Boss apparently did not think that two colleagues of diverse gender could ever discuss any subject pertaining to work. The maximum he allowed for any open talk between a female and a male colleague was two minutes.
A moment longer and he would call out one of them and hand over readers' letters to edit.
Frugal like only a boss can be with granting leave, it was unbelievable that he granted me a half-day leave. (Had he sensed I was going to spend that time watching a cricket fixture of World Cup 1987, he would have buried me in a heap of letters). In a reciprocal gesture, I asked him for any readers' letters that I could edit at home. He handed me the only two letters in his file.
As luck would have it, I got stranded in my friend's office while waiting for him to finish his job and drop me home. His work got prolonged and then it began to rain. Oddly, the World Cup match got washed away too.
Friend made an offer that we have gin, the weather not being conducive to having beer. Never having touched hard liquor, I gulped it like beer and the two pegs inside had given me a high. I told my friend not to bother about dropping me home and I would walk to Shivajinagar to catch my bus. As there was ample time left for the last bus to depart, I called up a colleague to join me for a brief chat just outside his office on MG Road. He obliged. I departed after a while.
On the way to Shivajingar, I was shocked to find the two letters were missing. They were with me when we left the watering hole. I surmised that they must have fallen from the bag when the colleague, out of curiosity, opened it to glance the magazines in it.
Getting back to MG Road would be one sure way to miss the bus. Catching an autorickshaw, if at all the driver obliged, would be expensive. Calling up my media colleague and requesting him to go and look for the letters would also cost time. Not finding the letters would only provide ammunition for my boss to use against me. I told myself that nobody would touch the letters. Who would pick up some unwanted paper from the wayside after all? If I was lucky, I would find them next morning as well.
Next morning, I beat the sweepers to their job. Without effort I found one of the two letters. Mercifully, the writer of the letter had used a ball-point pen and the previous day's rain had not smudged the text.
I had little doubt now about finding the second letter, written on a foolscap paper. Because it was light, it would have got blown away, I was sure. I just picked up a shred of paper from the pavement and dropped it from a height — like I was used to doing before using the red cherry in a match — to judge the direction in which the wind was blowing.
My cricketing instinct led me in the direction of nearby Blue Bell Sweets. I found the letter settled at the bottom of a street-edge puddle, created by the rain. I was about 20 feet or so from the puddle when a street urchin materialised from nowhere and piddled right into the puddle.
The dilemma now was whether to slight myself by dipping my two fingers, howsoever superficially, into the puddle and carry the urea-coated letter all the way home for solar-sterilising, before rendering it fit for rewriting or, just have my hygiene-consciousness intact. Loyalty for that unknown reader won over my sense of hygiene. The two fingers of my left hand never remained the same after that. Who says it is only the stain of blood that stays forever?
A moment longer and he would call out one of them and hand over readers' letters to edit.
Frugal like only a boss can be with granting leave, it was unbelievable that he granted me a half-day leave. (Had he sensed I was going to spend that time watching a cricket fixture of World Cup 1987, he would have buried me in a heap of letters). In a reciprocal gesture, I asked him for any readers' letters that I could edit at home. He handed me the only two letters in his file.
As luck would have it, I got stranded in my friend's office while waiting for him to finish his job and drop me home. His work got prolonged and then it began to rain. Oddly, the World Cup match got washed away too.
Friend made an offer that we have gin, the weather not being conducive to having beer. Never having touched hard liquor, I gulped it like beer and the two pegs inside had given me a high. I told my friend not to bother about dropping me home and I would walk to Shivajinagar to catch my bus. As there was ample time left for the last bus to depart, I called up a colleague to join me for a brief chat just outside his office on MG Road. He obliged. I departed after a while.
On the way to Shivajingar, I was shocked to find the two letters were missing. They were with me when we left the watering hole. I surmised that they must have fallen from the bag when the colleague, out of curiosity, opened it to glance the magazines in it.
Getting back to MG Road would be one sure way to miss the bus. Catching an autorickshaw, if at all the driver obliged, would be expensive. Calling up my media colleague and requesting him to go and look for the letters would also cost time. Not finding the letters would only provide ammunition for my boss to use against me. I told myself that nobody would touch the letters. Who would pick up some unwanted paper from the wayside after all? If I was lucky, I would find them next morning as well.
Next morning, I beat the sweepers to their job. Without effort I found one of the two letters. Mercifully, the writer of the letter had used a ball-point pen and the previous day's rain had not smudged the text.
I had little doubt now about finding the second letter, written on a foolscap paper. Because it was light, it would have got blown away, I was sure. I just picked up a shred of paper from the pavement and dropped it from a height — like I was used to doing before using the red cherry in a match — to judge the direction in which the wind was blowing.
My cricketing instinct led me in the direction of nearby Blue Bell Sweets. I found the letter settled at the bottom of a street-edge puddle, created by the rain. I was about 20 feet or so from the puddle when a street urchin materialised from nowhere and piddled right into the puddle.
The dilemma now was whether to slight myself by dipping my two fingers, howsoever superficially, into the puddle and carry the urea-coated letter all the way home for solar-sterilising, before rendering it fit for rewriting or, just have my hygiene-consciousness intact. Loyalty for that unknown reader won over my sense of hygiene. The two fingers of my left hand never remained the same after that. Who says it is only the stain of blood that stays forever?