I’ve found myself on an unplanned sabbatical due to factors completely beyond my control. Sudden caregiving responsibilities, and the growing apathy toward my work from all quarters, have forced me to step back. Not to think or replan or reevaluate, but simply to flatline the monitor.
Time now drifts by in household chores, repairs, and errands. Fixing a 50-year-old bungalow, a 20-year-old car, and then there’s the “Toilet of Doom.”
I’ll come to that later.
First, a revelation made by myself to myself, in a dream last night. I was seated in a large glassed office or a conference room when a smart, pretty young lady, purportedly a CA, who asked me, “What do you think is wrong with the startup sector?”
I took out my notepad and drew a cross-section of a volcano.
“Everyone,” I said, “wants a startup to grow into a massive volcano, impressive and loud, great for the optics and valuation. But no one wants to provide the magma that turns into lava, or accept the eruptions that make it grow. So you end up digging for the magma and in no time are surrounded by hordes of volcanologists and other experts (the mentors, incubators and accelerators), all curating your growth, offering advice, or acting as touts for tourists, which is to say, the potential investors.
Founders are expected to stack stones uphill, show slides of Mt. Fuji, and promise they can do the same or better. Some even put up a fake facade with an impressive volcano image -that’s the whole ‘fake it till you make it’ mantra.
In the end, no one really cares what your volcano actually does, whether it forms islands, raises mountains, or fertilizes the land. And yes, volcanoes sometimes explode, taking everyone around them with them. Eventually they go dormant and die”
Now, about the Indian Johns - or the Toilet of Doom.
There was an old Indian-style lavatory in the house, leaking and blocked for decades, but it stayed that way because my late father insisted on using it - his meditative power spot. I finally decided to convert it into a western WC. Got all the fittings, but plumbers either weren’t interested, disappeared after a look, or quoted enough to build a new one.
Never one to be blackmailed by the working class, my left leanings notwithstanding, I took on the project myself.
It took two days just to get the old pan out. Turns out the contractor who built the house had cast the floor with a 4-inch concrete slab. Subsequent plumbers poured even more concrete below, trying to fix the discharge pipe leaks.
The result, me lying on the floor for hours, head in the hole where the pan used to be, inhaling fifty years of sewage fumes, drilling out bits of concrete, and holding a digging bar while my Friday swung a giant hammer right above my head to hit it again and again.
By now, I can see the light at the end of the tunnel, though a little still remains. One thing’s certain, Stephen King wouldn’t have seen any redemption in this one.
Frankly, neither do I.
It’s definitely not something you’d put on a résumé, I may as well as write about it here. After all, it’s not about skills or tight purse strings, but attitude. Besides, dubbing it “the Toilet of Doom” not only makes my unenviable effort sound cooler, it also feels oddly appropriate.
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