Watching a Play With the Curtains Drawn

Notes on unsaid subtleties of Joining from Home, by Vedant Vaishampayan, Copywriter

We as humans are always gauging things, aren’t we? Based on the data gathered from the environment, we draw up estimates and conclusions. We try to breathe in a space, unknowingly storing bits and pieces of it inside us. We have a spot we prefer to stand in, we know how the breeze feels through the window in the corner in the evening. Further, we also tend to make calculated guesses about people from the way they move, react, listen, speak, breathe. The contours of their faces when they emit a specific vowel. The coordination between their hands and body as they eat. What they find funny, what they understand, what they ignore and what interests them.

Now, imagine interacting with all of this but not seeing any of it. Just a voice and the accompanying lilts and undulations. A whole repository of experiences and preferences of a singular human specimen, all tucked under the tiny flap of their voice. Stretch your mind further and imagine that they will register your responses alone, not your clothes, not the way you make your hair, not the way you walk in the morning nor the way you walk after a long day. Only and only your voice will be used to construct an approximate scaffolding of you; what they think you are; like making my voice deeper to sound as if I know what I am saying. It’s like being locked outside a door with only the keyhole to provide a semblance of a visual, and the odd chit of information being passed under the door, from either side.

All the minor things of a workplace, like catching a smoke, heading for lunch, the ball of jokes being flung across the room, have yet to appear. (In the current scenario, there is Amma asking me to get lunch, and a sly cigarette at 1 am before I crash.) This is basically a steady round of work with a small nap between at night. It is going in back and forth on WhatsApp and Teams trying to get the hang of things, trying to understand the processes that go unsaid. There is a bit of uncertainty, especially in a large conference call that is majorly attributed to everyone waiting for a turn to speak and also the internet connection giving up on them. Viewing it from a distance (or at least trying to), one comes to realize that this structure that they are a part of now is so complex with nodes of information sparking off in all directions. Information that would take ages to fathom.

This is what it feels like to join a company, start a job, become a part of the workforce from home. What a trip, or rather the lack of one.

Milan Kundera, in his novel ‘Immortality’, presents a surreal concept: “Just imagine living in a world without mirrors. You’d dream about your face and imagine it as an outer reflection of what is inside you. And then, when you reached forty, someone put a mirror before you for the first time in your life. Imagine your fright! You’d see the face of a stranger. And you’d know quite clearly what you are unable to grasp: your face is not you.” Somewhere, a similar hypothesized scenario has been birthed. Associating personalities to numbers and WhatsApp messages, associating sensations to a space that is yet to host us. And here we are, trying to squeeze our eyeballs through the keyhole. Trying to stuff a part of ourselves, as large as possible, balanced precariously on tiny chits of paper, under the door. Thank you for a larger chit. You are very patient.

“The serial number of a human specimen is the face.”
— Milan Kundera, Immortality