“Que sera sera! Whatever be will be! The future is not ours to see. Que sera sera”.
This is a song which forms the focal point in the Alfred Hitchcock thriller “The Man Who knew too much”.
I had a chance to look into my future.
The company that I worked for 20 years closed down for God knows why. The symptoms were there, delayed salary payments and then no salary at all. The writing was clearly on the wall, but we were afraid to look at the wall. Like the rabbits caught in the lights we froze, hoping against hope that everything was going to be just fine. By ‘we’, I mean a large number of employees in the wrong side of 30’s who had put their heart and soul to build the organization from scratch. Well, most of them, any way. The average experience was around 16 years. We belonged to a generation which believed that sticking to an organization was a virtue, unlike today where everybody looks for an opportunity to be upwardly mobile, which is the right thing to do as my experience has taught me the hard way. We had to put a brave front in our homes. Savings got eroded, tempers started getting frayed. We were clutching at straws. There is a saying in Tamil “ethai thindral pitham theliyum” literally it means willing to try anything to be cured of madness. My wife and I were in that state, and when someone suggested an astrologer , we jumped at it. Armed with my wife’s, our children’s, our pets’ and my jadagam (birth chart) we set off to see the astrologer(okay I was just making up about the pet’s ). For the uninitiated the birth chart is which tells the locations of the heavenly bodies at the precise time of your birth. By heavenly bodies I meant the planets and other satellites and not definitely Rambha, Urvashi and Thillotama .
At the astrologer’s, there was a huge crowd. It was heartening to know there were so many people with problems in their life. We had to wait for a long time, another indication that our time was bad. Our turn came. We handed our jadagams and waited with bated breath. The astrologer took out a sheet of paper and did a lot of calculations to find present planetary positions. He looked up and straight into my eyes and said, “You must be out of job”. Our jaws dropped. We had not told him about our problems. There was no way he could have found out about my plight unless he was supplied with information by the Mossad. Then he threw another missile at me, when he said “Soon you will be going to foreign lands”. I had never in my wildest dreams thought about leaving India, so much so that I had not even applied for a passport. I didn’t believe a word of what he said afterwards as my cynical side took over and discounted everything as a means to make you feel good and make you more liberal when you make the ‘offerings’.
Next, it was my wife’s turn. Again the astrologer made elaborate calculations and told my wife that she was going through a very bad phase of her life for the last 17 years. We were married for the last 17 years. My wife was nodding her head vigorously in approval, relieved by the fact that there was at least 1 person in the whole wide world who knew her plight. I looked at her in new light, I never knew that this was the way she thought of her life with me. My male ego prompted me to get back at her and told her how I had wasted the prime of my life with this marriage. My wife started talking about the sacrifices she had made, the things she might have done if not for this alliance. The altercations became heated and soon she was telling me what she thought of my family and I, in turn what I thought of her second cousin’s husband’s nephew. The astrologer had not anticipated this; obviously he had not checked the almanac for what the day had in store for him. He stepped in quickly to avert any disaster and told us that the days ahead will be very happy ones for both of us. He quickly saw us out without even collecting the customary fee.
Fifteen days later I landed a job in International Marketing. I have stopped taking my wife for granted and I guess she is happier now that I am more considerate. Maybe the future is ours to see, only if we keep our eyes open.
This is a song which forms the focal point in the Alfred Hitchcock thriller “The Man Who knew too much”.
I had a chance to look into my future.
The company that I worked for 20 years closed down for God knows why. The symptoms were there, delayed salary payments and then no salary at all. The writing was clearly on the wall, but we were afraid to look at the wall. Like the rabbits caught in the lights we froze, hoping against hope that everything was going to be just fine. By ‘we’, I mean a large number of employees in the wrong side of 30’s who had put their heart and soul to build the organization from scratch. Well, most of them, any way. The average experience was around 16 years. We belonged to a generation which believed that sticking to an organization was a virtue, unlike today where everybody looks for an opportunity to be upwardly mobile, which is the right thing to do as my experience has taught me the hard way. We had to put a brave front in our homes. Savings got eroded, tempers started getting frayed. We were clutching at straws. There is a saying in Tamil “ethai thindral pitham theliyum” literally it means willing to try anything to be cured of madness. My wife and I were in that state, and when someone suggested an astrologer , we jumped at it. Armed with my wife’s, our children’s, our pets’ and my jadagam (birth chart) we set off to see the astrologer(okay I was just making up about the pet’s ). For the uninitiated the birth chart is which tells the locations of the heavenly bodies at the precise time of your birth. By heavenly bodies I meant the planets and other satellites and not definitely Rambha, Urvashi and Thillotama .
At the astrologer’s, there was a huge crowd. It was heartening to know there were so many people with problems in their life. We had to wait for a long time, another indication that our time was bad. Our turn came. We handed our jadagams and waited with bated breath. The astrologer took out a sheet of paper and did a lot of calculations to find present planetary positions. He looked up and straight into my eyes and said, “You must be out of job”. Our jaws dropped. We had not told him about our problems. There was no way he could have found out about my plight unless he was supplied with information by the Mossad. Then he threw another missile at me, when he said “Soon you will be going to foreign lands”. I had never in my wildest dreams thought about leaving India, so much so that I had not even applied for a passport. I didn’t believe a word of what he said afterwards as my cynical side took over and discounted everything as a means to make you feel good and make you more liberal when you make the ‘offerings’.
Next, it was my wife’s turn. Again the astrologer made elaborate calculations and told my wife that she was going through a very bad phase of her life for the last 17 years. We were married for the last 17 years. My wife was nodding her head vigorously in approval, relieved by the fact that there was at least 1 person in the whole wide world who knew her plight. I looked at her in new light, I never knew that this was the way she thought of her life with me. My male ego prompted me to get back at her and told her how I had wasted the prime of my life with this marriage. My wife started talking about the sacrifices she had made, the things she might have done if not for this alliance. The altercations became heated and soon she was telling me what she thought of my family and I, in turn what I thought of her second cousin’s husband’s nephew. The astrologer had not anticipated this; obviously he had not checked the almanac for what the day had in store for him. He stepped in quickly to avert any disaster and told us that the days ahead will be very happy ones for both of us. He quickly saw us out without even collecting the customary fee.
Fifteen days later I landed a job in International Marketing. I have stopped taking my wife for granted and I guess she is happier now that I am more considerate. Maybe the future is ours to see, only if we keep our eyes open.
5 comments: