Losing All To Find One- Divyank J.

I live in a tier three city of a third world country. No, don't picture garbage and chaos. Udaipur, with its lakes, is comparatively beautiful. But like any other Indian city it cannot prevent its people from becoming a victim of a sick system they have to deal with for employment. There aren't many options. Between 2016 and 2019, juggling roles of a teacher, an accountant, and a wanna-be-writer, I decided to choose teaching as a career worth pursuing, for two obvious reasons: one, my dad has been a teacher himself and secondly, I saw it as an opportunity to observe the students at a turning point in their lives : when they step out of the schools for the world beyond. 

However, slowly my profession turned into something different. Within months I saw clearly that education is similar to any other industry and students and teachers are products, born out of someone's greed. It was not what I'd seen my dad doing when I was a kid. The time has rapidly changed. My dad won't believe me. It was too late for me to reconsider my career choices. One Saturday evening my wife concluded, 'You're making a horrible mistake if you think of quitting this job. You're home at 4:30 PM everyday. Enjoy the slice of your life." By then I had learned the silence and the weekend trips save marriages. So I kept going, for another year, this time for a different and bigger organisation.

In the larger scheme, everything trivial is justified. Your boss mocking your religion and gender, the director calling you a troublemaker, seniors taking the advantages of your naivety and the credit of your hardwork. You're overburned yet showing up in every virtual meeting is justified. We are a team! We bring the greater good to this world.

So, get up. Get ready. Finish your cup of tea. Drive to the bus stop. Your nap ends quickly. The school hides inside a Yarn Factory. Five minutes walk. The thump machine needed a repair. Good morning! I have lost the pen. Sir, take a remedial class for board students during prayer hour. Give them some work! A cup of tea during lunch break. A meeting concluded : we won't have a national holiday tomorrow, for the teachers. Duty-chart has been mailed. The same bus, back home, the same talkative driver, but no seat. Your house is fading due to harsh sunlight. Your wife notices a wrinkled, sweat drenched shirt. Mind filled with self-talks, not good enough to write down. No hunger. Eat, sleep and repeat. Carb-craving on weekends saved me. 

The world outside was getting sick. Garbages floating on the lakes. The water stinks. The environment molests you. Suddenly, the city was stripped of beauty. During extended meetings I desperately felt the need to shout at our director: shut your damn mouth! Or at least brush your teeth. I was mad. Sliced. Fragmented. This is for body, this is for mind and this is for soul. Enough! My body carries my mind. My soul sees through it. No room for lies. A senior fellow Cheeranjeevi says, "It's not just you. Everyone feels bad when she speaks." Being a writer I read the subtext. He basically meant why are you making a ruckus? Why don't you just silently let it kill you?" He suggested some yoga and meditation techniques. 

There's a blue bird in my heart that wants to get out...

Defending my colleague, I told the director that favouritism should be avoided. A 26-year-old bootlicker from management called a 55-year-old teacher a dishonest and worthless lady in front of the whole class. Three days later she resigned, leaving the office in tears. Rumours flooded the school's unofficial whatsapp groups that the director badly abused her, in front of two other female teachers. That was the worst part. Next Sunday she told me that in thirteen years she got used to this: take motivational pills packaged as abuse. It wasn't an issue. The issue was that despite knowing about her knee-injury the director had burdened her with some field-work, as they are soon going to fire a male teacher. That male teacher, I later discovered, was me. 

After a week I received a notice. ‘You have been found to speak unethical things against management’. I wrote back in simple two words : ‘Please elaborate’. Another letter followed. ‘You were not obeying the director's instructions’. I wrote back : ‘Please elaborate’. Finally I was summoned to headquarters. After a cup of tea and four biscuits, I was warned. They needed me and I knew it. Fifteen days passed and I told my director that I couldn't  assist the clerk with accounting and budgeting. I am supposed to be a teacher. My senior colleague, Chiranjeevi watched my reddened face as if I'd asked for a 6 months salary in advance. By then I'd had enough. Chiranjeevi’s bubble of illusions burst when I went into a full fledged argument with the director.

My colleague thought I was being wildly immoral: polluting the workplace environment. At times, I felt that, too. Maybe I am placing others’ careers  at risk too. Those who shook my hand every morning, while our director watched us from her window. There were spies. They don't miss their target. Looking down at my trembling hands, I asked Cheeranjeevi, "do you like this job this way, sir?" He told me, "Yes, I do have a family," and walked away. I stayed there, staring into the stained washroom mirror. The question was not whether to continue or quit right away. It was a question on the very nature of morality.

If you can keep your head, when all about you losing theirs and blaming it on you...

At this point everyone gives in. We are all raised to be morally and ethically accepted, projecting ourselves as self- sacrificing soldiers in the service of humanity. Our director sat inside her sedan. Unusually cheerful today, because her three-year-old nephew joined her and they played on the lawn. I heard the story. 

Who shaped our morality? Oh! I am totally aware that much of it is directly linked with our existence as a social animal. A smile for a smile. An act of service in return for another. There's no escape from that as long as we live. We are the threads tightly woven into this fabric of society. Yet many of the stains on these fabrics were never mine. The invisible shackles of socially approved acts, driving us to a mechanical behaviour designed according to our age, profession, position and authority needed rethinking, I thought. I wanted to start by winning this battle of morals and ethics within. 

If you can meet with triumph and disasters and treat those imposters just the same...

I am not ashamed of admitting that I was scared of the futility of our existence. I was shocked. Unhinged. Gods and Demons churned Mount Meru. It is churning of the worlds, planets, galaxies, ideas, thoughts and everything in your life turned upside down. I learned to churn the yoghurt. A humble lesson:  if you keep on churning, something valuable will appear, as delicious as a spoon-full of home made butter, needing only a pinch of salt to devour it. 

Here's the unsettling truth: there's no such thing as a career. It's a modern invention to fuel overproduction and overconsumption. Positions are made and erased overnight; millions of careers die between ‘buy and sell’. Even education has fallen victim. The age-old thrust of  a secure life has never been quenched, even once.      

To embrace life's indifference and still fight it whenever it gets to your throat takes immense  courage. You can only do it when you tear apart the fabrics of the value system, and learn to see through. Their nakedness. Their fears. They all seem artificial and manufactured like their dull products. Running. Mimicking. Controlling. This may be necessary for the continuation of this professional madness of capitalist machinery, yet too hollow to withstand any honest and simplest arguments. I didn't revolt against it, understanding that even revolting is participating. I allowed myself to simply step away from the procession. 

I quit the job and went under a process of healing. In a society that measures people's worth by productivity, the one who is audacious enough to take a break is equivalent to a derailed train - wrecked and unrecoverable. Many thought I lacked courage to face the reality. One day Cheeranjivi led me into the only room without cameras and said, 'we are all actors. These are our roles. We are supposed to perform well.' It was the worst interpretation of Shakespeare's plays, given the corporate context. One evening, a week after I quit my job I faced my neighbours with the widest possible smile  - so wide that they began to look down at their toes. To swallow down the bitter pill of defeat, even in their eyes, requires some amount of courage and plenty of brazenness for these are two windows through which you can throw out your resentment.

Now I mustn't lick my wounds. I've awakened from my deep slumber. My legs tremble as I  sky-glide along the steep graph of a so-called successful career. I may have a hard-landing, but I refuse to consider it a failure. I refuse to call myself a troublemaker. I am a character in making. I am fully aware that even my elders have no answers to this never-ending turmoil in my heart. I have been gifted with this. And I'll die with this. It is the most personal thing I'll have to keep in my heart forever. And knowing it sets me free.  

A child of nine will learn to swim someday. I sleep face down on my pillow. The breeze wakes me up. Fifteen minutes to slurp the tea.  No burden to finish a task on someone else's deadline contradicts with my unshakable desire to win the world. I love the paradox. Writing fits well and completes the puzzle. So I write, write, and write straight for sixty minutes. Landscapes, pastures and a river from my hometown. Stories of working class people. A tribute to John Steinbeck, maybe. Freelancing as a teacher. Reading labels carefully before buying the cookies for my daughter. Got a diet plan for myself and my wife too from a 65 years old physician who no longer works for money. I've got enough time to recover from the cold, too. 

It's evening. I am standing here at one of my few favourite places : Lake Bari. Seven miles away from the hubbub of the city. No crowd. No shoutings. No furniture. No corridors. No synthetic settings. No game of masks. Whoever I am, the wind welcomes me. The trees swaying on the hill-tops wave a hello. The mountains beyond the lake witnesses my existence. There are some push carts. You can sit on a bench, look toward the lake and have a bowl of noodles while the sun sinks behind the hills. You watch the edge of the hills when it all turns from yellow to red, knowing it isn't an end.   

Two roads diverged in yellow woods and sorry I could not take them both. 

Works cited : 

Poems of Charles Bukowski, Rudyard Kipling, and Robert Frost. 

Divyank Jain is the author of ‘In Search of the Lambs’, a short story collection. He holds master’s degrees in English Literature and Commerce. His writings have appeared in literary journals such as Novus Literary Journal (Cumberland University), Boudin by McNeese Review (McNeese State University), Active Muse, Together Magazine, yawp journal, Firefly review, and elsewhere. His short story Out of the Ring was printed and distributed in Belgium as a part of their Specials along with Kermesse magazine by 16 Pages Press. He has co-authored numerous Anthologies, too. Notions of Living and Notions of Healing compiled by Dr. Anu Lal were the bestsellers. Apart from writing, he is an accountancy teacher and a sketch artist. Follow him on instagram- authordivyankj for more on his works.