The Netted Fish and the River of Revelry

Thoughts on the new year's eve, 2008

Taking some inspiration from the Phoenix.

Now, after a treacherous wait of three long years, I have started to focus more on our business venture. And where else to look out for products than on popular sites on the internet?

As far as the prospects are concerned, computer technology has beaten rival fields by an almost unbelievable margin. Computer professionals get such high packages that the poor fellows belonging to other fields, be they even entrepreneurs, find themselves in a poor state, almost poor bunnies.

But one great thing about the computer and its shining armour is that it facilitates other, not-so-fast, smartly moving fields. Where else to go to look out for fresh business opportunities, looking for products, looking for new markets, new prospective partners, new opportunities in any hidden corner of the world, still unspared by the stampede of multiple business people running to grab a small opportunity?

And a cyber café is the place where one can sit and try to find out some rare opportunity that might still be there.

For too long I neglected the computer call, and now I realize doing so is harmful to me only because this is going to be the future. Be it any branch of career, this is the basic skill, the repository of entire information.

I have got in touch with some scrap dealers and used-oil traders, hoping that we can set up a sustainable relationship with them. I have carefully prepared our company's profile, and the moment, on your letterhead, you have a foreign office address with a telephone number, they take you seriously.

It is better—I mean this business venture, as its owner—it is better than humiliating myself by entering offices to seek tiny jobs, recalling that I could have been in some hot seat a long time ago.

So at least I have this feeling that I am making something new, and it helps me from brooding about losing the coveted civil services opportunities due to the harakiri committed by the politicians.

I have talked to certain people after getting their contact numbers from the internet, and in between, on a gloomy day when I ended up sending my résumé for a content-writer position at a firm in Noida, I got an interview call, even though I know that I won't be joining.

Because imagining myself in a cubicle, on a chair, lined up along with poor graduates, tapping, typing inconsequential stuff day in and day out for marketing websites about products—the content that is not read by anyone—that definitely puts me in a tight corner.

Even though they said that I can expect a salary of 20,000, I don't think I am ready to start from that base level.

From bureaucrat to a content writer is too big a chasm to cross.

So I am bracing myself with my business venture.

My life has stagnated like a mountain lake, even though there have been huge influences, huge influxes and outfluxes at both ends, but the lake has retained its shape.

Embroiled in the slowly swirling waters of this lake-type being, I have anchored my identity around a few boring things, like my pains, my efforts at alternatives, meditation, yoga, prayers, reading and efforts at writing.

But how can you continue writing if you are not getting anything out of it except the hollow satisfaction of being a writer?

It has now become a drag to me, taking me lower and lower into the depths of papery, classical, romanticized gloom.

I had thought that this thing, this passion for reading and writing, would support me like a lifesaving jacket in the stormy sea of life.

But see what it turns out to be.

I am a netted fish now.

Those fish of destiny, fate, chances, missed chances, self-inflicted agonies, madness and craziness entangle for some futile ending.

But I haven't given up.

I am having my face fully laid against the wires and netting around me.

It is around five in the evening. The partygoers must be waiting in glee.

People just force themselves to be in a party mood on New Year's Eve. After the invitation, I am still in two minds whether to go or not.

Shekhar, Pardeep, Jita and a few other chaps—they are waiting.

Don't know if I am in a suitable frame of mind to go.

And even if I go, it won't make any difference.

The chief mismanager of the Italian-forged Iron Lady has almost devastated my life. And what is ironical is that they don't even know that an ant has been crushed under their feet, hurriedly hurtling through the corridors of power.

Am I in a position to celebrate New Year's Eve after such irremediable losses, after such unprecedented pains, after such unredeemed suffering?

Definitely no.

And if I still do, then it would just be like allowing myself to be waylaid by the fast and furious river of revelry.