GET/PGET The KaamWali Mode…
(Pun Intended, To be read in a lighter mode, No personal experiences, Mere observations)
In an organization with more than 40,000 employees and over scores of sub units you may find a diversified set of personalities and diversified ways of executing various jobs coming one’s way. The nature of jobs is so varied that the approach to it needs to be branched out so as to complete it in an engineered way. Diversification helps as well as hurts sometimes. This story is not about praising or condemning a diversified company neither it is to give ‘fundas’ over it. Diversification leads to involvement of people from various disciplines as well as various backgrounds. This leads to inter exchange of tips and tricks of making things move over the roll. Interesting psychologies build up, clash and sometimes converts into procedures (SOPs). In a cluster of some 300 odd people with a mammoth job at hand you can have more than psychologies than the head count. One such interesting psychology or one can say brain pattern we are going to discuss in a lighter vein is the GET/PGET psychology. GET/PGET is basically an abbreviation for the newly joined Graduate/Post Graduate Engineer Trainees.
He is a new contestant to the cycle. He moves around following all the rules of the company and in the process comes to know how to evade the system and get things done forgetting the rules. He is the one who is authorized to do all the tasks over the phone but not on paper. Hence in the jugglery he never gets credit to the things he does and at the end he gets sarcasm from the top notches saying that the training he received since a year is futile. This in turn created a feeling of vengeance in many of the GETs/PGETs. Some of them run for MBA/M.tech, while others go for a job change. Rest clash day in and out with their respective bosses and keep forwarding mails, applying for online IPOs. The word training is basically an apocryphal for him as he never attains it. Even he does, he gets it on the subjects he had never listened to. Needless to say this lands in waiting for tea breaks, enjoying siesta and carry a face saying he was more interested than the facilitator. In PSUs the scene is more interesting. The fellow life in the classrooms for years never meets his seniors and sees his GM once in a blue moon. The world becomes a circle for him a complete circle where he thinks he is at the same level where he was. The only difference in now and then is the money and the follow ups. Follow ups more or less remain the same but the latter is now from strangers in a stringent way.
The reader might be frustrated because he came here to read about the kaamwali mode which is still not discussed. A gold medalist from an esteemed university comes at the block. He copies and files everything that comes his way. More or less there are unrealistic miniscule projects in his hand which gets delayed due to reasons he can’t even deem of. Moreover, some of the people around add music to his party and he feels like listening Linkin Park/Metallica in the morning. People, more of situations around him make him enter the so called kaamwali mode. He is made to follow people more than to do his work. And the person he follows hates anyone following him. The more or less of the people he follows feels xenophobic when he is around. Days pass. These days makes him enter the kaamwali mode. And the brain pattern of taking decisions begins resembling to that of a kaamwali. We all are in the same mode but all of us are not at the same levels. Let me elaborate on this.
The calendar just witnessed the dates of Holi. The holiday for Holi was on Monday. A GET/PGET takes holiday on Saturday packs his bag and drives to Daman to hang out. The gang of GETs promises their respective boses to come back on Tuesday and clear the pending work. They never return on Monday. The scene continues till Thursday. Kaamwali mode activated. This made me think and resemble them to my kaamwali who was fired when she did the same the third time. The levels to this mode increase as the GET/PGETs cruise their journey to their so called training to its zenith. Few days before the completion of training and prior to his stake being confirmed, he outbursts the tsunami of emotions in him. He catches his so called boss he never reports to and increases his adrenaline saying he will be leaving forever. My ailing grandma’s personal maid used to say this when she needed some of her old clothes or increment in her wages. The extreme mode of kaamwali activated…! Sometimes there are technical issues in the office and the boss never knows how to shoot such problems but he knows the one who can shoot it. He just offloads the contract and things get done. The mail around roves with he being in the BCC. This lets him down all the way. . . He goes back to the pathetic accommodation provided by the company and calls the one who he needs to talk daily and can’t help around. They too fight over the phone and worse are the mess when her mother’s call is in the waiting mode at the same nick. He takes the first piece of roti with his ailing mother discussing about the food there. His father inquires about his detoriating health.
He disconnects the call, lights a cigarette sleeps under the towering sky with stars in his eyes and dreaming what he coveted to be and what he landed in…?! He powers the radio and the song it plays goes like this:
“Papa kehte hai bada naam karega, beta humara aisa kaam karega..!”
He covers his face with the blanket in a way that can stifle him, tries to forget the day and fine tunes his alarm clock.
A day comes in his life when he gets confirmed and a new GET/PGET enters the gang. The kaamwali mode never gets disengaged it gets shifted and the new kid on the block now faces the music. You are in the same mode reading this and trying to shift yourself from your regular monotonous Excel sheets…Isn’t it?!
(Pun Intended, To be read in a lighter mode, No personal experiences, Mere observations)
Amit Purohit The Lone Soldier
