in the aftermath of the noon...

The alert flashes yet again on the screen. It is a reminder i set for myself, which now lies obscenely overdue at 3 days. I can feel the mouse slipping out of my grip and rushing towards the 'Snooze' button. One 'click' and the reminder retreats in defeat, vowing to return with vengeance. A lady is crooning away in the background..resting only for a mere 3 seconds - just enough for the 'Repeat' button on my Winamp to get into action. I have lost count of the number of times the lady has started singing all over again...she deserves some rest. But the wicked streak in my fingers is at its best, refusing to oblige her with a soft click on the 'stop' button. And she croons on...

One look at the system clock assures me that there are 4 more hours to go before i can officially call it a day and return to my dishevelled apartment with dishes in the sink that remind me of the dinner party we had last week. The silence in my cubicle betrays my state of inactivity to the outside world. A couple a rapid clicks of the mouse and few random taps of the keyboard breath a sense of life into my cubicle which is rapidly sinking into a lethargic slumber. But belive me...aimlessly minimising and maximising a couple of open windows does not serve to amuse even a 3 odd months old toddler.

The mail alert in the corner of the screen reminds me that i should somehow lay my hands upon the DVD of 'You've got mail'. I would have opted for a P2P had it not been for the 8 simultaneous downloads of F.R.I.E.N.D.S -season 9 sucking every ounce of speed from the processor. Well...yet another damsel in distress with a virtual memory problem sending out a SOS. My mind races out of my seat, down the stairs and right into her office where I can rectify the problem. My feet refuse to oblige. It must be the stubborn genes in me (which my mom sometimes blames on her great-grand aunt) all congregating in my toes. The meek surrender smiley (it goes like ^:)^ ...ever tried it??)mocks at me from behind the yahoo messenger icon.

Reclining in my new chair with a backrest that bends back in proportion to the amount of fatigue in my body, and munching on the walnuts which were passed over to me by the gal in the next cubicle (hallelujah !!finally found a good purpose that these cubicles and open workspaces serve..expect more about them in my next few posts)...i evoke many a 'are you comfortable? should i get you a pillow?' responses from my cubicle-sidies !!(its amazing how coining such terms makes you feel that fraternal bonding in the air). They dont even care to camouflage the sarcasm with a smile..hasn't anyone ever heard of sugar coated cyanide ???

"But Jesus was saying, "Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing." Luke 23:34

I hear bells...but christmas is 2 months away. Santa would probably be too busy making some last moment additions and deletions to the 'good kids' list...surrounded by pointy-eared elves in a costume similar to the one that i wore to my 1st standard fancy dress competition. The bells don't stop ringing. I am tempted to think that it is Santa sending me a last minute reminder to do some good and maybe scrape through as a small note scribbled in the minutest of handwriting in the footer of the 'coveted list'. When was the last time i ever tied a string to a dragonfly and hung it upside down from a tree ? or collected fireflys in a see-thru case and fashioned my own table lamp out of a convoluted sense of aesthetism? Looks like i do have a chance of making it to the list, more out of my apathy towards life than out of my good-heartedness.

Having derived some consolation from this realisation, i pick up the phone. Yet another task to be done...yet another deadline added on my calendar. By now im swearing under my breath...there goes my last chance of getting a gift for Christmas.

Another alert flashes on my screen. Its a message alert on my messenger.Its the gal in the next cubicle again...sending out an interesting link to a site which has some amazing illusions. Sometimes when i have nothing better to do, i imagine myself as a philosopher and give sermons to myself on how life is nothing but a big illusion. I tried explaining the same to my colleagues at the lunch table one day. But i guess lesser mortals are just too weak-hearted to see the big picture and accept the harsh reality. The word 'illusion' is now avoided worse than the bubonic plague at the lunch tables...!!I cannot even talk about illness because by the moment i say 'ill'..everyone has said their goodbyes assuming that the 'usions' will follow like a faithful labrador.

As i open the link to the site, my screen is bombarded by a thousand different popups...!! By the end of the evening, I have won an all new digicam (which they promised to deliver at my doorstep in 2 weeks), have signed up for a newsletter which gives the latest in all relaxation techniques, have got an account on a site which will actually pay me to use their email service and have got a pop-up blocker installed on my system.

I glance at the system clock which says 6.25 pm. But I know better than to trust it. Thanks to the friendly warning 'Is your computer clock wrong ?' with the little sandclock icon that kept turning up and down. What a boon for the unfortunate creatures whose spend a whole extra 5 minutes in office all because their system clock "chooses"(refer to my previous post) to run 5 minutes slow.

I decide not to get fooled by the chicanery of the clock. A few letters entered into the searchbar and there i have some 12,345 records giving me the exact time as it is now. Having convinced myself that the clock is indeed correct (which i am sure it is doing to win my trust so that it can catch me unawares in the near future), i start the systematic ritual of logging off from my system. I always liken this act to the much debated act which we euphemistically refer to as 'pulling the plug', the only difference being that the the misery and suffering being put to an end in this case is all mine. A couple of 'endtask' and 'close' button-clicks later...it is all done. C'est tout, c'est ce

The lady stops crooning. The chair springs back to its position. The walnut shells lie in the trash-can whispering sweet nothings to each other. The screensaver valiantly tries to hang on to the last shreds of life, flickering momentarily before the screen goes black.

And yet again my cubicle slips into a deep slumber of inactivity...


" They told me it was the lunch
some blamed it on the heat
they cursed the dim lights
nor did they spare the seat

speculations and accusations
not a clue we could find
but i know its right there
right up in the mind "

choices..

hmpf !! Choices...sometimes i wonder who made them. Take for instance now: i started creating this blog for myself (why??because i chose to !!) . I was asked to choose a name for my blog. Whats in a name anyway. A blog with any other name would still remain a blog. Thinking of it now..would "the-nameless-blog" have been a better choice ?

And just when the last tinge of doubt and apprehension over my choice of name was fading away from my mind, i had to choose a design for the same. Should i opt for black...nah..thats too negative. Reminds me of the English classes in Elementary School...chapter 5, page 36 of the Grammer coursebook "...as black as the devil's heart" !!
Or should it be grey? Not going to help...associated with too much of wisdom..grey cells, grey hair..so on and so forth. Pink reeks of romance (thanks to the candy floss love stories of Bollywood where ever other day the oh-so-romantic hero leaves secret bouquets with Shakespearean ballads written over pink cards dipped in oodles of 'Dioressence' (courtesy:Christian Dior) for the oh-so-beautiful female protagonist)

Just when i had gone over the previews of each design one thousand and one times and each one looked no different from the other...I noticed the 'verdana' font size 10 text which said that I could change the design any time I chose to. Well...so much so for the critical evaluation of each design and colour !!

Choices and more choices..thats what life boils down to finally. My day starts with a choice and ends with one. My computer whom i like to regard as my truly faithful companion thru the thick and thin of life (did anyone talk abt hard disk crashes??) just loves to shove the question into my face whenever I make any decision 'Are you sure ?' with two little buttons that seem to lure me with equal intensity towards them. Each time i ponder over my decision for what seems like an eternity. And the few times when I click on the 'yes' button, more out of frustration than discretion, turn out to be the times when i accidentally delete my presentation just minutes before my seminar.

I go to the restaurant for lunch and again i am faced with a fusillade of choices. The pangs of hunger which drive me to the restaurant faster than any Pest Control agency can drive the rats out of your house, seem to be forgotten in the war of the choices. My stomach doesn't seem to mind though...even if it does, it has no choice but to be silent except for the occasional growling reminders which evoke 'how-so-uncouth' responses from the ones around.

When work meanders around drooping eyes, I walk to the coffee machine. And there you go, a whole set of new choices. Sugar? Milk? Decaf? I walk back to my office with the weirdest combo i can think of (all my sense of adventure poured generously into the not-so-generously-sized coffee cup)...wide awake even before i could take the first sip of my drink.

I can just go on and on about how choices ruin our lives...but I have to go home and cook dinner. Now what can i possibly cook ?(rings a bell...doesn't it ??) Life would have been much more simpler had it been a set of commandments written down in a user-friendly manual.

"page 356: thou shalst cook pasta on the 23rd day of october 2004 for dinner, boiled medium for 15 minutes and 34 seconds, tossed in 41/2 drops of olive oil for 5 minutes and 30 seconds, topped with fried onions and tomato slices cut at a .6 cm thickness...."

Well...I was just thinking that i have started on such a negative note...i think i shud have rather chosen the black coloured template for my blog. As a mark of protest for this life where all you get is to make choices and more choices. Or rather...pink adds a soft touch to the tough life and even tougher choices that you have to make. Or maybe if after all this random rambling, if i still show signs of wisdom, then grey would make my day....
Well...can I just choose not to choose?