The Indian Dream

‘I could hide ‘neath the wings,
Of the bluebird as she sings,
The six o’ clock alarm would never ring.’

Dawn in south-west India comes relatively late. I cannot hear the bluebirds. But I can just about make out the first threads of light outside the curtains. Five hours of sleep. But that must suffice.

‘But it rings and I rise,
Wipe the sleep out of my eyes,
My shaving razor’s cold and it stings.’

Everybody else is still fast asleep as I am by far the first person to leave for work. The usual morning rituals are a routine affair, carried out at breakneck speed. A hurriedly grabbed pack of Tiger biscuits must do for breakfast. In spite of all this, I am still late for the 601. Wondering once again why my company is possibly the only one in Bangalore not offering office transport, I frantically wave down another bus.

The 502 to K.R. Puram. A busy route this, full of office-goers, daily labourers, fruit and vegetable sellers and the like. Seats are out of the question. But today there is just about enough place to stand without threat of being compressed to half my usual volume. All I can think of is getting to Tin Factory before 7.30. Any later and the traffic at K.R Puram junction will double my travel time. I get off at 7.35. ..

The 319 E to Hope Farm. The traffic is tortuous and the crowd suffocating. I have visions of a red dot next to my name again in the lab sign-in sheet. India’s largest FMCG company has not yet wholeheartedly embraced the idea of flexi-timings.

He is obviously a newcomer to this city. Slight of build and hesitant of manner, he asks where he has to get off to get to a tech park. Not ITPL, that cynosure of all eyes in India’s technology world. One of the smaller ones that dot the Whitefield area, for the main part hosting companies that are not quite in the same elite league. We strike up a conversation. He is in a hurry to get to an interview. Perhaps limited by my college years and experiences, I immediately assume he is an engineer called for an interview scheduled as part of his college ‘placement process’. I soon learn that he has just graduated from high school and is going to a BPO’s office because he read they might just be willing to hire right now. This is what he has been doing for two weeks now, traversing the entire city, having travelled two thousand kilometres from home to get here in the first place...

The 333 E to Brooke Bond. Somehow managing to get off without shoving one of the schoolchildren crowding the footboard off the bus, I swipe my card at the entrance and head for the lab at the fastest pace I can set without violating the company’s sacrosanct safety rules. I sign in at 8.29 and all is well. At least for today.

The PRA in the lab and the senior-most person on my team (with the exception of our manager) calls me over to discuss some relevant literature and discuss the previous day’s data. There are important questions to be answered before the clock moves to 8.45 and our manager walks in to start the morning meeting.

And thus the day proceeds, the open tea areas at ten where we take in the immeasurably lovely Bangalore weather, experiments to be run in the lab and pilot plant, the canteen at 12.30, special meetings for communications, new projects and other initiatives, all the way down to 5.30 when I sign out and head for the gym. Much of our work is organised around the labs and categories and functions we work in, but here, research, design and deploy come together and talk about anything except surfactants and process equipment. Most people live right next to the office and the after-hours games and other activities make up their social life.

I slip out of the gate at 7.30 and wait patiently at the bus stop. Many a time, it comes only at 8, but I am not inclined to take any chances. The 600 to Kammannahalli is a lifeline in the evenings. Missing that implies changing three buses again, including one from the horrifyingly crowded Tin Factory stop. Or travelling twice the distance on an alternate route through the heart of town.

The conductor knows me well by now. He asks why I was not there the previous evening. Some days, he lets me pay the additional two rupees on the next day in case I do not have change. The bus is quite empty at this stage, something that will change noticeably once it gets to ITPL and the other office areas.

‘Asking only workmen’s wages,
I’ve come looking for a job,
But I get no offers...’

He is on his way back ‘home’ after another fruitless day of job-hunting. He has just come back from his village in east India. He used to work in a cheap hotel in the city. His father died suddenly and he had to go back for the last rites. When he returned, he found that he no longer had a job or a roof over his head. Leaving his belongings with someone he knows at K.R. Puram, he goes looking for another job every day. He is running out of time though. Soon there will be letters from home, asking for money from their only remaining breadwinner...

The bus climbs onto the bridge at K.R. Puram and for a few moments, I can see the lights for miles in this city of dreams. The long line of cars and buses honk impatiently on the jampacked roads stretching in every direction. The Lee showroom will soon be visible in the distance, marking the spot where I get off and walk the remaining four hundred metres. It has been exactly five years today since I left home...

‘Seasons change with the scenery
Weaving time in a tapestry
Won't you stop and remember me
At any convenient time?
Funny how my memory skips
While looking over manuscripts
Of unpublished rhyme...’

The Indian Dream. This is my day. A small part of it. There are so many of us. Software, electronics, consumer goods, automobiles, call-centres. Roadside eateries, autos, shops, construction sites. Stories of a nation on the movie. Told without the help of GDP and per capita income growth rates and highest salaries at business schools. Stories of hope. Stories of heartbreak. Yet the dream stays alive. Of a better day. For us and our friends. For the strangers who play the extras in the dream. For our families, whether they are in the upper middle class apartment in Calcutta, or the drought-stricken village barely two hundred miles from there. A dream of a day when the hope will, by far, outweigh the heartbreak.