Except for a few good friends I have made and a few prizes & Star-of-the-Month/Quarter awards, I have not had much quality experience as a takeaway over the last 2 years of my association with TCS (does not include the technical expertise added to my CV). On retrospection, I find that most of this time I have spent entangled in the mundane mazes of rat-race. Leaving home at morning 8 o’clock and returning at 10 pm, has left me with very little time for myself, very little time to align myself to life I have outside office.
Let me confess, that I chose to join the IT gamut over management study only because then I believed that it would provide me not only with vital professional exposure but also serve as a worthwhile investment of time and effort. Till today, I uphold a very objective outlook towards my job - I work and at the end of the month get paid for the services.
However over the last few months I have begun to feel that I am missing out on the big picture, derailing from the essence of my belief - it seems I am getting consumed by the materialistic, mean and cut-throat outlook of the corporate world. I am so wanting to draw a line, put my papers and call it a day (since I am not enjoying it any more). But there are some things, no matter how much you would love to, you cannot do - only because there is a potential of greater gain if you abstain from. So folks, I would say - not yet!
The crux of my outlook towards existence remains, in lines of Swami Vivekananda, ‘Expansion is life, Contraction is death’. Expansion here does not mean an expansion in waist-line or tangible property - it means expansion in self-revelation - ‘knowing thyself‘. Let us try to join hands and make our office a more cohesive, inclusive and tolerant workplace - a place where we fire-fight to achieve the targets set by others’ (our supervisors have their targets set by their supervisors and the pressure of meeting targets goes all the way up to the CEO, who is answerable to the shareholders and market). So that, at the end of the day we have the time and energy left to attune ourselves towards our greater goals.
