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It was a remarkable day.
The sun wasn't up because it was raining. Here, I should tell you about the rain. How it fell.
In sheets, some people would say. In curtains, some others would say. Like cats and dogs, still others (the ones who understand similes) will say.
If you were in love, you would think the rain is the stuff of romance. If you were out of love, you would think the skies were crying for you (this, the depressed Literature graduate who understands transferred epithets, will say).
If you were in a film, this would be your intro-song. The one in which your wet hair swings in the air to demonstrate your bubbly character. And somewhere, in a tea shop maybe, a well-scrubbed boy is watching you with fascination. And his heart balloons. It tap dances. It blinks and breaks and in the rain, in the greyness of the clouds, he falls in love with your smile.
It will be the song that the people in love think about when they see the rain. Have I told you enough? You must know now, how the rain fell.
There was breakfast in a box. Lunch, too, was there in a box. How pleasant are these things. You wouldn't, for instance, be the person who doesn't have two square meals a day. You do not have to make both the ends meet. There is money, enough of it. If you must feel sad (despite the rain, despite its glory, despite how it fell, like cats and dogs) you must invent other problems. Not the square meals one. For there they lie on the table, two boxes. One for breakfast, one for lunch.
The van was there. A little slushy, a little wet, a little more battered. But its solid form stood outside my gate. A big, green vehicle. Here it had come, to take me to office. And I didn't even have to roll on the ground and throw a tantrum. Not for me the puddles of mud. It had come, without complaint, and all that there was to do was to get in and surrender to the rexine seats. It had come despite the rain, and as I sat in the unending traffic (this is another thing that happens in the rain), I saw so many different umbrellas (more various than flowers, more beautiful than clothes).
And at work that day, as the rain fell in sheets and in curtains, and like cats and dogs, we sat before our computers, listening to it falling...falling. We liked to think of the tragedies that could befall us. Electrocution. Drowning on the road. Or a cold. But nothing fantastic happened, of course. We were not the girl in the film whose wet hair had turned a boy's heart flippety-flop. We were ordinary people and the only fantastic thing that happened to us was that the power went off. Darkness fell, not like the rain. But it was enough. We were ordinary people and ordinary tragedies were enough for us.
In the evening, when I stood on the platform waiting to go home, the trains greeted each other and the noise sounded like the mating call of monsters. I made that up inside my head, of course. I am a Literature graduate and I must make up things now and then if I am not to lose my aura.
At home, there was dinner. Magic. Not only did I have two square meals a day, I had three. When I went to bed, the rain was still falling. In sheets, in curtains, like cats and dogs. I felt like a movie star and so I slept with my hair loose.
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In the absence of barber shops for women, dear lady, I come here for a haircut. You see, I do not want you to touch my eyebrows, no matter how unruly you think they are. I've grown them for 24 years and I'm half in love with what I've grown. Also, it is unlikely that I will kiss you, so do stay away from my upper lip. As for a facial, have you seen your face?
My hair displeases your sensibilities. You see, the day has rummaged through it and left tiny hair strands dangling down my face. In school, it used to be the height of cool. But not so to you, so possessed with a strange desire to straighten human hair. I like my hair: it waves when wet and snakes down my shoulder and on days when I'm pissed, it sits close to my head like a skullcap, looking just as cross as I feel.
Like waiters who make me starve so I order more, you try to make me feel ugly so I will beautify myself more. Dear lady with electrocuted hair, I see through your tricks. You see, on days I wake up feeling pretty, I can warm a cup of tea (non herbal) with my own heat. So it don't matter how many times you turn up your nose at me, I will still warm my own tea.
Why do you stare so? It's a strange stare. Not like men who leer so much that you feel like taking them aside to gently break the news, "There is more to life, dear man, than the bosom of women." Not like women in the ladies' compartment whose tired eyes search your face absently, without intending to stare. Not like children who stare because they must have something to look at. Your stare, dear lady, is the beautician's eye that looks for the slush when the lotus is right before her (the lotus is I, dear lady, if your electrocuted hair has numbed poetry for you). You can see nothing else and one zit on my face (that will doubtless mark me out if I die unexpectedly) drives you insane. I'm not made of alabaster, dear lady, and neither are you.
Yes, I'm tanned unevenly and I'm different shades of brown all over. Have you seen tiramisu? (It's rich in calories and wonderful to eat.) I'm a tiramisu all by myself. If you can't stand it, dear lady, do more of your breathing exercises. And no, I don't want a Platinum Bridal Package the next time I come (for come I must: barber shops for women seem a distant Martin Luther dream). I'm not made of platinum and neither are you. We're both made of skin that darkens in the sun, peels in the cold, breaks out when we want to look awesome, blushes without warning, and wrinkles with the years. I'll not have it any other way. So take your precious metals and bury them.
I've sat on your chair with the white cloth and borne your comments like a friendly ghost. I've said nothing to you about your porcine eyes. I've not laughed aloud at your electrocuted hair. I've sat and stared at myself in the mirror with love. And dear lady, no amount of cucumber pulp can bring that to your eyes. Stop holding your stomach in and eat some tiramisu instead. What makes you happy cannot be bad for health.
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So I'm getting married and everything. Konventional Kumari act I'm doing. But who cares, I'm happy as a clam :D
I'm marrying a government babu called M in the auspicious month of margazhi. M is a scientist with too many degree kaapis after his name. So ya, that's the news.
Burst some crackers.
If you haven't read Part 1, you should do so now before we proceed with Part 2. This will a. refresh your memory about the important Management Principles we learnt in Part 1b. make sure that the terms we're going to use in Part 2 are familiar (we shall repeat them endlessly for your benefit)c. make you feel important, almost as important as Kala Master
Since Part 1 was an introduction to employment and the different types of management, we covered areas such as:
a. Unproductive Employment (Government)
b. Counterproductive Employment (Non Governmental Organization)
c. Sedative Employment (Corporate).
We shall look closely at Type C at the moment since Types A and B will be printed as separate textbooks with almost no differences. However, it is crucial that you purchase all three textbooks if you want to be the King of BS.
Sedative Employment
Sedative Employment, as the term suggests, is a type of employment in which persons (often large) are found sedated on revolving chairs in airconditoned atmospheres.
In Sedative Employment, however, the biggest challenge is to APPEAR ACTIVE (words that appear in BLOCK letters are clues for students to open their notebooks and take notes. These are the phrases that will win you 99.99% in your BS exam). There are several ways by which a person can APPEAR ACTIVE in a setup such as this.
The following are some of the methods (this list is not exhaustive, please refer How Much More Can You Do On A Chair for more methods):
a. Keep shooting off 'official' emails to those reporting to you. Be unreasonable. Ask for files and reports to be sent to you INSTANTLY because the client is waiting and we have lives at stake here. Once the files and reports reach you, sigh and remark that the slowness has caused the deal to fall through. Mutter about how 24 hours a day is just not enough for you or Jack Bauer.
b. Keep shooting off 'official' emails to bossman. Be confusing. Google search for GRE words and use them liberally in your mail. Write your mail with at least three numbered points. These points could be pointless, but so what ya? Say you are extremely concerned about the abovesaid three points.
c. Ask IT to give you headphones because you are performing certain confidential experiments in your cubicle. IT guys are generally busy downloading movies in their room, so they never question explanations, however vague they might sound. All they need is an 'official' mail. Use headphones to watch Friends- Bloopers on Youtube.
d. Never buy anti-wrinkle creams. A smooth forehead is the sign of an unproductive employee. Look worried. Be tense. The more stressed out you look, the more you can zip across like Minnal in office. Never stopping to answer a question.
e. Keep a bottle of Amrutanjan or Vicks on your table. You are working despite being sick. Your dedication to your chair is unbeatable. When you retire, the bossman shall solemnly say that he hopes others in the company will follow your assprint.
In Sedative Employment, there are typically several divisions and several persons in each division. It is normal for persons of one division to never know what persons in other divisions do. Even if they meet every day, crib about the same people every day, and take their Optional Holidays together.
Sedative Employment, communists allege, is the result of a deep CIA conspiracy funded by manufacturers of revolving chairs (non-Chinese). It is America's plan, our comrades say, to turn the world into a bunch of obese, diabetic humans- as if McDonald's wasn't doing that already! American pharmaceuticals will then pump medicines into the intestines of the Third World and make that deadly word- Profit.
These allegations are yet to be bought by the common man and common woman with common sense, but in the coming years, Sedative Employment could turn humans into potatoes. Or so predict research scholars from several Vetti League Universities.
Here are the Merits and Demerits (Pros and Cons- do not get confused by an evil examiner who changes these words so as to ask out-of-textbook questions) of Sedative Employment:
Demerits:
a. The gradual development of a pasty face
b. Evolving into a chair-shaped body. Neither Apple-type nor Pear-type.
c. Your natural smell becomes Amrutanjan
d. Having to address persons you can't stand as 'Dear Mr/Ms So-and-So'
Merits
a. Free Internet
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This week, three employees who'd worked with CMama for a whopping 40 years retired. They are all in their sixties now, so they must have joined when they were in their twenties. Which is where I am right now. Forty years from now, I hope I will be a batty old lady who buys a copy of CMama from a newsstand and complains about how the fungus of youth has spoilt the golden tradition of this magazine. I certainly hope I will not be working here still. Nostalgia is the prize for growing old and I intend to make full claims to it.
My mum, who is one of civilization's finest unrecognized philosophers, used to do a 'self-analysis' at regular points during her youth. Profoundity seldom strikes me these days; my head's so fried by the time I get home that all I want to do is to press buttons on the remote (not too hard). But yesterday, since there is no escape from genes, profoundity struck me...and I went into rewind mode.
School:
1. My earliest memory of school life is being pinched hard on the cheek by this teacher whom I called 'Queenie'. She used to wear a clip on top of her head that looked like a crown. I disliked her instantly because I thought she disliked me instantly. Why else would someone pinch the hell out of me like that?!
2. Being forced to sleep on the school corridor in the afternoons. I used to play 'car race' with this tiny boy whose name I cannot recollect. It involved us lying on our respective mats and saying 'drrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr'. Whoever stopped first lost.
3. Being caned for playing in the rain. So much for Rousseau and the noble savage and the rest of the bilge.
4. Being Bharat Mata in UKG. I wore a half-saree and a flower garden on my head. I also had a crown (beat ya, Queenie!) and was required to stand up on a chair while the minions (personalities from different states of India, all below two feet) stood on the ground. This is probably the happiest I've looked in my life.
5. Bhangara dance in 3rd standard. I danced the bhangara with this plump boy who was worse than I was at dancing. Consequently, we stepped on each other's foot a million times. This could have been the beginning of a great romance, but it was not to be. Nobody steps on an erstwhile Bharat Mata and gets away with it.
6. Singing 'thechi mandharam thulasi' like a professional carnatic singer. As one of the mallu kids, I was asked to be part of the mallu chorus. I went onstage, shut my eyes in deep concentration, and sang the full song shaking my head vigorously and slapping my thigh...though none of this was required. The audience was apparently deeply puzzled by my behaviour.
7. Using 'dog pound' in my English composition in 6th standard. Chitra Pandey, our English teacher, circled the 'pound' and told me that there was no such thing. I showed her the dictionary and she gave me two whole extra marks for my vocabulary. This was probably one of my proudest moments ever.
8. Being the only girl in class who knew what the four-letter word meant. I then educated everyone else scientifically. Gone were the days when 'You are a stupid' was the prime insult heaped on a person.
9. Writing a few million poems and plays that I can barely bring myself to look at now. My favourite themes during those years were sadness, tragedy, angst, sadness, tragedy, and angst.
10. Writing my last Board exam. Accountancy. I finished in 1.5 hours and did not bother to check my answers since I was so happy that School Was Over, duddddeee!
College:
1. My earliest memory of college life is wanting to die on Day 1. The class was full of a. Churchu Parkku babies b. Goochee style missies c. aliens d.morons. Where does a nice chicken eating thayir sadam from PSBB fit in this?
2. Thinking N was stuck up since she's from KFI. N thought I was stuck up since I was from PSBB. We both thought the Churchu Parkku people were daft. Sorry Anika :D
3. Drooling over a small, pink poet called Ranjit Hoskote.
4. Sweeping the Green Hut for lunch with Shumsie. Shumsie came to meet us all the way from Pakistan. We'd read all her books sincerely before she came. Then our class gave her a book with our writing and she promised to get back. And never did. No wonder there's little progress in Indo-Pak relations.
5. Eating noodles with N and gang in Vandalur zoo when some of the delicate beings fainted and we had to make a stop.
6. Performing Cats at the British Council. I had whiskers and everything. Not a patch on Bharat Mata, of course.
7. Behaving badly in Elizabeth's class. What delight it induced in our lives.
8. Crying over Othello. Doing fiery seminars about Othello. Writing essays on Othello.
9. Performing Pride and Prejudice. I had a gown and everything. Not a patch on Bharat Mata, of course. But I got Mr Darcy in the end.
10. Valediction. When we lit candles, laughed at people who were crying, went to Gangotree and ate chilli cheese toast.
University:
1. My earliest memory of university life is wanting to never look at bread again. I became a patriot because of bread.
2. Hearing some of the best love stories ever from my classmates. And none of them involved straight couples.
3. Going for a drag king show and thoroughly enjoying the attention from the kings. The Pride march in Brighton was even better.
4. Stalking Catherine MacKinnon in the loo at Cambridge. She smiled at me when she was arranging her gorgeous grey hair and I nearly swooned.
5. Hounding Judith Butler for a photograph. Trivia: Butler and I are of the same height. Yippie.
6. Watching Veerasamy on my laptop and missing home because of TR.
7. Hating the cold, silent, grey English rain.
8. Deciding I'd never do a PhD because writing a thesis was a godawful bore and I wanted no part of it ever again.
9. Shopping in the pound store and buying pound cake for breakfast.
10. Buying Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows at midnight.
Office:
1. My earliest memory of office life is wanting to go back to school. The average age of my colleagues was 50.
2. Traveling all over Tamil Nadu for various projects. Ordering room service and eating by myself, at peace.
3. Discovering that the Government deserves tax evasion.
4. Being an Angry Young Woman wanting to change the world FOREVER. This lasted for 3 months.
5. Teaching gender for a week in Bharatidasan University and feeling grown-up.
6. My interview with bossman. Arguing for an hour on why stories shouldn't begin with 'Once upon a time, a king wanted a son'.
7. Joining the ancient Print team as the youngest and as the baas. Being 23 and five feet tall didn't help.
8. Having Aana and Chena published. It's my favourite weekend activity to go read it in Landmark.
9. Reading feedback from children and feeling high for days on end.
10. Making elaborate retirement plans.
What a life it has been. Sigh. I haven't typed out a million other things I remember. But it's time for lunch now and I have mushrooms.
Bye ya.
__It beats me how people stay in the same job for years together. Like fish in an aquarium. Everyone swimming about, looking absently at each other, and pretending that it's important we swim in circles and not in square formation. Which bright bulb came up with this office concept anyway? I'm not exactly in a mundane job. I don't ask people if they want loans. I'm pretty much free to do whatever the hell I want...except that I have to do it within this space. I have to do it here...in this place. If I write at home, it doesn't count. My leave will run out...though I don't know what I'm saving it up for. I've been here for a little over a year (clap your concracktulations) and already, I feel jaded. Already, I want to make speeches that begin with "In those days..." Already, I want to look back fondly at memories of office life and hug my retirement clock. There is something cruel about being forced to see the same un-hot faces day after day. To introduce some variation, I do occasionally make faces at myself in the office loo. But how often can one do that anyway? Making faces takes time and I don't want people to think I'm doing two bathroom in there all the time. I want to quit. I do not want to see Excel sheets and emails with designations. I should probably start Fatcat with N and live happily ever after with literature that does not exceed 10 lines. Office life is good and all that...it brings one a sense of discipline, it regulates one's life, it makes one value Fridays more. Apart from these simple joys of life that we can all gladly forgo, it pays. I should probably move on and actually go to Barcelona with a hat and a packet of tapioca chips. Does anyone want to hire me for anything? I'll leave in a year and you can make nostalgic speeches about me. Buy me a clock with a cuckoo. And a garland of five hundred rupee notes.
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The whole of last month, I was holidaying in Barcelona with a packet of tapioca chips and a hat so wide, you could put a baby in it.
Except, I wasn't.
I was here wonly. Right here. Pinned to my chair. Appearing to be busy by frowning deeply at my computer.
It'll be a year since I joined CMama (haha) this August 14th. Concracktulations, me! Concracktulations, really. This is my longest-held job EVER. How impressive is that, eh? I could go down memory lane, pick out the choicest bits of my long career and lay them out before you like perfect drops of dew. But I shan't. Instead, I shall order Gopi Manjoori on the 14th and treat myself. Quietly.
Hot Chips has opened a branch near my office. Many joys. Onion chutney makes up for most of life's sadness.
A boy called Manmatha Raja wanted to marry me last week. I'm not kidding. That really is his name. I should be an ethical decency person and not write this here...but I'm sorry, how often does a Manmatha Raja want to marry you in one lifetime? The idea cheers me up enormously. Life's little escapes. The path not taken and etc.
I made my blog private for a week because I thought someone from the parent company was reading it. And I didn't want to get fired just when I'm due for a hike. But as it turns out, the someone is all right.
Bossman is leaving today. Forever. Don't know who'll come here next. I hope it's not a bore. I've only just managed to chop off Respected Jatayu sentences. Bossman was a very good boss. Full freedom, autonomy and the rest of the Constitution. He shall be missed in this place.
This Swine Flu is scary. Go away soon.
