And Then It Got Worse
It is a beautiful Monday morning, you wake up, you gradually open your eyes and squint at the sunlight. The neurons are slowly activating, you sit up on the bed and without any thought just looking at the wall. After a while you get up, fold your bed sheet, make your bed, arrange the pillows and go to the washroom.
When you come out, you hear your phone ringing, you go to the bedroom and pick it up. It is your boss on the phone, he is asking you to join a call. You wonder what it is about, you join the call and bam you are being laid off. Your world turns upside down. Rain starts pouring out of the sky. The sun starts throwing solar flares and you realise that this isn't a dream.
You make peace with it.
But now you have to find a job. How do you find a job?
You enrol yourself on multiple job hunting websites, but wait, before that you gotta update your resume. You open overlead as your resume is in LaTex, you use Chatgpt to create better resume. Now you are ready.
You add your resume to all the job finding websites. You are a live candidate who is an immediate joiner waiting to burn the midnight oil to generate share holder value.
You wait. A day goes by, no calls, 2 days go by, no calls, 3 days go by no calls. What is happening, you wonder. You are a nice person who has nice experience, why are recruiters lining up to employ you? Turns out that the market is a bit slow.
What are your next steps, you think. You have to reach out to your friends now. You have to ask for referrals and all that. You open whatsapp, you search for the relevant contacts, you message them. Nobody is hiring. You feel sad. How are you going to pay for that GTA 6 game?
You then go on LinkedIn and start messaging big wigs to employ you. You get an interview, you are ecstatic.
A day after you join the interview call. The interviewer appears, he asks you multiple things, and you confidently answer. He says he will get back to you. You wait.
A week passes, he hasn't gotten back to you. You check in again. He replies that the position has been filled. You are sad.
Why are you so sad? Don't you have a rainy day fund? Yes, you do. You have savings. You take a sigh of relief. You will be fine you reassure yourself. And you will be.
But you now have to get a game plan.
You start to collect emails of different companies so that you can individually mail them to hire you. You are on your front foot. Aggressively chasing opportunities. You are a tiger, you leap on your prey and destroy it with a single blow. You can also be a python which lies in wait, strangles their prey and then swallow it whole.
Anyway, you are writing pretty mails to companies and showing yourself off. But this is humiliating, job search is always humiliating. So why don't you become a businessman? You don't have biz acumen? Maybe you do, maybe you don't. Who will help you? What kind of risks are you willing to take? The world is your oyster.
You take out your shoes, polish them and now you are headed to the mall. But what will you sell there? You don't have a product. You will think of it on the way. While in the auto, you look at the 2 wheelers zooming past your auto. You get frustrated. You ask the auto driver to drive fast. Every wasted minute is wasted money. The auto driver gets angry because you don't speak his native tongue, he throws you out and beats you and drives away. You are now sitting on the pavement, tired, beaten you think about the days when you were blissfully employed. You hate it. You get up. Dust yourself. You stop a 2 wheeler, you throw the man off the vehicle and you take the vehicle.
You want revenge. You drive recklessly and catch up to the auto driver. You stop in front of him. He gets out and you two have an all out brawl. Soon his colleagues (other auto riders) start arriving. They also get involved, now you are facing off 5 people at once. You get beaten up again. The police arrives shortly and takes you to the police station. Then they beat you for causing disruption. After that they let you go as they don't want to do any paperwork.
While walking back home with black eyes, torn shirt, dishevelled hair, it starts raining, you step into a puddle and fall, now you are wet. You think of the days when everything was good. You are tired. You walk back home, while walking back a man comes out of nowhere and offers you tea. You drink the tea, say thank you and keep walking.
When you reach home, you change, take a bath and sleep.
The next day, your eye is swollen. You look awful.
The bell rings, you open the door, turns out the vehicle owner has filed a FIR against you and the police are there to arrest you. You get arrested. You are taken to jail. You spend some time there, till your arraignment. The judge looks at you and gives you a 6 month jail term.
You are shifted to the prison.
After 6 months you get out of the prison, things have changed, you have changed.
