WFH – a different narrative

When we had severe drought at our native, a remote part in India, only option we had was to migrate to a bigger town, leaving our house and land.

My parents were not highly educated, and they had been working in farmland all these years and we were not sure how we will survive in the city with less education but the confidence we had was on our hard work, sincerity and willpower.

When we moved into this city, Bengaluru, all of us in family were shocked for few days on the size of the city and bustling crowd. We were confident of finding some way of livelihood here and started looking for options.

One of the most recommended was to search for jobs in and around IT parks.

With that, my journey around IT parks started several yeas ago. It’s a world which is not observed by many, including those who work inside it.

This is not only journey of mine but lakhs of people who made the IT parks as their source of living.

Whenever a new company starts its office in city it’s not only gives direct labor and indirect supply chain of people and logistics but also there are other economic developments sprouted around it.

I am not sure if you have observed, there are several tiny eateries, mostly serving meals of various forms – North Karnataka Rotti , Andhra Meals, Kerala Paratha or simple Rice & Sambar etc. We also started one such small hotel which was extension of our home. We were cooking in our kitchen, converted the living room for serving purpose and thus lead to good earning to take care of our basic needs.

We had several professionals visiting our hotel for lunch. Many of them would like to have change from   routine office canteen or their home food and they wanted to taste different food. We were good in preparing it and thus, it was mutual benefit.

I was always curious to know what work they do inside the IT parks, a forbidden place for people like me. I was overhearing their conversations and understood, they work on some “projects”, they work with some clients and all of them have some managers.

Like me there were several places surviving on such IT people having their food, snacks. There were many homes which were demolished near such parks and converted to PG’s and service apartments, thus creating more employment for people like us.

We also had, many cab drivers from my native depending for their livelihood and so as pubs and restaurants which was a Friday must for the many workers inside IT parks.

When everything was going well, we heard news about a new fever which spreads like wildfire. Though initially it didn’t bother much, eventually it hit general public and government announced several measures to control the spread of virus.

All those professionals in the IT parks were asked to work from their homes. Thousands migrated to their natives with their systems to work and the ever-bustling IT parks got deserted.

Within span of few months, most of the rented premises, especially the hotels got vacated due to rent   and lack of business.

My eatery was extended home, and I was in need to survive without business. For days I was jobless and survived on the donations received from various organizations.

Whenever I saw videos and images of people enjoying their work from home, I was thinking about me, struggling here, to work for home.

It’s been eighteen months now and with the possibility of the normalcy sets in and hope of people coming back to office, If you happen to visit such IT parks, do checkout the surrounding areas. You will for sure find to-let boards, locked shops, broken glass panels.

I can’t blame anyone here, it’s their life and fortune they are able to survive this onslaught working from wherever they want and its our fate, to keep waiting for the offices to reopen so that we can do some business for our basic livelihood.

While you may still look for work from home, I am here waiting along with all others like me, depending on the IT Park, to work for home….!!

 Disclaimer:  this is an attempt to write a soliloquy of an imaginary character and any resemblance to any person, place or incident is coincidence.