MY FIRST WAGE
October 30th 2006
Soest, Germany.
It was yet another of those cold bitter windy starts to the day. The nasty music of my 5 euro sagem , which I had started to cultivate a strong irritation against started shrieking , desperately trying to wake me up. After two or three snoozez I finally groped out of the bed . It was 5:00 A.M as the dull display of the Sagem showed . damn it ! I was so happy at my Engineering college , lavishly waking up at 9 and then skipping breakfast , and royally entering the class at 9:30 .. and now here I was getting my butts kicked around in some God forsaken land at 5 in the morning ( or do I call it night as there was still no evidence that the solar ball that was shining in other parts of the eastern world even wanted to look towards this village in Germany) . Still , pulling myself up, in all desperation and curses( this is how my day started every day of the first month in Deutschland- how inspiring !!) I quicky pulled on my shoes ( I sleep with the socks on!) Heights of untidiness it may occur to you , but when your arse is on fire like this and the pollution free Europe thankfully doesn’t add to your woes of making the socks stinky, I guess it was a good idea to take the liberty to sleep with the socks on. I would then hurry to the washroom, brush and rush to the kitchen to make my breakfast . ha ha .. what a breakfast it was!!..I would empty into a bowl some flavoured cornflakes and add the ready milk from the fridge to it – no sugar! I shudder even now when I contemplate on how I managed to eat that in such a disgustingly freezing weather , but as they say .. when you are pushed to the deapths of the ocean and you know nothing about swimming , even a small blade of grass will seem like a god sent rescue!.
I finally rushed out of my apartment ( it was a well furnished three room flat , with wonderful facilities for a poor student from India , but sad that I had little time to experience thy luxury) .While rushing down at jet speed I performed the usual ritual , ring the bell of the neighbour , for this was his alarm to signal that he should get going too .He had to leave to office at 6.15 , a leisure half an hour more than what I had.
So I rushed to the basement , dragged up the cycle ( geared cycle with front disk brakes-another luxury which the ordeal made un lucrative ) and punched open the front door , brr.. it was as cold as it could get .. Some degrees below freezing ,accentuated by cold dry breeze . It was ghastly , with not a soul in sight , dark as the gallows and silent as a lake .. I mustered all the courage ( actually I had little time to think about anything apart from surviving the onslaught!),and now was the most difficult part .. I had to remove my gloves for an instant and fix the light in my cycle .. it was not fuctioning properly , so I had to do this every time I started it . The moment I removed the glove, my hands would become numb and it felt like one hard tap , and it would break like a brittle metal.I carefully rubbed my palms , fixed the light and desperately pulled on the gloves . Now was the part I enjoyed to an extent , The cycling I had to do till the Bahnhoff (the railway station) It would be aloof and calm , at 5.30 in the morning .if you are from a country like India , where be it at 2 in the morning or 12 mid night , there would always be people around the roads ,mendicants,steet urchins , party goers ,sluts .. someone ,somewhere would always reassure you that you are not the last person living on this planet! But life here in this small village called Soest in Western Germany was totally alien to something called crowd .Never the less , the silence and beauty of the lonesome roads and the still trees impressed me and inspired me to keep on pedaling till the small lights of the bahnhoff in the distance would slowly start appearing nearer and finally I would be there.
Here after disembarking my bike(cycle) and securing it to one of the poles there , I ceremoniously entered the small bakery attached to the station . It was here that I could finally see homo sapiens .. the girl behind the counter , Petra , a lady in her early thirties I reckon , was so professionally sweet .. She would sharply , crisply , yet with one of the biggest smiles wish me “gutten Morgan ..Wei gehts heute” (good morning , how are you today) . No , not that I was one of her core customers and saved her business or something , it s like in this land , these basic courtesies of wishing are followed quite faithfully , though the “How are you” was on a personal recognition front.I smiled back , wished her (though it used to feel strange initially to wish strangers , I gathered or rather mastered the cold wishes quite quickly) and said “Ein schokoladen brodchen,keine fleich , keine gross , Bitte” in the amateur german that I had picked up.Now this was going to be my lunch , Except for Thursdays and Tuesdays when I had the liberty of ordering pizzas from the office(just one flavour- tomato mit olive), this is what I had to devour for my lunch! A chocolate bun , without meat ,medium sized, everyday!! Only when one comes out of his comfort zone does he realize the cosiness of the comforts. In India ,when there was abundant food for breakfast , tasty dosas and pooris, I skipped them and here I was hopelssly struggling to survive starvation and eating buns on a daily basis for breakfast !. this is also the time when your character and ideals are tested , I was so temped to start eating Non Vegetarian , I even reasoned to myself that this would be my survival strategy ,after all what are ethics for when the body perishes, but somehow , I managed to hang on to my traditional principles and ethics and decided to live on some stupid chocolate chip bun and pepsi.
Once at the railway station , It was an experience of sorts , everyone whom I would see, old man , young man , kid , pretty girl , old lady , hot teenager ,would wish me ! again coming from India , where if you wish a person once , you strike a conversation theron and sometimes develop to become best pals!! It was very tough to see that girls whom I would have craved to talk to just say a “gutten Morgan” smile and leave as though we were strangers again . Damn this land .. In India, especially the place from where I hailed (Tamil Nadu) girls never gave hope ,never even looked at men!! But here all these sexy bitches were like making me build huge wonderful castles and then wham firing canons at them!! Ridiculous but some experience I confess.
The next hour would go in traveling , I had to change two trains and then finally make to the finish line by a bus . Now this was another very interesting part of the journey, because here was the driver who became one of my closest friends.. he even bent the German law for me . I was allowed on most days to travel without tickets. Kruger was one of those Germans who had traveled a lot , outside Germany . He was a sailor , and had a Portuguese wife . He was also the only person in my whole day, apart from Mr.Koffman,my boss and Anaika , his secretary who spoke English.. so the easy bonding. He would tell me stories of his times as a sailor and of how beautiful Norway and Portuguese were and how he detested the winters in Germany and the conversation would always come to his favourite topic- Indian women . I showered praise on Indian women quite abundantly and the conversation would go on until I had to get down at my office and say “tschuss!! Gutten tag”(bye .Good Day) .
Once into the office , there were horrendous tasks that I was asked to do . As an intern from a respectable college in India I never imagined myself doing the kind of things that I had to do here . I was assigned to a man called Mucke (his nickname) . He was a thourough man . A man with whom anyone would love working . He was the typical German built .. sturdy and energetic ..tough from the outside but soft from within. He liked the idea of an Indian student coming all the way to Germany for internship , so he treated me like his younger brother , but still the task in hand was far from pleasing . I was to assist him in packing and sticking shipping lists . Man o Man .. And did he work like a dog. If there is one person I respect even today as the most faithful and efficient worker I ve seen , it s him . He seemed to be in his late forties and his job was to pack the thermocouples and heat sensors in a cardboard box ,weigh them , stick appropriate documents on them and dispatch them to the entrance , all of which he used to manage single handedly before I was asked to help. I still wonder whether I was of more help or trouble , because initially , the language barrier made us do crazy things like acting out every word, sometimes hilarious but sometimes desperate!! ,but the two months in the dispatch and warehouse department , now when I look back seem like the most valuable lessons of my life.So though I was initially overwhelmed with grief that ..here I was ..doing something that blue collared workers would do in India when I came with a dream of working with the auto majors (the likes of Audi , VW!!) . But life is a wonderful teacher, stern at times ,but very valuable teachings these were. Here I learnt dignity of labour, I learnt how to clean the workspace after I am done , and here is again where I learnt to respect hard work.
So after a backbreaking work of a day , I was all exhausted by body and drained of enthusiasm . I once again started feeling low for having come all the way to this cold ,alien land and doing what I had to do in the shopfloor when I dreamt of working in plush offices!
Just then the most incredible thing of my life happened. Clara, the Office personal assistant came towards me , smiled and handed me a paper to sign into . I was curious, but pretty much done for the day with zilch energy to strike a conversation , so I took up the paper , which looked like some official document . The only thing that was in English was my name .The Deutsch in it made me feel dizzy ,all I could read was that it had some amount written on it and some other high fi official stuff in german. I turned and asked clara what it was with the most questioning gesture I could make so that she understood my German. She gave a huge glaring smile and said in English “ Mr. Pavan – congrats this is your pay slip:” . I read it over again and it made sense this time surprisingly . The nebula of language barrier vanished ,I felt like hugging someone . I thanked God for my first Salary slip –which read “Mr.S.G.S.Pavan,son of Mr.R.Swaminathan, an intern from Sastra university ,India … ….. 500/ -Euros per monat. I felt at the top of the world , for a moment I just couldn’t hear the fan, the trawler, the machines. everything was shut out .It was a really accomplishing feeling , after all the ass whipping I had to go through , felt like I had been more than compensated .
That night I called home and told my dad “Dad –your son earned his first income today(though it was more of wages)” and I could literally feel the happiness in his voice.
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