2-ply face mask

Breathing is getting difficult. The transclusent green fabric of the 2-ply face mask is suffocating me. An additional layer of handkerchief below the mask is making matters worse. Still, I have kept the improvised contraption on. This flimsy green fabric covering my nose and mouth is looped around my ears with a very thin and worn out white elastic band.

Under normal circumstances, in some other time and place, even my five year old son would have shunned this 'band of protection' as fake. But, this is Pune, and through the last month, the H1N1 virus, popularly known as 'Swine Flu' has gripped the city in a vice-like grip.

Pune, with 8 of the 10 deaths, and 221 of the 333 Swine Flu cases in the state, is hogging the media-limelight for all the wrong reasons.

While doctors in select city hospitals are working round the clock to detect, isolate and treat the steady onslaught of suspect cases, media on the other hand is slogging overtime to discover novel angles of reporting on the flu. Reporters, photographers and editors alike are working in a tizzy to report on the confirmed cases of flu and resultant deaths. Adorned with the latest snapshots of ailing victims, families grieving the loss of dear ones and long queues of potential flu victims waiting to get tested, the newspapers are all clamoring to get a bigger piece of the pie called – ‘readership’.

The Government, as usual, is out with its age-old rhetoric ‘We are taking all necessary measures to curb the spread of the disease…’

On the research front, the Indian bio-tech companies will take at least another six odd months to come out with a vaccine for the flu. Compared to the completion timelines of other research behemoths – indigenous nuclear sub, LCA and ICBM variant of Agni to name a few, six months is almost like delivering the vaccine ‘before time’.

Meanwhile, surrounded by this medical, digital and bureaucratic commotion, I am left with this 2-ply face mask to defend against this fatal virus.

As the Government closes schools, colleges, cinemas, malls and other public places in a bid to restrict the spread of this virus, I try to stretch the thin material of my mask in an effort to cover as much skin as I can.

An article in the newspaper this morning exposed that not all masks can prevent the spread of the virus. You need to wear specially designed masks with three layers of filtration (sold under the brand name ‘N95’) to guard against the virus. The problem is that these masks are in short supply.

The article stirred the Leonardo in me. Improvise! Improvise! The label on the mask that I got in office, read – ‘effective 2-ply protection’, my handkerchief became the new and thicker third layer.

So what if I am suffocating, the mask is now in place. I have finally found my saviour, my knight in shining armour, who will guard me from all evils – viral or otherwise in this ‘Sankat City’, my 2-ply face mask!

A number game

I believe that this business of eLearning is nothing but a number game. With each day, this belief is gradually becoming a conviction.

I am a member of the Instructional Designer fraternity. I am supposed to bridge the “knowledge gap” of the learner. However, this involves, getting tossed between projects, while juggling verbs like ideating, visualizing, thinking, reviewing and scripting.

The crunch hits when the verbs collide and I suddenly realize they are not so abstract after all. This happens, for example, when scripting of a module crosses paths with visualizing of a previous module, or, when comment fixing (a follow-up activity of scripting) crashes against reviewing of an alpha module.

In these moments of verb(al) crisis, I sit back helplessly and try to duck the lethal volley of toxic mails flying into my mailbox. Alas! Without success! Soon, I start using a more physical verb — running, from senior reviewers to project managers, trying to explain that the timelines are absurd. More often than not, I feel like a clown performing alongside a domesticated lion, who is confused about what to fear more…the lion or the probability of missing the glass plates that he is juggling.

Time goes, in this — almost daily — melee of verbs, and it is time to catch the evening office bus.

I realize another day is over. Numbers on the calendar inch closer towards the dreaded project delivery date. Daily deliverables, in the form of number of screens, fall below the company benchmark. Appraisal ratings, again numeric, get affected by the previous two numbers. Finally, all the numbers together, cast an ominous shadow on the numbers on my paycheque.

In this season of recession, when numbers are pivotal to global financials, it is only a matter of time before they catch me too. Another number added to the number of pink slips.