In Love with my side Pillow.

It was about seven years back when i left home and its lovely contours. The way it used to caress me in my sleep, preventing my fall from the bed. Dark into the nights, my side pillow was my best friend whom i left and ventured out from home.


Its been seven years now since that day, that day when i cried like a child, leaving maa and sis, leaving the rice and fish at home, the casualness and security that every child is ensconced with at home.

This weekend i was back with it. At a friend's place there was a spare one. It felt like bliss sleeping that night at this bed. The bed was a commoner, on the ground a head pillow, but then the side pillow took me back to my love of yore.

These are days of adulthood. Or as they say of realising responsibilities. Realising that perhaps in life, there are only moments of leaping, before one comes to realise that settling down is the safest option one can take. I got my increment today. Without even thinking of it, i am amazed how people at workplace have taken it so seriously.

I am taken back to Sanyal's thoughts on this. How so often do people fall a prey to externalities, fail to erect their own realistic benchmarks and work in tandem with that. Increments, comparisons, lesser or more than a colleague and you can see the cloud around their face.

Isnt it so obvious that in economic terms the demand from an employer perhaps would never match the supply given by an employee. Had it been so then salaries would never have existed, in the first place, the price points at which market places of jobs would have settled down. Jobs would never have been swapped, and people would never say as an employee that "i deserved more" and employers would still settle on "you could have done better."

It is this classic case of information assymetry that thrives the world of today. The world of competitions and comparisons, where everyone is benchmarked with somebody external, not an effort being made to benchmark the individual with his own inherent talent. The thought is that if you put a product in a market place, then facing competition, the heat of excelling colleagues, people will automatically raise their bar. Not an effort is made to appreciate the inherent strengths of the people.

Anyways, thankfully in the last twelve hours since increment was handed out, i have managed to stay out of this bandwagon of comparisons and sadness and for those who got better ones, discreet joys. What's the use of this joy anyway, even if i get an increment which i can share with anyone.

Well, that they say is adulthood. Realising that perhaps there is no side pillow in life, only the head pillows, sometimes not even that, or the cushioning mattress to support your frame.

A long time since i have written anything. Its not been any exciting time all this while. but somewhere, deep down, i feel the pinch of the rock. The rock who is getting inured from all these externalities, and getting ready for the next big leap. May the force and you my friend be with me always for this new journey that i am about to embark in life.

Amen....

`thechild.