Everything's Official About This

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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.