Straight from the Office Desk

It takes time, and then, time takes it. In a moment of accidental reflection, it's clear that it took less than even a fortnight, for the capacity to think about other, less-taxing things to return to me. In the penultimate analysis, I guess what I had feared for a bloodsucking parasite, was only a pesky, pokey, unwelcome guest. A few sessions of brooding are still inevitable, and justified even in their pointlessness, for in the final analysis these 'sessions' are, I concede, more of 'fits', and you can never really be too sure about them.

The other less-taxing thing, as it turns out, is the industrial training. Only that sitting through nine hours of absolutely no work is a most taxing challenge in its own right. Sleeping, apart from being prohibited and inspite of being tempting, is an inconsiderate escape. Because each of the men in the neighbouring cubicles, whose professional assignments weigh a full-fledged train as against my handful of nuts and bolts, is bound to feel wronged, maybe even to sigh pensively amid silent cries of 'why me', maybe even stare resentfully at sleeping-me amid silent curses of 'why him'. The second alternative, now, is to pass time talking, but then, with whom ? Certainly not these guys with trainloads of work keeping them busy and rendering them irritable. Lastly, there's the option of actually working through the day, where my own inadequacies abandon me. In tragic contrast to my branch of study, I am not really a man of machines; except of course, the tomato-soup vending machine there, which, by now, may even possessively call me 'My Man' for the faithful company I've been to her. But seriously, there are only so many cups you can take, the numerous five-minutes just don't add up to nine hours; besides, you start feeling like a bottle of ketchup by the time you're back home.

Despite being a minnow's minnow in this intimidatingly complex pecking order in this intimidatingly large organisation, I, surprisingly, am answerable directly to the AGM, who, surprisingly, is a very humble, forthcoming gentleman. Quite unlike my immediate senior, the minnow, who is too much of a Mr.Know-it-All for him to actually know anything at all. But then if your actual expertise over your putative expertise is anywhere like mine, you aren't really entitled to grouses like these. For that, I must first get better at my work, or change the work itself, because currently, my work and I - we just don't get along. Like a platonic relationship between two shy perverts, ours too, is going nowhere. A few more months.

I have set a fresh label for posts of this kind, anticipating that there'll be many more of these. There have to be.

Added Later: Ok, my dashboard tells me it is the hundredth one. Not quite the way I would have wanted to hit a century, but anyway, I let it be, like they say, 'it doesn't matter'.