THIS DAY THAT YEAR --- 1978

I know how terrible unemployment even without the poverty is. One is left with idleness, boredom and also loneliness with 'busy' people looking down at you and also semi employed people feel 'one up' over you. This day changed that lifestyle of mine way back in 1978.

I have seen in others what unemployment with poverty is. Sisters teen aged though used to share slippers when they go for special occasions, the only set of dress for both men and women at home used to be preserved again for special occasions. A boy from such a family got a job in Tata Motors (then called Telco) as graduate engineering trainee for Rs.900/-per month stipend. The whole family rejoiced and borrowed money to send him all the way from down south to Tata Nagar to join the job.

I waited for my day after genuinely wishing him all the best as I had by then completed a year of unemployment living in three different towns with as many relatives before settling in a small shelter in Chennai. Every employed person was seen and treated as a potential help for job in his organization. Though there were no formal invitations for interviews forced visits to companies' through known sources fetched lot of promise of job.

People interviewed elaborately and I answered enthusiastically only to be told "you are a bright intelligent boy but we don't have vacancy now". Hoping for a remote chance of a call I used to thank profusely but feeling bitterly disappointed inside me. "I will recommend you to some other company", "when we select the next batch I will remember you" were the other kinds of promise that frustrated me since I knew how false they were.

The first day in the job contrary to expectation of busy work was just boring after the monotonous ceremony of verification of certificates as I idled in the company of 7 others who too idled their time before getting this job. The next day was spent with a picnic to the bank for opening bank account with hardly any work assigned to us for about ten days. Ultimately it was the salary that mattered and again I remembered the way my friend in Telco used the first salary to get a pair of slippers and sari to all his sisters. 

Unlike today, jobs used to be glued with, as one was conscious of the fact that it can be snatched till probation is over and the word 'permanent' had so much assurance that one felt ever sheltered with the job ever thereafter. Jobs today are not that rare and hence people 'feel' unemployed till they get a job of choice unlike the days when one adjusted and learnt the job that was available. 

Today unemployment is not that morbid also as the middle class have all items of comforts and also some luxuries in food and clothing except that the market offers so much more that they feel impoverished for not being in possession of some of the super luxuries be it in cell phone, other gadgets or vehicle. It was a war for necessities of life that all the unemployed persons fought with each other in the seventies and eighties while today with the necessities and comforts of life already in possession the unemployed want the luxuries in abundance to move from middle class to the rich or to raise the bar of middle class.

Joblessness is no more a stigma as rarely families especially in middle class go to the level of starvation in the absence of a job to the family head. Hence the stress of fears of increment cut, transfer, suspension or other punishments as part of office life are seen as stoppage of growth and potential of wealth creation rather than issue of survival. 

Hence what agony is 30 months of unemployment with very thin ray of hope of a job is not today's topic of appreciation.

Yet for me this day in 1978 was the D day that opened the floodgates of knowledge, appreciation, recognition, respect and above all wealth and I faithfully recollect and remember and thankfully pray for getting out of the dreaded term "UNEMPLOYED".

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