Morally Numbed Intellectually Dumbed

It was a tiring Mumbai morning - and I lay in bed for a long time wondering whether to get up or not but as I lay staring at the clock I realized that it didn’t matter whether I wanted to or not ...I just had to get going - no longer I was the master of my own time... My new job had taken over.

I headed out in the bright sun and faced the pimple-enhancing air of Juhu Scheme (there went my weeks of using Erythromycin, anti pimple cream) I walked 98 steps to the bus stop and waited 5 minutes for Bus no. 257 to be meherbaan on me and the other 20 behind me.

Inside the bus, the familiar conductor smiled and I smiled back wondering about the monotony of his job and while my mind was thinking my mouth spake the words “Ek stadium”. The familiar movement of his hand in the black bag. Cluck cluck. Punching of a hole in the sorry looking ticket and in my hand - Voila! I was a legal bus boarder now!! In this city tickets are instruments of satisfaction.

My journey to the office is not exactly eventful- I pass the same roads, stop at the same bus stops but I guess to make it more interesting I observe people en route - Today, my eyes fed on a couple waiting at the DN Nagar bus stop- the man, it seemed had come to drop his wife, who was dressed for office in a green salwar kameez. He had the same look of laziness that I probably had earlier this morning. He was in white kurta pajama- slightly crushed indicative of some night action.

The man was fanning his wife whilst she sat on one of those horizontally positioned poles that feature in every bus stop in Mumbai. She looked extremely embarrassed and blushed. I could almost lip read her saying “Mat Kariye Na”- definitely not Maharashtrian!!!

And my mind was screaming... Aha! The average India male has finally evolved so let him serve woman - its their turn now...

The bus moved on.

My stop.

Had to fight my way out of the bus and how!!! A big butt woman stood right at the door -as if ignorant of her rear until she finally obliged and moved but an inch to let us lesser endowed people past the narrow slit thus created by her. And believe- me- you ...it was what I call in my world a narrow escape... even with my irrelevant size I had problems. God bless the ones behind me. I decided not to look back.

Stopped at the regular pan beedi shop for the usual...and how I hope that I was an avid smoker...the boxes nowadays look very exciting but I asked for Wrigley double mint. The shopkeeper handed me the Rs.5 pack with the word LOSER writ clearly on his face. I walked out in a haughty manner - the weight of all anti smoking campaigns on my back and shrugged. Atlas shrugged - why couldn’t I??

* * *

Inside the lift, the dreariness hits me hard. The liftman is short, stocky and extremely ill tempered. He stands very close to the lift door...suicidal tendencies I feel- going up and down in this manner can hardly pass off as fun (grin).

My office.

The ‘pit and row’ office of mine is hardly one that can pass off as a slick set up...there is a pit in the center that makes two circles - inner circle and outer circle - less confusing than Connaught Place definitely. The inner circle is occupied by the juniors and the outer one by the seniors. There is a separate room for the graphic designers and another one for the production department. In row are three cabins for the three directors - very stuffy if you ask me but functional so no complaints. Anyways I occupy no fixed position in the office, that’s my boss’s way of giving me creative freedom in the ‘pits’- literally.

I am in a different world altogether. I am Falling. Fast. Furiously. Ferociously. It’s exhilarating. Have you ever been swept away by something so powerful that the strength of it renders you speechless, the Beauty of it manifests itself so deeply into you that it pricks like thousand needles are being pierced in to your soul, or like a bolt of thunder just struck you and fried you alive.

I Quit.

Just Magan.

* * * I turn into a pumpkin everyday - does that make me eligible for a life that ends in “...happily ever after.”?