The curious case of Recession

Yesterday evening, when I got off the Metro, I saw Honey and Ashish (GL colleagues) also getting off. Just as we met, Honey told Ashish that this man (me) knew what was coming in GL (I recently quit GL and joined ION). I said how come? To which Honey answered that people are getting laid off like the leaves from a tree. He added that these days even the star performers are not spared. If anyone is warming the bench, s/he is asked to leave the organization. I was sad to hear that ... but then to be very honest; it didn’t felt that bad because I’ve been hearing such news – almost daily. The recession is causing real havoc these days ... every day I hear/read news of massive layoffs across all organizations (especially in IT). Very recently, I saw breaking news on CNBC ... Sapient laid off 500 people. One of my friend, who is in a big telecom domain IT company ... he told me that the organization has asked everyone in Delhi office to relocate to Banglore office or drop the papers. Another friend of mine, who is in finance domain IT company, told me that her office has started to shut down the entire company on weekends (for which the workers are not getting paid). Another friend of mine, who works for a Fortune 500 company, told me that her organization has eliminated the HRA component from their salary (HRA is a very big component !!!). Stories like these are getting very common everywhere ... and not just in IT companies only. My brother in law works for a jems (precious stones) company. Their industry is also laying off people ... cutting salaries ... making unpaid working days. If I recollect all such stories, you would end up scrolling pages and pages. Everywhere you look these days, you see worried faces ... worried about bills ... worried about livelihood ... worried about practically their survival. Never in my life (am almost 30 now ... d’uh), I’ve seen such gloomy situation ... and so many worry lines on people’s foreheads.

In India, the recession started to make its presence felt last year. But this year (we still are in the second month), the things are getting bad to worse. Before this crisis, nobody really knew what recession/depression meant. As they say ... you live you learn. The world faces crisis situation every few years ... its cyclical ... but none as severe as this one ... since may be 1930’s depression. But then, things have really changed since 1930. The impact of this crisis has jolted the entire economics of the world. As we are progressing, all the economies in the world are getting coupled. Its like a chain, if there is a weak link, the entire chain has to bear its consequences. The greed and recklessness of few Wall Street players is making people of main street cry. This crisis has made all of us commoners realized the real importance of savings. We all heard the phrase that we should save for rainy days ... but c’mon how many of us really took it to heart. We spend like kings on things that we probably didn’t even want (let alone the need for them). We all had credit/debit cards at our disposals and we spend like there is no tomorrow. The government and market regulators kept their eyes closed ... relied upon the proven theory of demand and supply. Well ... time to wake up now ... rain check. Today’s economics is not as simple as demand and supply ... its much more complex than we think it is. There are tools/instruments which can tweak this simple theory, which resulted in this mess. So much so, that not only organizations, even countries are getting bankrupt – Iceland is a shining (read disheartening) example. We, India, are in a better position (just a little) because our economy is not as free as other developed western countries. We have massive red tape and regulations, especially on banks and markets ... which seemed like pain in arse a while ago ... doesn’t seem all that bad now. In addition, we Indians are really thrifty when it comes to spend money. We are a poor country, so we know the importance of money ... little more than a suburban family in ... lets say ... in Connecticut (ahahaha). Even then, we too are in the grip of this hurricane ... so you can just imagine the countries on the warfront. I wish this end soon. There must be sunshine after this rain.

I guess we all learn important lessons from this ... never take anything for granted ... NEVER. If you think this cant happen to you ... THINK AGAIN.

Mohini's Baby

Yesterday, we (I, Anshuman, Honey, Sonal, Gaurav Sharma) went to Mohini’s place. She has recently given birth to a baby boy. NICEEEE !!! Ruchi, Deepak and Gaurav Sarda were also supposed to come with us, but due to something or other, they could not make it. Anyways ... we all reached at Mohini’s place at around 5:30 PM. We congratulated Mohini and stayed there for almost couple of hours. We also met Aarav (Mohini's baby boy) ... he was sleeping. He was cute as button ... really tiny.

After that, we planned to play some Poker at Honey’s place. Anshuman got an urgent call from home so he left. Therefore, it was only four of us for the Poker game. We played Poker for couple of hours and then came back home. All in all, it was a fun filled evening yesterday ... feels good to catch up with good friends once in a while.

Basement and Super Sitare

After a long time, the basement gang got together yesterday and had some fun. The basement gang – Me, Gaurav, Payal, and Vihan – was formed in the basement of GL (hence not so clever name for our group ... ahahahaha). When I joined GL in June 2005, I got the Bowstreet project. Gaurav, Vihan, and Payal were also new to the project. Even though the entire project got on famously, we 4 really formed a good rapport and we remained good friends even after all these years. Gradually, most of us left GL, but that doesn’t meant that we didn’t met ... although the frequency of our get-togethers have decreased over the period of time, but we still do meet and party once in a while.
Yesterday was one such fun filled night. Couple of days back I was chatting with Payal and I told her that it has been a while since we all met ... and since all of them are in India (which is rare these days), we should seize the moment and party. So we all gathered at Super Star (we call it Super Sitare ... ahahaha) ... had little bit of booze and food (yeah ... just enough to get filled and soaked ... ahahaha). The masti (fun), the jokes, pulling each other’s leg, booze, food, catching up with life and work, the cheque fights ... aah ... good old days. We all decided to take a break and go somewhere ... the plan was for the coming weekend, but Gaurav’s has a family function to attend. So the plan is postponed by a week ... so I am hoping nothing else comes up.

Travel Blues

This week I tried lots of travelling options from Noida to Delhi. Coming to Noida in the morning is not an issue as I take a chartered bus from Pitampura to Noida Sector 62. The bus leaves from Powerhouse (my bus stop) at around 7:40 AM and it reaches Noida Sector 62 at around 9:15. So it’s kinda OK to travel in it. Getting a seat is little difficult but still this is the best public transport option to reach office at time. However, the evenings are bit tricky. There are two chartered buses which ply from near my office, but the timings are not great. One leaves at 5:15 PM and the other leaves at 6:45 PM. Both of them are not suiting me well as the first one is too early for me and the second one is too late. So I’ve been trying out different modes of transportation throughout this week. I tried taking buses from sector 62 and sector 12. Yesterday I even tried the Sector 62-Anand Vihar-Dilshad Garden route via autos and then took the Metro to Pitampura. After trying all of them, I found out that all takes the same amount of time to reach home. And since all of them are not direct ways of travelling, they are really tiresome for me. So I think I have to stick to the 6:45 chartered bus for the time being unless I find a better alternative.

Wasting nearly 5 hours in travelling to/fro office is not the best way to spend the day, but what can I do? I gotta earn the living so I guess I have to bear with it. Sometimes I feel that I should start doing the carpool, but then it also has its own problem. The worst being – I have to wait for everyone to get in the car. If I try coming on my own car – alone – then that would cost me dearly. Aah !!! why am I not filthy rich ... why do I have to work hard for every thing.