An Ode to Office

Monday morning is usually something very few look forward to. You get to hear of Just Another Manic Monday, Blue Monday, I Don’t Like Mondays, Rainy Days and Mondays, Call it Stormy Monday…you get the picture. Fortunately, we have no such Monday afflictions in the workplace. Possibly it is the company we keep. An eccentrically eclectic elite, each one with a distinct quality branded in like the mark of Cain.

Trust me, I was very good in deed…but the constant quartet of the Saint, the Sinner, the Sleepy Slicker and the Soulful Slurper, has impacted me to no end. I have been urged to navigate life with prayers, long dangling earrings, deadly high heels, smart hairdos, food for the soul, laughter that makes the stomach hurt, and if none of these worked then sleep it out. Finally, when I out slept the woes, prayed feverishly, hung chandeliers on the ears, ensconced feet in stilts, styled the hair, obsessed about food, and laughed till my stomach hurt, I was told I was on the way to recovery. And you can’t but laugh because office is a riot where the Sinner urges the Saint to buy Devil’s food cake mix, and the Sleepy Slicker slips in a comment about age and girth as the Soulful Slurper waits in anticipation for a slice or two...maybe even more?

There are many others in between:
The Homework Helpline who is just a phone call away for the kid’s Hindi and French homework doling out explanations with the single-dimple smile thereby ensuring that she receives the first call as well as earns the chance to share the blame on report card day. We have however successfully thanks to her learnt to say, “Mon pied” to the world and stand our ground.
The Doomsday Devi who exhorts everyone to close corporate accounts to the safe shores of nationalized banks on basis of some floating rumors and with equal fervor requests the team members to shut up and bounce (the instance).
The Virtual Vaulter who has an ABs pro, Yoga mat and all the relevant exercise material like hand and legs etc, but she prefers to watch and experience pole vaulting and other asanas virtually. The rest of the time she does not correct perceptions of people who vacate their seat in trains, planes, and automobiles asking her politely when she is due –she’s been overdue for a while now but in virtual shape.
The Peaceful Piper, who has the deceivingly peaceful look till she pipes in a last word when you least expect her to everyone’s amazement and amusement but she’s our only link with respectability – the only sane shred this team can lay claim to.
The Taciturn Tapori whose outer reserve is a ruse for the inner fierceness that puts all and sundry in place dismissing dissent with the emphatic Hyderabadi, “Chhal” when you feign an excuse for whatever it is you are trying to escape from.

And escaping I was from a trip being planned to Goa with the whole jing bang club to slink into yet another quiet Sunday watching CSI NY. I was issued the threat that if I did not agree, I would be thumped into the sand, fed to the lobster, which then would be cooked and eaten. A concerned office pal who was headed to the wise hills of the Himalayas heard the threat and told me, “ You are better off coming with us to the Valley of Flowers- it’s in the opposite direction, away from this lot!” They looked at him glaringly and he slinked away saying he would bring me back pictures of the Brahma Kamal, if of course, I was not inside the Lobster. It’s a severe matter here when a face is spotted with the ‘look of a ditcher’…

Many painful deliverables have been successfully timed after rahu kalams or when Saturn moved out of Pluto. A simple conversation is unraveled to reveal double (often triple) entendres till you have to think and measure every single word you use because you never know what kind of hornet’s nest you are setting up. A trip to the hairdresser opens the floor up for discussion and debates – “Rats attacked your hair last night or what?” Should you wish a coconut to fall on some duffer’s head, they will assure you that it would be bunch of coconuts that would fall. On a day that you come in angry and cursing your luck that star-crossed you and Hugh Jackman, you get a patient hearing and the advice to cry out your agony into the hollow of a tree. We have not yet found that tree with a hollow where we can wallow.

Then there was a time when my brother’s visit, coincided with a company dinner being hosted at a fancy venue. Considering the ongoing recession the operating thought was grab the free dinner. Colleagues suggested I put the key outside the Tulsi plant so that brother could let himself in. Then I asked them what I should do with my child...the reply was "Is your Aloe plant big enough? Put her under there." My appalled sibling who was crossing seas to see us called me skinflint and wondered if I was exchanged at birth, till I had to demonstrate my inherent selfless nature and prove I am family indeed by forgoing that dinner. The next day, my colleagues did as was expected of them – cruelly detail out the menu and smack their lips about the desserts.

It is here that I learnt how the love for food is the sincerest form of love and that often you eat for your soul – especially cakes with the chocolate ganache to die for and the Mysore pak that melts in your mouth. Hot samosas, are swooned over. I have been witness to such passion for mushroom that I began questioning my own sanity for the company that I keep. The fish fry is received with much festoon as a newly crowned queen. The chicken in the curry is given adoring looks that it never got when it was alive. The communal love shared over chicken biryani made me feel that it could possibly be a useful aid during riots, till I got singled out as a vegetarian. For team lunches, a Kebab haven would be sought after and after a cursory glance at my fellow vegetarians, and me they would say, “We can throw them a barbecued paneer or grilled mustard cauliflower.” A suggestion of a vegetarian Italian restaurant invites comments on the lines of “Fee, Fi, Fo, Fum! What? No bones of chicken? Are you that dumb?” I did however get a lunch treat at a Chinese joint which made me feel real special, till I saw winks exchanged and the following said, “Anyway all we have to give her is veg rice and a couple of baby corns”.

As for exercise, one colleague simply sinks back in her chair whenever the issue of Yoga comes up and asks me to show her the Surya Namaskar – till I figured out that whenever she felt she needed exercise, she would ask me to proxy it for her! Not that exercising attempts haven’t been made. In a fit of an exceedingly ambitious moment, we all signed up for Yoga Classes, where those of us who could actually perform the asanas were discouraged by comments that our legs were short or arms were long. But then the same excuses were given if an asana could not be performed - one leg is shorter than the other. And then there were some us who would defiantly sit cross-legged looking at the others and pointing out at the fat peeking out of errant yoga clothes. Understandably, Yoga classes began with full attendance on the first day, only to peter out to a day when a colleague found she was the whole and sole participant. That day she got an intensive one-to-one session with the instructor who contorted her into seemingly unreasonable arches and twists, that had her hobbling in to work the next morning throwing us deadly looks…Our boss nearly laughed till she cried, expressing how she wished she was a fly on the wall and even considered making Advanced Yoga classes mandatory. Thankfully the classes are still optional with none of us opting for it. Needless to say nothing was lost…not even the weight.

This could have been an All Woman’s team, if it wasn’t for a few men here and there who any way do not want to be seated anywhere near us and keep a safe distance. Besides, they would not understand the need for detailed dissections of clothes, haircuts, movies, books, grocery items, education, children – and men. It’s been a pooled knowledge of shared experiences and much appropriate naming from the Saint who if she is not doing her stand-up comedian routine, dabbles in scientific studies to classify men as such:
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Mammalia
Order: Primates
Family: Hominidae
Genus: Ogleterrific
Species: Sanitus empathos (common name: Nice Guy)
Rasculus rottenii (common name: Rascal)
Cynicus goldbrick (common name: Heartless Cynic)
Ogleterrific incineratus (So uncommon that there are no common names)
Some species are yet to be identified and are broadly classified as UNKNOWN. (Which basically also translates that some mysteries are best left unsolved and that we haven’t had the time or funds for additional research)

Forget about men, God has been analyzed, forcing the Saint to ceaselessly pray for the salvation of our souls and her’s – after all wasn’t it she who cooked and ate the pet duck(so what if it was bred for table purposes?) The rest of us feel a lot safer that she is praying because that means the rest of us can go about our evil ways – he he he!

Some voice bites:
You know whaaat?
No, I don’t know what.
I have Chicken Pox!
At this age? Please don’t come anywhere near us.
You know whaat else?
What?
My computer crashed.
What? You gave your computer the virus too!

I baked a cake over the weekend.
Where is it?
I ate it.
You Cheap Charlie!

Won’t you come and see me because I am sick.
No, and stay away from us for a month and give us notice when you are coming.
Why?
We will wave Neem leaves to get rid of viruses around you.

Pigeons are eating off all the potted Plants.
Can’t you get rid of them?
I feel like shooting them.
Hey, you can’t do that.
That’s why I ate off the eggs they laid in the pots.
How can you do that??
Simple – made an omlette…but it was very very small.

I feel so old today.
You are old.

My stomach is aching. (rubbing the (ahem!) seating arrangement!)

Kaun Columbus yeh application banaya…?
I just don’t understand this!
Don’t worry, you don’t need to.

Come you Little Thing, lets have some tea (person in high heels talking to vertically challenged other)

You are not taller than me.
Yes I am!
No you are not!
(Both parties solicit impartial opinion) Yes she is taller than you.
That's only because she has a big head.

You really are sooo nice…
OK OK…tell me what you really want?

Why are you wrapped up and sitting up hunched on your chair?
I am cold.
You look like a Toda woman.
What?
All you need is over-sized earrings and five husbands.
(Victim faints but rallies herself next day with huge earrings but no husbands - she also smses back, "Nice to be a short Toda, in flat sandals and loose pants and only Hugh Jackman to dream about")

I am going to be nice to you for two days (pulls victim’s chair away after two seconds)

Who has taken my chair?
Not me, but you can take mine.
No it will have Enterobius vermicularis.
What is that???
Pinworm.

That churidar looks like it was Mulla Nasruddin’s.
No no, it looks like that cloth hanging on the bottom of the big grinder we use in Chennai to make sure the chilli powder or the atta doesn’t spill over.

Arre, Chhal!!!

After all this over, there will be still the one who will suddenly peek over the cubicle wall to say “Kya Boli?”

In fact office is a place where one can’t even be depressed in peace. No one allows you to trip over a long face…they would rather stick out a leg, trip you literally, guffaw when you land on your bottom and pull your leg while you are still down. No ego massages available and be sure that there can be verbal guerilla warfare at any given time. Do not offer the rear end even if you have to pick a pencil up from the floor - it will be used as target practice by people who were kicking donkeys in their last birth. The bonhomie is hard to capture. The animated discussions, the absurd analogies and not a single chance is missed to point out how advanced you are in age, or how bad your hair looks. Amazingly, not a single deadline is missed. Not a single job left incomplete.

What a riot – what an incomparable tribe. Even though I say so myself. You know what I mean?

PS: Should you not see any post after this one, I might have been laid to rest.
PPS: RIP

There is Something about Mangoes

There is something about mangoes that makes the hottest Indian summers cool. There is that first eager anticipation of the mango blossoms, and the consequent prayers not to have the weather go all beserk at the wrong time so that the trees get a chance to blossom to fruition. Then the little green mangoes, making appearances like tiny tots on the first day of school, failing miserably to match up to the bully tree-bats who harrass them. Then there is their fight to thwart stone attacks launched in a bid to fell a few of the green ones to relish with salt. The privileged ones take cover behind the foliage till their greeness melts to match the golden of the sun. The journey is long and hard, but the hotter the summer, the sweeter seem to be the mangoes…and then the whole town is ablaze with golden yellow, and awaft with an aroma words will fail to describe. If there is to be royalty among fruits, the mango is undisputed as king, queen and annointed heir.

And so the Mangifera floods the nation with its majesty: Alphonso, Amrapali, Badami, Bangalora, Banganapalli, Bombay, Bombay Green, Cheruku Rasalu, Chinna Rasalu, Roomani, Dasheri, Fajri Kalan, Fazli, Fernandian, Gulabkhas, Himayath, Himsagar, Imam pasand, Jehangir, Kesar, Kishen Bhog, Komanga, Lalbaug, Langra, Maldah, Malgis, Mallika, Mankur, Mankurad, Moovandan, Mulgoa, Nattuma , Neelum, Pairi, Pedda Rasalu, Priyor, Rajapuri, Raspuri, Ratna, Safeda, Sammar Bahisht, Suvarnarekha, Totapuri, Vanraj, Zardalu…endless names, endless choices, endless flavor...

And so this season, each of my mornings began with a mango. Each scoop like a spoonful of sunshine. The sweetness unmatched. The texture smooth and delightful. The entire experience of relishing a mango is better than anything else.

Yes, better than anything else. Share a mango? Never! Bother about weight? Never! Control the indulgence? Never! Gorge on the slices, or eat them scoop by scoop or hedgehog style, a mango will always remain unparalleled.

There is the politics of mangoes, recall the attempts at sweetening Indo-Pak relations with the gift of mangoes? There is also the economics of mangoes. The mangoes you eat can help slot you in the appropriate economic bracket. Alphonso, means you have arrived, Baiganpalli for those who cannot afford the Alphonso…and all the other varieties in betwen...there is mango for each and everyone. Bottomline, if you’ve eaten mangoes this summer, you are above the poverty line.But seasons come and seasons go and there is always a last date to the Mangifera Magnificence. No more mangoes in the fruit bowl. Farewell then…to the last Mango of this summer, you made every bit of the hot summer worthwhile.

Face it...

“Everyone’s on Face Book!” Not me...and no, I am not going to wave placards to denounce it. Just that I’ve decided to bide my time and explore it along with my daughter... I have several invites and they are still pending patiently, while I debate if it is politically correct as a mother of a pre-teen to be part of a social forum where all and sundry can ‘poke’and even ‘super-poke’ each other to their hearts content. A forum where one's ego (fragile as it is in these days of recession) is given the boost by the number of friends we have added on in a desperate bid to show the world how much people like us and that we are not only connected but very well-connected indeed. Everybody is a somebody here and it feels good.

So, all and sundry seem to be on some online social forum or other—from the age range of 10 to 100. The peer pressure is overwhelming. The need to keep up, and have it all and let others in on the details of the ‘all’ is the order of the day. But aren't we couch potatoes enough that we need to add ourselves to another social forum in cyber space that requires us to glue our already exercised-starved gluteus maximus to the chair? Aren’t we leaving behind the simpler low-tech ways of having fun outside the door? I remember how I told my mother about how bored I was one summer vacation and how she challenged me with the retort: “Probably you aren’t being creative enough.” Aren’t we as busy parents using online socialising, PSPs, Nintendos to fill the gaps of boredom in children who have way too much in life to ever be bored? Do we need TVs and computers in our bedrooms however much they are needed for recreation and doing the homework?

Trust me, I value the power of technology—would not trade it for anything! I am amazed at the virtual dogs inside that Nintendogs that you can pet, walk, feed, and even clean. I am enthralled by the knowledge I can access at my fingertips. Without the Internet I would be lost—it is what links me and countless others to family and friends near and far. It keeps us connected and makes the world a much smaller place. I believe that the Internet should be added to the list of oceans right after the Pacific Ocean.

And that’s exactly what it is—an ocean with sightless shores. Kids are swimming in it already but for some reason I hesitate about them surfing the bigger waves. Are they aware of when the Internet become too much of a good thing and how it can bring in another set of issues and consequences? Cyber-space is a place of no boundaries. There also seem to be few limits on rules, loopholes, transgressions and eccentricities. Do they know when information becomes too much information? Click in a name and you can pull out photos, addresses, and other trivia and tidbits that leave a trail to trace someone’s life if they are not careful. Can they gauge what is real out there or unreal in Cyberspace? You can mask who you actually are. You can have aliases and morph yourself till you mutate into something unrecognisable. How soon can they have Face books and Orkut profiles? As parents we take the call on when they are ready for it but what do we expect them to be ready for?

Ready to know that it all depends on the choices they make? That what’s good is they can choose to take it slow, recognise the responsibility that goes with surfing the internet, prioritize their time, empower themselves with what advanced technology offers and evolve to the fullest potential. And hope that till then they don’t go chasing waterfalls…

“Don't go chasing waterfalls.
Please stick to the rivers
And the lakes that you're used to
I know that you're gonna have it your way
Or nothing at all
But I think you're moving too fast…”*

* Waterfalls, TLC

Monkey see and monkey do...

We’ve taken their jungles away, so what they want is restitution of what is rightfully theirs. So ‘twas on a bright morning, the house had just been cleaned of every single dust particle (well, almost). The glass top dining table was gleaming and what with the sun pouring through the French windows (why do the French call doors as windows?), the overall picture was one evoking images from an interior design magazine. Then I turned to walk into another room and I came back to see a Simian guest, making himself very much at home, sitting cross-legged on the dining table, hugging the crystal fruit bowl with one hand and helping himself to an orange with another…!

He/it looked at me quizzically and I just could not get myself to welcome it. So, I said “Hey, there!” Obviously, I didn’t get the tone menacing enough on the first go, because, he let go of the orange and picked up a pomegranate. Then it struck him, when he saw me rolling the newspaper into a baseball bat, that I did not want him around at all, and he made a dash for the exit, with cherries. Unfortunately, like many of us, he couldn’t distinguish between what is real and what is not. The cherries were fake and as I closed the doors, I could see him spit it out and give me a reproaching stare for endangering the environment with dreaded plastic.

From then on, we’ve been forced to keep the French windows closed. The monkey band was however, intent on getting back not just their rights but their pride too…fancy being caught stealing fake cherries! So they sent an emissary on a day when my visiting mother, ignoring our counsel, had the kitchen door wide open and aromas of her many dishes wafting out. The monkey walked in, mummy screamed. I cannot tell, who was more scared—Mummy or the monkey. My always unflappable and eternally dignified dad, recalled that the scream wasn’t nearly as loud as it had been the day she had spotted a full of beans jumpin' green frog of Orissa countryside in the bathroom, hence we had nothing to worry about. But for the monkey, it was was way too much—he bolted for his life and it must have taken a great deal of cajoling to get him back into the war against humans. But the rest of the band were spurred to plan another onslaught. They launched it the day my mother and I, were tending to the green gladiators, and your’s truly, left the doors of the balcony open. There we were digging and repotting my grateful plants, when I heard my kid say a very feebly questioning and trembling, “Mimi...?!” The proper noun hung there in unabashed trepidation, causing me to turn around and see a fairly large sized moneky (they finally sent the big guy) on the dining table holding on to the whole bunch of bananas, and proceeding to climb down the table. As he sauntered through the room to make a very unhurried getaway, he passed the piano, and looked at it. I almost thought he would put down the fruit of his labor on the floor and play a simian sonata for us! But I think he was smugly satisfied—he had squared for the fake cherries, the closed French doors, the scary scream…he had the whole loot, the real Mcoy.

It took me back to our ancestral home in our village and how we used to wage a battle against the monkeys when we visited during the summer. I remember there was one particular one, who had his hair arranged in a middle parting, and for some reason, he felt that our house was his. All my grandma’s efforts to keep him out, by keeping all the food and the kitchen locked up wouldn’t work. Then one day, perhaps to protest the lock out, he opened a bottle of her blood pressure medicine, swallowed all the pills, and moseyed off into oblivion, making us think that he had done a Marilyn Monroe on us. Ma was wailing that she was probably responsible for his ‘alleged’ suicide, and upped the prayers quotient for all her children, till some one spotted him waking from a deep dream of sleep like Abou Ben Adhem. Needless to say, he came back, unreformed and back into monkey business.

It’s hard to change, for monkey

…And for man?

Fourteenth on a Tenth

The irony of it is that it all happened in the Valentine month 14 years ago. The consequences of that is yours to bear because only you can bear it...What diference does it make? The sun came up this morning, you got to hug your child, layout breakfast on the table and do whatever it is you need to do.

And then there’s the dream of a time machine that could take you back to the point from where you would change things…

But, the bottomline: “No longer mad like a horse, I’m still wild but not lost, from the thing that I’ve chosen to be......Whatever it may bring I will live by my own policies. I will sleep with a clear conscience. I will sleep in peace”.*

So it’s a celebratory stride with a smile, through a day that would-have-been, could-have-been, but wasn’t an anniversary with:
Something old, something new,
Something black, something blue,
And…deadly, pointy, high-heeled boots.

*Sinead O Connor

A School Bag of Prayers

She hops off the school bus, slides into the car, giving her mother a perfunctory smile and wave but her eyes are fixed in a direction out of the car window. “See, look at them,” she says. “Those kids carry their books in plastic carry bags.” The mother looks out, and sees three children—two girls, aged around 10, 7 and a 5 year old boy, walking the dusty pavement with three plastic departmental bags stuffed with their school stuff. They are the children of a domestic help in their apartment and those plastic bags are probably from their house. The bags look worn out and the little one seemed to not be able to carry it so his older sister took it from him. As they walk on, the mother drives home, as her child keeps looking out the window.

The next day, same time, while she parks at the bus stop, the mother spots the three children again with their worn out plastic covers. Her child gets off the bus and once again looks out at the threesome walking down. “I have some old school bags but they are just too old…the fasteners are all worn out and besides who would like getting an old school backpack, anyway?”

That evening, as her child kneels down to pray, the mother hears her say, “Please Hanuman, or any god who has free time. It’s the New Year. Can you please get those kids new school bags?”

A few days later, she’s off from office early and has time till the school bus rolls in, and she passes by a shop selling school bags…

The next day, at the bus stop again, the child is all smiles as she sees the three kids proudly carrying brand new school backpacks. She knows now that she can believe in prayers.

Just that sometimes, you have to be the prayer.