Sharan's words

A work of fiction

The busiest day of the week, not Monday, is Wednesday as people in the middle of the week try to decide whether to go to the office as sprints may start or decide whether to use work from home on the following days and make up their mind to work from the office on that day.

Sharan walks to his office from his place of stay as it is quite close.He is in deep thinking over the events of the previous day even though the noise around him is much more.

The words of his team’s most senior solution designer in the meeting while reviewing his solution pricked him as the words he heard was “this is a very simple solution and you do not know to handle it with the help of developers around you and waiting for me, while I am working on very high tasks, my manager would laugh at me if he learns what I did”.

Sharan got irritated as this senior solution designer is the one who designed and gave the baseline for the task he was working. He gets to his place and opens his laptop and while trying to resume his work, his mind was not so calm, it was in turmoil.

He walked to his cafeteria for a break and started to breathe in and breathe out slowly.

That day, he missed his excitement in coding and joy in working instead using very harsh words in his mind to scold his team members who always did not value his work for once and always spoke only the issues done by him which He himself tried to understand and resolve and  assured himself to not repeat in future.

Sharan went back to his place of stay and a message from his team to complete the design and testing by the next afternoon for a review meeting made him use a bit more harsh and bad words and while working, his laptop suddenly froze or the internet speed was not good.

After 30 minutes of not so good progress, he started to type using brute force and started hitting his laptop, speaking in low tone to himself bad words.

After calming down, Sharan turned off the laptop and closed it gently and hugged it with sadness filling his heart.

The next day's office experience was not so good for Sharan and he kept on using bad words against the senior solution designer in his mind and after seeing his mic was off, he even said the words in a lighter voice.

His phone rang in the evening as his mother asked him to come to hometown since it had been a long time since his last visit.

He says yes for a 5 day stay at home using his 2 day WFH status per week and books a bus ticket.

Sharan and his friends had a coffee break and he openly spoke about how he hates the team and his work slowly as they do not appreciate his work and only blame him.

His friends leave for home and Sharan still sits there wondering why he spoke about others this way? This is not himself, He thought and completed his work and started to prepare to leave for his home.

His trip to his home also had him use bad words inside himself against the people around him who were snoring in sleep as he could not sleep as he is very sensitive to high frequency sound like slurping, snoring.

When he reaches home the next morning, his mom takes all his bags and he stops her and says you should not lift weight, but his mom still manages to get 1 bag inside.

Sharan has a hearty breakfast and proceeds to watch TV.

Then he gets suddenly reminded of the work deadline and works on it during that whole day and sleeps very late.

His mom enters his room and puts a blanket over him and takes his laptop,notebook,pen and keeps it beside him at a distance so he will not knock it off during sleep.

Sharan wakes up very late next morning and opens his laptop after refreshing and keeps on pushing his limits and uses his free time to do the task which starts to take a toll on his emotional balance, he becomes harsh and like a volcano that is slowly starting to emit lava that can burst any moment, due to his lack of sleep,pushing himself on his work without a break or taking care of his health.

Next day during the review meeting, His work is approved but is asked to make slight changes and after completing it also,Sharan is instructed to post the messages about the task and when he posts in 1 group, his team lead messages him, he should have posted in the other group and not in the group he currently posted.

He completely loses his control and starts using bad words in his closed room without any control.

Sharan’s mom opens his room slowly while he was looking at his work and He says looking at his mother, “don’t you have any sense, will you always want to know what I do in this room and keep lecturing me” and his mom closes the door and at that exact moment, Sharan uses bad words to scold his mom.

After sometime he realized what words he used and on whom and how he was behaving the past few days and sighed and started to feel guilty and sad.

Sharan opens his room door and slowly walks to his mother who tells him you did not eat dinner properly last night and did not have breakfast this morning also, I just wanted to ensure your health must be good. I heard a few words of what you spoke when I closed your room door, with tears in her eyes.

Sharan breaks down and says “Amma story, I did not mean to and cries” and holds his mother’s hands  and tells he will not repeat this behaviour again.

His mother wipes his tears and wipes her tears as well and gets up to bring lunch for her son.

Sharan’s mother shares an advice: Either things go as you expect or it does not go as you expect ,you must be prepared to go through both the times and learn when it did not go your way.

Sharan starts following a strict self-control over his words and starts to maintain a work-life balance and good sleep cycle.

Always kindly be careful at the usage of words both in case of appreciation or anger, using wrong choice of words will hurt both oneself and the person at the receiving end.