The first half of the 2000s

I lost my strand of hope of a livelihood, and two days later, at around 8 in the evening, we watched live footage of the World Trade Center attack. A few minutes, when the second plane collided in front of my eyes, everything turned surreal. The next few days were a blur with the depression of no work, no education and the news channels bombarding images and stories from the scene.

A month or two later, some guy from the company I had worked with called me asking me if I could freelance and create some training content for a premium computer training institute. Without hesitation, I agreed. Maybe they would put me on their contract rolls for a while, maybe even rehire me. I was told to study a lot of content and write on it. I worked on this project for 3 months and received no payment. The manager accepted my content in batches every week, not having any issues with it but I was finally told the work was not up to their expectations. I don’t remember getting paid for that. I don’t remember fighting for it.

Surprisingly I was recommended by someone at my past company, to a new company. I was offered an opportunity in the business heart of the city. I would be a writer, and I would be the second employee for this project (after the boss). Work was painful, as a 19-year-old travelling in second class trains at 7:30 in the morning, for an hour, then catching a 20 minute crowded bus ride, then a walk. I was told I would be paid Rs. 6,000 then eventually received Rs. 4,500 a month. This is very early 2002.

The boss was a macho types with no idea of what he was doing at this job. I knew he spent most of his time flirting with the women at work, assign tasks to me, rarely check his mails, come in and leave at any time he’d like. The other joinee was from my previous company came 2 weeks later. He was good at his stuff, but he’d do little work and trying to throw his weight around, just as he did at the previous company. Remember, I mentioned some obnoxious folk? I think he recommended me for this job. Great! And now, this 20-year-old arrogant guy was my boss.

I was now reporting to an obnoxious guy, who in turn was reporting in to a macho-flirty types guy. When I quit 6 months later, it was for several reasons. I was paid less than promised, I was reporting to bossy, lazy people, and the third, loose motions. The pantry at work had enough seating for 8 people. I had no friends, and my two bosses were out with their cool folk from work. Our office was on the 9th floor and the workforce on our floor was more than a 100. The lobby was posh with security guards for the consulates housed in that building, but the elevators were slow and crowded. The kind of money I made, I would eat on the footpath standing in the rains, in the heat. It was something to do with - I will eat and spend only what I can earn.

There were these hawkers selling a serving of rice with curry in plates rinsed in buckets for Rs. 14 or so. That was my regular place to go. I had several bouts of loose motions that lasted weeks. Sometimes on the train back home, they would haunt me like ghosts, disappear suddenly, then re-appear at the most crowded points of the journey. There were more than a few instances of sweats, burps and nervous farts to relieve tension, where I’d feel I was going to ‘go’ in the middle of a compartment with people hanging out of the compartment. Terrifying stuff and my phobia of public toilets was worse than any child’s phobia of ghosts.

Fuck this shit!

Another instance was at the correspondence school. After a project submission, and around the time they demolished the old building using a temporary accommodation, I needed to use the washroom, urgently. I was told the old toilet is still intact, so I ran in there. Opened the lid and a cake of poop awaited, with no water in the taps or flush.

Fuck this shit. Literally, fuck this shit. I am not doing this for Rs. 4,500!

I had taken a few days off because of the loose motions. I used to work Saturdays too. I couldn’t go to work on a Monday and I received some intimidating mail on the lines of “We need to have a talk tomorrow.”, from the macho one. I didn’t go back to work again. The new site launched with my content on its weeks later. A by-line was all I got. I didn’t go to pick up my last cheque either. You can keep my Rs. 4,500.

I was this 19-year-old suffering from loose motions for weeks, weighing 51kg, waking up at 6 and returning at 9, getting paid Rs. 4,500. That’s right, I quit my second shot at work.

Around this time, I got the elixir of (my) life - unlimited, cable internet. No more telephone lines, no disconnections, slow speeds, and no crazy bills. That’s what the ad said, and I said, screw you VSNL and screw you MTNL! Awaiting a bill was like awaiting your exam results, both equally taxing. The new connection wasn’t fast. It was a meagre 64kbps but it cost a fraction of our telephone bills, and I could download as much I liked. There were movie and TV file shares on the network, and Counter Strike and Warcraft 3 players. We gamed with local network pings. The PC ran 24/7 for years on end downloading something (and ahem) or the other. This was a dream come true.

Now back at home, living on my father’s last few years of employment, I felt relieved because I had at least a clean toilet. The loose motions subsided for the first time in a very long time, I had free time and freedom, to do anything I wished. Did I focus on my studies? No! I did just as badly as I did when I was working full-time.

I did however game a lot and download a lot of music and movies. I took interest in 3D modelling and game level designing. I could put objects in Counter Strike and Quake 3. Time was spent on 3D Studio Max, Maya, Lightroom, Modo, Photoshop, After Effects, Premiere, Houdini, Worldcraft, Q3Radiant and more!

I taught myself a lot of things at home. I was hanging out on irc and discussion boards with friends (online) who had worked on Half Life and Counter Strike, and many more who would go on to work on so many major game titles. It is today, one of the most unstable jobs you can choose. One year you’re in a city, next year you’re out if your game fails, and you need to find a new job in a different country, in a different continent, with your family and kids.

My schedule would mean sleeping at 4 or 5am, right before my dad woke up. I would be up at 12 in the noon, sometimes 1. I’d still have a cup of tea, and lunch at 3, then have a routine that switched between learning and playing. In hindsight, it’s scary that I would do this for two years or more. I was anti-social and those sleep habits were not very healthy. I learnt a lot but had no real-world experience with these newly-acquired skills. I wasn’t great at this stuff, but I was learning and getting better every day. I knew I could teach myself anything I wanted.

Things felt stable for now because I felt like I was on a vacation but skills alone weren’t going to get me employed. For that weird reason, I couldn’t tell whether to feel comfortable about it. It was now, 2003 and a big event in my life was to about occur.