He
raised his hand and jerked it upwards, trying to pull back the inconvenient yet
somehow majestic sleeve of his dark grey blazer. The intercom rang and he
sighed as he heard the ever-so-bland voice of his assistant reciting to him
some appointment she thought he had forgotten.
But
he hadn’t.
He
simply chose not to remember it.
Nevertheless,
he uttered “Send him in ten.”
“Certainly,
sir.” came the response.
He
needed these ten minutes. Not to prepare himself or clear the mess from his
already compartmentalized desk. It was a gesture. A rather passive one meant to
make the person sitting on the opposite chair subside with irrational
inferiority.
But
in reality, he felt bored. He was like a teenager in the body of a 35 year old.
What he really wanted to do was walk out that door and greet the gentleman
waiting outside. After all, time was precious to all and wasting it, in his
opinion, was a sort of cosmic crime in the moral books of the universe.
The
Murano Glass lamp on the table camouflaged just perfectly with the ethereal air
of the room. The Swarovski pen lying next to his laptop displayed wealth and
stature gorgeously. Handmade Egyptian artifacts on the wall behind him never
failed to have an arresting effect on anyone who entered that door for the
first time.
Overall,
his office appeared magnificently gregarious. Although to him it felt like an
entrapment.
His
feelings were jostled into a tunnel of his mind with the buzzer painfully piercing
through his ear.
“Sir?”
“Send
him.”
For
the next two hours he was immersed in the one-to-one symposium with his
colleague. Cups of coffee were refilled, the AC temperature adjusted and papers
signed. Constant activity left no room for any Awkward. There was neither a
casual breath nor a worried silence. There were talks in jargon and numbers not
meant for the layman to understand.
Finally,
the enfranchising words were let out, “It was a pleasure doing business with
you Mr. Manhotra.” Accompanied by a quick nod, they were both good to go.
He
felt consumed. One would presume from his ecstatic smile that he was now a
comfortable part of that life style. But nobody knew that it was a result of
those forceful braces back in eighth grade which gave way to an inkling far
from the truth.
There
was still time before he would be expected to reach home. Even though he felt
like rushing out, he had to fight himself. It was, supposedly, ‘a thing’ to
come home late from work when you were the Vice President of a large firm.
And
then they said money would make life easy.
But
the money never pinched him. He had seen enough of the callosity that prevailed
in the lives of those that lived on the tattered streets of Mumbai. He had come
to realize that Money was a dictator. A cruel one at that. And though silent
and seemingly powerless, it would inevitably withdraw certain privileges from
your life. He was more than aware of the criticism that would stab him in the back
like friend; he was ready to serve as the martyr in the war field of this corporate
world if it meant giving his family a quality life.
One
of his many untold struggles involved this 44th floor office. The grand
glass window that gave him a view from the top. The fear of falling was so
secure that he had forgotten what it felt like to look up.
It
was like being the topper of your class in school; full of innocent joy and pride.
Until one fine morning you woke up and found the redundant happiness smothered
by vacillating colours of insecurity. He knew there was no going back. At least
for him.
But
he hoped. He wished this was not what true success felt like. He dreamt dreams
that manifested escapades involving his disappearance into someplace else. His
awakening would bring to him a reminiscent shame. This moment was once upon a
time his dream, too.
He
loosened his tie a little. His thoughts sometimes possessed the ability to
physically smolder him.
Breaking
away, he glanced at his Rolex.
It was time to
go home.
A schoolboy-like excitement welled up inside him even before he could begin to
hide the injuries from his reopened wounds.
They
don’t tell you that success, just like funerals, is all about others and
nothing about you. They don’t, he
thought.