Tick-Tock, Tick Tock! Woof the lights go off, it’s 11:00pm. A regular ritual so Kunal, unperturbed started looking for the emergency light and switches it on. This unacceptable tradition has been on for the past one week. The lights go off for an hour and a half in the night almost every day, exactly when you are about to sleep.
After visiting 4 branches a day, which is covering almost 50 km, Kunal is drop dead tired. I have had a bad day at work with 3 escalations and 1 offer drop out. All, both of us wanted after getting back home was a couple of Blender’s to wash out the stress, good food to satiate us and a good night sleep to wake up with a fresh mind and body.
The latter was royally slaughtered every day with this load shedding and it started taking a toll on us.
With less sleep and the current work stress, Kunal and I grew more irritable and less tolerant towards each other. Otherwise, the very patient Kunal lost his cool very often and the ever irritated me felt more agitated. Disturbed sleep triggered the acidity problem in both of us. The acidic nature of life started directly affecting us again with more acid secretion in our bodies. We lived off Rabemacs, Histacs and Digenes, I’m sure the medicine shop owner must have been thrilled with so much of business coming just from one household.Half slept and irritated I was always groggy at work. In this current corporate scenario, where you are exploited under the cover, of the newly coined term ‘Multitasking’, being attentive and fast was the call of the hour. Being groggy and slow was adversely affecting my performance in this rat race.
The worst hit was our dog Czar. The normal body temperature of dogs is 38 C – 39.2 C , which is two Celsius higher than humans. During the day, Kunal and I have the AC at work but poor Czar gets all roasted in the heat with load shedding occurring for almost 3 to 4 hrs during the day.If he could talk, he would tell me how painful it is in this heat. Being his surrogate mother, I could see the pain in the eyes of my child.
One night I was so fed up that I called Just Dial, took the MSEB NIBM Office Number. I frantically called up the office and asked for the concerned person. Like all Govt offices, the man on the other side was extremely rude and didn’t know a thing. I didn’t give up and kept calling him incessantly and after 3 calls, he finally gave me the number of the site manager.
The corporate world has taught us lots and one of the most important things is ‘how to get your work done’. Being a manager, I’ve been handling people for more than 3 years now, you need to understand your target and accordingly use your strategy (Coaching, Supporting, Delegating or Directing – Situational Leadership Theory). Maturity had dawned on me (finally) and understood that these Govt. Officers are highly frustrated attitude suckers with no heart, so to deal with them you need to know which strategy to implement. Thanks to Sooraj Baljatya and Karan Johar, I was at my theatrical and melodramatic best and gave a huge emotionally angle to the Manager on how badly the load-shedding is affecting my family including my kids, Kandisa and Keeyan who were born that every moment. Kunal like always with his worldwide ‘gyan’ gave me the look (not the dude one though) and told me that I shouldn’t have spoken to him as they are assholes.
To our Surprise, the lights came back in another ten mins. Kunal and I were dumbstruck and I realized ‘IT WORKED’. My emotional drama had struck a cord in his heart and he was kind enough to switch on the lights.
Though I abused the entire clan of govt. officers past and present, at the end of the day, they are also humans and wanted to be given due respect for their work. Suddenly reminded me of Munnabhai MBBS where Sanjay Dutt goes and hugs the sweeper. The basics of respect to human, to human life, have almost been erased in today's world. This is time to relook at them. We are so caught up amidst the struggle of everyday life that we’ve forgotten the basic emotions that constitutes humans. We are all out like warriors on the battlefield, trying to suppress and win against each other.I lay quietly on the bed retrospecting on these thoughts and realized that Kunal and Czar were fast asleep. I looked at both of them, smiled at myself and slept off.
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