Say a Little Prayer

It’s Monday morning. So let me start by saying a silent prayer, that I love my job. No, I seriously do. These are hard times, and when I listen to stories about ruthless banks firing people, or the crappy work or the long hours or the mean bosses, I thank my stars for everything that this company has given me.

I love it because of the complete freedom it offers me: to do my work the way I want to, when I want to and how I want to…

I love it because of the minimal pretentious frills that are a part and parcel of corporate culture…

I love it because my boss lets me be: we can spend days without talking to each other and I can leave office right under his nose without worrying how it will affect my appraisal…

I love it because I hate it enough to hanker after an alternate career…

But most of all, I love it because it pays the salary on the 24th of every month…

Which brings us to the weekend…

Lately I had been a little cash-strapped given the inflation, my sudden urge to ‘explore’ as well as the last-minute vacation plans. Goa was expensive and add to it my next trip to Kerala next week, which is going to be a completely self-indulgent one, as well as the Pune get-together and the tentatively planned Coorg visit.

So my joy knew no bounds when my salary got credited this Saturday, thereby allowing me to buy a pair of shades (replacement for the ones I broke in Goa), an ipod shuffle (replacement for the nano that stopped working in Goa), two horrible books (the benchmark for Indian writing is so low that the only explanation for my script getting rejected is that I wasn’t bad enough. No seriously, think about it) and watch a horrible movie (what is Kevin Spacey doing in Horrible Bosses? Jennifer Aniston, I can understand, given her bad taste for, well, everything…but I still love her.)

I also watched an awesome play, “The President is Coming” at Prithvi Theatre. While Konkona Sen Sharma was thoroughly missed as the Stephen’s-educated intellectual bong, Kunal Roy Kapoor was mind-blowing as the racist IIMA graduate social-activist-turned-MNC employee. The other stereotypes like the geeky closet-homosexual IITian Microsoft employee or the stockbroker with no social skills kept me in splits though the screenplay tended to drag at parts. And oh, should I be concerned that I am seeing more of Dilnaz Irani than my boss?

Well, speaking of the devil, switch off your mobiles and your cameras, because the President boss is coming…