Aahista Aahista

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It was not long ago that we prayed to be at home and work from there. The long and painful travel to and from office would take away a minimum of three good hours from the day. Often, I would tell my friends that all those who had their homes close to offices in large metros like Mumbai and Delhi, were the happiest people for they could spend an extra hour at home with their families, an extra hour at work impressing the bosses and an hour to themselves doing things they loved like reading, playing and enjoying music. But the year gone by with its WFH has been an eye opener as this seems to a much more exhausting experience than the drudgery of daily travel of the past. You do not need the Big Four consulting companies to tell you the real reason for this burnout phenomenon among workers…..it is the speed that no longer thrills but kills. You may have sent a mail to your team and in no time your mail box starts flooding with clarifications and answers. Everyone is online 24X7 and responding sitting on commodes, running in the gym and I will not be surprised that they may be typing on mobiles, iPads and laptops even while making love.  The same thing happens when someone has sent you a mail, they seek the response instantly. If it is a complaint, even before you have realized, the person has already written to your Managing Director and is threatening to write to the Regulator. Some have gone even smarter by using the Twitter and other social media available to get their job done pronto. In short, there is no time to breathe, which implies you are exhausted. I long for days when things took some time…Aahista Aahista.

Let me transport you about thirty- three years back in time and tell you how it was then.

Office Office: One Act Play

Dramatis Personae:

Ram, the Record Clerk. He is one of the most important men in the office who keeps all the correspondence in a chronological and methodical manner. All letters have a date stamp and signature of the RC.

Somnath, the Typist. This man with a thick moustache is available infrequently at his desk as he is also a ‘neta’ in the trade union for clerical staff.

Gautam Bose, the mid-level Technical Officer. He is always smartly dressed in a tie and full-sleeved shirt and carries his neat briefcase to work daily.

Alok Sanyal, the Boss. He is the Department Head and claims to be more knowledgeable than anyone on planet earth. He is known to write long and flowery letters and has a caustic tongue.

Joy, the Intern. He is a direct recruit officer (in those days there used to be such a sub-specie), who has been given his first posting at the Head Office of an insurance company in Kolkata. He knows little, wants to know even less and is here just by chance. Till a few months back he was asked to only read only files full of copies of letters written by the Gautam da and the Ultimate Boss just to understand the art of writing office communication. The poor fellow would almost sleep reading the boring stuff but kept a smiling face lest the bosses were offended. Now, after three months, he has been assigned proper work like seeing claim files.

Scene I: Ram Babu puts a letter dated 13^th September 1988 before the intern on his table even before he arrives for work. The intern sees the letter, reads carefully. Someone has complained to the Chairman- cum- Managing Director of the company about a claim for sinking of a fishing vessel that had got inordinately delayed. The intern picks up his pen and writes on the blank space on the left hand side, “Ram file please”, and gives it to Ram and carries on with the other work on his table.

Scene 2: After a couple of weeks, the complainant writes again to the CMD asking about the claim and writes in bold, capital letters…Reminder 1 dated 15^th October 1988. Hell breaks loose! The CMD calls the General Manager asking him about the fate of the earlier letter. The GM in turn calls Alok Sanyal and fires him for not attending to the earlier complaint letter. A furious Alok Boss calls for Gautam Bose and the intern to his cabin. The latter is made to hear every possible verbal abuse in proper Queen’s English. Finally, he shouts in his mother tongue…Chitthi ta kothai? (Where is the letter?).

The intern asks Ram Babu for the letter. Ram quickly connects it to the subject matter and previous reference number and date and brings out the claim file where the letter has been filed properly.

The intern is made to carry the file and the Boss takes him into the CMD’s room to tell him who the culprit really is.

The CMD calmly asks, “Why did you file the previous letter?”

The intern softly says, “Sir, the letter was addressed to you and you wrote- GM, please attend. The GM then wrote on the letter- Manager, file please. The Manager wrote- Gautam, file please. Gautam da wrote, Joy, file please and I thought that if all of you, who had read the same letter, could write, file please, I being the junior-most officer should, similarly, write similarly- Ram, file please and our RC Ram dutifully filed it away.”

The CMD’s anger gives way to a giggle listening to the young man. “Will you now send a letter to the complainant and attend to the ‘file’ please?”

Yes, Sir.

Boss asks the intern to draft a letter which he will sign and send to the claimant.

Scene 3: The intern now opens the claim file which speaks for itself. He sees that the papers had been received in the office on 5^th June 1988 and on 14^th July a letter was sent to the Regional Office asking for additional documents and clarifications. Some documents had come on 30^th of July and the intern had again asked for some more clarifications and documents. These too had come by 10^th August. All this time, the intern did not do anything and just kept back the file and papers in the record room. Before taking the file to the CMD, he smartly removes the last covering letter from the regional office so that anyone seeing the file will blame RO for not doing their work and the root cause of the delay will, thus, lie with them and not our man. This was quite a common practice and if the lower office said they had sent the documents, all you had to say was, Sorry, we have not received, send it again and, thereby, you got another fortnight to reply.

The intern writes a hand written letter and takes it to Somnath to type. He then takes the draft letter to the Boss. The Boss edits almost everything in the letter except possibly an ‘is’ here and an ‘as’ there, a ‘this’ and a ‘that’ somewhere….rest is all his own language. The intern often questioned his knowledge of the language which he had learnt for years together in his Catholic School from the Irish Missionaries. He would, often, joke with his friends after office, Tujhe pata hai mera Boss kaun hai….Mera Boss, Wren and Martin ka Baap hai!

The intern then takes the edited letter to Somnath and requests him to type it again. Somnath asks him to keep the draft on his table and that he will do it in the evening as he has a union meeting to attend.

Scene 4: Next day, Somnath arrives and types the letter and the intern again sends it to his Boss to sign. The letter again comes back with a few more changes. The intern takes it to Somnath who simply says, “Na, korbo na! (No, won’t do it!). We are not fools doing the same letter ten times…and he throws the letter off his table. The intern decides not create a scene and goes away. After a while, he goes down to the nearby cigarette shop where Somnath is enjoying his smoke with his friends. Again, the intern requests Somanth to help him or else the Boss will make his life miserable.

So, finally, the letter is done on 28^th of October 1988. The intern initials the letter on the left-hand side and the Boss signs his name in full on the right side and the same is sent to the complainant on 20^th of November as the Dak (Despatch) Department staff is on leave. It is post Durga Puja and the group is touring from Kashmir to Kanyakumari.

Life was good then. Look what we have made of it. I ,always, loved the ride on the Kolkata tram….it moved slowly, meandering its way from point to point at its own pace where you could jump in and jump out at any time…you even had the luxury of First Class travel at the cheapest possible price. It is so nice to read your novel….you could finish reading a short story travelling from Ballygunge to Sealdah…..and if reading was not your forte, you could watch the Maidan, the roads, the people and the old buildings…. or could simply take a nice siesta and not be disturbed. Sometimes, I just do not want to be the hare, I want to be the tortoise and yet not want to win the race.....

थोड़ा ठहर जा
थोड़ा सा रुक जा
आहिस्ता आहिस्ता चलने दे
दुनिया को थोड़ी सी देख ले
जल्दी किस बात की है तुझे
कौन सी मंज़िल पानी है तुझे
थोड़ा ठहर जा
थोड़ा सा रुक जा
थोड़ा संभल जा
थोड़ी सी सांस ले ले
ज़िन्दगी के कुछ लुत्फ़ ले ले
दो घडी तो जी ले
भागता , हाँफता कब तक फिरे
बचपन , जवानी सब हैं जा बिछड़े
अब लौट के ना आएंगे फिर
संभल जा , और न अब गिर
आहिस्ता आहिस्ता चलता चल
जी ले ज़िन्दगी के बचे हुए पल.

SS