Sunday, October 7, 2018

I left the last post abruptly...

..... because   I did not want a very long post. :)


It all wrapped up Friday. A long association with my last organisation. The dots join up only in retrospect. 

Going on a reminisce trip I remember my newly married days. K was struggling to get a project. He ended up being put forth for one with an American client. Possibly an on site assignment. The Durga Puja that year was full of crazy anxiety with us deciding on what to do. I had been in my Chennai job for a little over 6 months and things were looking up for me too. We did not want to make a career move which involved the sacrifice of another. Somehow  K's project did not come through and he ended up with a real tough UK client. It involved long work hours. He used to be back at home at 2 in the morning and start back at 0530 to get the 6 am morning bus back to work. 

His hard work was rewarded with an on site trip to Leeds. It was for a year with a possibility of extension. By the time I quit my job in India and joined him, the possibility of extension seemed more certain. I started looking for a job in the UK and got my first within a few months. The extensions kept happening. My job continued. We even became parents. Life seemed 'settled'. 

After 4 years as if following a typical pattern, I felt the need to up my game. I started looking for a new job. 

What are the odds? I ended up being recruited by the same company and into the same team as K's. It was quite a coincidence. The people I had heard of, the office dynamics K spoke about and the software application I had been tangentially involved in became real - they became my team and it was my software application. The work was good. The benefits were good. I started working as a big team. There was lot of new stuff happening.  As work progressed, friendships happened too.

Seemed like a short run but I had finished close to 18 months with the firm. I had my maternity break. There was a change and we moved to Ipswich. There was a redundancy cycle through the organisation. Two of my friends moved on and one was made redundant. I managed to retain my job. 

I still remember the working from home days. That was so novel - with the monthly once trip to Leeds. I worked in that fashion for a year. Again when I was going through it, it seemed like a permanent thing. We were close to taking a house and settling in Ipswich. My distance working pattern seemed confirmed. 

Change happens. Many times unwarranted. We moved back to Leeds. And the office became permanent. Ironically the number of exciting challenges were depleting and I had to look outside.

As I pursued a new job, the simple benefits of my current role were not hard to miss. Primary was the flexibility. I was available for school assemblies, meetings with teachers and any impromptu arrangement with respect to the kids. Working from home was another.  One could work from home - no questions asked. It made me participate in simple pleasures - I could feed breakfast to Chiyaa peacefully, tie her hair, heat and have my breakfast, have green tea, pick Chiyaa and Pumpki earlier from school and recently being around my parents. They will be all a thing of the past. At least for the next 6 months while I am on probation when I have to work in the office a bit more.

That's the future. As I walked out my past, I felt nothing. I didn't feel any nostalgia. I was anxious about the future. I was worried I don't leave stuff lurking in my laptop. But otherwise there were no feelings. Maybe because I was never a part of the team. I was never one of them. I always felt like the new comer( people in my team  had spent 20 years or over within the bank)  I was always addressed from a distance. There was somehow a wall - a metaphorical one and a literal one since I sat near a pillar. 

There is no looking back anymore. Maybe it's a step forward in the right direction. The future will tell. The dots connect much later don't they?

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