STRESS, SUCCESS AND EVERYTHING IN-BETWEEN
The Highs and Lows of A Woman’s Journey in the Corporate World
CARE: This is Chapter 52 of my book Stress, Success and Everything In-Between. These are individual anecdotes but to understand the professional journey in totality, I would recommend reading the book right from Chapter 01 onwards.
As an Administrative Officer of the Region, I had to visit the branches in my span of control. After the mischievous anonymous complaint, I had no option but to venture forth alone in the crime-infested Badlands of western Uttar Pradesh.
It would be worth sharing that like all other public sector undertakings, the Bank hires services at L1 quotation, the lowest rate quoted by a vendor. The result was invariably a rickety diesel Ambassador car at my disposal when I visited branches located in far-flung rural and semi-urban areas. The reliability of the vehicle at my disposal was always under question.
As I travelled on those unpaved single roads through the agricultural fields, my stomach sometimes churned with anxiety. I often wondered what I would do if the car broke down while travelling on those kaccha bumpy roads carved by the wheels of the bullock carts. The paths were often flanked by tall elephant grass, making them perfect havens for crime.
The visit to a place called Jirauli is forever etched in my memory. On visiting this godforsaken place, the Branch Manager sincerely advised me to leave by afternoon as the area was highly crime-infested and not safe to travel, even by car. A few kilometres down the road, on a desolated path parallel to a canal, the cab started rattling, and its engine started coughing, making funny sounds. The car lurched and swayed along. The driver was struggling to keep it moving. It was moving albeit slowly. The dusk was approaching fast. The area was devoid of any human presence. The landscape was deserted. And an eerie quiet was pressing down on my nerves. If the car breaks down, what will I do? There was no way I could inform anybody. There were no mobile phones in those days.
While the car struggled to move on the unpaved track parallel to the canal, gushing with water, my mind started straying and conjuring up nightmares. What if the car stalls! What if I become a victim of a crime! What if I vanish here and my body is dumped silently into the murky water of the canal? No one would ever find my body.
And then I saw it. It was a splash of pink amidst the green waters. It was a bloated dead body, arms and legs stretched out, looking most grotesque, bobbing in the canal. My stomach lurched, and a primal scream was trapped in my throat, which suddenly dried up. The cab driver was focussed on driving and did not see it, and the car continued to rattle at an abysmally slow speed.
It was a great relief when I finally reached Meerut past midnight. After opening the lock when I entered the dark house, I did not feel like cooking and went to bed without any dinner. Tossing and turning in bed, sleep was nowhere near me. The entire night, I had visions of that body looking like a pink plastic doll, floating in the swirling waters of the canal.
I could not even share these scary moments with anyone. If I had told my husband about it, he would have been unduly stressed. If I had shared it with my colleagues, they would have judged me due to my gender and made fun of me behind my back. I would have given the entire Zonal Office fodder for gossip. Fear of whispers and innuendo forced me to keep this horrid experience buried deep into my heart and I continued to tour the territory that felt anything but safe.
Decades later, even today, the memories of that evening bring a wave of nausea crashing over me.
(To be continued...)
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