Lotus eater!

Here I am on a Saturday..doing the unthinkable-being in office! That I’d discovered my phone was missing from my bag just minutes before the bus left the bay the previous day did not produce a shred of regret. I could have jumped off the bus at the right minute and saved myself the trouble of coming halfway across the city to pick up my cell phone today. But hey, Que Sera, Sera, had been my thought. Come what may, I was too tired to even consider walking all the way back to my building, which is roughly half a mile from the bay, with a dozen steps, an overpass, a bridge over a pond and an uphill climb thrown in along the way. Variety I was not game for at the end of a long day. Not the second time around at that. The spring well of eternal optimism that I am, I had expected to find myself in the campus at 8 in the morning to be united with my cell phone, finish my business and be back home by 11 at the most. I reckon I’m one of those people who is impervious to learning lessons. Come Saturday, and I don the cleaning lady cap. You don’t mess with the cleanliness freak(Forgive the pun). Cleaning up home and restoring sanity unleashed by a freaky working week took up all morning and managed to reach office only at half past three under a bright merciless sun.

Clearly, I am not deserving of a high-end handset. Me and my no-frills cell phone jell just fine. Does not look like we’re ditching each other any time soon. The last phone I lost was lesson enough, nay, a proof of the fact that it’s always good for me to own a cheap handset given the probability of me losing it. I remember calling the chap and playing Lamb Of God and Nile and Napalm Death at high volume at eleven in the night, in the hopes that he’d be spooked out of his wits and would succumb to the fear of the Devil and its ilk. To no avail. Sigh. Obviously my phone’s new “owner” was a Brave Heart. The company campus looked so much more serene than it ever has. It dawned on me as I walked to my building that I work here; I’m allowed to walk in this part of the world at any time of the day, with just a flash of my card. Wow, that feels good! It also reminded me of the good old days of training when we were mandated to stay on campus. Those long evenings spent beside the amphitheatre sipping on endless cups of iced tea and long chats to folks back home. And that is all the time I _did not_ spend with my class mates. For some strange reason, I have always felt a repulsive force to my classmates, that is proportional to the number of years I have spent with them. This is without exception, in every school I have been to. Why is it that I find happiness only in solitude? Or only with people that I’m very close to and relate to? And not in boisterous “hip” crowds? Am I a freak? Ok, don’t answer that one.

Now, my building is the sleepy hollow that happens to be tucked away in the corner of the campus diagonally opposite and hence farthest from the bus bay. No wonder I did not want to walk all the way yesterday back for my low-end Man Friday. A scour of the entire campus showed that none of the food courts were open and I had to indulge my dessert fantasies elsewhere. It also brought home the fact that other people have a life that they don’t spend in front of the system. The only thing I saw across the campus, tucked away especially in the flora-rich parts was the weekend amateur Shutter bugg-ery. Hmm. Somehow though, lunch or no lunch, I _had_ to have this entry in shades of RG&B and had to stay back for as long as it took. If I die today of an empty stomach, you’ll know I died writing this blog. (Time to go back into the closet, Drama Queen : l) Looking forward to the day when I’m able to get a lappy of my own so I don’t have to stay back unusual hours after work(not that I’m complaining, I quite like it!) and squeeze in my blog posts in the limited time available and without the fear of my lead’s shadow behind me!