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08:30, 24 Jan 2015

One More Day….


Everything happens as usual,
The sun rises in hazy smog,
Unknown cars honk on the distant road,
Birds chirp in hunger
One more day begins in unhurried impatience

My eyes hurt craving for some more sleep,
The CEO’s early call to meet today rings on my phone,
My heart wants me to take it somewhere far far away,
The morning newspapers lie lazily on the doorstep,
At last something to cheer about and cry for…

Some more deaths in a distant land of unknown people,
The Army Chief wants troops withdrawn from Iraq,
The sultry ramp model believes in life after death,
Another CEO announces a takeover for a few million chips,
Daily astro-forecast proclaims accidental gains for me

“The Boss had to get into an emergency meeting, Sir,
He’s kindly requested you to wait.”
Requested or Ordered!
The battle between survival instincts and self-respect occupies me,
The electronic clock and the secretary’s hairdo tell me the time,
My wait waits in an impatient patience..

“What will you have, Sir? Tea, coffee or maybe...”
“No, nothing, er - maybe a glass of water...”
The Secretary vanishes
A new wait for that elusive glass begins,
And drowns the thought - I have been taken for granted
Anxiety takes the place of activity,
Is he avoiding me?

The glass of water appears,
Dangling between the manicured red nails
“The boss has asked me to tell you,
he’s sorry to keep you waiting.
He’ll meet you shortly.”
I try my best to regain my trust in the limitlessness of the word - shortly
The Theory of Relativity - from a new perspective perhaps!!!

“Let’s go for lunch and talk”,
The elusive boss of the ever-smiling Secretary comes out of his cabin,
With no one following him through the door
Was this a tele conference!!!!
The battle re-surfaces in a new avatar

“Sorry to keep you waiting for a little while,”
The CEO grins
“It happens.”
I stretch my jaw muscles to their extremities
The battle drowns in activity again

Weather, bombings, wars, capital market, ramp models
Occupy the CEO’s vocal chord and lips
With a liberal smattering of his confused vision of ‘my company’
In between
With his eyes darting between my necktie
And the low necklines of the lady on the other table
At last the meeting is happening.

And happens for a little less than three hours,
The content repeating itself in amazing regularity,
“I understand”,
I say, whenever he finds time to look into my eyes
Without a hint of the absolute confusion in my mind
I listen, pretend to listen and practice sleeping with eyes open
Waiting for the CEO to hear his own voice,
Which happens coincidentally at last,
Just when the lady on the next table stands up

“Ok, then. Do send in your proposal.
Let’s begin from Monday next.”
The CEO growls in his suave arrogance
With his eyes fixed
On the fast vanishing feminine silhouette
“Yeah. Sure”,
I mutter with my eyes fixed
On my credit card,
Stooping under the weight of the charge slip

I come out to face the sweltering metropolis,
With the Sun forcing its way through the hole
In the Ozone layer
The traffic snails before and past me in impatient laze,
The grey clouded western sky has orange linings
My mind thinks of the charge slip and the accidental gain

Everything happens as usual,
The sun sets in hazy smog,
Unknown cars honk next to me,
Birds chirp restlessly for a shelter
One more day ends in unhurried impatience.

08:22, 24 Jan 2015
Lessons from a learned pigeon

If you find a pigeon hovering over your laptop, don’t stop it from tweeting
If you do, don’t chase it
If you do, don’t scare it.
If you do, don’t scare it so much that it craps on your laptop
If you do and it does crap, don’t chase it again
If you do, don’t scare it further
If you do, don’t keep the windows shut
If you do, be gentle and open the window
While opening the window, don’t curse the pigeon in Hindi
(Pigeons don’t like their mothers and sisters subjected to human repression. And Indian pigeons know Hindi. Try Swahili instead. If you’re lucky, it hasn’t yet used its passport and has never been to Africa.)
If you do, say sorry and don’t anger it
If you do, don’t let it crap out of anger
If you do, don’t step on it
If you do, don’t slip n fall
If you do, don’t fall on your back
If you do, don’t let anyone be around
If you do, don’t let that one try hard not to laugh
If you do, don’t say I am okay
If you do, don’t keep lying down
If you do, don’t betray your helplessness
If you do, don’t refuse help
If you do, don’t go to your regular doctor
(He already knows your unseemly ways)
If you do, don’t give the gory pigeon-details
If you do, don’t let your doc get wild at the pigeon
If you do, don’t let your doc suffer the same fate as yours and your laptop a repeat insult
Take your doc’s advice and make a resolution not to chase the pigeon that craps on your laptop
Moral of the story – Pigeons love to tweet.
Trust me – you cannot hear from a better horse’s mouth