It is true. The secret is 42. No, not because it is 21 times 2 or 7 times 6. Not even because Douglas Adams said so. That's my age. I have been here for some time. Multiply my age by 0.5 and you'll know. I know you are thinking - what's with the math? Training, training. I am not allowed to say anything until it is statistically significant. Intuition is like that part of my body I can't mention. Either of them I don't use much. Okay, so I haven't that great a sense of humour. Never needed to use it. Got married at 22, bought my house at 28, built my pool at 34, took my vacation to Tahiti at 35. Life was too serious.

But now I see the grass on my campus and feel it's greener on the other side. I feel these vibrations. I hear ringing sounds (all polyphonic). Could be my age, but most likely it is Muthu - the placement guy. All right, all right, I am selling out. Leaving the wonderful fabric of homegrown culture and heading for the light. Don't blame me. For I have seen that I did not see it coming. Who knew they would not hand out any more stock options? I should have shorted the stock long ago, but the last tranche was yet to vest.

I am sorry to sound bitter. It wasn't always like this. Back when we started, it was fairly relaxed. Machines were slow, the connection was slow, life was slow, but over a cup of coffee you could hear God's vision. It was great entertainment. He spoke about the lands we had to conquer, the mindsets we had to change and the wealth we had to create. Senthil even built a nice program. You could feed in the vision thing and it would throw up a number. The number was our pay hike. It worked every time. Those days the sentences were short and the numbers high. Last year we fed an entire paragraph and it hung. I checked with Senthil recently. The program doesn't work any more. Gives a WIN32/SYSTEM/ EXPECTATION.ERROR message, he says.

We really haven't had the time to rewrite the programme. And God hasn't had time to rephrase his vision statements. Senthil and I, we've been very busy of late. Both of us have been playing a game popular on campus. It's called Free Cash Flow. It's a simple game. When I work my regular eight-hour shift I am the Cash Flow. The next three hours Senthil works - for Free. They don't bill those hours to the client. He would have quit, but they were quicker to the draw. He was sacked while doing the seventh spell-check on his resignation. He got desperate so they gave him another six months to improve. Last night I saw him reading "Seven Habits Of Highly Effective People". That's the book Sharma, the project manager in enterprise group, was reading before he got shown the door. Bother.

You know the other thing that bothers me? The language around the place. There is talk of multi-skill matrices. The HR talks about diversified competency sets. When it gets really serious, the bosses talk about binomial expansion of our inner potential. My potential is already so stretched you can draw the map of the world on it. Frankly, I would rather have an exponential increase in foreign travel. Travel broadens the mind. Helps you connect to your country better. Nothing like feeling a bit superior to those stupid Americans, whom we replace, to feel better in these times. That small bit of fun is gone as well.

I make do with tennis now. I used to swim till it got traumatic. I hit the pool a few weeks ago. When I opened my eyes I saw all my stock swimming underwater. I had swallowed large quantities of chlorinated water when they fished me out. I avoid water now. Grass is better. It is the right colour. The texture matches my life. Hey, wait a second. I am getting those vibrations again.
It was Muthu again. That MNC just hired someone else. Rapid scale-up and all that. Don't think I am going to quit. I just saw the new plaque on the boss's table. It says: "Don't Panic." Like always I'll believe him.