Time for a Coffee break

In my short work career so far, I have had the chance to work in quite a few offices. The number is not anywhere near the dozens of offices and clients that my friends and colleagues have been to.

But, I have always wondered and even been amused by the different types of coffee breaks that I have been introduced to at these places. I am attempting to categorise some of my coffee breaks here.

I am sure most of you out there have your own types of coffee breaks. For those who don’t like their java, it could be a break for any other beverage or even a smoking-break. Please feel free to drop in your 3, 30 or 300 lines about it, in the Comments section here

The break could be from any kind of work – from office-work, from house-work. It could be a break from your desktop PC, or a break from your kitchen PC (which is the ‘Pressure Cooker’) or a break from working at the Dixons or Circuit City store …. or even a small break from barista duties at ‘Cafe Coffee Day’

Here goes …
“At the Desk + Brainstorming” Coffee break
You are so deeply drowned in some critical task at work – like, say, something that you were supposed to complete and send yesterday. You don’t have time to un-glue yourself from your seat. But you still need the dose of caffeine to keep you going. What do you do ? You pick up the phone, dial the small pantry facility that your office has, and request the chap (Nandu) to bring you a cup of hot ‘Kaapi‘
He puts on his usual talk about desktop coffee only being given twice a day and that for the rest, you need to go yourself & get it. But since you are one of Nandu’s “Frequent Foodie” customers, he obliges to your request. “Only this last time. Next time you will have to walk over and get it”, he says as he places the cup right next to your mouse-pad.

“Deadline-meeting celebration” break
This usually happens the day following the above mentioned situation. The previous night, just as the on-duty security guard was about to drive you nuts with his long story about the time he met Sachin Tendulkar and Pravin Amre at some Sarvajanik Ganeshotsav celebrations, you managed to complete the work and send out a  mail. You managed to get the last Autorickshaw waiting near the office gate - to reach home, just a couple of hours before the “Good Morning India” show on TV started.
And now, today to describe your brave midnight ordeal to two of your colleagues, you take them for an extended morning tea-break, over to the neighbouring Indian Coffee House

“Long-weekend stories” break
I saw these type of breaks on one of my overseas assignments.
Its the Monday after a long weekend. Everyone on the project team had either gone to some exotic vacation spot, or had gone to the hot & happening pubs, clubs in town. And now, each person is eager to share his story with the team. So, at sharp 10-30 AM, the whole team decides its coffee time. All take the Lift (Elevator – if you prefer that way) down the twenty odd floors, walk over to the Starbucks across the street. Everyone buys their stuff – Latte, Mocha, No-sugar-no-cream Coffee. Some grab a muffin or two. And the whole point of going all the distance is to get enough time to exchange weekend stories.

“Oops-I-broke-the-machine” break
At one particular office, I did’t have to walk too far to get my perfect coffee.

The office has a shiny, techno-smart vending machine. Press 5 buttons in the right order, keep your favourite coffee mug in place (or the disposable plastic cup will also do) and press ‘START’. Voila ! Hot & sleep-defeating coffee is ready in 15 to 150 seconds !
You also get to meet one or two new people in the office, while you are waiting in queue for Miss Jane to get her coffee from the machine.
All this on the better days. On the bad days – when you sat on the wrong seat on the train, and when you had actually managed to put a layer of polish on your shoes – the machine will give out a grawky noise and suddenly spray the coffee over the floor – and all over your shining shoes.  B!**)y Hell !!!  The bad day just got worse !

So … what kind of a break do you like to take every day ?
 

 

Libraries, Fish – and their possible connection

Have been busy at work since a few days. So, I was mostly absent from blog-planet (except for reading a couple of posts that fellow blog-mates had put out)

MumbaiWallah (MW) had put out a post, asking for information on public libraries in India. I could not think of any such libraries in India.

Later, MW wrote a nice & informative post about “Public Libraries in India“. That was when I thought – of course, the British Council Library in Mumbai – how did I forget !!

Some time back, when I was in school and still trying to get my multiplication tables correct, one of my cousins lived with us for some time. Dave ( name changed here ) had just moved to Mumbai, in search of a better job & a better life. Even though Dave was my cousin, he was much older than me. He lived with us until he had adjusted to the city and was able to move into an accomodation on his own.

One of the first things that he did after he got a job at an office near V.T was to become a member of the British Council Library. And then he used to bring home these wonderful books. I found them wonderful because they were neat, clean and hard-bound. They would have this tracking page stuck on the inner cover, with blue rubber-stamped dates indicating when the book was due to be returned. And, I was still very young to actually understand what was in the books, or who the authors were.
Since Dave had to travel in the local train every day to & from work, he would finish reading the books quickly. Within two or three days, he would come home with a different coloured book
I would only notice the colour change in the book’s cover, whereas he actually would have returned a book and brought a different one home that evening.

Those were my memories of a library, until a few years later, I got my own library membership. The library that I joined was a simple circulating library, opened in a small unused shop, near where I lived. It was started from the charity of a big lot of second-hand books.

And the library mainly worked during the Summer and Diwali vacations, when hordes of school & college students would drop in for quenching their thirst for Enid Blyton, Ian Fleming, Sidney Sheldon, Jeffrey Archer, Mills & Boon and even comics like Asterix, Tintin, Superman, Batman, Archies. Those vacations were days of fun – read a book within a day or two, and rush back to the ‘library’ to get started on the next one. Nothing else to worry about, nothing else to do !

Now on to something else that MW had said in the post requesting library information …
“I remember a library (or so it seemed) at the back of a municipal school near the big fish market in Chembur, Mumbai. The state of the building and the location in general did not encourage visitors”

I know exactly what she meant when she said about the location being not so encouraging to visitors      …     I don’t know if there is (was) a library behind the municipal school. But the big fish market is still there.

I had to walk past this particular ‘location’ whenever I needed to go to the Chembur Railway station. Partly due to my good luck and partly due to my love for travelling in the B.E.S.T buses, I have avoided going to Chembur station to a large extent. But when I did have to go that way, it was always an eye-opening experience.

Ok, before I proceed, would like to say this here. I am a vegetarian by preference. I do like eating my chicken and my sea-food, but I am not a connoisseur of any type of cuisine. I don’t know too much about food – I just eat whatever I get.

My only principle in eating is – I will eat whatever is readily & easily available, as long as it tastes “ok” and as long as its still not moving when brought to my table.

So, if any of you feel that in what I am writing next, I have offended your beliefs or your culture or your food – please understand that it is not so. I am just trying to explain the ‘fun’ of walking on a road where all your human senses are put to a test.

Now coming back to the Chembur Fish Market. On one side is the roadside fish market. A dozen or more vendors displaying and selling all types of fish, to people on their way home from work. Across the road – a poultry shop selling eggs & chicken. And all these people conveniently dump all their waste right there on the side – a rotting, stinking heap. If anyone with a blocked & stuffy nose was to walk that way, he would have his sense of smell back to normal even before you could say the words “Vicks Vaporub” !! 

Further up this road, there would be other not-so-pleasant sights & smells (especially in the mornings !) which I will talk about some other day.

That is enough said about stinking garbage near fish markets. Let me clean up this mess.

Talking about libraries & fish – the next book I take from the library will be “Three Men in a Boat” by Jerome K. Jerome. I still remember a story from that book, which I studied in school, in my English class. It was a hilarious account of a trout on display at an Inn and how everyone there was bragging about how they were the ones who had caught it.

 

Man in the Mirror

                                                                               

He suddenly woke up, shaking like a leaf. In the little light coming in through the window, he looked around the room. The room seemed very unfamiliar. This was not the room that he usually slept in. It added to the craziness of the dream that had jolted him out of a sleepful state.

Mohit had dreamt about a car crashing over the edge, going off one of the twisting-turning roads in the Western Ghats, somewhere in Maharashtra. He had seen it very clearly. In the dwindling evening light, a maroon car was toppling down a ravine. He could not see who was inside the vehicle, but he could hear a man’s screams, as the car took the man down to what seemed would be a fatal fall. At the top of the hill, another car, that was until now parked by the side of the road, drove away towards the junction where it could get on to the expressway.
And then, in a flash, Mohit saw inside the car, which was now lying on its side, on the floor of the valley. The shock of seeing his own face on a corpse had woken him.

He was now in a decently sized bedroom. He could not remember how or when he got there. There was some other furniture in the room. There were two closed doors. He walked in the dark, towards the smaller door, at the opposite end from where the bed was. When he opened it, he could make out, in the faint light, that it was a bathroom. He fumbled on the wall for a light switch.

When the light came on, he glanced at the mirror, more out of an habit formed over the last 30 years. What he saw in the mirror almost had him fall back against the wall. 
The face staring back at him was not his !!!

 

Its been 14 years

That particular afternoon, I was busy trying to understand the classification of animals – their Class, their Phylum etc. I just needed to hang on to this information for another 20 hours. The next day at the same time, I would have finished the last exam of my H.S.C Examinations (also called Pre-Degree or Plus-2 in Kerala, and probably many other names across India). After that, it would be pure, unadulterated freedom. All this only till the exam results come out, following which hell was sure to break lose at home.

I sat at my table, attempting to digest the differences between animals of Phylum Annelida & Phylum Arthropoda, when the ringing of the phone woke me from my crustacean dreams. It was Bhanu uncle, who worked with a company in Andheri. He asked me whether I had heard of it already.

“Heard of what ?”
“You haven’t heard of it then ! They say that bombs have gone off at three places in the city, including at the Bombay Stock Exchange“
“What! Oh “

Now, this was a time when the satelite TV boom had just started in India. The boom had begun with CNN & its almost-live coverage of the war then going on in Iraq. So, back then, there weren’t three dozen Indian news channels spurting out the same news every hour in ten different languages. The only places to get live news about anything in India were still Doordarshan & All India Radio.

I turned on the TV. And sure, something was happening in the city. There was news trickling in, of various stories & rumours – about bomb blasts in various parts of Bombay (as it was called then)

I quickly called Brijesh, my class-mate & study-mate. He said he was about to call me. His father had called him with this news. His father worked in a building right next to the Air-India building at Nariman Point. Sitting in his office, Brijesh’s father had ‘felt’ the blast that had happened in the Air-India tower’s basement garage. The glass on their building had vibrated, and some panes had cracked.

By evening it had emerged that around 13 bombs had exploded in the city, all within a span of two hours. Scores of people dead, property worth millions damaged. And the whole city in a state of shock.

All that happened exactly 14 years ago, on this very date – the 12th of March.

Even after 14 years, that ‘Black Friday’ has left its scar on thousands of people. Scars that are not just physical, but a lot many mental scars too. So many sons, daughters, wives, husbands, siblings, parents lost that day. So many dreams blown away in a few seconds, by the dirty deeds of a handful of terrorists.

And, even after all these years, the judicial proceedings against the accused are still going on. Nobody has been punished, while the main perpetrators have evaded the arm of the law & long ago flown off to safety.

 

The Package

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~~~  THE PACKAGE  ~~~    … a short story

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She opened the door to pick the package. It was not there. This was surprising. In the past so many years, Warren had never missed a delivery, or even been late.

Nicole rarely met Warren or talked to him. He came without a sound, dropped the package and left. Nicole always found it at the proper place, when she checked. Today things were different. As she went inside and closed the door, Nicole wondered if something was wrong.

She knew that Uncle Greg would want his dose of ’camellia assamica’ very soon – he was an addict. If Greg did not get it on time, he would start getting agitated.

Every two minutes, Nicole peeked through the curtains to see if Warren had come. After aproximately ten more minutes, she heaved a sigh of relief as she saw Warren’s vehicle turn round the far end of the street. As soon as Warren had done the delivery & left, she collected the package.

She was glad that her Uncle had not yet woken up and not noticed the delay.
Nicole hurried to the kitchen with the two bottles, and put the kettle on the stove.

 

Missed Heartbeats

Another ‘Song-post’ … this song, Dhadkan zara ruk gayi hai, was playing a little earlier in my headphones, as I was busy trying to tick off items from my office ‘to-do’ list.

Its a fabulous song … the music and the lyrics are fantastic … it has been on my fav-songs list since a long time. The words are by Mangesh Kulkarni. I do not know of him doing lyrics for any other Hindi movies, and don’t know if he has worked on any Marathi movies or any other albums. But for this song, Mangesh Kulkarni has written a great simple song, with a kind of Gulzar-esque touch to it.
And of course, the song has been sung by one of my all time favourite singers, Suresh Wadkar. I always feel that Hindi movies have not done justice to his great voice & talent.

The song is from the Hindi movie ‘PRAHAAR‘, directed by Nana Patekar. The movie on the whole was ok. I remember enjoying the first half, and I liked the simple look the movie had given to both Dimple Kapadia, and to the superstar-actress of then, Madhuri Dixit.

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Dhadkan zara ruk gayi hai

Dhadkan zara ruk gayi hai, kahin Zindagi bah rahi hai
Palkon mein Yaadon ki Doli, Bheetar Khushi has rahi hai
Ye Khushi tum ho, tum hi tum meri jaanam, karu aitbaar

Chehron ke mele me Chehre the gum
Ek chehra tha main, Ek chehra the tum
Jaane kya tum ne de diya,
Mujhko jahaan mil gaya

Hothon par baat rahe, baaton mein sur bahe
Suron mein geet wahin, tumhari hi baat kahe
Mitt jaoo Sapnon ke Aagosh mein
Bhig jaoo Yaadon ki Bauchhaar mein

Milte hi aankhon ne rishta pehchana,
Ehsaas seene me saanson ne jaana
Chupke se pyar choo gaya,
Dila ke Ek Janam naya

Dhadkan zara ruk gayi hai, kahin Zindagi bah rahi hai
Palkon mein Yaadon ki Dolee, Bheetar Khushi has rahi hai
Ye Khushi tum ho, tum hi tum meri jaanam, karu aitbaar

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If you would like to listen & check out this song, go here to musicindiaonline  and look for the first song on the listing.

 

Breaking News

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 ~~~~~    BREAKING NEWS     ~~~~~

                                    — a short story

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Rajendra Sharma loved Saturdays. It was the day when he had to work only till 2:30 in the afternoon, at the finance company where he was employed. He usually reached home before the clock struck four. And the best part was – he got to use the PC and access the net without anybody else to fight over who gets to use the PC and for how long. He would not be bothered by his children for now, as they would be still at their respective colleges.

On this 2nd Saturday in February too, Sharma was surfing his favourite news websites, including one site particularly for all the local Mumbai news. One of the pages that he visited was a feature called “Snapshots of City Life“. Sharma was looking at the dozen photos showing yesterday’s life in & around Mumbai. On the 4th picture, he smiled and turned around to tell his wife, “Malati, take a look at this photo. This girl looks very much like Priya“
Mrs. Sharma, not happy to miss even a single dialogue of the afternoon movie, walked over from the sofa to the PC.  ”What do you mean ‘looks like Priya’ ? She is Priya. You can’t even recognise your own daughter now ?” she frowned.

And then, with the kind of unity that is shown only by Chinese sychronised swimmers, the question mark of suspicion came on both their faces at exactly the same moment.

The photo on the monitor showed an almost deserted B.E.S.T bus-stop shelter. The only inhabitants of the bus-stop were a young boy & girl, presumably taking shelter from the sudden off-season rains that had drenched the city on Friday. The two were sitting close to each other, without space for even a malarial mosquito to pass between them. They were holding each others hands, blissfully unaware of the fact that they were posing for a photograph. The caption below the photo said “A couple try to stay dry, as unseasonal rains hit the city yesterday afternoon“

This was not something that the highly orthodox Sharma clan could easily digest. The worried parents were now thinking about how many of their relatives and friends might have already seen that photo.

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Her father opened the door when she rang the bell. On Saturdays, Priyanka looked forward to sitting and chatting with her Dad after college. That was the only day when he arrived home earlier than her. Priya asked her father about his day at work. He mumbled something about it being all right.
That was a little strange. Normally he had a lot of things to tell his elder child, his only daughter. But today his smile also seemed to lack the usual ‘Colgate Total’ shine.
A little later, along with the customary tea & biscuits, came the police-style questions.
Priya knew there was something boiling the moment her father took the role of the interrogator.

“Did you leave college early yesterday ?”
“No. In fact, since it was raining outside, for a change I attended all my lectures”
“Was it still raining, when you left college ?”
“Er … mm,  No.   Huh, I mean, Yes,  a little drizzle was there”

It did not even last the whole 20 questions, before the poor girl broke down and confessed.

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Priyanka and Adarsh had been together since three years, and both their households had not been aware – until now. The fact that both of them had their roots at the opposite ends of India did not help at all, in convincing the two families.

But finally, filial feelings overcame everything else. The Sharma & Menon families warmed up to each other. It was decided that once the children got their MBAs and started their jobs, only then they would be allowed to enter into wedlock.

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Its been more than a year since their grand wedding celebrations. In Adu & Priya’s bedroom, on the wall hangs a framed photograph – a picture of ‘an almost deserted B.E.S.T bus-stop’ – the same photo which had appeared on a website exactly two years ago, on this very day. 

 

Cellular Driving

  
It is a warm February night in Hyderabad. All the lights in the town are switched on – except the lights in this flat. Naresh sits in the dark, thinking about the light in his life that was suddenly extinguished eight months ago. He no longer has the desire to live. He does not eat at proper times and skips meals quite often. Today he has given dinner a miss again. Since his sister knows that he doesn’t cook, she always calls him over. Her house is just a five minute walk, but today he lied that he is going to a colleague’s place.
He does not feel like going to his office. He still does go though, just to try and keep his mind busy. But then at the end of the day, he loathes the idea of returning to a flat which is empty & lonely now.

He does not answer his cell-phone most of the time. He hates cell-phones now, although there was a time when he thought that it was the next best invention of mankind, after electricity. This is the same person whom you could always find with either the cell-phone stuck to his ear or else talking non-stop into his Blue-tooth ear-piece. He used to attend conference calls with his colleagues in the US, while he drove home in the evenings. Naresh liked to make good use of the hours he spent in driving - by calling and catching up with long-lost college friends, or by calling the architect, to discuss details about the large house that he was having built on the outskirts of town.

That house was Sunita’s dream home. Sunita had so many plans … about decorating, about the colours for each room, about the setup in the huge living-room, about the mini garden on the terrace. At that time, the house was going to be ready in another five months – which would have been exactly a month before their first child was due to enter this world.

All those dreams were shattered in a matter of seconds. That week, eight months in the past, Naresh was out of town on work. Since he could not make it this time, Sunita had gone by herself for the Doctor’s monthly check-up. After all the clinic was just a few streets away. On her way home, Sunita stopped near the road-side vegetable market. It would be nice to surprise him with some Gajar-ka-Halwa, when he got back the next day. She was standing on the narrow footpath, next to the street-light, and bargaining with the vegetable-lady.

Mr. Govardhan, the owner of the big electronic-goods store down the road, was driving home. And he was speaking on his mobile phone, instructing the distributor about the delivery of more 29″ TV sets. In a flash, the flower-selling boy’s bicycle came right in front of his car.

With one hand still holding the phone, Govardhan tried to swerve a little to the left to avoid hitting the cycle. His single-handed pull on the steering turned the vehicle far too much than he would have liked.

The car went crashing toward a street-light pole on the footpath. The vegetable-vendor, who had setup shop right next to the light, had a very lucky escape.

It all happened so fast that the lady in the cream coloured salwar-kameez, buying carrots, did not even see the car coming !!!

 

Life begins at 60 !

This world that we live in is as much about “Generation-Previous” as much as it is supposed to be about “Generation-Next“. It is the young sexagenarians & septuagenarians out there who are more willing to ‘run that extra mile’ than lazy old people (like me) who are yet to complete four decades on this planet. They are there in all fields of life, matching each step with us.

For example, watching the Oscar Awards telecast gave me my ‘Lesson for the Day’ — Life begins at 60 !

The great director Martin Scorsese has given us cinema masterpieces like ‘Gangs of New York‘, ‘Cape Fear‘, ‘Goodfellas‘, ‘Raging Bull‘. But he had to wait for his sixth nomination, to finally win a ‘Best Director’ Oscar – at the age of 64.

The charming ‘Queen of England’ Helen Mirren had to cross over to the other side of 60 years to make her Oscar debut. For her it was a case of “3rd time lucky”.

Alan Arkin also had his lucky stars alligned around the number 3 – his third Oscar nomination. He won his first Oscar – ‘Supporting Actor’ for his role as the grandfather in ‘Little Miss Sunshine‘, after having blown out 76 candles on his birthday cake

78 year old Italian film composer Ennio Morricone won an honorary lifetime achievement Oscar.
Mr. Morricone, who had been nominated five times – but never won, is credited with the original music compositions for many great movies. But I feel he will be most remembered for the grand music from some of the famous Clint Eastwood Westerns, like ‘The Good, the Bad and the Ugly‘, ‘For a Few Dollars More‘.
Anyone who has seen ‘The Good, the Bad and the Ugly‘ cannot forget the iconic theme music of the movie that plays every time Clint Eastwood rides onto the screen … to the effect that the music is always associated with an image of Eastwood, a cigar in the corner of his mouth, his cowboy-hat pulled almost over his eyes, astride a horse & meandering into the town’s Main Street.

What does all this show us ? That our own Big B is at the ripe age to start & try getting those Oscar-chasing roles (ha ha ha)
And that Deepa Mehta will probably have to wait at least till 2010 before thinking about winning an Oscar !

 

Gloomy without ‘Gumsar’

I used to look forward to visiting Gumsar’s blog everyday. Every day lunch-time meant, getting something edible from the cafeteria and sitting in front of the PC, reading his latest story-post. Gumsar was the name he had given himself on this blog, and I chose to believe that it was inspired by the poet-lyricist Gulzar.

He did not write things about himself, his job, or any general “my-day-today” like posts. All his posts were fiction – short stories. He spun such beautiful tales. His stories never stuck to the same type. They transcended across various genres. Some of his stories were wonderfully spooky – they could scare the living daylights out of the reader. So much that the reader would keep all the Laxman Sylvania bulbs in his house burning from dusk to dawn, so that one does not wake up in the middle of the night & get scared. But the reader would always want more.

Then some of his other stories, were his funny trips down memory lane. These posts would have his readers laughing away to glory and until tears came down. There would be instances of some reader breaking out into loud peals of laughter, very much like the ones we see in those Close-up Toothpaste ads.
Some of Gumsar’s stories would transport you to a different world altogether. If one story of his had you travelling in a Mumbai B.E.S.T. bus, along with the two protagonists of the story, then another story would make you feel like you were actually present on the day when Manori-Bai went around searching for her lost cow Phulgo in the dusty lanes of Sotkargaon.

All this until one day in July, he put out a post, much to the sorrow of his 50 odd regular readers, saying that he was going on vacation to Kerala for 3-4 weeks and that the next post would be in a month or so.

Soon, it was August, and everyone was expecting Gumsar to start posting soon. I used to check his blog daily even though he had said that the next post would only be in August. And everyone of his readers was sure that with a lot of fresh material from his visit to his hometown, he will come up with many more magic filled posts.
August gave way to September, which was then pushed to make space for October. Then November, December & January marched past to the tunes of the Republic Day parade – but still no further post from Gumsar. My daily checking on his blog had long ago diminished to visiting the blog ‘once in a full moon’

And then came the pleasant shock. His post on February 19th read like this …

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Good News … & Thanks 

Friends, there will be no more Fiction posts on this blog. While I was posting on this blog, I was in parallel, trying to get in touch with various publishers. And finally all my efforts have paid off. A small setup, Triad House Publishers, have bought my book of short stories.
The book, name still undecided, will be out in August this year. And since I am now saving my material for this book & future possible books, I will have to prevent myself from putting these stories out on my blog here.
So, dear friends, thanks a lot for all your encouragement & feedback. If it were not for readers like you, this may not even have developed into something concrete.

All my regular readers, please send your postal address to my e-mail id and I will make sure to courier you a copy of the book when it comes out. After all, you are what has made it possible. Lets keep in touch through mails. I will keep posting updates about the book and other stuff on this blog.

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After reading that, I was happy for Gumsar – happy that he was fulfilling what seemed to have been his long-cherished dream.

And I was also sad – sad that I will now have to go & find some other ‘Gumsar’ for brightening up my day … & my lunch-time reading.