Bored to Death

The last few days/weeks have been grossly inactive. Not much fun activities, nothing new going on. All was the same, having done nothing for so long I was getting sluggish. Well I hope to embark on a trek in one of the coming weekends, that should instill some much needed break in me.

Well just to add more to my delima, we had one of those routine re-orgs. and had a whole bunch of presentations put by the Big Bosses. To top it today we had one of out "new group" meetings.

We did expect the meeting to be more in line of what the new group would be and what our roles would sound like. Unfortunately the meeting took me through one of the most pathetic 1.5 hours of my life. I am being honest here, never before have I felt so confused or giddy after a meeting.

The meeting basically started with an introductory round like "I am A working on B for X years" , then came the talk which sort of said what we would be doing and who the new folks were.

I honestly did not know that we would be having any new faces in the group, for all I understood we were the same group with a new name, well the truth had a new mood though.

Soon the meeting went into the technicalities of the new group, and started getting intense into the micro level discussion of what the new folks were doing all these years .. err (my bad) months. It did seem ok at the start to know these new found folks and be a little bogged down to the fact that these guyz did some real hardcore "w.o.r.k". Thats about when things went bad.

The manager started talking about all the little nitty gritty this group did, and then it wavered into a single channel discussion about the new folks and all the technical (most words were simply Jargons for me )difficulties they faced. And this discussion never seemed to see the end of day. It went on with new mails and colorful excel sheets with rows and rows of technicalities which did not even remotely sound familiar.

Initially I though it maybe due to my recent apathy over being in this group thats making me feel this way, but soon realized everyone apart from the "new members" were counting sheep or scratching their eyes or rocking the chair or simply giving blind stares around. I felt confided, continued crossing my legs and tried to rub the grease off my pants.

Soon I could see the notepad in front of me with a flow chart and I had really enjoyed that chart and everything that went into making that chart. I mean I understood everything about it and got this huge grin on my face and -lo- the grease still stayed on pant refusing to budge to my relentless scratching. Boy had I started day dreaming.

But again, I thought why I dreamt about that flow chart which I made some 4 years back, the very next week of making that flow chart I had resigned from my previous job. Then I though of the days in my current company and I got really enraged at the way in which the management had always tossed our group from one to another. Dammit the grease is not fading... so I stretched my legs pushed the chair back folded my hands relaxed as the dim presentation of the excel sheet continued to scroll and so did the jargons.

Another guy from our older group was trying out at an MNC, little did I expect him to try that. So Shailesh had rejected his offer from this place, since he thought this place was new and the position was a little risky. Why wasn't I ready to quit or rather why was I all charged to quit and yet sticking around. Maybe the comfortable chair made me not take the decision. Dammit now my legs were stretched too long and then people were still walking around their cubicle that could sight through the transparent glass wall. The excel sheet had changed colors and was on a new worksheet. Piyush was still trying to keep his eyes open as Mandar looked as his hoes and kept scanning the room with Abhishek still rocking that chair.

Both the scroll-tab and fonts on this worksheet were so small that no time in the world would get me out of this torment. Thats when the manager said, "I guess we can discuss this offline" and many of us smiled :).

By now I realized my looking up or down consistently at a stretch and the background score of unknown jargons were getting me all dizzy. Soon the manager asked if there were any questions. The original us were used to keep quiet but that was not the case with these new Knights (atleast one of them).

Damm I wish I had a broom stick, which I could shove down his throat and wack him left and right. This guy had even more jargon knowledge and enjoyed playing jargon-jargon with the manager. Damm I recollected the Ashok Kumar mimicky from the previous post .. I felt no different and relished on the prospect of giving a Shatrugan shot "Khamoosh .. Ayyeeee.. Bhishumm". I had that huge grin again.

The meeting ended half an hour post schedule as someone else who had booked the conference room kicked us out. It never felt so good to be hustled out. I was still shaky and dizzy from the meet. The world around me went spinning and all looked or seemed over-brightened, damm was my grey taking in the much necessary blood.

Once back at my cubicle I shut my eyes and rested my face in my palms as I tried to recover from the onslaught and forget it as one bad dream.

Never before have I ever faced or been bored to death by a meeting, this was my first. Donno how many more are headed my way :-)