As soon as the wheels touched the sacred land of India my mind announced “welcome back to the real life. The fun time is over”. Although onsite assignments are always tedious with crunch of time and loads of work, but still it makes those moments unforgettable. Walking out of the airport, my body and mind, suddenly gets in rush and alert theme. Sir taxi .. sir taxi .. I was looking for a taxi but same time I pretend that I didn’t listen to them. I had to make sure that the taxi I am hiring will not cheat me.
Asked one taxi wala .. how much u will charge to old airport ? .. sir .. according to meter. Ok that’s good. Let’s go. On the way I tried to speak in Hindi but he was not comfortable in Hindi. What a sad thing back in my country and still struggling with English.
Evening was generally nice to see in the countries I visited. All the coffee shops and restaurants will be full as soon as the sun deeps in the west. People will be seating together laughing, talking and sharing their gossip. Beer starts bubbling out in glass full of ice. “No anxiety no rush, just chill and enjoy” looks like slogan you can smell in air. A loud sound of “cheers”(‘mot hi ba yo’ in Vietnamese or ‘muoth’ in Lao) can be easily audible when you cross some restaurants. I sometimes wonder how these people get time to spend their evening in such coffee shops and restaurants. Eventually I got a chance to see living style of the local people very closely. Most of the office including govt offices starts at 8am and ends at 5pm. When you say 8 it is 8. All employees are in by the time. People will be laughing talking and tickling each other creating a jolly mood to work. Average once in 2 week there will be a team party thrown by Project manager or the organization. Once in a while an excursion trip of 2-3 days is also organized. With all hardwork work we put, these types of boosters were always kept the work interesting. People will be so friendly that only with the eye contact, triggers the exchange of smile in spite that we never met before.

Most of the people close their work by 5pm with a simple reason that “I have a family too”. A kind of smiling and laughing faces around with a party like environment in evening when light tops are in action, couples and family in their best colorful dress roaming on road leaves you with a joyous weather.
As soon as I land in India I feel like I am back in race. There is hardly smiling face you can find. Office will be a place where silence is best observed with almost no bursting of laughter. Anxiety and frustration can be seen on people face with most of the discussion will be about their dissatisfaction to company or politicians. Whatever project is over, whatever milestone is achieved team party or excursion is rarely seen. People will appear in office with straight face as if hiding their all anger and frustration, fulfilling their work, trying best to finish the assignments and then go back home when they feel it is good enough time to go home take dinner and fall down on bed.
When I come out of office, I only see people are in rush to go back home. The bus is always crowded whenever I board it. The only option I am always left with is to travel in it standing. When I look around people are sitting with straight face. Hardly have I seen couple have jolly conversation or some laughter cracking. Sometimes at some corner pan shop some friend group will have something to laugh and smile on.
Everyone is in race, race with themselves, race with society, race with their past. In this race anxiety and frustration is quite common. As soon as you fall in this society you also start running, start rushing to find better and better life. I also started running, got something better than before, and hence had anxiety and confusion for last 28 days since I landed. Finally selected one option and moved ahead from myself and from my past. Same time, ruled out the anxiety and rush for few days.
Still I miss those satisfied and smiling faces and envy with them, how cool they can live life, how at every overtime they will be served with bottle of beers and whisky inside office drinking bottomless and how completion of project will lead to some excursion, how with all the pressure and tension everyone were laughing and smiling and teasing each other, how comfortable they made us with them and involved us in all their fun activities in spite of language problem.
These things always force me to think where are we rushing to? How long we will keep selling our present happiness for our future. And how long it will take for India to have such a jolly work environment respecting the human lives.