The Today

Like always I reached my workplace late (we don’t have flexi timings), made it there at 9:10:57 (the time displayed on the fingerprint scanner). Had I made it before 9:05, I would have been considered to have come on time. So, I got late by a bloody 5 minutes and whatever seconds. This is my daily morning routine, take a 21G at 8:30, then a 54 or M49 at 8:40, and try to get to work by 8:55 but that rarely works out as there is a considerable idle (waiting) time in the process, thought I’ve made it to work on time on more than a surprising number of occasions, but somehow punctuality is a difficult tea to drink, or maybe vodka, I find it too bitter to sip, have to tipple the whole of it down my throat. Otherwise, Chennai has a fairly decent city transport service, however, they are all always overflowing with people, carrying thrice their actual capacity I believe or maybe it’s only twice but it’s still more than the rated capacity.

I work with this Business Development Cell and my manager (A) is really cool. A never minds my turning up late everyday. It was to be my first busy day in the last 6 months since I’ve had my first ever full-time job. I was receiving offers for all the product enquiries I had sent over the last week. The work day was all reading mails, replying to them, calling up the suppliers, clarifying and making queries, in short really busy. Also, there was this call I had to make to one of the suppliers. Let’s call this gentleman D. D called me up confirm if I had received their offer which I did. About an hour later, I called up D as there were a few things in the offer I did not understand. D explained me things for a good half hour and by this time my head had gone whizzy and damn, flirt bug had bitten me bad and then there was this moral self in me that said “Darling, try behaving like a professional once” and I reasoned with myself that I am happy being an amateur flirt, don’t want to be a professional flirt so soon. Khay, I can crack PJ’s with myself, I know. Anyways, D had a nice voice and was very courteous. Towards the end of our discussion, D cleared his throat and hesitated when he asked this, “So S (yup, that's me), you are not from Chennai, are you?” I had to muster all my will so that I did not make any cheeky replies. Boy, was that tough? I hung up five minutes later, giggling. And for all you wondering, no, I did not get asked out for lunch or dinner or anything.

Also, there’s this sweet kid (R) who occupies the cubicle next to mine. Though, he’s not really a kid, but he’s a chartered accountant, totally naïve and uncorrupted. So, I call him a kid. When he has the urge to laugh, he has to rush to bathroom to laugh out all loud, which he does quite often. R told in the morning about the Satyam fracas. I was so busy all morning; I could not logon to timesofindia.com which I usually check every hour. However, the Satyam fraud was the biggest story of the day, the confession letter from Mr. Ramalinga Raju, the plummeting share prices, all the speculation, it sure must have been a crazy day for the lot. And then R began speculating on PwC’s collusion in the fraud.

Finally, on my way back to my place, I came across two middle-aged gentlemen debating over Satyam’s market-close share prices and in the night, when I called my little brother to check up on him, he asked me, “Did you learn of the Satyam fraud?” When I answered in affirmative, he enquired, “When?” I replied it must have haven been around eleven then. He said, “Oh, I did not get to know about it until some time later!” Then the usual stuff about his grades that he always tries not to discuss with me thought this I congratulated him on his performance which he again defended saying that it was not good. The guy cannot take either a compliment or a criticism from me, but he’s a good child.

That was today, and now it’s goodnight.