“Coffee” I whispered. He kept his head straight ahead and with a
weak murmur responded “I have no time right now. I need to get the answers
correct”.
I gasped unable to believe the torment each one of us was
undergoing and many of them seemed entwined with it expressing a joyous cheer
or a clap or an astute smile indicating an ego victory, clearly living a dream
which did not belong to them.
Over the next few days I was pleased that Siva spoke quite a lot,
expressing how he had to program the code so that it looks better. I was
continuously battered by his non-stop lecture on different technology and which
suits best for a particular project. It all sounded blah..blah..blah to me, but
I definitely got to know him better. Now and then I sneaked a few questions to
him.
“When do you manage to read about all these articles” I once asked
him. He replied with a question “What do you do after you go home at night?”
I said, “Eat, watch TV and Sleep”. I believe this was the first
time he managed to open his mouth for a laugh which seemed motionless and
seamless in time that I felt forever looking at his face. He exclaimed, “I get
so less time, I wish we had 36 hours in one day”.
So that was it, he would go home and then open the same mechanical
junk books and go through all over it until he had sometime to sleep, which
ideally in his case was very very nominal.
Finally the day arrived, each one were to be assigned to the
respective projects. Siva was eagerly looking forward to get on to the
technically advanced projects. He had managed to convince the trainer that he
has spent extra hours during the night to learn the newest technology which
really impressed the trainer who actually would have been impressed just
looking at him.
The boil had to burst only to open up a more painful wound.
We were assigned on the same project. Siva was elated when the
trainer made the announcement. Most of us managed to get into the same project
as the funding was really huge and there were quite a lot of demand for skilled
workers.
Six months passed by. Siva had now moved over to the
most hard-working person slot. He was there probably 15 hours a day and when he
went home, he spent the rest of the night finishing up what he started. One
evening as I passed by, I said, “Siva lets go out for a drink tonight”. He
hardly made any effort to turn around; looking at the computer screen he
remarked “I have no time now. I need to get this done tonight”.
Siva’s mother visited him from the north of the
country where she lived. In awe of her son who now has made a career for
himself, she was overflowing with a happiness which had no bounds. I
accompanied him to meet his mother. Paying my respects, With bewilderment I
listened for the next thirty minutes as Siva explained with a lot of excitement
about the project and how he has now moved on to a more responsible role. She
acknowledged his excitement with a large smile.
During her stay, Siva hardly spent time with her. Either he was
occupied with the project or the newer tech book kept him busy. Sensing her
son’s busy schedule she planned to relax him by suggesting a visit to the
festive exhibition. He had the same statement put across but this time in a
better way, “Mom, I have no time today, Can we go some other day?” With her kid
now grown up and shouldering immense responsibility, she kept quiet and killed
the wish of being with her son. A week later she left quietly asking him to
take care of his health.
The next few days, I spent thinking how Siva could call all that
he had done as achievement against his sedentary lifestyle. Hardly any
breakfast, late lunch, un-timed dinners with minimal physical activity made him
a flawless IT slave. As days passed by, I understood that Siva worked hard only
to impress the project manager. He kept telling me, how he has managed to get
into his “good books” and how he has promised him an opportunity abroad.
It was a year later when the inevitable happened. Siva bagged the
“Rookie of the year award”. The project manager now openly spoke about him in
front of an audience and it catapulted Siva to a different level then the rest.
He had tasted the seductive apple of eve. The poison had started to brew. He
felt a supreme power being passed over to him. I congratulated him on his
success and said with a wide grin, “We should celebrate!!! You should treat me.
Let’s go out for drinks today”.
“Aahh !!!” he exclaimed..”Today I have to meet the manager and
gather the requirements for the new project after the ceremony. I have no time
today”, he said, without battling a eyelid. Surprised, almost instantly I
blurted, “Are you going to work after this fun ceremony??”
He excitedly replied, “ You wouldn’t know buddy, I have been
promoted as a senior developer, Soon next year I will be a team lead and then
my ladder is going to reach the sky”.
Few weeks later his mother had called. She was ill and desired to
see him. I could hear him talk over the phone in a low tone. He kept explaining
to her how difficult it is for him to travel that far and that she should go to
a doctor nearby. I could see him whisper “I do not have much time; I need to
get back to a meeting. Bye”.
A month later his mother passed away. He was devastated when he
heard the news. I accompanied him to the funeral. A bunch of letters was left
in his possession, the last remains of his mother. Next day, he spent sometime
reading those letters and weary of the events he slipped into a slumber. I took
over one of them and read. It said,
“My son, when I had called you a month ago, I was certain that my
end was nearing. I only longed and wished for you to be beside me. Nothing more
would a mother look forward from her son but to see him happy and healthy. I
have given up the hope that you may come down to see me before I finish my
journey in this world. Although this heart is filled with pain and would miss
you a lot, I wouldn’t burden you with my pain. Please do take good care of your
health. My blessings will guard you always. Goodbye Siva.”
Tears rolled down my cheeks. I wept, a cry, for a different
mother. I wished I could have fulfilled her last wish. The poor lady only
longed to be with her son until she died.
Few hours later he woke up and I quietly asked him, “Did you read
through them?” He half heartedly replied, “Yeah, couple of goodbye letters.
Nothing much”.
All through the journey back home I kept quiet.
He seemed to have recovered from the tragedy pretty sooner than I
expected. The project manager was now encouraging him to be practical towards
life and had lectured him on how life and death are in-evitable and that every
human alive should someday die. No sooner did Siva get back from mourning, the
project manager promised him an abroad opportunity sooner and that to achieve
it he has to get the critical project delivered.
I could see the rage of a wild animal in his eyes, a blood filled
urge to get it done and achieve the one thing he seemed to be alive for, the
abroad opportunity.
The ordeal begun. Siva hardly slept, ate at odd hours and labored
hard for the project. He had no time for anything else other than the project.
Friends and family had by now moved away. They slowly started to disconnect
from him due to his un-responsive behavior. The project seemed to have taken
over him and his urge to impress his boss seemed more than anything else.
Six months later he was promoted as a manager at iMsoft in Australia,
earning him the “Youngest manager of the year award”.
I wondered if he ever had spent time on anything other than the
project. There were so many other beautiful aspects of life which are yet to be
discovered. The high of being at seashore or a evening walk on the rocks, or a
trek to a mountain, a swim in the lake, a outing in a jungle resort, as many as
I could think of. There in all probability could be a thousand more and a
million more to be discovered. Siva was never into any of this. All he said, “I
have no time for all of this”.
Seven years had passed by and it was almost a year since Siva had
been to Australia.
One bright morning as I came in to the office, I saw an obese guy,
bespectacled, and staring right into the infinite tranquility the monitor could
offer him. He turned around as I walked by and raised his eye brows and then
his lips split, “Hey..how are you?” he said, still smiling. I stared in
disbelief, “Siva, how are you?” I responded with a huge smile but still down with
the utter dismay of trying to come to terms with his physical appearance.
“Pizza and burgers, hotdogs and Fries” he said munching on the
doughnut he probably carried it as a left over from Australia.
“Ahh..that explains”, I said, still oscillating from his previous appearance to
his new one. Siva almost seemed to burst out in the shirt he was wearing.
Inquisitively I asked him, “So, how was your trip? Had fun?? Did you visit the
kangaroo zoo or the bars at Sydney?”.
He shook his head, a slow pause and then replied, “err..I did not have much
time, I had to get the project completed, and once done they sent me home”.
All I managed to say was “Good for you”.
Weeks later, he seemed to be engrossed with the new project
manager who promised him the Vice president designation coupled with an
unbelievable compensation and several more day-dreams which came at a savage
cost of labor. It never surprised me that Siva fell for all of this as he was
bound to given his delusion to achieve more. Sometimes I pondered if he ever
knew what he wanted to achieve or he was just living the moment to achieve what
his manger wanted him to.
Either way I knew it was dangerous for him.
They say, the faster you run the quicker you collapse. It was a
Friday and I sleep-ishly walked into the office, my gaze loitering around to
see if the manager had come in and if he had I had to quickly think of a lie as
to why I was late. Luckily, he wasn’t there yet. Thanking the entire fraternity
of gods, I walked over to Siva’s desk to invite him for a coffee the answer
which I knew would be “I have no time right now”. Although the response sounded
unpleasant, I still admired him for his quick answers and the innocent smile. I
could talk to this guy for hours about my vacations and he would finally come
up with something like, “Cool…I am happy that you had a great time, I wish I
could afford to fork out sometime but this project really needs me”. This
response would raise a new bar on my blood pressure, prompting me to swing my
forearm in a half cyclic moment and with all the might launch my knuckles on
his nose. A second thought, I would look at him and wonder if he would die of
coma or brain freeze.
He wasn’t yet at his desk. I turned around to see if he was at a
different desk or near the water cooler, strangely he wasn’t there either. I
moved on, grabbed a coffee and settled down at my desk. An hour later, my
cellphone rang with a shrill tone which I had forgotten to change. It was Siva.
I was still contemplating to pick his call when I pressed the green button.
“Hello” whispered a faint voice. I increased the volume of my device and
replied, “Hello Siva, Whats up?”. For the next few minutes I was barely able to
make out his murmur filled with long pauses. It was sounding worrisome and I
knew something was amiss. He was stammering with a murmur which made it more
difficult to decipher his words. All I could here was, “Not feeling well…” and
then a long pause. I consoled him not to worry and said, “I will be there in an
hour”.
The miserable traffic depressed me further and the heat was
sweltering. I rode my bike up ahead the lane for an hour and then reached his
house. I looked around to find complete silence in the neighborhood; I wondered
how people ever stayed in this vacuum of silence.
I knocked several times before banging on the door. For fifteen
minutes there was no response and I had started to believe that there wouldn’t
be any. I lingered around the house, trying to find an opening, probably a back
door or an open window, or probably a neighbor who knew him well. Disappointed,
I finally zeroed on a window which seemed to directly overlook the hall. I
tried to push it open, but it seemed to be closed forever. The sill looked
rusted and it probably hadn’t been opened in years. I tried to scream “Siva” a
few times but to my utter dismay it hardly made an impact. Gripped by fear, and
cornered by compulsion I had to do something. I looked around for a metallic
object, probably a rod, or a brick or a thick stick. I leaned forward over the
neighbor’s compound and picked up a rusted rod which looked like an iron fossil.
I took a long deep breath and swung the rod on the window glass.
For a split second I stood there with fear of being called a thief. The glass
shattered with a shrill sound, the pieces flying around, some inside the house
and the rest on the window sill. Relieved, I looked inside. At first I thought
it was a waste management recycle unit, and then the dark fantasy dawned upon
me. Apparent as it may seem, the whole place was as chaotic as the traffic.
Cluttered cartons, books strewn all over, newspapers thrown across, blankets
floored which seemed never to be washed. I gasped at the view but realized that
I was here to look for him and moved further ahead to get a better look.
I kept staring at the dark bulky image, which lay motionless
embodied in a serene tranquility, unaware of the chaotic aura surrounding it.
It looked so subtle of him, a figure which always loomed over the monitor
staring at it in disbelief. All the energy, the excitement, the zap which he
epitomized had now narrowed to a zilch.
My first thought was, it wasn’t him. I looked harder, deeper and
let out a loud scream “SIVA…”,
“SIVA..” I screamed,
realizing the peril he was in. I knew, he was not deep in sleep neither was he
pretending to be asleep. This was no April fools day and he wasn’t the guy who
had time to waste on fooling someone.
I banged a few neighbors’ doors and gripped with dogmatic panic,
kept screaming loud enough until I could gather a few people. They all looked
baffled and driven by a frenzy of mass hysteria they obeyed my instructions.
One push, multiple shoves deterred the efforts to open the door. Someone came
with a rock hammer and few bangs, the wood battered under the impact. Few more massive
hits and the lock creaked and broke.
I sprung in, reaching almost instantly besides him. I called out
“Siva..siva”, he never moved. I tried to wake him up, but he seemed to be in a
trance from which he never wanted to come back, His cold hands made me shiver
and I asked a few from the crowd who kept looking at each other with a half
hearted approval, to help me shift him to the hospital. With all our might we
lifted him and took him to the hospital. The crowd trickled away and I could
hear someone say, “Must be an IT guy…”
The white sheets seemed to tell me a tale of a
million patients who had slept on them. My stomach was wriggling with pain, my
heart almost bleeding, I had never witnessed nor done anything like this
before. The guy whom I saw everyday at the office, who was immeasurably
dedicated, immensely talented, highly committed and whom the industry called a
Geek was now lying motionless on the bed. My brain pondered over a million
thoughts, trying to understand if the industry in which we worked created the
pressure or is it the guy who falls for the pressure. Nevertheless, I knew it
was Siva who was affected and not the industry.
I walked up and down the ICU like a father expecting a baby, unable yet to come
to terms with what I had seen. The picture of him lying motionless on the floor
with saliva dripping from his mouth was a sight I was trying hard to erase. The
doctor had shifted him now to the ICU and I was praying hard for him to recover
from his slumber.
“Brought dead” declared the doctor with the
police inspector standing beside me. I felt the lightening strike with all its
might and I wished the dinosaurs would eat me up at this moment. I could feel
the doctor’s words ringing in my ears, my mind wandering and unable to find an
answer sucked into a black hole. I tried to bring myself back to my senses; the
inspector looked up at me and pushed a form into my hands, “Sign them up!!! Once
done we need to talk”. I looked at him, words trying to flow out of my parched
throat, my lips seemed stuck forever, I felt my fingers numb with fear and I
gazed at the form hoping that all this would end soon and I would wake up from
my dream.
“Did he talk to you before he died??” questioned the fat burly man
with a paunch which kept pushing the table.
“No sir”, I said, and paused for a few seconds. He shook his head
slowly, the eyes fixed on me but the face bobbled up and down in a slow
soothing movement. I gathered all the courage I had and asked him, “How did he
die??”
“Heart attack” he said in a loud tone, “A massive one”. He went further
exclaiming, “Nobody survives an attack of this intensity!!!”
I stared in disbelief, with a thousand questions popping out of my
head.I felt my head would burst open and my brains would directly question him.
“He was 30 years old, how could he get a heart attack”, I tried to reason with
him.
He took a deep breath, unfazed by my teary eyes, he questioned me,
“What was he doing for a living??”
“Software Engineer” I responded. He took one long stare at me and
moved his body a bit trying to move his paunch to better rest it against the
table.
“Hi-tech typist” he groaned. “Most of these cases
happen to them. They hardly have any time for any kind of physical activity,
nor do they spend time with their family. All they think of is to slave as much
as possible, earn a fat salary, work abroad, and by the time they realize that
it is enough, they are not alive to enjoy what they have earned”. He seemed to
go on forever, but looking at my incredulity he said, “Are you his friend??”.
I wanted to say a NO, Siva never treated me like one, but I did.
“Yes”, I said in a semi-conscious tone the pain in my heart
searing through unable to believe Siva is no more.
“Ask his relatives to collect the body”, said the inspector
standing up. As he moved near the door, he turned back and with an apologetic
consoling gaze he said, “I am sorry”.
Struck by remorse, I sat in the room weeping, the antiseptic
seemed to fill the air with its aroma, the sheets looked inviting with its calm
white surface, and the steel table with the scissors seemed to cut my heart
into pieces. My stomach churned as tears swaddled my cheeks at the thought that
he wouldn’t be at the office tomorrow.
As I looked back, the flames which have now calmed down after
devouring the wood, I muse as to what could have possibly gone wrong. The
industry which was created by the same IT professionals is now preyed upon by
its existence. Has a Frankenstein monster been created?? I wonder how many more
engineers year after year would surrender their creative ability and
their naturalist talent to the industry. Once the brain is sucked out of its
ability to churn out more ideas, it is considered dead. The body then becomes a
mere vegetable awaiting its turn to be butchered by death.
As I point my finger at the IT sector and blame it for creating
Siva’s, I am inundated by the guilt that we are responsible for the choices we
make. Jumping on to the rat race, we never are able to connect the dots as to
where it could lead us. All through we let people convince us as to what we
don’t want and we end up living other’s dream. We finally surrender to the
pressure and slog harder and harder only to discover that we haven’t moved an
inch in terms of how we wanted to live our lives.
When we look back at all the years and measure the
loss we have had in terms of the time we spent enjoying a sweet at a wedding or
a night camp or singing at a bonfire or surprising a friend by visiting him or
watching over our aged parents or being there for our brother and sister or
walking over a farm to feel the nature’s gift, the or list is infinite.
All through the journey we only managed to declare “I have no
time…”
When we have all the time we would be lying deep down placidly in
a pit anticipating for the decay to begin.
