For a guy like me whose life entirely revolves around really important things of everyday existence like the following:
1.Hunting for the mobile early in the morning to switch of the monotonous hum hum of the alarm;
2.Making a frantic attempt to grab a window seat in the most non-chivalrous manner on the right hand side of the company bus so that the early morning sun rays does not wake me up from the morning slumber;
3.Fretting over the regular dosage of curry patta during the breakfast;
4.Ordering some dish that resembles biriyani in every food court of my workplace at lunch;
5.Making every possible excuse to bunk the gym in the evening etc, a small petty issue like the judgement of the Cauvery tribunal did not hold much of a charm for a man on work on a Monday morning. Now, I know u guys who do manage to read the gibberish that I write over here must be thinking that what kind of a pathetic human being this ass is who does not seem to be fazed with such a major decision regarding a dispute that has run for more than 300 years and the court cases of which have stretched for more than 16 long years culminating in a final order that runs into 1000 pages in 5 volumes which when hard bound and hurled at anybody's head could have well killed him/her, inspite of being a resident of Karnataka at present. But once you consider that the guy in question braved a horrible hangover to land up in office only to find his official mailbox being migrated to some other server, his virus definition being unable to protect his PC from new virus threats, transactions he required which he did not have access to at the most auspicious moment and a whole bunch of errors that need resolution waiting for his dizzy brain to act on; you would realise how Cauvery would be the last thing that you would lay your thoughts on. Its ironic how the god of IT and networking collude and conspire against you and make you land up in a deep shit situation on the very first day of the week.
So there I was braving issues that threatened to make my existence on the project network a thing of past till I heard that the mother of all verdicts about the two part of hydrogen and one part of oxygen was out and that Karnataka was in a very bad mood about losing out to Tamil Nadu. The tribunal had ordered Karnataka to share its scoop of ice cream with Tamil Nadu and naturally like a young kid whose passion lies in licking up every bit of the icecream's existence being told to share was too much of a sacrifice that he could take in his stride. And of course the grapevine of my workplace populary called as the BB (Bulletin Board) began flooding with news trickling in about how there law and order problems were being detected in the city and some frantic mails from the HR department pleading not to spread rumors. And I got calls from friends whom I hadnt talked for months telling me to quit office as soon as possible because they had heard from some friend that riots had broken up in certain parts of the city. So the entire office made a frantic rush to the gates at 3 in the evening to get back home safe and sound. Sadly only 2 buses leave at that auspicious hour for people having to quit work for varied reasons like a sick child needing attention, a parent teacher meeting or an appointment with the dentist. Unluckily the transport department did not have the resources to accomodate a thousand people in 2 buses and the service got scrapped for the day. People who had made desperate attempts to quit office on a monday at 3 in the evening to enjoy a leisurely evening had their plans going awry. And there I was still getting calls from people I did not even remember as to how threatened my life was as I was in Electronics City which happened to be just 20kms away from the Tamil Nadu border. My life was seriously threatened, not by the law and order though but by the amount of work that had accumulated since morning thanks to a not so well done mailbox migration. A rough estimate revealed that I could only think of leaving office as early as 8 in the evening which so as to say is a very unfortunate event for a monday at work.
The situation got really out of control when the HR shot a mail saying that all buses were supposed to leave only in 2 slots at 5p.m and 7p.m and the regular schedule of every hour buses in the evening stood cancelled. The final set of approvals came from the PM when he came and convinced us to leave by 5 so that we could reach safe and sound. I made a frantic attempt to finish off the important work at hand so that I could also vanish from the scene and land up being 32kms away from the TN border as compared to 20kms. Finally bang at 4:45 p.m the office wore a deserted look as cubicles lay empty and we finally made our way to the gate for the security check threatening a project mate called Chandru who happened to be a localite. We told Chandru that if something happened to us his life lay in grave risk the next day. The lines for the security check were breathtaking. Total chaos prevailed at the bus terminal and you could see thousands of heads looking here and there for a bus they could push themselves into. Every one of the bus seemed to be packed with people like sardines. It looked like a mini Kumbh Mela which has seen itself being immortalised in the scripts of so many Hindi movies. The utter chaos at the bus stand did make it seem very much possible to lose your twin brother/sister in a typical Hindi filmish way.
Me and my flatmate were finally able to push and shove and get ourselves into an already overcrowded bus. It was quite a new feeling acting so very unsophisticated in the company bus and pushing and standing on people's feet. Normally the bus journey from office to home is the most boring of things with about 75% of the junta passing on to a deep coma kind of sleep only to wake up near the Silk Board flyover some 11kms from the office and the rest trying to struggle to keep awake by reading some novel or simply cootchie cooing with their respective lovers on the phones. For a human like me who has been used to literally playing gang wars by throwing bottles and bags and even bricks if one was fortunate enough to get it, and hitting up people to get a seat in the school bus for some 14 long years this journey seemed to be a relatively non risky affair. But Monday at work was different from the other days. It was a back to school days experience with bags being thrown here and there, 4 people sitting in seats meant for three and a hell lot of noise and jokes being cracked here and there. The jam packed bus finally left with me being the third person sitting on a two seater barely managing to get my ass to not fall off the seat. Once on the Hosur Road life seemed to be as normal as possible with all shops having their full shutters up and no visible signs of any disutrbances. So it was definitely a false alarm that had made me leave job to be done early on Tuesday morning to save myself the agony of getting abused by the client. The rest of the journey back home was pretty much chaotic with me slapping the bus wall in the typical style in which a Kolkata conductor would stop the blue and yellow painted tin cages that play on the roads of the City of Joy, in a frantic attempt to stop it for people to get down. I got complimented by a girl for the valiant attempt of stopping the bus in the typical Kolkata way. The compliment sounded something like "He just does it the conductor way at Kolkata". Not going into the intricacies of how higly she regarded my skills of being a conductor of a bus, it was a compliment and I basked in the glory of the same.
Finally home came and unlike Hosur Road which was much closer to TN than BTM and still had shops with shutters open, the shops of BTM had merrily downed shutters and had merrily gone off to sleep. Well finally the water issue did land me in trouble not for the riots that never happened but because of the fact that we had completely run out of drinking water at home and the shop that gave supplies had merrily called it a day off. The drinking water crisis at home did make me feel concious about the 270 TMCFT that Karnataka was getting as compared to the 419 TMCFT that Tamil Nadu was getting. Maybe if I was in Chennai I wouldnt have had to face a drinking water crisis as Bangalore offered me one yesterday. Its time to stock up Bangalore junta for the bandh on Thursday. Is the IT city going the Kolkata way now?
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