guilty

Courage has many forms, sometimes subtle and sometimes loud. It takes as much courage to say I will as it takes to say I won’t. The courage to say I won’t and to deny the desire to act in a particular way could potentially create a conflict with your humane side in some but the guilt may be so deeply buried in the subconscious that it would surface only at a later time when you are most unprepared for it. This deep burial of guilt has found easy takers in today’s times since modern life has greatly redefined Maslow’s hierarchy and is now governed by laws of material self actualization which also happens to be at the bottom of the pyramid-if there is a pyramid anymore, that is.

Let me explain. If you were walking on the road , getting late for a meeting arranged in your office which would decide whether you’d get a promotion after three years of dedicated service to the organization, and you saw an old man, opposite your office, desperately needing help to cross the road, which could take five minutes and it could well mean bidding adieu to a faster car (may be your first car), a better place to live, a comfortable drive to office and other such superior comforts of life, which has no existence in your current life; would you still help the man cross the road?

Let us say you wouldn’t because someone else will. So you leave the old man on his own, completely ignore his plight like you never saw it and continue to walk to your office. You arrive in your office building and you realize the lift is not working and you will have to walk up twenty floors. Usain bolt isn’t exactly even distantly related to you and you therefore have far inferior genes for all athletic purposes. So you start walking up twenty floors. In fact, a quick glance at your watch and you start sprinting like a dog that bolts to the piece of bone it spots from a distance. On your way up, you realize while the stock market has risen by hundred percent in the last three years, your physical agility has dropped by double of that! By the time you are on the second floor you pause and bend your back for a quick breather. Realizing how you could be kicking your dreams away with that one extra breath, you start sprinting again. For the first time you notice that the walls along the stairs have some beautiful paintings hung on them. The color of the railing is black and it is done in aluminum. You also realize the floor color is a sparkling blue and the walls are gray. ‘Oh, do all these people work in my office?’, you wonder as you breeze through several strange faces and hit the seventh floor. Sweat is pouring from all pores that existed in your body when you started your ascent and from some that got created by the thrust of sweat trying to make its way out after the Roman period! You are now walking up slowly, one step at a time. You remove your coat, untie the knot of your neck tie and open the collar button. Oh, I almost forgot. You have already cussed the administrative head, the milk man who came to your place late today, your domestic help who haggled with you for a full five minutes to increase his pay by a huge sum of Rs.100 per month , your toaster for not knowing how much it should toast the bread slices even though you have been training the darned appliance for three years, the fridge for freezing the butter to Siberian temperatures, the pair of socks who found their way to the neighbour’s terrace, the house key for having hidden itself in the trousers you were wearing yesterday and had put to wash in a separate bin. You have cussed to your heart’s content, almost, when you suddenly realize your morning newspaper had more semi nude ladies than ever and it made you spend an extra ten minutes drooling over them. ‘Damn those journalists!’

Ninth floor. You can’t believe it. You do the bravest thing since the last five year plan came out five years ago- glance at your watch. Twenty minutes past ten. You are full fifteen minutes late already and you know you have lost the opportunity. You give up. You slowly walk up the rest of the distance and when you finally arrive on the twentieth floor, its thirty minutes past ten.

You sheepishly knock at the door of the conference room and open the door a little to give them a glimpse of your mighty self. Your boss looks at you and gives you a smile. He asks you to come in and take a seat. You greet everyone else in the room who are- your organization’s vice president, the CEO and the human resource head. ‘You are quite punctual’, says the VP. You begin to explain but your boss cuts you short, ‘He always is. He very highly respects other’s time, a great value in him which I love the most.’ You do not know where to look. You were being mocked at by your own boss! You get back to silent cussing. You bring to mind images of all those times when you had waited for your boss for hours together while he was either busy watching the final of the Twenty-Twenty tournament or discussing it with his best pal over the telephone.

“Can you start presenting?’, asks your boss.

‘Sure’, you say and rise from your chair. You connect the lap top to the projector and begin what you are best at- displaying to others what a bunch of others achieved under your ever so supportive self. You talk about the growth figures, year to date performance, make sales forecast and also roll out the media plan for the same. But you completely forget to mention all that you did during this period for which you were presenting. For instance, calling up the marketing team at the corporate office and enquiring when the media plan would be released, talking to your products team and asking them to give you the products that were going to be sent to your stores, talking to the visual merchandising team and asking them the docket number for your VM consignment, talking to the supply chain team to give you dispatch details and finally relaying this treasure of information to all your store managers, business associates and others concerned.

What a loss!

You always seem to suffer from this most terrible forgetfulness and have never been able to treat it in all these years. Poor you!

You receive a thunderous applause and smiles come your way straight from the top. Once settled in your seat, your boss informs you that he has a piece of news for you. You heart starts to race. Its beating faster and your fingers entangle under the table in a nervous clasp.

‘You have been promoted’, he says.

The disbelief leaves you speechless and you simply give your ever so infectious, placating smile to all. You shake hands that will go down in the history books for having lifted you and you have a fleeting sense of weakness about yourself. You dismiss the thought. You leave the room as your boss takes you to your new cabin.

‘Thank god I know your habit of being late. I had to cook a story once it was ten and I realized you were going to be late’.

‘Anyway, welcome to your new space.’

He turns to leave you alone. He takes a few steps towards the door, turns around and says, ‘that bottle of wine was really great. Would love to have another one!’

He smiles. You smile.

You are now staring at a glass walled office as big as the one bed room-hall-kitchen house you live in. There is also a mini telescope placed in your office at the right hand side corner of the glass wall behind your desk. You are gloating with pride. You walk towards the glass wall and fix a gaze at the world outside. You move towards the telescope and fix your left eye on the viewing glass. You make a few adjustments with the zoom and focus on the road beneath. You notice a huddle on the road along the Zebra crossing and move the lens for a more appealing view of the sky and its scrapers.

After spending the day in your new office calling everyone and letting them know of this new development, you leave at five p.m. Once back in the house you can’t wait to throw this space away and look for a place in the high rise you have always been dreaming of, opposite your office.

When you wake up the next morning with the thud of the newspaper on your floor, you feel the same as you do every morning. You open the door and pick up the news paper. Scratching your scalp and holding the paper in one hand, you turn the open end of the folded paper upside down and shake it to get rid of all the products ready to enter your mind space. You place the paper on the flush panel and splash water on your face. As you look into the mirror you realise you look dull. But then you realise you look the same everyday in the morning when you let this routine run its course.

You take the toilet seat and unfurl the newspaper. You go to page two straight away which carries city news and happens to be your favourite part of the newspaper.

‘Blind old man run over by a maverick driver outside XYZ Limited’.