Few days back, sitting in the county library, I was going through some magazines - a thing which I hardly do, now that the world is hooked to net. An independent line caught my attention - “America has invented a new type of bomb which destroys all humans but leaves the building and infrastructure standing. They call it Stock Market”.

True to its description, I tried to recollect all the times that this “bomb” has exploded in the past. There was the Great Depression of 30’s which brought every business, big or small, to its knees. Then there was the fall of 70’s which dented the American Car Industry in Detroit so bad that their engines are still knocking. The IT slump of 2000/01 is still fresh in everyone’s mind and the only one that I experienced in my full consciousness. Nowadays if you stand outside the gates of major IT companies in Bangalore or Chennai, you will see a herd of solicitors asking you to open an account with a bank or take their credit card. Almost 8 years back these same banks were declining credit card applications from IT engineers. Aftermath of explosion? Its nothing surprising though; stock trends have always been sinusoidal. What rises has to fall and vice versa.

Life is unfair - perhaps that’s why this latest market slump has come only 7 years after the last one. And it is driving people crazy again. Every morning I get up and before going to office I check the health of stock market on Reuters. Gives me an idea how long I may need to wake up at 8 AM every weekday. With every new low hit by the market, fresh stories of layoffs come floating in the air. One such story I heard was from a company which recently laid off a couple of hundred resources. Word is that the engineers came to office and were not able to log into their respective network accounts. Thinking this was a technical glitch being fixed by the network team, the mood was anything but suspicious. Finally, it was conveyed to them that the company longer needed their services and that they can go home “now”. Since then, every morning that I am unable to log into my account due to a “genuine” technical glitch, my pulse rate takes a northward stride. Is this it? Is this how it ends? How it feels?

I attribute the ups and downs of my recent mental state to the media - mostly. One day I heard on the news that unemployment rate this month has improved and that market recovery isn’t far now. And yes, the unemployment rate had dropped by a whole half percent! I could breathe a sign of relief. On another channel, they were showing the same news with additional research done by them. It seems that the government has a weird way of calculating unemployment rate. If a person has lost his job and is desperately looking for another one, he counts as “unemployed”. But if a person has lost his job but is not looking for another, he doesn’t!! So, losing your job AND your hope may not be good for you, but you sure can’t beat its positive effect on the nation’s image and news-watching citizens’ health. See the silver lining? So lose hope now and be the bigger man….. possibly the saviour of all mankind.

PS: “Hiatus” isn’t what I will call my long absence from blogging. This word is more synonymous with Rock Bands. Perhaps the “King of Procrastinators” may be a better term for me; “Pure Laziness” for my absence.