Anyone standing beside Delhi's renowned India Gate at dusk that evening would be forgiven for thinking that he was in a scene straight out of a Hollywood period drama- Peter Jackson's latest epic, prehaps. The weather was more forgiving than it had been all month, with temperatures hovering around the 30 degree mark. Yes, touch wood, fingers crossed and all that. Even amidst the chaos of traffic, dust and street-hawkers, the sunset was quite a spectacle. As was the case with most sunsets, I soon pictured myself walking into it with the lady of my life. On this occasion, it was Ana Ivanovic. 'God is the greatest director of them all', declared Dreamy Joe, cruelly ending my wondeful reverie, 'and the capital his maginificent canvas.' 'Nothing wrong with the sets or the director', I replied, 'but he could have done a better job picking his actors.'
I'll board the Tamilnadu Express four days from now, bringing down the curtains on a fairly eventful stint at the capital. Many of my notions about the city and its people have altered considerably, though not always for the better. For one thing, the place is hotter than I'd imagined. Nevertheless, I have spent a month amidst Delhi-ites without losing my sanity, which is a fairly pleasant surprise. One thing that i have learnt is that if you leave logic and etiquette by your bedside table, Delhi is a wonderful place to live in.
'Lodhi Road isn't actually a road,' the Boss informed me a month ago, 'it's a locality. To get there, you'll have to take a bus to Sarai Kale Khan, which isn't a Sarai, but a bus terminus', the conversation strangely reminescent of a scene from one of my favourite movies ('Tum jo ho woh tum nahi ho, tum woh ho. Woh jo hai, woh wo nahi hai, woh tum ho. Main jo hoon kya main hoon?' Does it ring a bell?)
Over the course of the past two months, many have wondered what I did at work. A couple even asked me if I took a pillow along. Flustered, I have decided to put you, dear reader, through my average working day- a day in the life of Dela, if you like.
7.15: The alarm rings. Put it on snooze and continue sleeping.
7.20: It rings again. Slam it on the table to see if that makes it stop.
8.10: Wake up.
8.50: Stand in the sun waiting for that blighted 323.
10.00: Try to come up with a credible excuse for turning up an hour late.
10.15: Realize that noone really cares.
10.30: Start Firefox and open 3 tabs- Gmail, Facebook and sciencedirect.com
10.45: Set off for a cup of coffee, hoping to run into an HR girl I'd been eyeing for a while.
10.48: Find noone there.
11.30: Boss walks in asking for a report I'd been assigned two days ago. I start talking about his tie instead, buying myself a few precious minutes.
12.15: Submit the report courtesy Messrs Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger.
12.30: Another round of coffee. Still no sign of the HR Girl.
2.15: Lunch time. Walk to the cafeteria with my colleagues only to find Rajma Rice and Aloo Zeera on the menu.
2.18: Pretend to receive a phone call and slip away to Eatopia.
2.23: Gorge on the best fusilli ever made by man.
3.10: The boss walks in with another assignment. Once again, the conversation turns to his ruddy tie.
4.05: To the coffee machine again. HR Girl is there this time, putting forth her two pence-worth on the Rupee-$ rate, how it had to stabilize around 47 for an optimal exchange-rate, export advantages and all that jazz. My opinion is sought. The only 47 I know is the bus that got me here from Andrews Ganj, I tell her. HR Girl leaves with a grunt. I continue to sip my cup of Georgia Gold, still wondering whether or not she got the joke.
5.15: One last cup of coffee and I'm off for the day. As they say, all in a day's work .
12 comments:
Your day sounds way better than mine. I didn't even get to know the name of the girl I had been eyeing. And my 'boss' sat beside me.
Brilliant schedule, Dela. You make this helpless minion envious.
A month is scarcely sufficient to know the city well enough. 18 years of visiting India Gate made me finally realise its value. And before you make your conceptions on Delhi-ites, remember the humble soul that I am.
Voila
Its really nice that you've had fun time in your intern :)
Reminds me of my brilliant schedule (or the lack of it?)at IITB :)
You haven't quite elaborated on outdoor stuff (you quite get what i mean) :P
Hope you've a gr8 time at Maddu Land :)
So your intern involved going to Delhi also? I thought it was just Noida. Good to know you discovered the joys of Eatopia and India Gate. Delhi is full of such places.
So in the end, your intern lasted almost the full 8 weeks, huh? Good going.
The line, of course, was from Andaz Apna Apna.
You hovered around Lodhi Road too? Darn.. If you would have shouted my name from Eatopia, I'd have heard you, you know!
*doh*
Anyway, I like your schedule. It's quite nice!
And 'day-lights' (I quote a friend from Roorkee here) have logic and etiquettes. They just don't seem to use it much. Complacency, I suppose. But having stayed in many places round the globe, I do want to say that Delhi is like no other city in the world. In the good sense of course!
ScienceDirect? reading Journals and papers all day?
Ana is hot. Period.
P.S: Eriksson's Snooze are by default set to 9 minutes !Weird.
@Bang-bang
Then again, you're in Hadduland ra. Bangalore is just a 30-minute flight away.
@mGay
Oh well, there are always exceptions.
And a correction: it was 2 months.
@The Mathematician
There wasn't much outdoor stuff da. There probably never will be- long story. I'll narrate it to you over a glass of mango shake at Azad.
@Lefty
Unfortunately, yes. I just hope the basters pay me for all that I've done.
My job was to visit clients' plants da. I even went to Dadri a couple of times.
And yes, Andaz Apna Apna it was.
@Hermetical Platonist
I'm at India habitat Centre right now. I will shout out your name a couple of times just before I leave work.
To each his own, I guess. I keep telling people that B'lore is the greatest city in the world, with or without the traffic.
@Chronoz
Didn't you notice that I also had FB and Gtalk open all day?
9? Strange. 10 is ideal, if you ask me.
Ah, Dela's set an appointment at the Azad canteen, which means he'll forget. Trust me, Raghav.
About the snooze, it's set to nine as the alarm's supposed to ring for a minute and if you don't hear it, the snooze runs to nine meaning you end up 10 minutes late. The snooze button is actually never expected to be hit, you see. Even Nokia has it on its not-so-funky models.
As for Delhi, I guess you're getting past the je ne sais quoi much quicker than me. But there'll be more, I am sure.
so..finally went to eatopia, good good.
atleast your opinion is sought at your office, people at my office only speak to me when they want me to order to chicken rolls from nizam, which by the way is too too great.
Well, your schedule is not much different from my own, only difference being my prof is too busy to meet me (not even once a week, hurray!!), and , of course, as is expected of any engg deptt in the country, there are no girls in here as well.
Only bright spot:I live in a CO-ED hostel :). Need I say anything more!!
@Murta
There was no 'je ne sais quoi' stage da. Not everyone's a wannabe-Delhi-ite, you see.
@Boonsal
On the other hand, you'll get paid at the end of all this. I still don't trust the basters at BALS.
@Desi
Co-ed? Nahees. Murta somehow wasn't impressed by the greenery in B'lore though.
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