Information is power.

Yes I always knew that. But that held much more merit when I was a journalist. Not only did it mean more "exclusive" stories but knowing more information than that could get published was always a thrill. After all gossip would not made the now popular phenomenon of page 3, if it weren't for our vicarious thrill for gulping down huge chunks of tidbits of lives of people we perceive as famous.

As a journalist, information like whether its news about the stock price of a company or personal habits of a tycoon or just policies of the company I worked for, to know them before the rest of the world got a whiff, was a great rush.

When I switched into an IT environment, I of course, had no clue what lay there waiting for me. Even here, it turns out, information is power! Information about up coming projects, up coming promotions, people leaving, people being fired, being hired back, what package? how much more? Etc etc..

I did not realise the impact of knowing things, even here, until recently. The company I work for is a BPO for a company in the US and on a recent annual visit some clients visited us. Now while that is not for news worthy mentioning, the dinner we had with them was.

A select few were picked out from a hundred odd employees (instantly displeasing the ones that were left out) and asked to attend an evening with these guests from the Far West.

For anyone having attended office dos, you know how boring they can get. We were all of few women on a lawn with some forty odd men, all gravitating towards the wet bar. We had little else to do but to talk to THESE PEOPLE.

Of course once we got past the primary assumptions of India of elephants, no education and extreme poverty we moved on to THEIR plans for us. Practiced lines they were, am sure. I was listening to them with half an ear wondering when I could leave and then one of our bosses here came up to me to ask, in a roundabout manner, what I knew about THEIR plans for us. Of course he too added to the gossip chain links. More dimensions of controversies and more work coming our way - we were not to worry. Hello!!! Where did that come from? I was a lowly person in the company's feeding chain and what did I know?

But as the evening progressed I realised we were few people who were really talking to THEM and somewhere along the way I decided to just enjoy myself instead of gleaning information and like a miser, to later dole out bits and parts to my choicest few. I hated doing this even when I was a journalist. What ever happened to responsibility to society and disclosing information? That's for some post some other day. Enough has be written on it for me to add to it.

So back to conversations about tourism, cuisine and weather till the end of the evening and I decided not to consciously indulge myself in the information black marketing.