10 Reasons Why We Go to Office

It has been some one and a half months since the 4 of us have been going to office together, bound by the same mission to file PTI, our mutual contempt for authority and our inability to do what we really want to do at present. Initial days were all marred by complains...me not being able to pursue a PhD, Khushi's failed attempts at working for Marie Claire or any fashion magazine, Saloni's PG at LSE and Baishali, simply sticking around since she had not found a reporting job. Once we got tired of complaining and accepted our fate, we looked around and realised it was not that bad after all. Sub editors at Outlook could, for sure brag about their job. We started to find various ways to satiate our thirst for our actual ambitions. For one, Saloni and I have decided to read V.S Naipaul. Khushi has started her own fashion blog where she can post all the watches and clothes that she likes. Baishali...well, we need someone to work while we do all this. Hence we came up with 10 reasons why we like office, or like coming to offic

1. Food: We come to office to eat. Chinese from Red Chillies, Sandwiches from Baker's Bite, South Indian from Tea Corner, Chicken Tikka from Rajinder Dhaba, Chhole chawal from the normal, nameless dhaba, even the thali from Outlook, Coffee and Ice cream from Cafe Coffee Day and if nothing, then maggi from the pantry...anything will do. Sometimes its home cooked food. Rounds of chai, horrible coffee...we gulp down everything. In fact, we have been planning to stock up office with plates and bowls and paper napkins. We are constantly eating. Oh and there is also the chat wala...from whom we have the most mouth watering golgappa and alu tikki.

2. Entertainment: We come to office to get entertained. Be it my jokes, strange sounds that I make, impersonations, political satire, faking news, boss man, the creaking chairs or the songs from 'Bodyguard' that Khushi plays, we are constantly laughing. There is not a moment in office, when the 4 of us are together, when we are not laughing our asses of. There is also the more serious kind of entertainment...like sad songs, movie trailers, etc. But for us, office is a place, where we laugh and laugh, till we have tears in our eyes and cannot laugh any more.

3. Money: Yes, there is no denying it, we come to office for money. Had there been no money, we would not have come. We need money to fulfill our girlish whims, to go shopping and to buy books...to sponsor all the food that we eat and for other more serious, less whimsical reasons that I shall not get into.

4. Inspiration: Needless to say, we inspire each other. Khushi gets inspired to start a blog, I get inspired to write, Saloni gets inspired to sit for her civil service exams and both of us get inspired to read V.S Naipaul. We tell each other what we should be in doing in life and how we should be going about it and how life will be once we are out of this whole PTI filing thing.

5. Free Magazines: Outlook gives us a bunch of free magazine...Geo, Marie Claire, People, Traveller, normal Outlook, etc, etc. Now who does not want free magazines? Big reason, why we like going to office.

6. Time Killer: Going to office is a huge time killer. When we are at home, we have no clue what we should do, so we go to office and file PTI while we eat and talk. It is called healthy recreation and one that gives you money at the end of the month.

7. Excercise: We are on the 4th floor...which means climbing up is probably the most strenuous excercise that any of us do throughout the day. Its good for the heart and keeps diabetes down...burns some of the calories that we gain once we reach on top and start eating.

8. Brand Name: Telling people that we work for Outlook, has its own charm. Obviously, they have no clue what we do in office. Just the brand name, 'Outlook' does the magic.

9. Support group: Mommy-Daddy Issues, Boy friend issues, Flat mate issues, Career issues, all get solved here. We provide mature advice and solutions. Any trouble. Worry not! We are here, baby. To cheer you up, wipe your tears, make you laugh your bum off and pull your leg. We support one another against the wrath of the boss man and do naare baazi when he does not give a holiday of Eid.

10. Friends: Personally, I feel that with Saloni, Baishali and Khushi, God is making up for the friends that He never let me have in Jamia, where my only friends were 40 year old bearded men. So obviously I go to office because I know I will get to meet them, share moments of maniacal laughter and craziness which Vinod Mehta and his minions cannot buy back from me. 

Eid With An Old World Twist

The sun flooded through the green leaves as I walked past the Church. The air smelt of festivities...of sewai and tender meat being cooked in spices. Families in shiny clothes and bright smiles walked past me on their way to meet extended families and friends. I definitely stood out as far as purpose was concerned. I craved to run back, put on a shalwar kameez and visit my 'other family'. But that was not to be. I obviously had to postpone all my 'Eid meeting sheeting' as I termed it, for later. For now, I was on my way to office. I-pod clutched in hand, wearing my very un-festive jeans, I almost dragged myself down the gali to the auto stand or rather the place where autos stand. There was just one auto waiting at the stand. Beside it, stood a man, with a big smile on his face. It was not one of those creepy smiles that make you want to run away lest you get molested. It was a genuine, generous smile, the sort that tells you, you are home. The kind of old world smile that you don't see any more.

Old world...he was barely 60. Tall. Well built with north western massive hands. He had a strong jaw and sported a stubble. Apart from that irresistible, 'you are home' smile, he wore an immaculately white Pathani Shalwar. For a moment, I didn't know if he was the auto driver and if it would be appropriate to ask him so. I mean, how many auto drivers dress like that? They are usually skinny, sweaty, nose diggers. No offence meant, but they are skinny and sweaty and they do dig their noses...we shall simply term it as a professional hazard.

Anyway, I asked him if he would go to Safdarjung Enclave, and he replied that he would. What sounded elixir to my ears was the impeccable Punjabi Urdu that he spoke. Old world he was. After I sat in the auto, I didn't quite know if I wanted to plug music in my ears because I was simply dying to hear more of that language. All I could think of was Lahore, at which of course the smell of food wafted back into my nostrils.

I am a part of a generation that is usually not very emotional about the Partition, barring exceptions of course. But how I wish I belonged to that Old World. I remember how fondly my grandfather spoke of Dhaka, where my whole family came from and how he would love the fact that among all his grandchildren, at least one loves to hear stories about 'those days'. My grandma whose family had been given shelter and hence saved by their Muslim neighbours during communal riots, told me the story often, emphasizing that people are essentially good. In fact, I promised by grandfather that one day I would go back to our house in Dhaka and write a memoir. Probably this is how I developed my affinity for the old world. And this guy in the auto simply brought it up again...the melancholy that would fill my grandparents every time they told and re-told the stories to me...the fondness and love for the land of their childhood...the one black and white photograph which I promised I would preserve to show the next generation...how I crave for the irreversible!

After work, I was supposed to have dinner with Wasey sahab and family, my head of the department in Jamia, it being Eid. People were sitting and talking in the living room, so he asked me to go and sit with his wife and mother inside. The women, which included all the women of Wasey sahab's family and the wife of this particular Rajya Sabha MP were busy chatting. I am pretty close to his mother and wife and hence I knew I would not be as bored as I usually am in such 'separation of sexes' situation. And to add to my day's Partition flavour, they were discussing, well, the Partition. Wasey sahab's mother was ruing about how half of her family got left behind in Lahore and Karachi and how her parents got her married off at the age of 12, left her behind in India and settled in Pakistan. There were frequent sighs followed by a 'I have not seen my brother for so long' or 'how beautiful Lahore looked'. Of course there were comforting statements such as 'take a month's visa and go visit relatives' but I knew it was not the same.

Whether we like it or not, we have wounded a nation fatally. Whoever's fault it was, whatever reasons there were, nothing can justify what people have had to go through...those who stayed back and those who left. I am not simply talking about physical pain or riots. It is about the heart ache and injury caused by tearing away from what was one, something that 60 plus years of progress has not managed to heal.

P.S: Dinner was awesome, except for that MP's wife exclaiming about my Urdu and a particularly irritating woman who turned up to rub secularism on our faces by her constant ramblings about her array of Muslims friends till Wasey sahab decided to shut her up for good.