He looked at his watch: 12:30. "Shit", he murmurred. Again he was late, Like the last fifteen days.
"What the hell" he thought, "I do not have any work anyway!" Thankfully iGoogle was not blocked at his office and he had installed a pretty cool braingames addon to his iGoogle homepage. He now could play battleship with the computer or someone as idle as him allday. But still, he was anxious to get on to the bus, because in his bachelor life, office also equated to "Lunch" or "Food".
Technology is a bliss! he thought.And he looked above to thank the person above. Only to face the searing sun directly above his head. the temparature in these parts of the world never goes down. And the money one earns never goes up. He was sweating like a pig. His shirt had already given up the deodorant and braced the smell of sweat. His hair was all wet. and He stood in the busstand (or so they claimed though it was practically just roadside) for a bus to go to office.
Today was friday. And the day to party, to hang out with girls at pubs after office. Well these things meant nothing when you are cornered to a city like this. He despised the city, its people, its life, its weather and its food. Not to mention its language. Everything about this city was directly from medieval age. He looked around and looked with pity on the few gents and ladies standing beside him for the bus.
One guy wearing a white shirt and a white dhoti which was folded in half and knotted near his waist. It looked like a miniskirt. He could draw analogy from the scottish national dress - the kilt. However the scotsmen looked nothing like these hideous creatures. There was a girl wih a assortment of flowers on her hair. She smelled pathetic. Moreover she had applied some face powder quite heavily on her face, making it look fairer from the other parts of her body. "These people are darker than the african americans!", he thought. At the same time he felt proud of his complexion and thanked the searing sun above for having his birth elsewhere, somewhere where still existed a season called winter and butter chicken was loved more than pepper chicken.
He's been thinking about leaving this place eversince he came here. He wanted to go back to his city, but alas there are no jobs here. He wanted to go to some other city which were cooler or what his friends usually call "happening". But his bloody project manager wouldn't let him go anywhere. He was stuck here. Parmanently.
He tried a number of stuff to get out of this shit hole. He tried to get into MBA. But all the good colleges wanted smarter people than he was. He tried to switch job, but looked like, someone in america screwed it up bigtime so there were no job for a developper with a 2 year experience.
When he went back to his city after spending one year here, he was astonished to see the city change. It had grown a lot more savvy. There were more coffee shops and pubs, more girls with fewer cloths, more tall flats everywhere. The small town was quite desperate to shed off its "small town" tag, and was galloping towards metropolis-dom. He loved it.
But that was almost one year back and was for only 7 days.
That was when a flight ticket could be bought for 1 rs if you plan appropriately. "Chance illa" now! He's been saving money to go home, to see his girlfriend - Shalini.
Time flies by and doesn't even gives a notice. After joining his job, he became so busy for the first one and half years he didn't notice where he was going. Now was the time to retrospect. He had worked hard in this city. This city was about working hard. Everyone from the porter in station to the tea kadai owner everyone is working hard here. His next door neighbour were a few 20 years odd youngmen. They studied engineering in the city, as was the norm with any medium intellect fellow over here in this region. Those guys start at 7, in unison, at a high pitch voice, to study and continue at that pace, without stopping till 12.
"OMG", he laughed in his mind, he had never studied like that in his whole life. Probably if he did, he would have landed a better job than this. But it didn't matter. He was where he was. And where he was, everything around him, gave rise to a sarcastic smile in his face.
"How long more", he muttered. One bald guy in gentlemanly suffary suit was standing beside him, almost shouting in his cellphone at someone in english. Understandably he was looking for an address and that fellow at the other side of the call, wasn't much helpful. The guy snapped his call, looked at him, and spoke sheepishly,"Execuse me, do you know this place well". For two years he had been doing just that, knowing this place. because everywhere he went, every road he put his footprint on, made him banter, made him sarcastic about the locality, the locals. The man, who was a bit elderly, around in his early fifties, asked him about an address, he didn't know where it was. But thankfully he was talking in hindi. What a bliss. None here speaks that. The man went away. He secretly was pleased at the tamilians bracing of hindi. It was a victory of somesort. The north will win someday, and these "darker-than-the-african-americans" will give way.
The bus was coming. Heavily crowded, it looked almost like a Mumbai local train. He started jostling for getting on. Finally he could place a foot on the last step and tried to hold one of the rods across the windows. His hand slipped.
He was terrified, and the bus had just picked up speed.
suddenly a darker than dark hand came out of the crowd and caught his company ID tag. The bus pushed ahead.
[Disclaimer: This is not my point of view but that of the protagonist.]
1 year ago
