t’s six thirty on a Monday morning and I say to myself – “What a beautiful day it’s going to be. I can’t wait!” That’s the mantra I repeat over and over again to drag myself out of my warm bed. My alarm clock survives another violent slap of the hand but it will not learn its lesson. It feels like I never even had a weekend because of the tons of work I had to bring home on Friday. I don’t even have the pleasure of exhibiting mountains of paperwork to prove what a hard life I have. All of it fits into a small CD. As I get ready for work I cringe at the thought of the week ahead. Conference calls with clients that think that the more they hound you the faster and better the work will be. Meeting after meeting where nothing useful gets done and more work gets generated. A boss that irritates me no end by going through the entire day with a wide smile on his face. I even start the day badly by having to endure a bone rattling forty-five minute bus journey to work. The only thing worse is the one-hour journey back late at night.

Once I get there I am slightly mollified when I see the large and pretty campus ahead. Five minutes later I’m not so happy. I still have another five minutes before I reach my cubicle. It’s the middle of summer yet the office feels icy. I once heard someone say that the plusher the office is the colder it is. I fish out a sweater I keep in my drawer and realize it smells a bit. Not surprising since I never take it home or get it laundered. As I settle down to check mail I see that five of them are from my client. I carefully avoid opening them because he is in the habit of attaching a read receipt to all his mails, so he knows when I have reached work. I don’t start up the messenger program for the same reason. I think I’m so smart but it seems that he is smarter. He calls and checks with one of my colleagues who can see me from his cubicle. He is told that I am at work. Foiled! My plan to put off talking to the client goes down the drain. A minute later my phone rings and with a sigh I begin a call that lasts an hour. It doesn’t go so well either. The module deadline that we had agreed on for the middle of the following month was now brought forward to two weeks from now. By the end of it I’m already tired just thinking of how I would tell my team. What a great way to make friends! I’m not even sure how it happened. I stood my ground for a good while but somehow the client got his way.

Before I face my team I head to the pantry to fortify myself with a cup of java. My colleagues take one look at my face and know what’s coming. We try to be positive. After all, we are used to having tough deadlines and working late. It would go against the Indian software industry trend to go home at quitting time. Before we can knuckle down to work we receive a mail calling everyone in the department to a meeting. As usual rumors are adrift. Some speculate that our boss is quitting (or is he fired?), while others say we are the ones being fired. The managers pompously walk in ten minutes late and take their seats. The director then starts talking and we start to realize that the subject is nothing quite so dramatic. It is in fact a very boring lecture on the department’s “roadmap” – one of 4 others in the past year, all of which have never been followed. From past experiences I know that this is going to be a very long meeting, lengthened by annoying and useless questions from the department’s nerds. We secretly are a bit envious of them since they are the ones who know exactly how to get into the managers’ good books.

By the time the meeting ends it is lunch time so we drift off to the cafeteria – that place where we fill our bellies with delectable vegetarian food. Well we are told it is supposed to be vegetarian but I remember from school days that cockroaches, worms and other bugs belong to the non-vegetarian class. The cook claims my spider fell off the roof into my beans like that is supposed to be an acceptable way of having my proteins. I refrain from complaining more because I know nothing will be done.

After lunch I settle down at my desk for what will hopefully be a productive afternoon of work. One hour into it and I don’t realize the base of my neck is slowly going numb and my fingers are beginning to tingle. I stop working only when a teammate comes over and then I suddenly cannot move at all. Slowly the crowd at my desk gets bigger and we forget about work for a time until someone reminds us that we have work to do. And so it goes till it gets closer to quitting time. Six o’clock comes and goes but everyone is still at work. Stomachs start to growl and anyone who can rush to the cafeteria for a snack. Not me – my client decides to call again to check on our progress and irritate me some more. Before the call I asked a colleague to do me a favor. I wanted him to go get a quick snack and then rush back to his desk to message the client with a concocted problem regarding his work. This ingenious idea would let me steal away so I could go fill my tummy. By the time the call is halfway through there is no sign of him and my watch shows that it is almost time for the cafeteria to close. He cheerfully gets back while I start to hang-up and when he sees me a bulb goes on over his head. He apologizes profusely while I ruefully try to get some last minute work done while I wait for the next group of buses to leave.

Its nine o’clock and finally time to leave. The bus is filled with blaring music and I feel the beginnings of a headache stirring. I try to endure but midway an accident on a bridge brings the bus to a halt. From past experiences I know that it will be an extra thirty minutes before we start moving again.