First Job
Some days, I have a deep craving for Singapore — for the safety of being out alone at any time of the day, the cleanliness of the city, sudden tropical storms, and its network of libraries. Singapore spoiled me for adult life. It was the first city I properly lived in after I left home; actually, as a small-town person, it was the first city I lived in, because I spent barely a month in Hyderabad before being called to join the project team in Singapore. (And all that while, I had been cursing my luck because most of the people in my batch were placed in different projects by the time my turn arrived; it was just the luck of the draw!)
This was my first job. I was in IT like lakhs of others, but the glamour of my role suddenly went up several notches. It wasn’t often that newbies were sent abroad. I had never even dreamed of it, because my plan was to get through an IT apprenticeship as quickly as I could, while I figured out what I wanted to study next and where I wanted to work. I couldn’t have asked for a better start.
The job could feel fancy sometimes. We worked with three monitors and corresponded with people in Tokyo, London, and Stamford. The staff on our floor were almost all from India, but with glass windows overlooking cruise ships on the North China Sea, you couldn’t really imagine you were back home again. Being in banking was a novelty, and while we were not encouraged to ask too many questions about the sector itself, it was quite a historic time to be there. Lehman Brothers had just crashed and the name came up in some of our work. However, we understood nothing.
Last year, I came across The Lehman Trilogy, a book by Stefano Massini on the history of Lehman Brothers. Written entirely in verse, it is a three-act play that has been performed in different countries. Beginning with the arrival of Hayum Lehmann (who later became Henry Lehman) on American shores, the play traces the rise and fall of Lehman Brothers’ banking empire. I was initially daunted by the prospect of reading over 600 pages in verse. But a few pages in, I couldn’t put the book down, reading greedily as the Lehmans expanded their interests, fought their internal battles, and consolidated their families and their businesses, before the recession swept everything away. The differences between the brothers when the Civil War broke out, their motivations, and their disposition in general, made for interesting reading.
Back in Singapore, far from any knowledge of the German family whose name was everywhere, staring at terms such as credit default swaps, equities, confirmations, settlements, and the like, we had no idea what we were doing. While the trade investigation side appealed to most of my colleagues, I was more intrigued by the banking terms — possibly because they were forbidden fruit. But just as we started to understand our work better and settle in, it was time to leave. And in a way, it felt like the right time. I didn’t get along with our manager, and my female friends and I experienced a good dose of sexism on the job. We didn’t know how to handle it then, but it did toughen us up, and told us what to expect as women in the workforce.
I never wanted to work in IT, but I have absolutely no regret about how things worked out. There were days when I was miserable because I felt like a misfit; it took me months to adapt to living with five other people. The women on the team had to work twice as hard to gain the respect of the all-male senior teams. Every day was like an exercise in working towards approval and validation. But I gained from it all. Apart from dealing with workplace struggles, I tasted freedom in one of the safest cities in the world, learnt to share and live with other people, and grew as a person. I went to a Formula One race, wandered for hours in museum, walked up and down the city all by myself. (And oh, I met Bernie Ecclestone, if I haven’t told you this a few thousand times already!) I only wish I’d made some friends as well and understood the different facets of the city better. But I might be forgiven as a naive youngster abroad, heady with the joys of living in a global city.
Whenever I need a pick-me-up in my head, this is it.
