IT’s a Fantasy

I have heard the life of working couple in 1950s from my grandma. Being a teacher by profession, she balanced her personal and career well and groomed her three children. She even mentions about her savings plan, how they bought their house, got their children educated and married etc. The working time for men and women started at 8 am and ended by 5 or 6 pm. This included their travel time to their workplace as well. Of course, the mode of transport was by foot or bicycle. Most families were joint families and the working men and women supported their parents and siblings till they grew up well.

Hearing the stories from my mom, I fairly have an understanding of the life of working couple from the 1970s as well. Similar to the 1950s, they too had a working time between 8 am to 5 pm in most professions. But people migrated from villages to towns and cities seeking Government jobs. Hence the joint families were slowly getting separated. However older siblings took care of young children or relatives stayed closer to each other. There was some help available for rising the children. Children who were 10 years or older took care of themselves and the society was much safer for them to stay alone until their parents came back from office. Families had supper and dinner together. Very few TV shows were available and families watched TV for less than an hour and spent Quality time with each other talking about school, work and so on. Although joint families were separated, nuclear families still existed. Savings plans were devised by the working couple and they responsibly budgeted the family expenses.

Things seemed to change drastically ever since 2000s. The IT industry boom was seen in India. We have seen a rising demand for IT education for a decade from early 2000s. It was considered as a good opportunity for people to earn more than any traditional profession in India. IT became a buzz word and youngsters dreamt of having IT jobs. Matrimonial hunts for “an IT man/woman” begun. Marriage ages of men and women saw a steep rise. A woman earning 20000 waited for a man earning 25000. When she got a man earning 25000, her pay scale rose and she wanted a man earning 30000 and the hunt was never ending. This resulted in late marriages and late parenthood.

Nuclear families were still getting nuclear with husband and wife working in different timings. What seemed to be a family in the past was no longer known to the children. Companies which started initially with a typical eight hour day increased it to eight and a half, nine and nine and a half officially and unofficially to N hours. Weekends became the only meeting time for most families. Life of people working on support projects seemed even more difficult due to maintenance activities or higher priority issues over weekends. Even the excellent workers were given a feedback to show continuous improvement. Technologies grew, so did the need for learning. It did not seem to be a matter of choice but a matter of necessity to sustain the rat race. 

Unlike the government jobs, where the experience counts and grows your career, in the IT industry, as the experience grew, it was more of a challenge to survive the threats. Satisfaction remained just an unknown word to the IT industry.

As the salaries grew, so did they create their needs. In the initial years, owning a car, bike and house seemed to be a prestige. But now owning a luxury car, a luxury bike and a luxury apartment seems to be a prestige. People no longer want to be called a “middle class”. Peer pressure still caused people to fake up their statuses. The concept of savings or budget is being looked down. Funny part is employees hate to be compared to their peers during management reviews but they compare themselves personally and want to increase the standard of living seeing the neighborhood.

Irrespective of the level of earnings, all that we hear is “No money at the mid of the month” which is the bitter truth. e-Commerce grew up drastically and the so called online giants implement their own tactics such as “Big sale”, “Free sale” and so on. Rather than looking for the need of something, people buy for the sake of buying and boast that they have saved 30% or 50%. In reality it is the 70% or 50% expenditure that has occurred to them unnecessarily. Festival shopping is no longer special as we shop every other day.

Families started splitting. Ego clashes were seen commonly. Couples started maintaining secrecy between themselves. Unlike couples from the previous generation where they called “Our money”, today’s IT couple started fighting “My money, your money”. Money has become the prime factor for most relationships. Relationships are judged by the number of posts in social media, the number of gifts, the number of selfies, number of messages and the number of likes and comments. People would like to text each other even within the same house. Love is measured by the cost of the birthday gift, spouses give each other.

Children are taught the different brand names right from birth. Parents boast of their children being adamant for buying their choice of branded clothing to footwear to cars. Parents boast of their children not knowing their mother tongue but only speaking in English. Parents boast of their toddlers knowing to use iPads but fail to understand that we are just creating a virtual world for them. Increasing needs not only bring dissatisfaction but also greed and grief. We also see that the society is going towards a wrong path and is no longer safe.

People who live their life in a simple manner today are being termed as “Old generation people” who are not upto the change. We boast of technology growth, modernization, internet era and so on. But the positive consumability has become very less. We use it for comparing what’s available in other countries, how do we increase our standard of living by purchasing foreign goods and so on. But we do not understand that we are shouldering more burden to our lives. We only live chasing our dreams but do not experience a lively moment.

We are not living even about 10% of what our grandparents lived, or what our parents experienced. Most of our lives end in paying bills and chasing power. There is no labor law that governs the IT industry in India that prevents overtime work which causes mental stress. We see and hear of young deaths in this Industry. If work causes a kind of stress, personally by chasing for a luxury living, we ourselves create another stress zone around us. 

Our parents and grandparents lived a debit life. They worked, saved and retired happily. They may not have had the kind of weekends, luxuries that we have but rather had a peaceful life. We are living a credit life. We think we live happily but in reality we are running behind life until the very end.

They enjoyed having natural moonlit dinner in the open terrace but we are having artificial candle light dinner. They knew that they are just humans and had their feet on the floor. We think we need to fly above the horizon and live in a fools paradise that we have created. It’s just a fantasy! IT is just a fantasy! But we can make IT a reality!