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
