The LED lights shine like a second sun, and you even say good morning. The air conditioner feels too cold while you open the glass door and step inside your cubicle. The day is not different from any other day, you think as you switch on the computer. And then you know it’s not every other day. You cannot log into the computer.

At first, you think it’s a technical glitch, and then the familiar thought that crosses your mind, if someone has changed the password. It’s funny that you don’t feel violated but think of yourself as a trespasser. Yes, a computer can make you feel that unwanted. And then it starts sinking in as you hear people crying, shocked, leaving their cubicles going out of the glass door like illegal immigrants being shoved back to their home country. That was like the first stab. And then the shoving away of the body, the signing of the severance letter. Now you are one of the three hundred staff of an English daily laid off all at once, and sentimentality is the last thing that’s left. 

They called it a mild word, ‘corporate restructuring,’ to you it was a more violent thing; a termination. You were a small-town boy who proved that hard work meant success, a moral story, not a cautionary tale. You had the English language on your side. It was the ultimate currency even in the era of decolonization. Still, there is something about the English language that attracts you to its quieter side, to cut off emotions, and so it’s best not to say a word about it. 

At the age of thirty-two, without a job, with the rent, the card minimums, fast depleting savings, you cannot survive in Delhi, the capital of India. ‘You are much better than some of us,’ a colleague says. ‘You know some very senior journalists have been let go a year before their retirement.’ Another tries to find some reason, ‘The generation that had to read a morning newspaper before beginning their day are dying. News has become so completely visual.’

The only silver lining is that your arranged marriage proposals will stop. And then the arranged marriage was your parents’ idea. You never like going to other people’s houses and eating sweets to see a girl.

A month later, you have applied to fewer jobs and received even fewer responses. One of the journalists makes applications for eighty jobs, including being a shop assistant. And one of them takes to the streets, selling books. The only respectable offer you get is a job at a content company where they want fresh graduates. And they ask you to give a grammar test after being a journalist for a leading English daily for ten years. You decline to save your respect and then immediately regret it. Another asks you to send a sample on a topic of their choice, something about ten product descriptions of different kinds of induction cookers. You have a hunch they don’t need you; free samples are somehow more important. 

You always had a bucket list of what you thought you’d do if you had a vacation. You’d always wanted a break. And the poetry that you wanted to write. The notebooks where once you had written verse that you had kept so long now read foolishly. The nights are long and sleepless. You often wake up sweaty, as if logged off all the computers in the world, like some kind of death. The next time you get a call you decide you are ready, whether they ask for a grammar test or a sample test.
And sure, a next time comes, before you prepare to go back to your home state, and the moral story is at least an ambiguous one.
It doesn’t matter that it is a website startup where programmers and designers are more important than content writers. It doesn’t matter, it’s a half-constructed building with a muddy road overflowing in the monsoon which they call the IT hub. You look around and see the other job applicants, a bunch of youngsters and amongst the fresh silt that the river sweeps up, you are like an old muddy stone that is getting smaller and flatter. You open a glass door after a long time, which is a thrill in and of itself. You think you are going back to your cubicle. You await logging onto the computer.

…

Tapti Bose is a writer based in Kolkata , India . Her poetry and short fiction have been published in a number of online magazines including Women’s Web , Gulmohur Quarterly , Kitaab International , The Blahcksheep and others . She can be reached on twitter/X @tapti_bose.