“I was in a medical college in Allahabad. I was so happy that my hard work had paid off and I was going to fulfill my dream of completing my medical studies. It’s tough you know; it’s not easy to clear these exams. I was enthusiastic of joining a new place, a new college. I wanted to make friends and study and party and enjoy myself too.”
I smile at the other end of the phone. I wish we could’ve met right away, I say to him. It’s so much better to meet and talk such stuff. Harsh – no, not H-A-A-R-S-H that means cruel in English; Harsh, as in, joy, that’s what your name means, silly – are you sure you want to tell your story?

“Yes. I do. But I’ll conceal some details till we meet face-to-face, alright?”

Right.

“I’m an easy-going person. I enjoy music a lot, I’m serious about my work, which is not to say I’m boring and just studious. I’ve had a good friend circle but over the years, either I’ve matured too quickly, or they’ve been left far behind. I do not know but life has changed. I am fiercely protective of my parents (like any other son). I want to think of a bright future for myself. After all that’s happened with me,” he sniggers, “I’m still hopeful.”

How did it happen?

“Ha ha, you want to really move very quickly, huh?”
No, no, I’m sorry, it’s not that. I…
“It’s okay. You don’t have to explain yourself. Explaining oneself is very difficult. I know it. I’ve done a lot of explaining to the teachers, to my parents, to some of my friends, to the bureaucracy, to government agencies, to the police. All I did for two years was to try and explain myself to others.”
Did you succeed?
(Dry laughs on the phone for half-a-minute at least)
Did you succeed?
“I don’t know if I did. I’m not a doctor, you see. I never finished my medical studies.”
You called it quits because of what others did to you? What’s wrong with you? You lost out on your dream of wanting to become a doc?

“Oh, the same set of dialogues. Wish people would at least say the same thing in a different way. Like, say it with a feeling, in a tone that’s conveys anything but frustration. Say it like you were sitting in a fancy café, sipping on cappuccino and just, you know, discussing your recent shopping jaunt with a friend. Or, like you were on a picnic, or on a long walk with a pal, and just talking, y’know, just chatting.”

 
Hey, sorry, I just blurt it out. I didn’t mean to…

 
“No, it’s okay. Like I said, I’m used to it. My own voice shakes when I talk about it. I mean, it’s alright for me to talk about the incident — or incidents, because it went on for one whole month, every single day, every single night – but I often shiver and feel the tremble in my voice. I want to control it, catch hold of my neck and say, “Shut up, and talk properly,” but that would mean I’m turning into a villain too. What would be the difference between them and me? Yes, it happens. Stanford has done research to find out why bullying exists, why people become rude, why youngsters – and children too — are ragged. Very often, the research found out, victims become perpetrators and that’s why stuff like bullying and ragging exists.”

 
You’re right. I remember when I was in the first year of college. I promised myself – along with others in my gang – that I’ll rag simply because I’ll be in a position to. I’m hopeless at debates, I’m pathetic when it comes to fighting for my rights, I barely have a voice with which I can defend myself even as a 32-year-old. So I cry, I cry even today. But, listen, this is your story. Please go on.

 
“Hmmm, alright. But bullying, rude talk can happen in offices too. It’s alright to cry, it’s alright and it’s not stupid.”

 
A friend, in front of whom I cried about some office matter, said the same thing yesterday. And I felt much, much better. But, listen, would you go on with your story, please? I don’t want the attention on myself.

 
(Sighs jokingly) “Women are always so impatient. Okay, I was ragged. I was ragged very, very, badly. I won’t give you more details but you can let your imagination run wild. I was unable to face myself. I thought, ya’ar, this is the done thing in college. I can’t be so chicken, after all, I’m preparing to be a doctor. But every night (I was scared to even shut my eyes, by the way) I thought it was becoming unbearable. I spoke to the principal and he was sweet; he patted my back reassuringly. It felt nice, very nice, in fact, and then I waited. I needed action. I waited. I deserved speedy justice. I waited. I needed to set things right. I got ragged that night by a group of seniors who came into my room and then asked me to … I waited. I cried. I waited. I ran to the loo. I got ragged there too. I screamed. I waited. I begged. I waited. I packed my bags. I waited. I cried, ‘Mamma’ like a 4-year-old who had been hit in the mud by four bullies. I wanted to hug my mum. I also wanted to pee very badly. But I was so scared to go to the loo. I waited. Yes, I just waited.”

 
By this time, I start crying. “I’m so sorry,” I say, “I can’t hear anymore.”

 
“I couldn’t bear to stay there any longer. My parents fetched me, we came back to Delhi. For two years, I ran to get admission in any other medical college and authorities, seniors, elders laughed. My parents persuaded me to go back. I didn’t flinch. Yes, parents we can bully no? So I didn’t budge. ‘I’m not going back,’ I told Pa. They sighed. Their dreams of seeing their son as a doctor were shattered. Some professors came to meet me. Sweet na? They told me, ‘Beta, you are lucky. You didn’t spend six months in a hospital; that’s how ragging can be — and has been — in this medical college.’ At that time, I wanted to bear my soul and show them the scars but that wasn’t possible. I mean, you can’t rip open your heart and tell these profs, ‘See Sir, I’ve been hurt here, and here, and here.’ Even Majnus and Romeos never managed that.”

 
What do you do now?

 
“I wasn’t given a seat in any other medical college in the country and after two years I decided that I’d had enough. So, along with two other guys with whom I was in touch on an online anti-ragging community, I decided to run and support an anti-ragging forum. Anytime, anyone needs us, we’re there to show our support, our understanding. I wouldn’t use lofty words like, ‘mission’ or ‘aim’ or ‘goal’ to describe our forum, but if anyone wants to connect with us, we are there. We hope to sensitize people at large, we pray that ragging (which isn’t ‘fun’ or ‘easy’ as most people believe) will get eradicated someday. That’s what we’re doing. That’s what I’m doing and that’s what I’ll continue to do.”

 
You are a brave-heart. And you know what, you’re still a doctor. You are, after all, treating the society at large.
 

Dear friends, if you know of any person, organisation and/or forum, working towards the cause of eradicating ragging, please inform me on my id abhilashaojha@gmail.com

How many of us would have thought that we would have to spend more than Rs 50 to buy a dollar. But that’s the new reality and no one quite knows when things would start looking different.

But by the time things change, the Indian currency itself could see some changes.

The government has already launched a competition to put the symbol ‘Rs’ in the cold storage and find a new identity for the Indian currency on the same lines as the dollar ($), the sterling point (£) or the Euro (€).

The idea is to put get people – especially foreigners — to identify the rupee with the new India instead of sharing the ‘Rs’ symbol with the likes of Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Nepal and the Seychelles. It’s a different matter that the British would still use ‘Paki’ to describe an Indian and a Pakistani. Or for that matter the foreigners are now more bothered about their home markets than emerging markets.

But the thinking is that almost all superpowers have their unique identity for their local currencies and by that logic, the Indian rupee should be no different.

A new symbol for the Indian currency is not the only item on the agenda. The currency may also have a new feel.

The government and RBI have been on the job to make the currency less prone to counterfeiting through the use of polymer-based notes. While the issue has been on the agenda for over a year now, a final decision is yet to be taken because of the various lobbies involved in the whole exercise.

Most of the paper and ink used globally for printing of currency notes, passports and stamp paper come from Germany, France, the United States, the United Kingdom. These companies have often cited the poor record of polymer-based notes, which have been tried out in over 20 countries including Australia, New Zealand and Romania, with variants in Bangladesh, Brazil, China, Mexico, Singapore and Sri Lanka.

The government had planned to experiment with a million notes of Rs 10 each based on plastic bank note technology. Based on the pilot project a decision will be taken.

Besides checking claims that the polymer notes are more durable, they are said to be less prone to counterfeiting thanks to a transparent hologram. But there are many countries which have opted for these notes and then gone back to the good old paper notes.

While few of us would bother about the substance being used, security agencies which have found a link between the paper used in our currency notes and the paper and ink used by Pakistan for printing passport are keen on devising ways to check counterfeiting.

When the tide rose high at Mamallapuram, the tourist guides told us, small sluices used to be opened to allow sea water into the Shore Temple. Then the reclining Vishnu in the garbha-griha, lit by lamps, would appear to rest on a sheet of water.

That was in 1990, when the temple was still approached across sand and rocks. Then it was something elemental, and even as a child I could see that. Now the temple sits in the middle of a lawn, landscaped earthworks separate it from the sea, and a crazy-paved path fringed with ropes leads brazenly up to the temple entrance. And the temple has been reappropriated: families enter with the tawdry paraphernalia of worship.
Now the Shore Temple is modern; it is no longer capable of awakening the pagan roots of your soul. It is no more sacred than Parliament House.

Reading the Financial Times‘ ranking of global B-schools (available here), the same question swam in my head as when Advani had praised Jinnah in Pakistan or when the middle-aged Sheba Hart makes out with an underage Steven Connolly in Notes on a Scandal: What were they thinking?

Forget the number of institutes represented (100) and the sheer scale of criteria they were ranked on. My question is, is the list a barometer of quality — does the world even need that many MBAs, when clearly they don’t know their CDOs from their CDSs? What, okay who, do these institutes churn out?
At number 3 on the list is Harvard, the alma mater of one Mr. John Thain, whose only lasting contribution to Merrill Lynch may be the $35,000 toilet he got built for his private use. (How do you even bring yourself to use such an expensive dump?)

There is something surreal about this saga, almost like American Psycho leaping off the screen and taking the form of all those Masters of the Universe who, until yesterday, believed that the world ticks to their beat.
And boy, were they right! MBAs got the highest salaries, had the trophy wives, vacationed on another planet, and even got away with the criminal act of flying in separate jets when they went to the government with begging bowls in their hands.

In India, the craze for an MBA degree does not seem to cease. An acquaintance who works for an MBA training institute tells me the favourite read in her class is, you guessed it, The Fountainhead. Ayn Rand would be glad. Alan Greenspan, chastised by the crisis, less so.

Countless such MBA training institutes are mushrooming all over the country, admitting gullible, stars-in-their-eyes students who have no aptitude for an MBA (and no Math and English skills to crack CAT, the entrance test). The fee for a six-month programme is, on average, a quarter of a lakh.

How will these just-out-of-college boys and girls learn to think for themselves if all they do is learn English words from tiny booklets that have 10 synonyms for every “tough” one? Where is the choice to follow one’s heart when one does not know how to heed its beat?

Are we then headed for our own John Thains, flush (pun intended) with money, but without an original idea to call their own?

I wouldn’t have been so greatly aware of being vegetarian - and the consequences of it - had it not been for the effect it seems to have on hard-core meat eaters I encounter from time to time. When I gave up eating meat at the age of 11 or 12, it was a plain, matter-of-fact decision that my parents whole-heartedly encouraged even though they were non-vegetarian. If it has now - and in this piece - attained dramatic proportions I would put the blame squarely on the kind of alarmed reactions I have received in this matter.

In fact, I often struggle to remember how I managed to ward off the oh-my-god-how-do-you-stand-being-a-vegetarian looks shot at me through my teenage years, a presumably more delicate age than at the moment. However, it seems worse now than ever. Somehow - and I’m sure many of you non-veggies would know where this is coming from - self-declared meat-lovers just don’t seem to be able to digest that it is wholly possible to enjoy food in all its glory, so to speak, while being vegetarian.

If I have ever suggested that I could eat all day long, or that I love to try out new places to eat, or that I find the idea of food trails extremely exciting - it never really goes down well with the meat-eaters. Their now predictable response is, while scoffing, - “What? How can you claim to ‘love’ food if you don’t eat meat?” If there is a worse question someone can ask me at that seething moment, it is, “So you probably are a big paneer-eater?” For the record, I am not. And not because I don’t like paneer per say, but because I have been stuffed to death with it over the years since it’s considered the next-best thing to chicken everywhere I go.

On days when I am in a pleasant enough mood to explain, I say gently, “I seriously like most vegetables. I enjoy eating and cooking them. I’m not fussy when it comes to the kind that people usually avoid - lauki, tori, saag, kathal.” There is either a resigned sigh at that explanation or a completely unconvinced stare. Not that it would it would bother me ordinarily, but the repeated pity I have received at many-a-meals - from aquaintances to colleagues to those I have met not more than once - has sort of put me in a place where I would rather keep this piece of news to myself. Unless, of course, I’m asked vehemently why I’m not keen on chicken tikka or why Karim’s isn’t on my list of favourite places.

It gets progessively worse. If I happen to mention that I am partly Bengali, then a “You are a Bengali vegetarian???? Goodness, the first I’ve met!” is not an unusual response. And oh, if I go on to point out that I actually like Bengali food, then what-is-Bengali-food-without-its-fish follows. Agreed, fish cooked in Bengali style is delectable, but veggies cooked in Bengali style is NOT a non-entity!

On many occasions, when I was younger, I had even wandered as far as to share why I had turned vegetarian - when asked the usual question - “So are you ‘veg’ by birth or by choice?” I would groan inwardly, and reply, “By choice.” “But whyyyyyy?” Eyes would widen but I would have my answer ready for it had been said several times already, “I prefer to not kill animals” …which would be followed by a heated argument/many sniggers/dismissive gestures of “So animal rights, huh? You know then you should not be eating eggs either….” Which is why I now avoid these discussions altogether. A simple explanation doesn’t do, a longer one gets too tiresome and only takes the flavour out of a meal - for most often neither party is convinced either way. In any case, my intentions have never been to impose my ideas on anyone or try to convince them to give up meat.

In fact, once I was even asked by a friend if I would consider turning non-vegetarian for half the month if he considered not eating meat for the other half. Even if it was meant to be taken lightly, I wasn’t amused and it so happened that we soon fell out of touch. Not that I pick my friends based on what they eat - all of them, I’m happy to declare - are ones who enjoy their greens as much as they do their meat. They graciously, and genuinely, suggest we eat order only vegetarian if we need to share a dish at a restaurant. I’m equally adamant that they order what they wish to and not change their mind because of me - and it is, thankfully, a meal eaten in peace and mutual respect.

And I suppose my woes are also largely balanced out by those who have been pleasantly surprised to find that I haven’t felt the need to reverse my decision, or been seriously tempted to. “Wow, you managed to stay vegetarian for so long?” - “It wasn’t hard at all,” I insist, it isn’t a feat, really, but for the few flashes of tandoori chicken that also eventually faded.

Rocky Mountain News, Colorado’s pre-eminent paper (besides Denver Post) printed its last edition last Friday. In a moving farewell write-up, the editors at the 150-year-old paper wrote of the hard times that have befallen the newspaper industry in the US, and how the paper could not find a suitable buyer since it was put up for sale in December. It must take some courage to walk into the newsroom (and what a fine newsroom too) and inform the staff that they would soon be retrenched. At the Obit Magazine, there is a fine video about the last days of Rocky, which includes not unjustified barbs at the management.

In such times, the world of William Randolph Hearst seems almost like a distant dream. Hearst is the much-maligned inspiration behind the lead character in Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane — a megalomaniac publishing tycoon who left no stone unturned to bring his readers the latest news. It is fitting then that nearly 60 years after Welles’ film, Kenneth Whyte, a leading Canadian journalist, redeems this enigmatic personality and his reputation in The Uncrowned King (Counterpoint; 512 pages; $30).

William was the son of millionaire senator George Hearst, who in the late 1880s was struggling with the San Francisco Examiner, a bleeding newspaper. Still an undergrad at Harvard, William sent his father a detailed proposal to rescue the paper, and, against the wishes of his mother (who thought a career in mining offered better prospects), persuaded George to make him proprietor and later editor of the Examiner.

In Whyte’s view, William ran “a smart and well-written paper. Its crusades were often courageous and marked by an unmistakable sense of public service.” At a time when it was unheard of, the Examiner routinely carried specials on photographically striking news events such as arson and drowning. Further, it frequently plied its readers with special offers and freebies.

The Examiner’s circulation grew by leaps and bounds, and by 1895, Hearst had his eye on New York. Most of the book concerns the bitter circulation wars that ensued between Hearst’s New York Journal and Joseph Pulitzer’s New York World. Both newspapermen had a touch of the obsessive about them, and the saga of their rivalry is brought out in racy detail by Whyte.

The author overturns a few commonly held assumptions about William Hearst. Quashing charges of yellow journalism levelled against Hearst, Whyte emphatically points out that rigorous scholarship has borne out the veracity of the reports carried in his papers. Further, Hearst, Whyte stresses, would have been better placed to handle the growth of online media, since he wasn’t one to take on challenges lying down–unlike the current crop of newspaper editors who are only too willing to chop cerebral sections (such as book reviews) to cater to an imagined, dumbed-down readership.

The Uncrowned King is a sympathetic doff of the hat from one newspaperman to another.

Nokia has dropped broad hints of its intentions to enter the netbook market. Nokia’s big boss, Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo in an interview with a Finnish TV admitted “we are looking very actively at this opportunity.”

What began as rumours last year has fuelled itself into a full-blown opportunity for Nokia.  The company executives do not want to miss out on a product category that is thriving and which could be a good platform for boosting uptake of its web services (that are to be launched in May-June this year). This backs up Kallasvuo’s statements made at Barcelona last month that Nokia would expand the definition of the smartphone “into categories and form factors that have not yet been explored”. But the use of an ARM-based chip will hugely disappoint Intel.

Intel’s Atom processors gave birth to the idea of netbooks by leveraging its powerful position in the PC industry. Today, the chip giant has ensured that its mobile processors remain dominant in netbooks category, even as it got tougher to break into the conventional smartphone world. Intel is investing through recession – which executives insisted would be the pattern for 2009 too– in order to emerge from the downturn with the most advanced products in key growth areas. With operators relying on mobile data for their own survival plans, netbooks with embedded 3G, Wi-Fi and/or WiMAX should certainly represent one of those growth areas, and Atom is already driving volumes at Intel, even if it is squeezing margins.

Nokia, the Finnish giant, is reportedly working on a cut-down, mobile web-optimized PC, based on the recently announced ARM multicore Sparrow processor and incorporating elements of the existing N800 internet tablet, including its Maemo-based Linux software platform.

We won’t see a Nokia netbook until early 2011, and most probably missing the first boat for netbooks. But trust Nokia to try to outdo the traditional PC makers in terms of form factor and mobility, playing to its strengths and building on the N800 experience to create a new approach, as well as capitalizing on its vast scale and logistical excellence.

According to various leaked features (found easily on the internet) of the supposed prototype, nicknamed Nokia Sparrow, include a multi-slide keyboard with different layouts, automatically revealed as the device is moved in different directions; and a multidirectional display, similar to the tilting display of the N97 smartphone.

In the film, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Benjamin played by Brad Pitt says, “It isn’t so bad to be old”. In India, till quite recently, old age was seen as a time for well-earned repose. The old were seen to be wise and worthy of respect. Today, old are seen to be dispensible. Notice, how politicians who are above the age of 50 are pilloried for being fuddy duddys who have outstayed their welcome.

Congress party general secretary Rahul Gandhi wants young people to stand for elections and we are told often enough that India has one of the youngest population in the world. Why is youth being considered to be so important and old so undesired?

As a nation, should we not ask for the best and brightest people to govern us or even guide us? Why should age define who or what we can become? Once upon a time, the differences between the two genders were upheld for reasons for strict division of roles: women were meant to cook and clean, and men were expected to bring home the bread. Similarly, we are once again drawing rigid boundaries where one age group is being demonised as being useless after a certain age and another age group are being seen as a pancea for all the problems that afflict this country.

The divide serves nobody well and if this nation has to do well, then we need to harness the best of every age group without discrimination. By encouraging a thought process where the old are seen as no longer being important, we will create a huge burden on society and lose out on valuable skills that every generation gathers on their way to old age.

Like Benjamin in the film, we need to realise that being old isn’t all that bad. 

I moved to Gurgaon in 2002 and lived there till 2006 before shifting to Mayur Vihar. Though people knew that commuting there was a hassle (still is, I hear) a typical reaction of friends was: “Wow! Gurgaon, huh. That’s where all the malls are.”

Despite the so-called malls and multiplexes, Gurgaon was a miserable, hopeless place. In fact, what you read about Gurgaon in the newspapers today are problems that had started a long time ago. I remember commuting in those “RTVs” (small, match-box sized buses) and jostling for breathing space everyday before reaching office in ITO. It took me close to 1.5-2 hours every day, one way. We used to have a chartered bus leaving from Sushant Lok-I everyday at 7 am and another small bus that left at 9.30-10 am. Oh, we were promised another bus at around 12.30 pm but we could bet a million bucks and be sure of the fact that it was an invisible bus. The conditions of these buses were hopeless with creaking seats and parts (such as nails) jutting out from the seats. The buses (if - and when - they moved) drove at maniacal speeds and the thought of elderly people sitting wasn’t ever a consideration. The buses dropped us to AIIMS and from there used to begin another journey; haggling with auto-wallahs for the fare to reach ITO. By the time I used to reach office, I used to think of it as a job well done. I used to pat my back, eat some food, pray for death, get some work done and quickly start planning how to get back home. 

If reaching Delhi from Gurgaon was a trip, going back to the “mall village” was another adventure. You see, a bus left every day from INA market at 5.30 pm. There was no way that I could go on that bus because of office commitments. Anyway, my target used to be trying to catch the 6.30 pm bus (another RTV) which used to leave, most of the times, by 6 pm. “Bus full hoh gayi toh nikal gaye (The bus got full so we left)” was the perennial excuse given by the conductor. In this scenario, I had two choices; either reach Mehrauli and then take a bus to Gurgaon, or brace myself to get into those call-centre cabs where drivers were charging Rs 10-20 (the fare depending completely on whether it was a brand new SUV, or a rickety one). 

It used to be a challenge; jostling past people, running to nearest traffic signal (since the traffic cops didn’t allow these vehicles to stop near AIIMS) and praying all the while to manage a seat. There were times when I was lucky to get the corner seat and I just didn’t want the journey to end. It was so tiring to run after vehicles that finally, when one did get a chance, it was a treat to soak into the luxury of a partly-torn seat while also listening to some music. The rising whiff of body odour, the cheap comments made by some men in the same vehicle, a middle-aged “uncle” feeling up and saying sorry every time his hand, under the briefcase, brushed and brushed and brushed your thigh till you looked him in the eye, smiled and said aloud, “Uncle, please don’t do that. I hate it,” was usual, par for the course. The vehicle (if I arrived at AIIMS later than 6.30 pm) would drop me outside Bristol Hotel or near one of the malls and from there I used to hail a rickshaw for Rs 50! (I was mugged too, right in front of the lane where I used to live, while I was sitting in a rickshaw one evening, by two young men on a bike). By the time I made it home it used to be 8 pm and after a quick dinner and some TV watching, it was time to crash out to start another crazy ordeal. 

The next morning? Oh, it was just another day.

PS: Please don’t send comments like, “Don’t you know how to drive?” I don’t. I don’t think I ever will.

A Business Standard editorial piece published today suggests that India’s GDP growth in the fourth quarter of FY2008 will likely be slower than the 5.3 per cent growth recorded in the preceding quarter of the fiscal.

Hang on, there is more bad news.

In his latest column published in ToI’s Sunday edition, Swaminathan S Ankelasaria Aiyar ventured a calculated guess about how long this downturn could last. He wrote:

 “We should expect slowdown to continue for several quarters…We may expect some small improvement in the last quarter of 2009, but a return to a fast growth will have to wait till late 2010, or even 2011.”

Till about a month ago, many analysts were predicting that the Indian economy will be back on track by the first or the second quarter of fiscal 2010. Aiyar says that we may have to wait till 2011.

Even now, even by the most optimistic estimates, customers will not be beating down our doors at the end of three years.

All analysts have admitted at some point or the other that all their upturn-cometh predictions are based on a number of assumptions – like the US economy will show signs of recovery within the next two quarters and India’s fiscal stimulus doses would kick in before the next quarter. Some are also factoring in the emergence of a disruptive force (like rural connectivity through 3G networks) that would do unimaginable things to Indian economy like the Internet did the last time.

Putting all estimates together, it would be safe to say that the Indian economy may see at least three years of sluggish growth before it gains tempo. And that the next two years in particular are going to be painful for everyone concerned in the corporate world.

It will be especially tough for young executives — mostly in their mid-to-late twenties — who have joined corporate workforce in large numbers during the last six to seven years. These executives will see tough and uncertain conditions at workplace perhaps for the first time in their careers.

Estimates say that the slowdown has claimed around 10 lakh jobs across industry sectors since September 2008. And the churn has just begun.

The young executives have gone through the first part of the course correction drill. Lifestyle changes have been brought about – new home and car loans have been put off or cancelled; as for the ones already taken, distress calls to parents have been made; many have applied to management colleges where they could sit out the storm while it lasts.

Those who are still around could face deeper cuts as time passes by.  With every turn of the screw, they will lose some of the baggage accumulated during happy times – best friends will get busy, long time suitors will disappear and quicksilver spouses will vanish. In short, it will not be an easy ride.

Tough as it will be, this will also serve as an introspection time for the first-generation corporate worker. When the new convert will compare his shaky corporate career with the serene vocation of those of his father’s generation – who receive regular, decent hikes in salaries and pensions regardless of the state of the economy – he will be forced to think that there is some merit after all in the largely unenterprising but secure government jobs.

Recent media reports highlight a renewed interest among youth in government vocations.

While all this plays out, some of these first-timers will stick out these tough months, some nervously toiling at one job, others moving from one job to another (if they find them, that is) and some barely scraping through with freelance work and family support. But stick around they would, learning and unlearning things in few years what they would normally take a decade to discover.

All members of this particular tribe will have one trait in common, one reckons. Somewhere down the road, these guys will figure the real reason they want to stick to their line of work for, and will then decide that this particular reason is bigger than everything else they stand to lose during this phase. The rest, as they would tell you later, was easy.

No prizes for guessing who will stand to make the most of new opportunities when the tide turns.