Wednesday, February 17, 2010

Job Satisfaction, Ph.D and Maturity...

This post is adapted from another post in my personal diary that I maintain in the form of a blog (and is only accessible to me). It was written after a lot of thought and deliberation. 

Hi friends

Having so much free time (Boss has gone for campus recruitment, leaving me fultoo free for other activities), I have been blogging like crazy the last few days. Chatting (with many friends) and blogging have never been more fun I guess!

Now a days, one of my IIM friends from Assam calls me up almost once a fortnight and we have a nice chat about our work routines and life. Looks like he is getting pretty nervous about his marriage this April :D One thing I can sense in his voice (and also in mine) is that our work satisfactions are low. Even though we are happy to get a job, even he, with a really good paying job, is not enjoying the grind. I guess there ain’t no such thing as a free lunch, right? If you want the big bucks, you got to grind your arse up.

At least there is one guy who feels that my future Ph.D plans are not crazy – my junior Anup. He also plans to become a professor later in his life and it would be great if we could go to the same university somewhere in Europe (I have had enough of the USA).

My work is going somewhat ok I guess. Everyone in the office has been really co-operative with me, apart from one person, whom I shall henceforth refer to as “the one who shall not be mentioned”. I know I am not exactly the kind of guy one would like, but I am certainly not the kind that one would hate.

Life is going pretty much smoothly. A close college friend always used to talk to me about the need for guys to have a girlfriend to share their “emotional side”. I never really felt the need to express my “emotional side” to anyone, because I don’t think I have one at all. It’s just that I feel emotions too, that’s all, like any other human being. But an emotional side, well that sounds complicated & huge. It makes me look like a weakling, someone who needs something so badly that he/she can’t live without it. And no such thing can exist for me, nope. Not even the Internet. Not even chatting :)

The closest that any one can be in my life are my parents. They are the ones who gave birth to me and made me who I am; hence I have an obligation (read: love) towards them. This brings to mind a certain incident, which, on later introspection, made me see this other side to myself.

It was in school, in the 5th grade I think. My mom was supposed to pick me up and she had been picking me up from school for quite a few days. I think I was staying late from school because of that quiz club idea , hence my auto wala used to leave, so my mom was there to pick me up daily. The instructions given to me were pretty clear: My mom will come by a particular fixed time. If she is late by more than 15 minutes, then I was supposed to go home on my own. That particular day, I was out very early, so I came home (I had a set of home keys with me then). I then realized that I was supposed to wait for mom, as my coming home was dependant on her being late, not on me being early. I was panicked and tense (this was the time when no one at our home carried a mobile phone).

When my mom came home, I remember this conversation happening – it was originally in Telugu.

Mom: You came home? So early?

Me (Quite tense and panicked): Yes mom, oh I am so glad to see you. I came back early today as I became free early. But I came home and remembered your instructions. I was so tense you know. I remembered that you have high BP and on seeing me missing, you would have become very tense about it and perhaps panicked.

Mom: So you were tense and afraid for me because I had a high BP?

Me: Well, yes. I know that you have it and it would have made you tense and angry, right?

Mom: Hmmm....

I never understood if I had done anything wrong then because I saw that my mom’s reaction was very different from what I expected. It was this – I was tense because she had BP, not because she was my mom and I love her. The emotional connection was beautifully outsourced to a physical malaise and the reason for this was because it hadn’t developed in me yet.

My dad keeps telling me (even to this day) that I have not yet matured. I know what he means. In my view, my brain is an amalgamation of the emotional brain of a smartass kid and the sharp-shooting brain of a wiseass. In other words – it’s simply an emotional hotchpotch inside that tiny head of mine. This makes me immune to the feelings of love, pain and even death. Creepy? Yes, because though sometimes I am able to sense those feelings inside, I am unable to express them as and when needed. When I need them, they disappear. Weird...

Ciao for now. Thanks for reading.

6 comments:

Abhi said...

Almost daily rading your posts ...hoping for more to come :)

IIM ka Sarkari Babu said...

@Abhi: Sure man... I am a vella Sarkari Babu after all...

Anonymous said...

Thats straight from the heart!!
There is an emotional side to every human :~)
Hey Prof?? PHD?? Good good all the best!!

IIM ka Sarkari Babu said...

@Sivarchana: Well diaries are meant to be straight form the heart :) Pg.D is only because I do not want to spend any more money on studies :)

Mural! said...

hehe maybe vella..........pretty revealing ofcourse! but that is true to a certain for everyone of us........we always can't seem to express what we feel

IIM ka Sarkari Babu said...

@Murali: Yeah, perhaps...