a time when you were playing on a beach in your shorts and were gleaming with your purchase of an ice gola with your last ‘char anna’. The times when not having money was an adventure, watching the sunrise didn’t send shivers down your spines, a train journey didn’t tell you that you haven’t arrived in life and a courtesy call on a friend didn’t imply that you needed a favour at work!
Think about it. You walk into an office party, you’re beaming, the cheeks are blossoming (both pairs) and your boss gives you a weird look. How can you even make an attempt at looking so happy? They would quite quickly refer the company guidelines on acceptable and permissible behaviour. Surely, the employee must be on substance abuse! That would be extremely unacceptable behaviour. OMG...stress free!
Think about it!
Now...you would be wondering..should you have rather spent
the last few minutes catching up on the sales performance in Uttaranchal? Or
should you have perhaps been replying to an email before your boss, just to
make the right impact. Or....even better....should you have been making one
heck of a strategy presentation for the next year, hoping to become a executive
associate senior deputee vice president!
How often in life do we
kind of let go? When was the last time you stood in the balcony on a Monday
morning with a cup of coffee and watched the sun rise, without thinking about
the morning review meeting? When was the last time you did something for the
first time?
Now...of course the EMI
payments have struck your emotional chord and your rationale is telling you
that can’t lose sight of the ball nor your position in the corporate rat race!
Hell...that would be sacrilege.
Should you
take that minute and button up your son’s costume or reply to your boss’ early
morning query? Should you add fancy images to your presentation or buy a
bouquet for your wife? Should you accept the cocktail invitation with the CEO
or take the family out for pizza? Should you loiter around in office till late
night, lest the office sees you leaving ‘early’ or listen to Miles Davis?
Should you spend hours on analyzing the other department’s performance to give
you enough ammunition in the board room, or put in those finishing touches to
that painting that had been started three years earlier?
Now...get back to your BB
and don’t forget to pop in those pills either!
