Miss Neat

She's impeccably neat. Obssessively-compulsively neat with herself. I really couldn't say much for her home or work-station as I have been to neither.

But she passes by like a porcelain doll on stilts, placing one foot ahead of the other in an accurately-calculated step, down to the last fraction of an inch. Everything will be in place - her hair, make-up, necklace, earrings. I feel awfully uncomfortable in her presence.

She is hardly ever around, just passes by in a stately aura with a trail of not-so-neat almost adoring friends following closely behind. But you know when she passes. The air is broken with the friction between obssessively impeccable and incorrigeably untidy. There's a slight click-click on the tiles and Miss Neat floats by, swishing her hips carefully eyed by 20-odd pairs of male eyes full of hope and an equal number of female eyes full of perceived disdain.

I've had more than one opportunity (I'm not sure whether it classifies as one) of being in the women's rest-room when she walked in. They are usually quiet entries, where she sneaks up on you. Perhaps she does not want to be noticed for not having her make-up on right. But she doesn't know it's fine - exactly the same way it was when she arrived at work in the morning.

She will proceed to comb her hair that has already been combed, pull it through into a pony-tail or curl it into place. Her manicured hands and shapely nails will pull the zipper of her clean (disinfected?) handbag to rummage neatly - if one can do that according to the laws of life - through its contents and retrieve a lipstick. It's really not needed, but it seems like a ritual now.

Carefully, with deft hands and keen eyes decorated with mascara, she outlines her mouth and purses her lips for effect. I am way passed my comfort zone and really, don't see me as a stalker or confused heterosexual. No, this is not attraction. It is wonder, amusement, repulsion and awe all rolled up in one.

I sometimes have the urge to shake her like a rag doll to stop her from being so perfectly "Barbie"-like. But then I stop myself. She just might break.

Coffee break at work when it's raining outside

You sit on the steel chair lost in a large room full of others just like them, nursing a cup of free coffee. The deep smell wafts into your nostrils as you lose yourself in a maze of time, watching the rain drops fall in a movie-like fashion - slow and meaningful - outside the glass windows.

It's that time of contemplation, dreaming, hoping and pining. Your coffee break at work when it's raining outside. You realise you're hungry only on some occasions like these. Other times, you just sit alone and ignore time passing away. The atmosphere is so meditative when the clouds burst. Rain falling like a sheet against reality, screening you from what you wish to hide. You wonder about silly things. At least I do! - How big is a raindrop to grasshoppers? Do ants drown in the flood of a puddle? What would it be like if I was that small? Stupid existential questions of what ifs and how sos.

It still isn't nice having to go back inside when it's pouring outside. So you struggle to rise and help yourself to another thermacol cup, unmindful of the damage to the environment, arguing with your own mind that you deserve another shot of diluted caffeine. You slump back in your chair and revert to the comfortable vacuum of bored expression. Doodles on the table-top and eavesdropped conversations are such time-consuming and interesting passtimes.

You decipher gossip from the table nearby and feel good about your wonderful ability to understand the complexities of an unknown relationship just by listening to a stream of bitchy words. If someone you know passes by, you smile vacantly and get back to listening to the conversation, uninvited. It is still raining outside.

Alternatively, if you are the chatty sociable sort, you will still be in the cafeteria only this time with friends or colleagues. The conversation will be among yourselves and the bored loner seated at the table near you will be patting his back as you regurgitate gossip. You still spend hours at the table, eat the over-priced food, drink the free coffee, be anti-institutional and plan for the weekend.

Finally, whichever sort you are, you decide it's time to go. There's work a-pending and a boss to satisfy. You stand, stretch (as inconspicuously as you can), drag your feet to the office and give the world outside a last parting glance. It has stopped raining outside.

ZZZZzzzzzzz....

Bliss. Quiet oblivion. Unknowingness, fuzzy images (sometimes) surrounded by darkness. A curtain away from reality.

I try to fight the shadow, swim back to consciousness, reaching for the veil to pull away the darkness and see my window.

Tiny slits open. A flash of light, and grills, very conspicuous in my frame of vision. Steady breaths get steadier, slow with the rise and fall of my chest. I sink back into the darkness.

How long has it been? Half an hour, an hour, ten minutes? It feels like seconds...

I reach out again. A watch appears in my head, numbers and a voice, my voice saying "Nine. Work at nine."

Now I can imagine where things are... I see the window, the cupboard, the clothes. Though they have no clear outlines, I ready myself for the familiar.

With a great amount of energy and an equal measure of will power, I force my body to sit up. My head follows suit.

Hair obscures vision. I draw my hand mechanically, like the driver of a machine, wipe the hair from my face and let it fall lifeless. I lean against the wall and sleep again.

I jolt awake. I've had a dream, but that is not the reason for my wakefulness. Strangely, I am alert. My body is mine again and my head connected with it.

Refreshed, I stand, steady myself from the slight spinning. Then down a glass of water and I'm off to the loo to pee.

If I just had the time...

To me

I know it's seems odd and not possible, but somehow I have the word 'journalist' written on my job profile.

As part of my job, as is with every journalist especially the arm-chair sort, there's not a day that goes by without calls. The constant introductions every five minutes, the repeating of names (like mine or Sholin or Jolandra or Balakrishnaprasad Subramania Kumaran Harisundar Chattopadhyaya, without insult to anyone or any community) over phoneline static, the interpretation of Hindi-, Bengali-, Konkani-, Kannada-flavoured English.

It was going great yesterday. Everyone decided to speak to me, although most times the conversation ended with: "I don't know much about this. Please contact Mr/Ms X, who will be in a better position to answer your query." I finally got the elusive Ms X and rang her up.

(Heavy traffic sounds. Honking)

D: Hello, may I speak to Ms X please?

X: Yes, speaking.

D: I am Dielle D'Souza calling from the P... A....

X: Who??

D: (very slowly, trying to be very clear) Dielle D'Souza from the P... A...

X: Yea? ok?

D: I'm doing a story on dolphins and I wanted your help. I spoke to Mr S and he told me you work with dolphins. (bla bla bla)

X: Yes, I do, but who did you say you are again?

D: I'm Dielle D'Souza from the P... A...

X: Is this a joke?

D: (to self) What?? Would I call sources to chat them up just for the heck of it? Waste money and time? Introduce myself to random strangers who will almost never get my name... and screw opportunities for developing a source like I did the other day?

D: (in conversation) No, this is not a joke. I'm sorry to disturb you but I'm doing a story on dolphins and was told you work with them.

X: This is an April Fool's joke isn't it? (laughing) Who's this?

D: (almost cracking up) No, this is not a joke. I'm really doing a story and I need your help.

X: (between bouts of laughter) I'm sure this is a joke...

D: No Ms X, it's not. (watching everyone around crack up incontrollably and finding it very hard not to laugh)

X: Listen (laughter), could you call me back at 8 o'clock please?

D: I really need your help. Will you be able to speak to me then? (to self: and not think it's an idiotic friend on an April Fool's loose-end)

X: Yes yes. Call me at 8.

D: All right then. Thank you.

(Puts phone down. Bursts out laughing)

Call at 8:05pm unanswered. Story up with someone else's two-line quote.

Happy April Fool's Day.............. to me!

Note: This post was not meant to hurt the feelings of anyone/any community. If anyone/any community does feel insulted, I apologise profusely.

Happy April Fool's Day to U

Oh yea... April Fools Day. I've never really been made a fool of (intentionally, on this day.. otherwise.... yea!). I can't remember fooling anyone, except mandatorily my mom, other than someone we'll call U.

It was a pretty stupid thing but U got fooled anyway. It was over the phone of all things and U was completely baffled. U had called earlier and I pretended I couldn't hear. When U called again, I pretended like it was the first time U had called that day. U thought the first call had been placed to someone else and U had said things like "idiot" and "stupid" when saying "I can hear you". The only other person registered under 'D' on the mobile phone was probably Dean of the University.

Now, U wouldn't want things like that, would U? The call lasted about 10 minutes, seven of which consisted of "But I'm sure I called you. Who else could I have called? I know I heard your voice and you said you couldn't hear me" and "No... there's no one else at home and this is the first time this phone's rung all day. I was studying near the phone and if I didn't hear the phone, it means it didn't ring. Think logically, will you?"

Thoroughly confused, U put the phone down. I let it lie for a while because I knew U would spend most of the time wondering what just happened.

Surely, when I called again after about half an hour, U was still confused. I asked U about the problem in chapter 5 and U said it was left out.

I put the phone down, but not before saying "Happy April Fool's Day".

U pelted stones at me the next day.

Happy April Fool's Day to U!

I live for vacations

I really do live for vacations. It's the thought that I'll eventually be off again that keeps me going in the first place. Not the hope that I'll be first on the team, or that I'll get a salary hike next month (well, maybe that too!).

How far along can you go without a break? And I'm not counting weekends here. Those are the breaths of fresh air mandatory for your survival in this wicked work world, where you break through the surface at the end of every week to grab the life-giver.

Cynically, weekends are the days you're given off to recuperate so you can work the next week to the "best of your capacity". Don't for a second think they're actually wishing you a good weekend when Friday comes round the corner.

Weekends or week-offs (if you're one of those unfortunate souls who slog a six-day week) are the days unofficially assigned to you to finish your laundry pile-up, pay your bills, explain your late nights to your landlord, and cook for the rest of the next seven days. That's the only time you work for yourself. The days when you're the boss, not counting the landlord of course, and the state of your house clearly tells how much of a boss you are.

Too bad for those several years and a couple of kids into a marriage, where wifey dear is undoubtedly boss of home and hearth. For those, like me, sworn to a life away from home with room mates and flatmates, landlords and neighbours, it's the tussle to keep everyone happy including yourself, the hope that you'll make it through the week without a complaint that you left the gate open and the dogs came in, or the pulling of lots and unspoken authority on who should clean the dismembered rat lying outside your front door.

I've seen shared houses where logs on the wall spell out chores for the week down to who pays for the milk on which days. Horrible stories of money-hungry roomies and landlords who stake out lobbies and kitchens reminding you day after day that you owe something to someone. Worse, stories of how roomies are tricked into paying for another's bed and breakfast.

Strangely enough, it's an interesting world. One that you can get tired of easily, hate all-at-once, but never really escape. I suppose it's the human obsession with the fact that one must belong - to a family, to friends, lovers, spouses, God, past, present or future. It would be so easy to just float into oblivion. But then, would you belong to oblivion?

As I said, I belong to vacations. It's the closest to oblivion for me. I can leave the dirt of office politics and forced ethics behind and get to a time that I designed. No work, no laundry, no schedules, no tempered expressions.

Just me.

Marriage plans

Knew that would generate interest and lead you here. Now that I've turned you into the Sucker For Today, you can read on....

Loads of people seem to be getting hitched these days. Rather bad time for an investment, don't you think? Sure it seems like you're saving money by sharing costs, but if you look at it really carefully it's not much more than cohabiting. With the damned strings attached.

Poor losers... anyway, my father has long treasured his Asterix collection and he's said he'll place them into my jealous hands as my "dowry".

The wheels are turning and if I am to get that collection before long, I'd either have to swindle my father out of it or get married.

Now pops is not one for getting swindled so there goes my option. The easiest way out is to catch some sucker, get hitched and ditched. That way, I'll have the Asterix collection, alimony and no tag-along.

Yes I know I can buy them all for myself. But the whole point of them being a collection 'inherited' with all the stains and memories just gets wiped away. I won't see that patch of oil on the corner of the book when I indulged in the forbidden activity of eating while reading.

The little bug that was mercilessly murdered as we slammed the book shut and squished around where we thought he might be... Later we'd open the book to see the splatter of the 'enemy'.

And the page I ripped in half as I fought with J over who ought to read the book and the face I had to look at when my father found out...

"The Magic Carpet" which has literally travelled across oceans and is hopefully now in Melbourne, and will stay there till I hop on a plane to go get it back...

The yellowed pages of hilarious creativity and friends we'd wished were real...

The little notes on the front page:
"Darling Dominic,
Happy birthday!
Love always,
Marise
13 March 1983"...

Or maybe my dad will get fed-up of waiting and sick of my consistent whining that he'll dump them on me one day... (hope!)

"These women are crazy"