It’s been a long long time, and there are reasons.
The fall I had just a day before elections were set to happen in Kolkata, was pathetic because it was absolutely unnecessary. True that I always had this problem of twisting my ankle whenever I’d be on slightly uneven surface, but usually I hold on to some nearby support and manage to maintain my balance. That day the fall had to happen because there was nothing around me that I could hold on to. On hindsight, it was all very stupid. My brother was all set to leave for Bangalore. It was a scorching afternoon, and anyways we had decided to take a taxi, so, we kept chit chatting and delaying the travel to the airport. Finally, as we decided to step out, my brother just called out to me to take “the other route”. Now our house has a proper main gate for exit, and the other end is the garage gate, which is over grown with shrubbery as we don’t have a car and that route is not used. I don’t know why we went back to our kid age and wanted some adventure, but as I tried to jump across the bamboo wall that borders that exit, I lost my balance and fell flat on my face. I scraped my knees and elbows, which was nothing much, but there was this huge swelling near my ankle join on my right feet. My brother stood at an arm’s length, still holding on to the umbrella he had planned to hold on my head till we’d get the taxi. You should have seen his face with “I am the culprit, it is all my fault” kinda pleading look. Well, dad helped me back on my feet and I just couldn’t think of dropping the plan of accompanying him to the airport, and instead stay home and take care of my wound. So I limped to the taxi stand, and I am limping still. The pain is substantially gone, but the limp remains, it has been two weeks now.
Things don’t really end there. On our way back we decided to take a bus, and just when I was getting down, I hurt my left foot in something that jutted out from the front seat of the bus. Not sure if it was tin or wood, but there was a deep gash that started bleeding immediately. There was no way I could tell dad about the new wound, he already being worried about what happened earlier in the day. And I was like…would this lead to tetanus? Would I die? Would the vaccinations that I had taken in infancy still work? Finally I just decided to wait and see whether I’d die. As it appears, I am still alive.
Yet nowadays I have this severe falling tendency. Mostly due to the limping, I was about to fall down in the staircase while I was going out to cast my vote. I held on to the railing and saved myself. And I limped around a kilometre because there was not public transport on the voting day. Still, I won’t be deterred – I am so proud of being part of a sovereign democratic republic. Why, even yesterday I was falling of the chair, held on to the table and saved myself.
But my body didn’t respond well to the apparent negligence of my health. Within a week I fell severely ill, and had to visit the doctor and be given a course of antibiotics and paracetamol and cough syrup and what not. As a result, I have been long absent – I refrained from any kind of activity except my regular eat-sleep-wake up-go to the university routine.
Well that would again be wrong to say. Whenever I’d get some strength, I’d sit up and read the new book by Malcolm Gladwell, David and Goliath. And what an interesting book it is. Kind of gave me a new strength to live.
For you see, the world around me is not a happy place. May be for the blind and unfeeling, it is. But not for people like me, who have themselves known pain, and who understand pain when they see it. It is such a tough world anyways, and over that, within moments your world might go topsy turvy once a bad news comes. Husband of a colleague in the university has been ill for some time and now he’s been diagnosed with cancer. A long fight ahead of her (i.e. if it lasts long) and moreover the fear factor is there. In other diseases the hope acts as a booster, this kind leaves you nowhere. Poor lady has simply forgotten to smile. Then today in the newspaper I read about this lady, around 50 years old now, who’s a science graduate, and who out of loneliness had attempted suicide 20 years back. The police admitted her to a hospital and ever since then, she’s living there, coz she can at least be in human company there. I think of these circumstances that life poses before you – I sigh and thank God for giving me the courage to come back here leaving my job. I am at least happier here, but then it is a so far, so good condition. I don’t know what might happen tomorrow. Today, I am more contented than I have ever been in Bangalore.
Watched two movies lately.
Apur Panchali couldn’t make me cry. It left me dumb and writhing from within. After so many days, I still can’t handle this topic of death of one’s child. I wanted to say a lot of things aloud, things that came to my mind as I watched the movie – like, how it makes no sense to commit suicide because a child is dead, when you and your husband are young, you still can go for another baby, and then I’d remember my once upon a time colleague, whose life changed after her first child got aborted, she got some medical complication and haven’t been able to conceive ever since, a jovial fun loving girl turned reclusive in front of my eyes…I wanted to speak about all these things – but not a word would come out. It was a steely silence inside me.
On the other hand, cried my heart out during Two States. I could identify so much with the movie. Been through almost all the twists and turns – except alas – the guys in my case were not caring enough. In fact there is no comparison; they were loathsome people who simply played with me and I was stupid enough to trust them. I cried all the more towards the end of the movie, during the marriage. In the joy of the screen couple getting united, in the sorrow that this life will never be mine. Now, I have taken that in my stride, haven’t I?
Well, this is turning out to be a long entry, but I still have lots to tell, The Facebook experience, for example. So, after this long while, I finally went to Facebook and put up couple of photos of the inauguration of our website. It was less of boasting and more of a social experiment. For by now, I am totally out of Facebook. I wanted to see who’d be the people who’d like the photo despite my long absence. In this entire period of close to 8 months, I have rarely liked anybody’s photos or status updates. I wanted to see who in my friendlist are – “like me and I will like thee” type, and who genuinely feel good at my achievement. Well, my target was that particular group who have changed drastically after I left my job…e.g. the “SPHS friend” (the lady who wanted proof that I have indeed lost my job) and the guy who said “this is the life of s/w engineers, they have to stay away from home”. Well, none of them ever materialized in the like or comment list. There are people who are so jealous that they get severely impaired by their malice, yet won’t change themselves. They are the most “soda” types as well, they show off the most, but if that fizzes out, there’s nothing much left of them. Then there are the elite types, oh she’s not our category – the rich and blessed ones who are too busy celebrating their achievements to care about mine. And finally there’s the loser x-boyfriend type – who are kind of sad that their ill treatment didn’t kill me finally. On the other hand there are people who wrote things like..."proud of you" and "you are the best"...so you see, there's that selfless kind too. In the end it doesn’t matter to me – it was just an experiment, and I quite enjoyed it.
Finally there was this ping from my ex boss last week. He was my self-styled big brother when he said he won’t release me and coaxed me into serving a 5 months’ notice period. But afterwards there was not a single “hi” from him. Neither did I bother to get in touch with him despite the very tough time I had in between. Even when I was planning to go back there, I didn’t ping him but instead talked with another manager I knew there. I have this big fat ego, you see. And I quite like nurturing that. So the ping was of course to ask for help on a banking proposal. And soon after, I was flooded with pings and calls and emails, most of which I couldn’t receive coz I fell sick right then. Anyways, what I gathered is, they don’t really want my help in doing the proposal, they want me to write the proposal instead. Hello…I am no more your employee, remember? It took me a couple of mails and calls to drive this in their head. Afterwards there was one call where they sought some explanation and then again they went off the radar. Uff, how relieved I was to realize I am no more a part of that crazy organization. I wonder why the Indian s/w industry loves this delegate and pressurize rule. Why don’t they plan things in a better way, now that business is all the more difficult?
Whatever...hI am not thinking much. Que Sera Sera. I want to read “Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban” once again…I love Sirius Black.
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