The story of the office plant

Imagine for a while, I could be an office plant.  I could sit on a pedestal - look pretty - be tended to - watered - pruned - left in the sunshine from time to time - admired - part of a corporate  -- peep at who is using facebook during meetings - overhear talk of who gets that position -  the next kill-the-competition plan <mm!>,  who has favours with who, hear what they really thought at the meeting <tsk tsk> - watch success parties of all sorts <uh oh> - watch who falls asleep at their desk  - myself nod off in the soft tap-tap of keyboards - avoid fake conversation with people <cackle!>  - not have to nod my head to unacceptableness <yeah>. Sigh. 

Lunch in Uxbridge Road

It is always silent here, no matter what time of the day. Hardly anyone talks. From the pantry behind me, there emerges humming sounds of the rattling microwave and clattering spoons in the backdrop of water falling into the sink. The fragrance of home-cooked pasta floats in the air. Some of the team are away at the gym across the road. The demolition cranes are pecking away at concrete slabs from the building (it should be called demolish-ing) next door. As usual, there is the lady eating cereal for lunch because apparently she does not get paid enough. The photocopier is spitting out toasty sheets of documents. The lunch box is slowly emptied and satisfaction fills up. Suddenly work seems irrelevant.

Readings From Long Ago

(A year ago) I read part of The Book of Nothing. It speaks of a musical piece of four minutes and thirty three seconds length - of silence. (A weird colleague of mine, I am told, actually owns this audio CD!) Then it speaks of a chapter in a novel titled "Essay on silence" containing blank pages. This author was sued by another author for copyright since the latter had already published a complete novel with blank pages.

Now I don't know how much of fiction these incidents are. But I was amused out of my head and laughed and cried. Then I stopped reading the Book of Nothing. Also I read a bunch of booklets by Kamla Bhasin on Feminism, Patriarchy. Very simple and strong. Wonder if Kalpana Sharma published similar thoughts. My boss when I was at Thinkpad in Kerala is in Delhi these days. I called him up and he usually tells me what he reads. This time it was "The world is flat". When I told Vijaya and Sreesh they both burst out laughing and asked if I was the Pope :-D.

Unreal

i

Running on rail tracks. Sand everywhere. Leaping and bounding across tracks. Scorching midday sun. Screeching trains in close pursuit. Rattling rail tracks. Hot chase. Sweat. Heart beats. Lungs on fire. Nerves on end. Not letting go of clenched fists. Still racing. Engine hurtles past. Phew, made it just in time.

ii

It is a massive cylindrical building painted black on the insides. Each floor is circular. The balconies of carved wood are widest at the top and narrow with every floor below. The ceiling is high, there is space in abundance. The missing bit is the stairs. The lone prisoner is on the top floor in darkness. On the bottom most floor someone is engaged in a duel. The mission is to reach the cellar in time for the underground train to escape. The duel is on. The prisoner leaps down each floor, shackled though she is. The duel meanwhile, has been won. Freedom!

iii

The old lady lives next door. I visit her each day. She is disabled. She tells me stories and feeds me good food. She hangs clothes to dry outside her house above the well where I can see. One day when I go to her, she laughs and tells me I can no longer visit her. I am puzzled, or am I a bit afraid? I leave and as I do, the doors I pass suddenly come to life and whack me on the butt and send me flying to the next. And so on till I find myself by the familiar blue rusty gate. At home I discover, we all have to leave. Somewhere. It is night. Bags are packed. The taxi has arrived. But strangely, aunt and children have left without proper direction. Scooter comes trotting on its own. Kalasipalayam is far away! London Open bus arrives. We all sit safely in to leave for an unknown destination.

Ironic?

Somebody at coffee-machine conversation told me they know that least 1200 Iraqis serve in Britain as Medicos

Lunchtime at Farringdon Road

Afternoons in the office between one and two.

Activity dims. Chaos and chatter leave. I almost have the place to myself. I can hear stray coughs, heavy breathing and soporific tap-tap of keyboards. A lunchbox is opened. Buses rumble on the street. A train rattles past. I can hear where I sit, five floors above. I eat lunch. Read a book review. The sound of rustling newspapers punctuates the quiet in the room. A phone buzzes quietly. There is a conversation in the next room.

The sound of a footfall entering the room, and the spell is broken!

But I found the Post Office

Just wondering how you are. I know it’s a long time I've written. Am trying to get settled. But honestly, I'm feeling quite unsettled. I remember you telling me once there is no time in life where one feels settled down.

I miss a lot of things that I knew I would miss when I came back here. But there are newer and differently nice things and people. There are also some changes I am finding hard to accept. Like for instance, sometimes in the morning, I expect to wake up and go down to meet my mother and Sreesh for coffee downstairs or suddenly chatter away about something odd, I find I am really very far away.

People move on they say. I have moved on from one phase of life to another, each of which I have thoroughly enjoyed living and I have hardly realized the time pass by. I never saw myself as anywhere out of my school. I could have always walked back home every single day from the bus stop back with Rugmini and chatted about events and people in college. I could have always gone on unplanned trips with friends. May be in a few years I would say, I could have always come back home after a long day’s work and relaxed on the couch with music, but now I find myself old with grandchildren, toothless and eating uppuma and pasta.

There’s something weird about being in a software job. Apart from the money and great circle of friends, I find very little fulfilment in the job in itself. This is not to forget that there have been projects I have really enjoyed working on and learnt a lot of things.

I keep asking myself, if this is what I really want. I have been reading lots of papers on testing. Outrageous. So many of them zero-content. The same stale theme repeated over. In different words and very un-refreshingly. And such people come to fame and get celebrated as international speakers and experts. I feel all this corporate world is big nonsense and does little good to the world.

When I teach myself a new programming language for fun, I ask myself, who it benefits. The language by itself is not even anything remotely permanent, because very soon some other next-best-thing in new technology will arrive to solve some so-called business problem. All the software managers will put on their ties and shiny shoes and sprinkle power-points on gullible clients and hypnotize them into paying hefty sums for some crazy application that I test meaninglessly for days on end. Some times I find myself stretching on a task for six to eight days that really needs only a day or two of concentrated effort. Don’t know who I am fooling. Me or the rest of the world.

So I am wondering whether to set myself a purpose. What my purpose is I don’t know. However, I think I need to be looking for something. I went to the town library last weekend. Spent a couple of hours browsing and reading. Then I read bartleby.com which has literature online. And then organized searching on the net. Got me some authors toget started on. Ben Okri, Mitch Albom, Rainer Maria Rilke, Emily Dickenson.

Then I am listening, as always to some carnatic music. Looked on the net for carnatic music related blogs. Also going to figure out how to reach out to people here who have musical interests. Don’t know if Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan is a good place to start. Do you have any ideas? I need some place where I can sing. This morning I took the lift right up to the topmost floor and then came walking all the way down because I was itching to sing the JalajAksha-Hamsadhwani varnam. The stairs were very quiet. And I don’t care who heard me sing, as long as I didn’t see them. More importantly, I need a music system. Something I can just switch on as soon as I wake up and will make me happy about while I am living through the day.

I am just back from a walk in the afternoon where I was pretending to looking for a post office. What I do is, I follow my nose. So despite the cold I walked and walked. And despite the cold, I came to realize that I was singing a song Sheila Gomez had taught us in school

How I love to go for a walk along the street
Just to smile along to the people that I meet
And to watch the show of the happy, happy feet
When I say to myself it’s a miracle!

It was a happy coincidence really! Where I had landed myself, was a place called BroadGate circle. There was a decent crowd of squealing children and assorted grown-ups at a huge skating rink with low music playing. Some almost near-professional and some reluctant beginners. I stood there and stared. I imagined that it was dark and that they had glittering costumes - instead of the sweaty back and sticky clothes that i could see – and stood rooted and gazed and lost. I am back now feeling slightly happier, less disturbed about the world around me and more sure of myself.

Disability and usability

Had been ill last week and bought a couple of medicines for relief. This included some throat drops, cough syrup and tetrapacked juices.

The throat drops were packed in some sturdy plastic armour. Twisting and tearing didn't help. Nor did biting. So one had to sit up, grope for sharp edged tools to carry out operation. Most unhelpful. Not something that can be done with eyes closed.

Let's see what of the cough syrup. It was Benadryl. As it is, the patient is a weak person. To add to that, the seal was hard to break off and took a lot of coercing with cutting edge technology like knife and scissor-tip. The fingers got completely bruised and cut. So after dealing with cold and cough, one has to use Boroplus to tend to one's injuries.

Yes, the tetrapacked juices were alright, but not the packaging of the accompanying straws. Not very amiable sort. Most reluctant to slip out of packaging even at the pointed end which could reputedly pierce. Therefore, one ended up drinking directly from the tetra pack. Result: The neighbouring ants and cockroaches also joined in the party.

Fair ?

My slipper snapped this morning. So I stopped by a mochi to get it repaired. He looked at it, looked up at me and said ''Mooru rupai AguttE. ParavAgilvA?" (That would be three rupees, is that alright?)

Why when people don't shy of quoting monstrous prices for their services, here is this small cobbler with his tin shop in a street corner, who hesitates to even ask for such a small amount as three rupees for a few stitches that would save me a whole five hundred or more. I complained to the God that the imbalance in the world is too much. I get to sit in an airconditioned office while there are some people who wade into the stinking city-drain kneedeep, with no protective layer, to build a flyover for public convenience.

Weekend with Radha Iyer

My house has a completely new look. It is actually far more liveable and homely than it was. There is an assortment of divinity on the drawing room wall, pooja room and kitchen. A little away, is a pretty bamboo flower vase with bright purple flowers. Of course my creatively arranged calendar is on the next wall.

The bedroom, which more effectively serves as my living room, now has the bed in a different position. It has some wall hangings. The dressing table has two tiny green bonsai trees framing a slightly larger bonsai with yellow leaves. Jazzy eh?

Listen, now. the maroon fridge with sparkling green freckles all over now has two wooden dolls. One is a Maharaja with moustache and one is a Vaadyar with a kudumi. They both have springy necks. I will presently explain what I mean. Whenever I open the door of the fridge, the two figures perched on top nod their heads and they nod their heads and it such a delight ! Also there are two bonsai trees on either side of these men.

I must also point your attention to the green frog. This particular green frog sits near the grey wash basin and has its left arm waving and wears a nice white toothy smile.

In case you need to know, my mother is a cleaning freak. But she was not terribly discouraged to find so little ammunition to serve her ends. Within a few hours of her arrival, the house had mops, sponges, scrubs, liquid cleaners, brooms and waste cloth all over. And needless to say, I was tricked into cleaning the house!

In addition to all these wordly possessions of cheer, I acquired, for a price of a thousand less, many thanks to the bargaining power of my mother, a blue queen-size chair and a tiny wooden computer table with wheels. This serves as a desk for the Desktop which has not yet come into my possession. The aforesaid desktop will serve me that I may be able to chat with my beloved and with my family while I go about life in this traffic infested city.

If you will look in my kitchen, you will find numerous vessels. You will also perhaps find it a wee bit amusing if you examine it in the context of how many people reside in No 3391, 13th B Main. Me. There are enough vessels for four! Thanks to generous contributions from mine and Ashok's mamiars. Ha ! Up to yesterday, the fridge wore a deserted look in its interiors. Now open, it is well furnished with sweets, pickles, snacks, eats, vegetables, fruits, cooked food, batter and dough of various categories. Big grin!

The award for the best purchase however goes to one tiny item of glory. It is this bright and happy yellow Umbrella with blue and pink flowers, and currently the joy of my life. I was waiting to wake up and go off to work wielding this deadly weapon to combat the fierce sun and rains!