The Company Men

Last weekend we saw "The Company Men", a movie on modern day corporate life set during the 2008 and 2009 recession.

It is a beautifully filmed and narrated story set during that time, and the impact of job loss on the lives of the characters. The film touches very briefly on management greed and the unremitting pressure of financial performance from share-holders and the "market", but in the most it keeps to its core of focusing on the lives of its protagonists. It illustrates the collapse of inherent mental models and the change in each person as they go through experiences that are probably getting universal. The “job for life” ethos that our parent’s generation lived through is coming to an end in most parts of the world, as even Government jobs are no longer sacrosanct. The confusion and perplexity that besets the characters as they try and make sense of events out of their control, and their efforts to rationalize them as they unfold, is engrossing.

We saw the film as a family, and we loved it. Its unhurried pace and its unfolding storyline had us enthralled, and what was even better was that it kept to its promise of authenticity. There were no dramatic turnarounds and no miraculous escapes – just life as it unravels for most people. We could identify with a plethora of characters, just as we could with the various emotions, since they were the most human of reactions. From anger to non-acceptance to shame, and then to the eventual recognition of the need to survive.

The film also touched upon some key sentiments at a subliminal level. How our jobs, not only provide a means to a living, but have evolved to providing significance to our existence itself. The very act of getting dressed every morning and driving to work provides a purpose, bereft of which, it strips one off their individuality. We are what we do. What would we be, if we did not go to work every day?

The movie illuminated the importance that we give to material possessions that surround us, and our unwillingness to let them go. Our house, our car, the school’s our children go to, club memberships, all provide a snapshot to the world of where we stand on the material index. It is deemed unfathomable to relinquish these, having achieved a particular level, but at what cost? As much as anything else, these paradigms define us and shape our lives through the unconscious decisions that we make. They express to the world how we view ourselves.

The movie also showed the role of family, and the impact of the family’s support or the lack of it, on the different characters. Probably more than anything else, this aspect of one’s life defines eventual success or failure as different reactions lead to divergent decisions. The need to keep up appearances, denial, and ego add pressure to an already extreme situation, whereas acceptance and pragmatism overcome most hurdles.

To sum it up, an eminently watchable movie, and definitely one that will provide fodder for conversation with friends.

The Haze of Time

In my previous blog I had written that I hardly ever pick up a physical book nowadays. Last week I decided to go through my bookcase to clear books that I thought I would never read again. As I was sorting a shelf, I noticed an old school textbook. It was a thin dust-covered book, tucked away amidst other tomes, and since it was a volume of short essays I thought it could provide some bedside reading. Anyway, that night I picked it up to read and lo and behold, the first thing I noticed were my handwritten notes, jotted down when I was probably younger than my son.

My generation, which precedes the digital age by quite a margin, have a few photographs, but no video or voice recordings, to remind oneself of how we looked and sounded when young. In short we have little to no digital memories! My parents did not maintain scrapbooks full of our dithering’s, drawings and squibbles, and due to the severe limitations of living space, no toys, clothes or other memorabilia were kept either. So to chance upon any personal belonging from that era was quite strange. Reading my scribbles from over three decades ago, started me thinking about the conditions and state of mind under which I would have written the same. It transported me back to my school and my classroom, and the trials and tribulations that at that age filled up my world.

My last years in school were a time of studying and examinations, unrelieved by play or relaxation. I do not have particularly good memories of those years, not because of any abuse or punishment. It was just that they were an endless parade of days filled with meaningless tests and exams. All I remember is trudging from school to tuitions and back again. Days spent cramming senseless facts and statistics that helped me not a bit, later in my chosen field. Those years were spent studying endlessly, with days and weeks of play, sunshine and happiness irretrievably lost due to the facile pressures of student life. Thankfully there was no pressure from my parents at all, and I can only imagine the hell those years would have been for classmates whose parents were "involved" with their studies and school.

I remembered chomping at the bit to leave the strictures of school life, but also overwhelmed by the thought of getting out into the wider unfettered College world. From the time that I could remember, my life had been a road that stretched straight ahead, with no forks or crossroads. Every year was a progression into the next school year, with each class unfolding either new subjects or greater depth in the same ones. The only thing that changed from year to year was my decreasing ability to cope with the different fields of study.

I remembered the trauma of my Board examinations, followed by the practical’s for Biology and Chemistry. And after that ......... nothing. The time between the Board examinations and the Final results draws a complete blank. I cannot remember anything. I was probably in mental stasis, with the contradictory emotions of excitement and fear, making it akin to floating away from the womb, the umbilical cord cut, never to know again the warmth of the familiar.

Every time we gain a new foothold on the steps of life, we concurrently lose something else. Whether it is our innocence, our paradigms, our friends or our comfort zones, life extracts its price.

I retraced the journey that I had embarked on since those school days, as an under-confident geeky slip of a boy, with neither the brains nor the brawn to take on the world. Any initial hint of bravura was crushed by the fiasco of my tenth grade results, the outcome of which was my inability to get admissions into any city college. At the time, the shame was almost unbearable, but my parents took it as stoically as they did all else. Not once did I feel their support falter, or hear them express even the hint of disappointment. All I recall are days spent in snaking queues for college admissions, with a growing sense of desperation as door after door was slammed shut in our faces.

In retrospect it was probably the best thing that happened. I tasted failure very early in life. I learnt the direct co-relationship between work and results, and that actions counted for more than words. Even more importantly I learned that failure was just an experience, and what mattered eventually was our reaction to it. Spending the next two years of my life in a community charitable school taught me to be humble, to learn to adapt to situations that one does not control, and the virtue of patience. All values that I frittered away during the next three years, in one of the most prestigious (in those days) college in Bombay. The freedom of college life, coupled with the absence of study or supervisory pressure made me complacent and lazy. From those years I learned that lessons not well learned are soon forgotten, and that freedom without responsibility is a one way street to failure.

Chancing upon my text book made me reflect on my journey since those days. In that cursive text from years gone by, I recognized the undeniable lineage of my current scribble. And just as the foundation for my handwriting was laid in those nascent days of my life, so was the character of the person I was meant to become.

The child truly is the father of the man.

P.S. Yup that is me in the photograph, and the glasses were the cheapest and toughest that my Dad could find in Bombay. They lasted through half my school years, and well into college!