by Sonali Chulki

Created on: April 15, 2008

I have been working for the past 10 odd years in India, as a banker. Had started as early as my graduation year, which is not too common in India, especially among the middle income group, as most aspire for post graduation or professional degrees. The only reason perhaps,as to why I started working so early, was because I ended up getting a good offer from a multi-national company, and seemed to be a great place to start a career.

Things seemed fine, the first day I set my foot in the all white wooden chairs & tables furnished office. It had the look and feel of a multi-national, and was equipped with the latest technology fax machines buzzing away, desktops clattering and spewing rims of printouts on the loud noisy dot matrix printers, the year was 1995, when the common man in India had not even woken up to the information technology era. To be a part of a fast paced and professional organization of this kind, made me enormously pleased & a trifle proud!

On this backdrop, I felt really happy that my workplace was modern and well appointed, people around seemed professional and so imagine my shock, when I realized I was working for a family owned business who were Non-Resident Indian's from Portugal, and my immediate super was a Director on the Board of the company. The multi-national' part meant they had branches or in reality, overseas relatives running operations in the UK & Sweden.

With this new knowledge, my interest in the company plummeted and I chided myself for being hasty in accepting the job offer. However I had already boasted about my accomplishment to all my friends who were still in the varsity, and jobs were not so easy to come by in India then, so now quitting became a issue! Though not very excited I decided to prevail, and decided to give myself atleast a quarter before I decided on the quitting. But what awaited me further, was something which I would have never even dreamed of in the worst of my nightmares!

Over the next month I heard several rumors typical of any small time office, affairs between the secretary and two of the Directors, nepotism, court cases, fraudulent operations and several other damning things. In a few months as I worked there and became a part of the team, I also realized that the organization was mired in several lawsuits, and had problems with most of the government bodies. These things are totally unexpected, unanticipated and shocking especially when you are on your very first full time job, and made me uneasy to

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