It is that time of the year again – the weather invites you to leave everything of concern behind and enjoy carefree holidays amidst nature while your official commitments prohibits you from leaving the chair, even any thought of pleasure seem sacrilegious. Amidst such contradictions of life you(and I) quickly learn to tame your rebellious spirit and concentrate on work in hand. Ultimately, threat of default by borrowers and achieving loan growth takes precedence over losing oneself amidst music or trees.
But human beings also have the capacity to rise above the situation and smile, once in a while, even under most abominable circumstances and since our situation is far from that, we smile a lot more frequently.
A meeting was scheduled in the afternoon and we were required to wait for our turn. Out of total thirteen proposals, ours was placed precariously at number eleven and the meeting had entered its fourth hour with only third proposal under consideration. The afternoon had already turned evening and going by the trend, stay till mid-night was a theoretical possibility. I said ‘theoretical’ because there was a possibility of a part of the meeting being deferred to another date.
Under these circumstances, I and one of my colleagues from another branch but subjected to similar ordeal decided to take a walk in the glittering Park Street to pass our hours.
Having just celebrated Christmas & New Year, the Street sparkled with colourful lights and as it often happens; our feet carried us to The Oxford Bookstore. The crowd was bigger than the usual and our enquiry revealed that there is a Book Launch function – by son of Shashi Tharoor. Now, since daddy Tharoor is fairly well connected, some well known literary names graced the occasion including Mr. Amit Cahudhuri, the latest addition to the long list of Indian writing in English and getting international acclaim.
I have read one of Mr. Chaudhuri’s books(The Afternoon Raaga) and admired his style and therefore was eager to hear him. But the pathetic sound quality of the mike induced us to leave the congested area and save the organisers further blushes.
I was flipping pages of a book named, ‘The Wild Sheep Chase’ when a small piece of paper revealed itself between pages. It was torn from a copy and the following text was written in feminine hand on it,
‘You seem like the person I would spend an afternoon.
drinking tea and chatting .’
I examined the paper for a few seconds and then looked around. There were many women and girls . it was difficult to guess who might have extended such a tempting invitation . and to whom!? Was she(now we have already agreed that it was ‘she’; haven’t we?) targeting a particular individual or was it just an offer for blind date? And how on earth could anybody contact her?
I showed the piece of paper to my colleague who offered me a toothy grin. We discussed the issue a little and agreed that things can turn interesting but then he concluded,
‘But the offer is wasted on you. You should put that paper back where it was so that something interesting can happen.’
Then and there it flashed to me that this is the way to contact that mysterious person – writing another note in response and putting it in the book.
But then, my colleague was right after all – I am too faint hearted(you can also call it ‘principled’) to respond to anything which may have romantic implications.
So, we walked back to our office and enquired about the status of the meeting and learned, not without some delight, that it has been postponed.
I kept the note though . and wondered what would I have done if it had reached me couple of decades back .
