The days spent in solitude!

After completing my graduation I got an opportunity to work with IFFCO, a fertilizer company. Along with me there were many other boys who had also joined IFFCO to work as an apprentice under various trades. As an apprentice, we used to have hands-on training so that we can have the required expertise in our respective trades after completion of the training. As a part of training, on every Saturday, all the boys were required to come to the training centre where managers from different units of the plant used to take lectures explaining the theoretical concepts essential for running a fertilizer plant.

After attending several sessions at the training centre, it was very strange to notice a man, who must be in a managerial category, sitting idle in a room for the whole day long. We used to wonder how IFFCO could afford to have a manager whose output is zero. We never saw him interacting with anybody. We never even saw any of his colleagues visiting his room. One day, when we saw him leaving his room and going towards toilet we grabbed the opportunity to peep inside his room just to see what research he might be carrying out sitting alone there. We were surprised to see that the room was equipped with an air conditioner, a table and a chair to sit on.

It was very difficult to resist the urge to know the reason why the fellow was being treated like that. We approached our instructor and asked him about it. Our instructor informed us that the fellow was under a punishment where he will be kept isolated for around two years. He will be paid for nothing. He has to come, sit, can have his lunch and go back home doing no work. He further explained us that we all are social animals and, as such, it is very difficult for an ordinary person to live in seclusion. And perhaps, owing to this fact, IFFCO might have adopted such policy against him believing it to be the most severe kind of punishment.

I left IFFCO after completing one and a half year’s training. Once I left IFFCO it never occurred to me like inquiring about the person who was under a very unusual kind of punishment whether or not it brought any improvement in him.

Then I joined Kandla Port Trust and in the beginning of my career there, working in the capacity of a Technical Assistant, I had an opportunity to work for various projects. It was a great learning experience to work for projects like ‘Construction of 3^rd Oil Jetty’, ‘Soil Investigation’ and several Road works since I was new to the field of work I had to look after being a science graduate. I was still a halfway before I was informed that I will have to go and look after a sewage treatment plant. I took the order as a big setback for my career. The term ‘sewage’ in itself aroused a sense of loath. At the backdrop of the work I was involved in, it was very difficult to accept working at sewage treatment plant. I tried to manipulate some of my colleagues to accept the responsibility of the sewage treatment plant, but they too were reluctant and shrewdly managed themselves from getting into the trap called sewage treatment plant making me understand that they were not what I believed them to be. Finally, because I was appointed under the scheme of Sewage Treatment Plant and there was no alternative, I, with the ‘positive frame of mind’ accepted to work at sewage treatment plant.

Sewage treatment plant is where the waste water is collected and treated before disposing off into a receiving body. It clearly suggests that these kinds of plant can only be located at the remotest place. The plant where I had to render my duty was contracted out for treatment and maintenance. So, apart from me there were only a few labourers who used to be there for my company. The supervisory staff from Kandla Port side normally used to visit the plant in the morning hours before I reach the site. My job involved quality control of the treated water and to suggest changes required to be done in the treatment process in order to improve the quality of treated water. In the beginning I had to establish a complete laboratory testing facility for treated sewage water which required me to undergo a thorough study of waste water treatment. After I got the laboratory set and completed studying the theory of treatment process and when my work became nothing but a routine I started finding myself isolated. The nature of work left me devoid of having quality people around me to interact with. The plant being situated at the remote location my colleagues hardly used to visit me.   I was prompted to become nostalgic about the unusual punishment a manager at IFFCO was subject to. I felt being under the same trial despite not being subject to any punishment.

In school days, I left deprived of reading for the reasons I do not remember clearly. Owing to poor reading habit, it used to take more than a month's time for me to complete a hundred pages book. Owing to this, somewhere in the corner of my mind I always kept feeling a kind of incompleteness within me. But, after getting deployed at sewage treatment plant, the limited scope of work rendered me to have enough time to read newspapers and books of my choice. Sitting alone, inside the laboratory room, I cultivated the habit of reading which made me feel like recovering the lost ground. Reading helped me bring in changes at personality front. I came to know about money management and, eventually, started investing in equities and various debt instruments. I came to know about the importance of self-management which led me to take initiation from ‘Yogoda Satsang Society of India’ and since then I am regularly practicing spirituality. I remember how inclined I was to become a software engineer after completing graduation. But, since I wasn’t academically bright student, I never attempted to appear entrance test for such courses. Today I have no regrets about not being able to become a software engineer since I have developed proficiency in writing software programs in ‘visual basic’ and have mastered writing queries in ‘SQL’.

‘Wandering one gathers honey’ is a famous adage and I have heard people advocating that for a person to bloom to his fullest, travelling to different places and interacting with people from different walks of life is must. But as a contradiction, as it may suggest, the time spent in solitude could also work wonders to bring in the desired changes.