Once upon a time they were recognized for the search in their eyes, the despair in the actions, the anguish in their daily. The genus of migrants, presently have a fresh unidentified breed. Currently, they arrive with the luxury of relocation, a punctuality of lifestyle and nonchalance for local. Earlier, they adjusted, but now isn’t it the city that accommodates?
It was practised as an act of trust. Through safe, tested positions in a consistent manner for a long-lasting feeling towards a delayed and secured ending. With evolving trends and opportunities now lies an alternative. One which is quick, pleasure seeking with changing role plays and flavours for instant climax towards short term benefits. How do you satisfy your job?
All the houses a stage; they are merely helpers. Sometimes as family, sometimes as nobody. They are both comfort and the complaint; the spy and the gossip; the caretaker and the careless; the demand and the supply. A round the clock service provider appointed not on merit but for need. Manufactured and assembled locally, they are, truly made for INDIA.
The time ticked 9.45 am and the lady rushed to her work table. Quickly arranging herself coffee and a water bottle, she extended the right hand to log-in just in time. While with the outstretched left hand she packed her daughter's lunch box. Is this off-site job policy redefining today’s working culture, or a cultural pattern ingrained in our system?
There is nothing unique, nor something special. It neither has a name but assumes what is assigned by all. A periodic schedule that becomes a part of the academic timetable. A place where one visits not for a need but to fulfill a growing habit. An enclosure where one returns not to purchase, but to collect memories that lay dispersed.
At once she plays a mother, in another shift a daughter, but generally the proverbial sister. She evokes everything but an impression of a health worker. For she is believed to be doing a ‘service’, answering a ‘calling’, that demands sacrifice but neither respect nor recognition. While she serves everyone medication, why does her pain not call for any attention?
Within the bustling streets, lies a unique troop safeguarding the common man’s daily life. In nature they are unofficial, in behaviour untrained, in expertise unskilled. Yet, they appear everywhere. Around a table, sometimes on the ground and many times as a façade defining the eye line. Their survival mechanism – to protect human from damage. They are the Phone Defence Academy.
From a distance, they call out. Not in an identified language but in a recognizable phonetic. It is a coarse melody whose wavelength runs in anomaly to the normal city sounds. Identify them, and one will realize that it is a fully automated, self-contained yet selective moving service, to which one drops the coin only if they prefer the music!
The phone bleeped. A new destination unveiled. He prepped himself and geared up. No grin, no twitching, no terse expression; but a certain gait, with rigour. Midday or midnight, glary or rainy – doesn’t matter. For, if he doesn’t abide by the assigned order, gameover! On his toes, breaking his back, he rushes and zips through the streets – he must deliver!