Exactly
a year ago I started my journey with Novartis. When I look back at my life now,
I can see that I can divide it, though not always very neatly, into different
phases and compartments. My employment at Novartis is certainly one of them.
Working
at Novartis has been a special experience not only because it is my first
corporate experience, but also because it brought me back to my country. After
living for six years in the US, I was again back in India, to be submerged in
its sea of humanity and be a part of the 21st century Indian
dreams and aspirations.
Working
at Novartis over the last few months I got to observe closely and also learn
the discipline, demands and distinctiveness of the corporate culture. I
understood that at most times appearance counts as much if not more than the
substance. Among others, these last twelve months impressed on me specially the
value of timelines, the worth of crisp communications, and more interestingly
the shrinking of geographical distance. The effortlessness with which we are
integrated to our colleagues located at Basel, Switzerland and New Jersey, USA, geography seems
almost to be a deception.
There
is also a congeniality in the atmosphere of the workspace. The employees, most
of them young, confident and self-assured, look more or less happy
and content from what it appears, though during crunch times some tension is
perceptible too. The café is a colorful, and at times also a cheerful place,
though I cannot claim to be completely satisfied with the taste of the food on
all days. Perhaps my Bengali taste buds are still far away from making peace
with the South Indian spices.
One
of the best things about working at Novartis is the new friends I have made,
and the old friends with whom I have had a chance to reconnect. The last few months
have been personally rocky for me. Surely my friends and colleagues have helped
me in cruising over the internal waves of confusion and conflict in a
considerable way.
But
among all the good things, one thing that worries me is the disconnect that
slowly but surely creeps in with working from a sanitized high rise with wide
glass walls. Standing at the edge of our seventh floor wall, sometimes when I
look out at the expansive contours of the city, I wonder, am I not slowly
getting sucked up into the bubble of a soft comfortable lifestyle and a
superficial corporate culture, separated from the seething, swelling, swaying
mass of an overwhelming majority of my countrymen? The globalized workspace and the demands of the corporate
job, is it not taking me away from my Indian roots in an imperceptible way? Am
I not slowly falling in the groove of the upwardly mobile Indian middle class,
and in my aspiration for a successful and secured professional life, am I not
bartering away the spirit of adventure and exploration that I cherished in my youthful heart?
The
picture of a fluttering tricolor on the ramparts of the Red Fort, covering an
entire wide wall of the corridor on the seventh floor, helps in no way in
letting the old embers die down.
