Pearson India Blog

   

Just the other day, my friends/colleagues and I were discussing how our lives have changed significantly after the thing called "recession" hit the market. Right from spaces in newspaper columns, magazines, and journals, it affected the subject and content of every conversation floating around. Everything going wrong could now be tagged as being a result of this demonic thing. To put it very simply, I could fathom that one needed to be careful about a few more things in life. It took a little more than brushing up my high-school economics to understand the whole phenomenon. But everywhere I went, from marketplaces to restaurants to bookshops to coffee shops, people suddenly seemed to have discovered a lot of common things to talk about. Different people came up with different reasons, causes and theories, and I continued absorbing them along, retaining what I liked to believe, and discarding those that did not sound romantic enough. Of course, the story of this man about to get married, losing his job in the United States due to this villainous occurrence, and his wedding getting postponed appeared to me to be extremely romantic (I think all sense of romanticism comes with a sense of loss, and so pardon me if I sound heartless and cruel here)! So here were exciting times - people losing jobs, losing money, losing people they would love to be with, and I think these were the times people actually felt grateful and started valuing factors we usually take for granted.

 

I was having a conversation with a friend on the phone right after his appraisal got over. He sounded quite satisfied, if not positively happy. Later I realized that all the satisfaction came from the very fact he had not lost his job, even though there was not even a paisa raise in his salary. So here was one man, satisfied and devoid of greed, just because of this thing called "recession". Well, had any other person, deconstructing this so-called "evil" phenomenon, stumbled upon its spiritual benefits? I wonder.

 

So under these given circumstances (validated with a mail from the CEO declaring the fact that a raise in salary would only be a rare thing, and that all of us should be cooperative in these times of recession), we were given another choice to think of a place we could fix up for our NSM in 2009. Incidentally, my friends/colleagues and I were discussing once more what an ideal place for our NSM would be. Of course, just as everything is related to everything else, we could not keep away "recession" from our discussion for too long. We know how we ought to be thrifty and considerate, and we kept coming up with ideas. Somewhere close by - one wise suggestion - as it saves travel cost. So what would be the places close by? Manali, Ranthanbhore, Rishikesh, Lakshmanjhula, Dehradoon, Mussoorie, Sariska, Corbett, Jaipur, Shimla, Nainital, Bhimtal, Chail, Ranikhet, Alwar, Manesar, Gurgaon.and we realized that the list gradually was closing down to places around and almost inside Delhi. So once we did include areas we visit almost regularly in our list, we became more accommodative. Places in Delhi are not a bad idea at all. After all, so many people do come to visit this city as well. In a lesson learnt a few paragraphs earlier, we ought to be less greedy and not take things for granted. And what better way - just because we work in Delhi and meet each other regularly on the other side of the Yamuna does not necessarily mean Yamuna loses its charm. After all, so many poets have scripted love songs and poems on the lovely banks of the Yamuna (which, I realized seemed no broader than a canal only after I came to Delhi)! What about Patparganj Industrial Area? There is a river, a canal, villages, and houses made of clay, there are cows (in abundance), and often donkeys and elephants - all things that we completely disregard, but might have found fascinating had we seen them in a place much farther away from our place of work. And besides, we have our office here, which I am sure we will miss once it shifts to Noida (or so as I hear)! And now, with the new cafeteria and coffee machines, new flat-screen desktops, the office looks pretty attractive! And finally, the good thing about an NSM right here, in our office, would also mean saving travel cost at a time when we do take expenses seriously. And I wonder what it would feel like to stay over nights after nights (for almost a week, during the NSM) at a place where we come to work everyday. If not anything else, we would have spent enough time in our 482 FIE Patparganj office, by the time NSM gets over, to not miss it any more once we shift to some other workplace we would soon learn to call our own.