The Butterfly Diaries - A Bad Beginning

 This was back in the days when even the good old dumb phones were still novelties. The second gold rush was just starting. This time it was the Indians who were rushing to California. And the mines were not physical but corporate. Any enterprising fellow who could string together two dozen lines of error-free code had his fortune made. Was I to be left behind? More so since I was one of the few who actually loved stuff such as if…then conditions, for…next loops, variables and stuff of that sort that produced the magic to make the idiot machines dance to my tunes.

But then it looked like the great Indian IT dream was going to end even before it began. They were talking of something called the ‘dot-com burst’. I did not know what it was except that it had caused my June Bangalore joining date to change into a July Bhubaneswar joining date and then to an August Chennai joining date. My dad had seen numerous transfers in his twenty-five-year career. And here I was seeing two of them even before starting my career. I heaved a sigh of relief when the August Chennai joining date did not next change into a September Pune joining date. The only silver lining in the cloud was getting one final summer vacation before transitioning into a life that was not broken up by semesters or trimesters. 

And thus, I landed in Chennai all ready to start on my corporate journey exactly two days after my college convocation, which was fortuitously happening in the same city. It did make sense to formally conclude one’s association with one’s old organization before initiating ties with one’s new one. Also, I could say goodbye to my old friends and hello to my new friends at the same time. For there were guys from the batch joining the same company. 

The evening before  D-Day, we were asked to report at a 5-star hotel. I had never been to one ever in my life. It did look like things were turning around after all – I was entering the world of glitz and glamour. Man, was it posh! What a contrast from the economy lodges dad used to put us up at. And there was a whole bunch of young folks joining along with me. There was so much hustle and bustle. One downside though was that I had to share the room with a stranger. Even in the college hostel, I had always had a room of my own. But I accepted this as the first of my occupational hazards.

Among the crowd of people, I identified some of the chaps from college. A few familiar faces always helped when entering a new, unfamiliar life. And surprise of surprises – a couple of folks who I had known back at school. 

Every morning, we would be herded into a bus and taken to the office campus. The first two days were dedicated to form filling and orientation – our first brush with the much-maligned HR department. The legal language in some of the forms was so scary – I wondered if I needed to hire a lawyer to go over them with a fine-tooth comb. But then so many others were signing the same. So, I decided it must be all right. You know the good old safety in numbers and all.

Talking of numbers, I received my first ever employee number. One of my friends sardonically pointed out that we were being reduced from individuals to mere numbers. That number did remain my identity within the firm for the next five years.  That coupled with frequent use of the word labor in the document we signed felt so de-humanizing. The things we did for money!

Talking of money, I also got my first salary account complete with an ATM card. And there was an ATM in the office campus to draw money whenever we needed. Only there was no money to draw out till the first salary was deposited. That was another exciting event for us all but a month away.

The orientation sessions were coming to an end. And then a lady executive stepped in to conduct the final one – presentation of something called ASHI – Anti sexual harassment Initiative. I wondered what the big deal was. Why a whole session on it? Didn’t we all know it from the movies and stuff? It was the villains who harassed the heroines. The good guys protected them, didn’t they? I was in for a big surprise. The concept of sexual harassment took on a whole new meaning I had never ever even imagined. It looked as if one really had to walk on eggshells around the fairer gender to avoid being hauled up for sexual harassment.  Which would have still been easy back in engineering where sighting one was uncommon. But here they seemed to be everywhere. Whatever were we to do! The whole corporate set up had been a trap! What with all the documents I had signed, including the bond that made me bonded labor. And now this!  Why ever did I not listen to my parents and go abroad for higher studies!