Daily Grind

In the buzzing beehive of office life, where caffeine and chaos hold hands and dance to the drumming of deadlines, we occasionally finds flashes of wisdom hiding beneath a stack of unread emails and someone else’s forgotten Tupperware. You see, modern corporates are fascinating places .. part monastery, part madhouse. Everyone’s chasing KPIs, promotions, and the elusive Holy Grail of “Inbox Zero,” while secretly Googling “how to fake project productivity with an PPT slide.”

Most offices try so hard to be Google that they forget they’re just glorified filing cabinets with fluorescent lighting. They toss around the word 'culture' like it’s paneer in a street-side momo, hoping it’ll stick. But let’s be honest, we don't know why a paneer momo even exists and our office culture here isn’t ping-pong tables and bean bags. No, my friend, ours is this great Roman coliseum .. only instead of swords and shields, we have spreadsheets and soul-sucking PowerPoints. The brave cubicle warrior crusaders who enter the office each day with nothing but a dying laptop battery and a glimmer of misplaced hope.

Amidst this chaos, there comes a moment of daily zen.. the making of office coffee. It’s not just a beverage... it’s a ritual of survival. That first whiff of ground beans, the angry hiss of the kettle .. it’s not just a brew, it’s a lifeline. A cup of liquid optimism that tugs at your soul seductively whispering, “Oooh Baby .. You got this!” until your inbox says, “No you don’t.” And let’s not kid ourselves, sometimes that coffee’s only purpose is to jumpstart the morning poop.. because nothing screams productivity like evacuating existential dread before that budget review meeting.

But no office enlightenment is complete without facing the dark deity of our domain .. The mother flipping Printer. A cruel, sentient beast that behaves more like a vengeful ex than a machine. One moment, it’s your friend, spitting out your documents like an obedient disciple. The next, it’s spewing error codes like Spanish curses. Paper jams, low toner, cryptic blinking lights .. you go from peaceful monk to full-blown Hulk Hogan, ready to suplex it into submission. Really, I dont know about you .. its all divine comedy to me.

Then come the meetings! Where time slows to a crawl, people talk over one another like a badly dubbed kungfu movie, and no one leaves with a clue or a task. It’s modern theatre at its finest. A few gladiators emerge victorious .. not because they contributed anything, but because they masterfully dodged all the responsibility. It’s not collaboration, it’s an artful escape room.

By 3:30 PM, you feel like you’ve aged a decade. You rise from your chair, your bum hardened to concrete .. suitable for breaking coconuts and dreams alike. And while you contemplate your life’s choices, you spot that one colleague who always acts busy. You know the one .. her ten browser tabs open, all stock images and fake dashboards. Their biggest deliverable of the day is pretending they’re drowning in work while you’ve been swimming in actual it.

Even our workspaces are a touchy subject too ..like the whole- tidy versus tornado. Some people are so obsessed with minimalism, they chant mantras about 'less clutter, less stress.' Rubbish. My desk is a glorious battlefield of chaos. Sticky notes in three Cuneiform languages, scribbles that would confuse hieroglyph experts, and coffee stains that date back to pre-pandemic time. But it works! Because creativity, like chutney, needs a tiny mess to ferment into that magic.

Do I care to explain? Well, Go ahead, Google 'shallow work' and 'deep work'. Whether your desk looks like Marie Kondo just left or like a paper tsunami hit it, the real productivity lies in how you work, not how neat your pens are. I will declutter one day, I promise .. possibly right after I learn salsa, finish War and Peace, and attend that webinar on digital mindfulness I registered for in 2021.

And as if in this mad, capitalist carnival .. things were not mind-boggling enough, we’re bombarded with the gospel of more.. More money, More hustle, More life hacks, More “How to retire by 35” videos. What’s truly rare, is peace. Not the kind they put on a greeting card, but the real, bone-deep, 'let-me-breathe-for-a-second' kind of peace. The kind that hides in small things .. a hot cup of chai, an email marked 'resolved,' or a printer that finally obeys.

I'm starting to have pep talks with myself. Don’t just chase the title, the raise... Chase the chuckle, the moment of stillness, the unexpected joy in mundane madness. Laugh at all the absurdity. Embrace the glorious ..nonsense. Because life, like the office printer, rarely works the way it should.. but it still churns out something beautiful once in a while. No?

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I must go meditate in front of the vending machine and ponder my life choices over a KitKat.

Enlightenment is just one more snack away. Eh?