Thank you God, what could have been wasn’t

The year is ending a lot better than what many of us had prepared for. We were expecting worse. Isn’t it? Thank you God!!

The year began inauspiciously with the mother of all corporate scams. We – shareholders, employees, believers in our great Indian corporate leadership - received a letter which shocked us all. The letter from Mr Raju left us all aghast. Riding the tiger and not knowing when to get off by Mr Raju damaged the lives of many and created a distrust of the corporate leadership. Fortunately, we saw one of the swiftest actions from our government in true PPP - private public participation mode.  The company was salvaged in time. Many predicted that there were similar skeletons in many a corporate cupboard and it was only a matter of time before they would come out. Thank God there were no more (a)satyams during the year as some were expecting.

In the last few months of the last year it was a few and then the numbers kept increasing. That is the lay offs in some form or the other.  Companies were laying off people left, right centre, across companies and within companies at junior levels, middle and senior levels (for once there was no discrimination). Bad news kept pouring. Bosses were sending off employees during the day and were in turn being sent off at the end of the day. The last quarter started getting better. We were back to newspapers enjoying the daily dose of “so-and-so will be hiring 150 in the next six months”  kind of news. Thank God hiring is back.

Around the middle of the year the nation sat glued watching all those TV channel beaming scores and latest tallies from across the country and experts and some overnight experts of all kinds.  The mornings started with the latest score as the headlines. Swine flu did what political leaders have forgotten to do – unite the nation. We all watched the latest score the victims of the flu and went into panic mode if a colleague sneezed. (He was lucky, he was sent off from office, granted paid time off). The Swine flu lost interest or energy somewhere in between and let us get back to watching political discussions from the medical ones – the former is what we are best at, next only to cricket of course. Everything else is an unwelcome distraction. Thank God swine flu flew away without much damage done.

Thank God we have a government. Yes, we have one. We were all prepared for many months of no government. We were prepared for a divided mandate. We were prepared to see flip flops in the sides our leaders would take. We were prepared to watch the trading of a different kind happening. Strange are the ways of God. None of this happened. We had a government within a few days of the elections. We were denied of the tragic comedy. We all felt so relieved that this happened. Thanks God the formation of government went off smoothly.

Thank God it was not one more year when we got numerous calls during the day from the banks pestering us take loans, credit cards, insurance and what not.  Good that the banks had run out of money or were not willing to part it. There was so much peace. (At times I did felt bad that I did not getting those calls. Lesser calls made me wonder at times if my value has come down. Self pride was hurt.) In general lesser of those calls was a relief.

Honestly it has been a lot more peaceful year than what it augured to be in the beginning. Thank God!!!