(W)orgasm

Having spent a few years in the corporate world in fairly reputed organizations, I have noticed a certain pattern in the way employees behave. To begin with, there is a spate of hiring, usually campus recruits who think the world of themselves, bubbling with excitement and views on everything from Rakhi Sawant’s cosmetic surgery to Obama’s lineage. Having started my career as one of those snobbish, know-all management trainees, I have been through the honeymoon phase myself, also known as the denial phase, when you look at your company with rose-tinted glasses, when you are gullible enough to swallow all the sugarcoated management jargon with blind faith and when you are still excited about the spoils of being part of the corporate world.

The next few years are more of a reality check, when you come to terms with the ground realities, discover the ugly faces behind the masks, have your share of office politics and if you happen to be the headstrong, rebellious, non-conforming kinds, you also brush against the unstated corporate protocols. All the more so, if you increasingly find yourself a misfit, if you have a passion and if you are nurturing a dream of your own. And with each passing day, you feel even more trapped, even more claustrophobic and even more suffocated. Yet, you carry on, as the company makes more efforts to retain you by creating exit barriers, as you are held back by people or social mores or simply by materialistic ambitions.

Until the day comes when you see people around you throwing in the towel: either to follow their dreams or to go to another organization for the promise of more money, new responsibilities or sometimes, just the promise of a new environment. It’s like an orgy where some people are reaching the heights of pleasure as they put in their papers, while the rest are just watching in anticipation, waiting for their turn, wondering what’s taking them so long.

And finally when the time does come, it’s too short, too fleeting and never as satisfying as you expected it to be…