This is the story of an ordinary IT couple who did ordinary things until being ordinary bored them.

Their life so far was everything but mundane until Priya graduated and landed herself in one of the top IT companies that recruits humans like herds of buffaloes from universities. This is where their run of the mill lives began. Priya was excited with the prospect of working for a “MNC” (short for Multi-National Companies, you must see the way the “HRs” {Human Resource Personnel} use the term MNC with such ease and snob) . Whatever! Priya was happy and all set to dedicate herself and her family after the power packed inspirational induction into the company which they sell to the “freshers” (a bunch of new under grads just out of college) along with a company T-shirt and a coffee mug. That’s it. The free coffee mug and t-shirt with the company logo buys lifetime loyalty from the regular people.

Have you seen the white mice in cages with fancy thread-mill? That’s what the company did – bought each employee a fancy cage called “cubicle”. Every few cubicles became a “bay” enclosed in glass walls and carpeted floors, they ensured your screams could not be heard to anyone in the outside world. Total sound proof but they installed the moving eyes “cctv” in every corner so they could monitor your moves and your sleep times – the spare moments you got to rest your head on the desk piled with wires and all sorts of computer gadgets.

The colour of the walls, floor and computers were all dull to match everything in the company including the work environment. The concept of “bench” started becoming evident. The company had plans of expansion, of “projects” coming through but they failed to see the light at the end of the tunnel resulting in these engineers sitting on bench. Every time I hear the word bench, it reminds me of a wooden bench but ironically there is no such physical bench where the engineers are made to sit. The software consultants come to work as usual, “swipe-in” and “swipe-out” doing nothing much in between. The men generally created more than one profiles of their own in different matrimonial websites, more than one because they had time, not because they wanted more than one girl. Those were decent well behaved gentlemen. The ladies (readers bear in mind I am one), stuck to getting more certification courses and in their spare time discussed how to get the managers in their good books so that they could have a prospective future. Officially they are made to take these online compulsory courses that the company academic team would have set depending on the level of seniority. Once you complete the set, the customary technical certification will follow. All to redecorate your skill set. Hardly do they know these engineers have mastered the game of Bubbles or something similar.

Then the day comes where one of the umpteen mails you have sent requesting to merge you in any project goes answered and they schedule for an interview. Yes, you non IT guys, you heard me right. The “project manager” of the team actually interviews you to know if you fit into the team! Isn’t it only fair to believe that everyone in the company is worthy of being in some project or other? After two rounds of technical interview Priya was pretty confident she would finally be working in some project but to her dismay, there wasn’t really a need for an ASE (Associate Software Engineer, one of the names they have for basically the same kind of people). Priya was frustrated but Priya’s thoughts won’t matter anyway! Not as long as the HRs are seated in there. So these HRs took the trouble and heard of an opening in not this office, not any office in any of the 5 locations in Bangalore but all the way up the coastline, in Mumbai.

Meanwhile, the husband, who was the other side of the coin, a project manager in another tech company was having a separate life of his own. Meetings with clients, then meeting with team members and then more meetings with the clients. If this wasn’t enough he had team building activities and team picnics to go to. Hell, he spent all his time with his team and the company wanted him to spend some more time with his team in the form of team building, just when he wanted to get away from his “team”. Funny world this corporate life is! As years go by, “mainframes” changes to “java”, “java” to some other “python” and Python to some noun-less technology but basically the essence of life remains the same.

Arjun hardly met Priya at home and would be on “conference-call” with the “clients” all day even after reaching home at nine in the evening. His lingo only contained “onshore”, “offshore”, “clients”, “deadline”, “project plan” and more meetings. Not that he was having a brilliant life either. He was screwing the associate and senior coders while he himself was getting screwed by the “program manager”. That’s a nice sort of hierarchy there to follow, wherever you are placed in the ladder, the effect is similar. The flexible work hours that the company so smilingly adds in their advertisements is really this – you flexibly work beyond and after working hours. He was under tremendous pressure to meet the deadlines that his seniors had promised the clients. Some senior doing a wrong estimate of the billing hours and everything trickles down to the last step in the ladder. Everyone including the janitor is under a deadline in the IT industry and everyone only works for the very notorious “appraisal” that they get branded at the end of the financial year. While a five star rating means a good salary raise and a bonus it generally means you are lying too. 4 is one of the more common stars that equates you to a decent hike and a good profile while having a 3 star means you are the average kinds and this would impact you getting into future projects. I don’t think I need to specify what 2 and 1 star means.

The time that Priya and Arjun spent on the travel added to more than the time they spent at home together. The quality of life that they were leading was suffering and they knew it. That is when they decided to do something out of the box. Both of them put in beautiful resignation letters, typed with clean italic font (exaggerated a little for reader experience) and sent it out of their mailbox for one last time.

Postscript: No harm intended at any software giants, at any male colleauges or at any feminist activist out there. Special apologies to the HRs.