The Interns Poem by Dr Vidya Hariharan

The Interns

Young lads of twelve and upward
Used to work for masters
Who provided food and board
Taught them all that matters
Related to their craft.

Carpenters, smiths, artists
All of them needed apprentices
Who ran around without protest
To earn their good offices
And learn to weft and warp.

The master was his guardian
To whom he gave his all
In return learned his trade
And began a few years later
In business, looking sharp.

This was a practice long ago
In Europe and the British Isles.
Here, now, it has begun to grow
Imitating the foreign styles,
College kids are told to work.

Girls and boys of sixteen plus
Go looking for jobs in offices,
On reading a line in their syllabus
Which tells them that they are novices
Learned only theory in the past.

They need to run to catch up
With what the industry demands
Summers, winters, all the breaks
Are spent working at jobs.
The pressure's on to adult fast.

Often there's a race to seek
Where the positions are free
It's a kind of madness
As only a very few get lucky
Manage to hook a post.

These few chosen ones
Spend some miserable months
Slogging for absolutely free
Working from dawn to night
Feeling rather lost.

During the placement interview
There's not a single clue to bare
The toxic work atmosphere
It's all smiles and welcomes warm
Till the intern learns to his cost
That what you see and what you get
Are two vastly differing concepts
Files pile up in the inbox
Not a moment to stop and rest
Not even for a bio break.

The office dragon keeps an eye
The workplace grapevine spins and spews
Any recriminations, all the news
The hours, minutes and seconds pass slow
Till it's time to go homewards.

All the others quit the scene
Leaving the interns in uncertainty
The manager's office is brightly lit
He's still at work, although its past time.
Should you knock and ask or not?

Lunch is a packed-up sandwich
Eaten at the worktable
Scrolling through facts and figures
Flowcharts and pie charts and graphs.
These need to go in a report asap.

The intercom is always on
The seniors call whenever they want
Anything to be done, there's the intern
That's the cry that goes out.
Unpaid, labour's love is lost.

The work keeps pouring in non-stop
There's no respite, no chance to talk,
The ringing of the phone is banned
Bowing and scraping is mandated
If any senior floats past.

Those kids who travel from afar
Are sent to buss in places
Located from the office far
Trains, buses and rickshaws
Are paid for at the intern's cost.

All this in the name of exposure
To the wonderful future work culture
Before he earns his certificate
The intern is taught to sweat
To imitate the race of the proverbial rat.
***