Of offices shifted…

We finally shifted office over the weekend of the start of August. We had been here exactly seven months. Seven months in which we had managed to get a loft constructed, some wiring work done, and some furniture added. But we never really felt at home, you know, so to speak. We had been in our previous office for well over ten years, but had to move out when the building (an old MHADA chawl type of building) went under the reconstruction hammer. We were emotionally attached to that place, it was almost like a second home. And we had done well there. Decently enough to help us buy a home in Mumbai and live a life of a fair amount of comfort. And then we moved to this office. It was in a mall, located in Goregaon East, a little further up from the Oberoi Mall. The mall had never really taken off, and so all the shops were being converted into offices. And we got it really cheap. What’s that they say about Caveat Emptor? Buyer beware? Always be a little suspicious if you get something at a great bargain for no real reason? Well, we were foolish enough not to heed that. We moved in, files, computers and all. And rubbed our hands and got to work. But work just trickled down and died out. Cash flow completely dwindled down. The bank started acting up. Within a few months of moving into that office, we were wondering whether we would need to shut down business. Add to this, was the actual office itself. Situated in a rabbits warren of passages, there was no glimpse of natural sunlight at all. Once we were inside we had no clue whether it was sunny or rainy outside, until we actually drove the car out of the basement parking. Coming closer to home, we thought, would cut down travelling time, but found ourselves stuck in East to West traffic for an hour most times. Most of the shops had been converted into warehouses, some of which stocked chemical kind of stuff, and very often passing a certain shop on the way into office was enough to knock you out with a sledgehammer over the fumes. And the piece de resistance, we could get no mobile signal in the office. And you can only imagine how terribly that impacted business and client relationships.

At the end of July, the husband got antsy. I cant stay here anymore, we have to move. And he started searching for offices with a vengeance. The husband is a typical Taurean, slow to the boil but when he does reach boiling point, he bubbles over with rage and Do It Now anger like a bull on a charge. He spent three days checking out offices in the vicinity. He also began asking for plans of the office and asking friends who knew about these things about how the vaastu of the place seemed like. Something I had never seen him do in all my life. A lovely office, barely across the road from home, was rejected because it had a toilet in the North East. Another office bang on the main road was rejected because it had a beam splitting the space in half .  Finally we found a space, a shop in a decent residential area, five minutes away from home, and five minutes away from the child’s school. It was fully furnished, rendering all our old furniture redundant. For me, the positives were that the vegetable market and grocery stores were just round the corner. And we have a canopy of trees and dappled sunlight right outside, which is oxygen for me. I need to see sunlight. Although I might not want to be in sunlight, my rods and cones need their daily dose of sunlight in order to be at peak functioning levels. Also, the market is vital for me who is always picking up veggies and groceries at the nth minute. And better still, I had space upstairs in the mezzanine where I could work in peace without needing to share the cabin with the spouse and his lackeys and fight to concentrate with them yelling in my ears all through the day. What luck will this office bring I don’t yet know, but I do know my productivity has increased. I am able to get more done in a day. I save an hour either way on travelling which gives me more time in front of the computer to actually get more work done. If there is ever anything at the child’s school, which is inevitably always at odd mid times, I am able to rush there in five minutes and get back to office in five minutes rather than spend all my working day shuttling in traffic crossing over from east to west and back. The only negative I can think of so far? My reading time has been cut down drastically. My time in the car was the time I used for reading all the books I must read for professional reasons. Now I have to carve out some other time slot in order to read.

Have you ever felt that a particular place is not lucky for you? Do you believe in the vaastu of places? I never did, until we experienced it in the previous office. As for now, our fingers are crossed. But the feeling here is much more peaceful and positive. We actually find ourselves looking forward to get into office everyday, and that by itself is a huge huge positive.