Brief

A maximum of thirty words are spoken everyday.

Most are concise answers to pointed questions. A few, on good days, are spent in basic questions.
There is no need to talk more than needed. There is no desire to ask about days, weather conditions or thoughts. It is a very intense game of what we like to call “Do you really need to know?” If a certain story or fact isn’t going to change your life or affect you immediately, the answer is NO, you don’t need to know. Thus, the thought will not be shared, and will be stored in one’s careful mind till the day it qualifies as something that will indeed make a difference to your being.

At the end of the day, if you have words left over from your thirty word quota, those words are lost forever. They aren’t carried forward, like points at the supermarket.

If all the lost words got together, we could use them to fill a hundred page book.

Organized worries.

Get a yellow legal pad and a freshly sharpened pencil.

Then, you write down on what exactly is bothering you. If there is more than one thing, make a numbered list in no particular order. However, if there are more than ten things, I’d suggest you make the list in a manner where no. 1 is the biggest worry (like. Renal failure or bankruptcy) and no. 12 is less urgent (like chipping nail polish or empty juice box) 


Then you divide the list (still maintain the descending order of seriousness) on the basis of things that are in your control and things that are contingent on external factors. An example would be, while you can control what tie you wear to go with your blazer, you have no command over the country’s inflation rate. 


After the list has been duly split, into these sections, put away the section which you cannot change. I don’t think you should trash it though. There’s a strange pleasure in ticking off things from a list, so you can preserve that and check the item as and when the world conspires to correct it. 


The section which you have control over gets further divided into whether it stems from you or from other people. I suggest you write ‘me’ or in red ink against each item. In my experience, most of these things will usually come back to you, unless you’re an absolute darling but your husband beats you with an iron rod on a whim. 


Now your lists are ready. Look over them for typos or logical fallacies. You now have two options. You either deal with the things that are upsetting you OR you sit with your feet on a windowsill and wallow in how the world has wronged you while smoking a teaky pipe.


It’s really up to you. Both bring their own qualities to the table.

Tight-lipped talking.

It was expected that the answer to how one gets through the meeting would be at the bottom of the coffee mug. However, the bottom offered no advice and in turn left behind granular residue that smelled nothing like coffee.

It was quite a verbose morning where everything that was being discussed brought with it more thoughts than it needed to, most of which were spewing out of the many mouths around the table. The women, in their tan coloured stockings and cherry red lips, continued to drone on about how advertising their products with a little pink somewhere appealed to pre-teen girls with access to money. The men were outraged and tapped their expensive pens in opposition saying that this would alienate the little boys who would get bullied for buying pink things.

They took stereotypical breaks where the women walked down long winding hallways to mirrored bathrooms and the men stood outside in circles smoking. It was strange that not a single man went to the bathroom to wash up or a woman in heels stepped out for a quick puff. That being said, it obviously also didn’t bode well for people in support of gender neutral opinions that this group of people held to their chests their pinks and non-pinks debates.

The product, seen on long banners around the office, was an energy drink for children which a lot of people thought would be a bust because no sane parent would want their children to have more energy than they already did, which in itself was a task to handle. They called it Mr. Champ or another such name that tried as hard and decided that the advertisement would have a child jumping off a dive-board at a swimming pool only to start flying mid-air thanks to all the newfound energy. They tried variations with the child being a girl and the swimming pool being a meadow with butterflies and the diving board being a swing set. The variations, although a little too ridiculous, were discussed anyway so as to give everyone’s idea a chance. In the end, over elaborate lunches, it was decided that the child would be a robot with a pink laser beaming out of his forehead.

The day ended like it started, with machine coffee and longwinded thoughts, with logic faltering a little bit. They deemed it a productive process and congratulated one another with sappy lines and over-used adjectives. The men offered to drop the women home but they said they would drive back themselves.

Meanwhile, children everywhere made mental notes to not buy anything unless it came with a free toy and thus pre-empted the death of the robot child that drank energy drinks but offered no freebies.

There were monsoon birthdays covered in photo collages. There were books in paper bags. There were cards and letters; my handwriting jumping off the pages in reds and greens. Midnight was a special time – the waiting by the phone and feverishly dialling the number only to scream Happy Birthday and other festive things.

Then the day dissolved into nothingness soon enough. It wasn’t just another day but it definitely wasn’t noteworthy. It came down to just phone calls, even text messages.  It was an insipid two-minute phone call, where we discussed new cities and dinner prices. I don’t remember too much else and that’s saying something because I am not one to forget. I do however remember the feeling of just being two people, very far away, making small talk because that’s the norm. The birthday wishes were a burden and from what came next everything else was too.

The monsoon birthday is unimportant now. It passes me by without the slightest hint. Days later, when I am reminded of it because of a Facebook update or some such, I realize how this was only inevitable. The people involved now exist miles outside my scheme of things.

This is something that I just write about now and every time I do, I smile as the metaphoric dodged bullet whizzes past me.

Everyone's man.

Today, he is a good listener. He sat through lunch listening to a colleague whimper about a cheating wife. He nodded at the right places and thumped the colleague’s back when he was done. He dropped in a few appropriate phrases that he couldn’t believe came out sounding sincere. There was the age old “This too shall pass” and then there was “you’ll pull through” Neither of which he could provide a guarantee for but since today he was a good listener, he said it anyway.

Some days, he is a funny man. He makes incessant jokes about everything and people tell him what a hoot he is. He is full of good natured jibes and harmless sarcasm. He pulls out one-liners that he’s heard elsewhere but they never fail to impress. In tense situations, he makes people laugh and they look over at him gratefully. He drives back at night, wondering if people could see the dead pan expression in his eyes.

Last week, he was the conscientious one. He checked for punctuation and made sure that the pages were aligned when he punched holes through them while filing. He replied to each of his mails and then said, “It just bothers me to leave unread mails in my inbox” while people looked on with a milder variant of awe. He washed out his coffee mug and he made sure all calls were returned. He had his coffee without sugar and took the stairs instead of the elevator.

And then there are days when he tries to be everything all at once. He laughs and makes impeccable presentations. He makes a visit to a sick subordinate and then makes sure to take some flowers along. He walks home to burn a few extra calories. He stays up at night to finish off a task he took on because it would be challenging.

Even in his own space, he is unsure of who he should be. He wonders what he should do with the ten free minutes. He falls asleep over his laptop, his back bending at a painful angle. He wakes up with a cramp in his neck but he powers on anyway because today he has to be an interesting person and he needs to prepare for that.

Chai.

There is something absolutely gorgeous called Iranian chai, which is found in old, slightly musty places with red checkered table cloths sandwiched between the table and the glass top. 

There is always the old man with a fur cap sitting at the entrance, his big yellowing eyes looking magnified from behind his thick glasses. The time stops and watches the world go by,  as the old man hits a little bell signalling over a hunched waiter. The waiter has a towel on his shoulder which he uses to mop tables even before the people vacate their chairs.

The tea is hot and sweet, with cardamom and only a whiff of ginger. The tea cups are non descript and shapeless, but it doesn't matter. The tea is best consumed on dark, rainy days when the sky looks particularly gloomy. 

The small, slightly burnt bun slathered with delicious blobs of butter, which accompanies the tea, becomes a part of your memories which remain untouched for a long time. 

Then many years later, when you walk past a defunct Iranian joint, you tell your friends how you once missed an English Literature lecture to have bun maska and chai for ten rupees. 

There is a small shop in the lane. It sells biscuits and bread, pens and band- aids. The man at the store always has a radio held to his ear. He listens to anything worthy of his time. Some days it's the news of an important building catching a strategic fire, other days it's the delayed monsoons.

Children go to the store to buy packets of chips to play before school. He takes the folded ten rupee notes and yells at them for good measure. They don't care and it makes me feel better, so all in all everyone's pleased. Men buy loose cigarettes and ask him for a match box. The women buy hair oil and shampoo sachets, preparing for Sunday morning hair care rituals. He growls at everyone and pretends like it is a burden for him to sell them things.

The only thing that the man approves of is cricket. The only time he doesn't scowl is when children come to buy rubber balls to play cricket with. 

I stop at the store to ask for change, after late night auto rides. He never gives me any and angrily starts pulling the shutter down. This eggs me on to ask more often, to check if he ever gives people change.

Then one day, it hits me. From now on, whenever he gives me change, I check my phone for cricket scores. 

I am told that every four years, there is a month so magical, that if you stand outside his store with a thousand rupee note, he'll give you change and he will smile at you. When India won the world cup last year and all the jumping up and down and bleeding blue was done, I thought of this and jumped a little more.