High hopes

Arun is a twenty-two year old boy working in the silicon city of India. He works in the city’s biggest man factory – the IT organization spread over acres around the city’s outskirts. Every morning he obediently boards the company bus and travels a gazillion years to reach office and submit himself to endless rounds of writing stories in a strange scientific language.

Then he stands in the bus for almost two hours to reach his company office on the outskirts of Bangalore, because he feels that he will make an impact in the world by doing what he is doing. By writing some technical manuals for some nameless and faceless client sitting across the seven seas. He imagines himself changing the lives of millions through that little code he has written. He imagines the impact and smiles to himself.

Today morning, he is very extra special. He has been given some special work last week to write the code for a company which is into making mobile phones, but which now wants to make products to help physically disabled children. These will be some kind of devices to make hearing easier for the hearing impaired, seeing easier for the sight impaired and movement easier for the physically impaired. Finally the day that Arun was waiting for. This was the kind of impact that he hoped to make all his life.

He visualized tonnes of children being given new meaning and means to live their lives. He imagined them trying to fit perfectly into the regular world and the tears of joy they would get after that. He felt that by writing this code he was changing their destiny, and he could not wait to finish this work. Then the benevolent client will make those much needed products and impact millions by their benevolence. He knew that it was no easy for capitalistic corporations to spend money on these activities so he proud of this particular company. Now he could work for them for free if they wanted, which was anyway almost the case since his salary was so low, but that was another matter.

He didn’t even mind standing in the bus today. He felt everything assumed a special meaning. Everything had purpose. He had left his village for this one project. Now his parents will be finally proud of him. He couldn’t wait to get to office. Soon the office was there. Arun rushed to disembark from the bus. He went through the endless security checks and walked the long mile to his building. By the time h reached he was already tired but he still didn’t let that get to him.

He reached his desk and switched on his computer. He had butterflies in his stomach and his fingers were itching to start the work. He opened his emails. The first email was from the client to the entire team working on this amazing philanthropic project:

“Hi everyone,

Please note that we have decided to scrap this project immediately since this is not viable for our company financially. We have decided to make a bigger and thinner smart phone that these children can buy and play games on. They can even pay through EMI option.

Thank you and please continue your work.”

This blog post is inspired by the blogging marathon hosted on IndiBlogger for the launch of the #Fantastico Zica from Tata Motors. You can apply for a test drive of the hatchback Zica today.
Image from pixabay