Tough Thoughts!

Recently I have shifted to the Hinjewadi office. There is a cab service that the office operates for me to be able to work in UK timings. In the cab I have co-workers who work in the BPO segment. I have had the opportunity to make small-talk with guys travelling in my cab and it has been a very humbling experience to hear their stories.

So often I hear the same thing from them, they are over-awed by the fact that I belong to the IT segment, their eyes seem so much to wish that they should move into the IT segement as well, they are all aspiring to somehow or the other to make a switch into the IT segment. They need to put in more hours at work and are not happy about the mechanical nature of work they are doing. Most often they are people who have risen from humble financial backgrounds that could not afford them paid seats in engineering and hence ended doing diplomas; or had to stop at graduation instead of going on to complete their post-grads in an attempt to support their family. But still, they have this very strong urge to move into supposedly a more prosperous stream of work which would at least afford them "better work" if not anything else. They so curiously ask me how I landed into the line of work that I am in currently (not that I am doing anything great, but looking at it from their perspective this is like a dream job for them perhaps) and seek advice on how they should be going about it if they want to move to the position they so earnestly desire. They are guys who are young and so dearly want to be better placed and deserve to be better placed as well perhaps - and so often they want it just so that they can earn the heart of the girls they would like to live with! :-) The spirit of these people is inspiring.

These are people who have probably got the talent, but just missed out on the right exposure and opportunities purely because they did not have the background support either financially or an educated guide perhaps. Just these missing things led them to take the path that came their way and they had no choice. They had to take on responsibilities like running the house even though they had the urge to study more. It is so much dependent upon fate sometimes, is what you begin to wonder when you meet and interact more with people like these. I felt like I was so detached from the reality of life and the troubles that people have to go through to make a position in life.

Meeting people who freely express that they would love to be in a position like we are in, is an extremely humbling feeling. It is difficult to describe. It just makes you enter a philosophical mode where you start thinking that you've probably got so much in this world without half the trouble that people go through and yet you have your own qualms about what you don't have! Do we really have the right to grumble?

And this is what I felt when I met people who are not that impoverished or something. They are in a very decent position, but they would like to be better. I wonder what I will go through if I were to really meet and interact with poor people or those keeping sick etc. and see the ground realities and trouble they go through - I think I just cannot imagine! The infinite gratitude I will be overwhelmed with then for this beautiful life will probably make me a saint or something and stop me from doing or saying anything that hurts others to start with. I just realize more and more how important it is to be in touch with the world around you in its not-so-beautiful form to be able to appreciate and value the beauty that exists with you. Not only that, one begins to realize it is so important to share one's blessings too rather than have it all greedily.

Can our race to be better than what we are; be at the cost of losing touch with reality and don't we owe anything to the world around us?

Difficult thoughts to deal with, difficult questions to answer!