Drained Brains

Everyday coming out and in through the gates of my company, I see some chaps distributing pamphlets. These are mainly the same promotional schemes of Airtel, Vodafone. Although, almost every employee here already has a mobile phone, he/she takes special care that the distributing guy does not run out of his job and hence thankfully takes this paper and just after walking a few steps, either throws it away or carries it. Some say they use it for rough work even though our offices are already flooded with waste papers. They say it helps feed the families of the rag pickers and paper recyclers.

When people have breakfast, they use paper cups to drink water and since their royal manners do not allow them to use that same cup to drink tea, they throw it away and take tea in another. Because of their mind being engrossed in work left at the desk, they carelessly take a stack of paper plates to carry foodstuffs.

In the office, most of us were born and brought up in European countries: the air conditioners run at temperatures below 19°. Since we cannot hire a person to take care of the lights, I have been having the privilege of customarily putting off the outdoor lights. Unfortunately, if I do not come out of my office before lunch, the foyer is left bathing in the numerous lights. Either people can’t distinguish between on/off lights after a smoke (for which so many shuttle in and out of the office) or, I guess, there is some optical-illusion-spell cast over the foyer of my office - so many people find it hard to discover the dazzling lights and put them off. Since this spell has never worked on me, I sometimes feel like Harry Potter. I pray there is no such spell cast over other places.

Then comes lunch time when we leave our monitors on to entertain the angels with fancy screen savers. I guess it is mighty hard to switch off the monitors.

There are some very nice people who become special nice in the canteen; they use almost 5 to 6 tissue papers to clean their dish; one more to clean the spoon. I even saw an innovative guy using one tissue paper to clean one compartment of the dish at a time and imparting justice to all (there are 7 such compartments in the dish). Thankfully he was prompt like the others to throw the barely used tissues and flood the waste bin. Then there are some who find it very disturbing to see fresh, unused tissue papers kept at the counter. They do not hesitate to stuff a handful in their pockets.

Then comes the food. There was a group I saw a few days ago: three skinny girls. They could any day give a complex to the ants (an ant is known to be able to carry 3 times its own weight). I actually owe my sincere gratitude to them; they saved my efforts in visualizing the maximum carrying capacity of the dishes. Surprisingly, they were also very diet conscious and ate a meager 5% of the stuff.

India is a country of lights. In a constant attempt to maintain this legacy, we keep the lights on even after office hours.

Seeing all this for last one year, a thought came to my mind. We all work in one of the world’s most famous Engineering Company. What we do, sets up an example, a model for the rest to follow. I remember some nut somewhere on TV commenting about the responsibility of people towards the environment. He even dared to expect consciousness towards the environment from literate people. To top it all, the stupid guy also had the guts to appeal all the engineers in the world to take special care of the environment.

I think of inviting that guy to our company. After all he should see the IDEAL practices we follow and be educated by the so called ENGINEERS of one of the world’s most famous Engineering Company.