Stop that. Don’t tell
me. I have least interest in knowing how you spent your weekend. The movies
that you watched, the delicious food that you had, the pubs where you spent
your nights at, whatever it may be. I spent the whole weekend in my room, sulky
and disheveled. I cooked, ate, and slept the rest of the time. I know you had a
better time than me, but still, that wouldn’t give me the slightest temptation
to go out, on weekends. All because of the one weekend celebration that me and
my roomies had, couple of months back.
It was during March, I think. Our training was still on. I
stayed near to the training centre, with two roomies, S and V. A close friend
of mine, A, who has already been mentioned in this blog before, would drop in,
on all weekends. It was a time when all of us felt enticed with the mischievous
and fun filled weekends that our friends used to have. So we too, planned one. We
made a ‘to do’ list first, in which we listed out the different activities that
we wanted to do during the coming weekend.
The list was very intelligently designed. We had plans A, B
and C. And the first entry in the list was ‘Please remember that there is a ‘to-do’
list in place’ and that it is being kept between the 36th and 37th pages of the playboy
frontline magazine’. More entries resulted from our brain storming sessions
together, and each entry was assigned a priority level.
And it was Friday. I went to office very early, so that I
could finish my work and leave early, in a mood to enjoy the weekend. It was
part of the plan.
I started my computer, and dug into work. Very few people
were there on the floor, scattered here and there. After a few minutes, I heard
an alarm sort of a sound. A beep sound, in high volume. I kept working, and
just didn’t take my eyes off the monitor. After a while, when I looked around,
nobody was there on the floor. Suddenly I started to panic and think that any
hot female colleague in some other floor
might have come to office wearing a mini skirt. I got up and rushed to the
elevator, and then, a watchman came running in, and started scolding me in
Tamil. ‘Fire alarm’ was the only thing that I understood.
Fire. God damn it.
A thousand questions started to flood my mind. Why did I
come to office early? Why the hell did I ignore the alarm? Will India ever win
a cricket match against England?
The last one being a deja vu for me now.
What if I die now? I haven’t even married. Both are
practically the same, but still I could have a life till that.
He pointed towards the fire exit and screamed
something. I galloped downstairs, in
Usain Bolt-ish speed. And then, everything started to be in slow motion. Past
moments of my life started to flash in my mind. In ultra slow motion. Perfect
camera angles. Just like the scenes from Guy Ritchie movies.
Hah! Not really. I ran and came out of the ground floor. A
huge crowd was there. I stopped just when I was near to the compound wall, and
looked back, at the building. I had already commenced to fantasize about the
whole building collapsing under fire and the office being closed for an
indefinite number of days, during which, all the employees get paid, as usual, and
the Sodexho vouchers get couriered to the respective house addresses.
I waited impatiently. But nothing happened. Couldn’t even
see a wee bit of smoke. Besides, none of
the people gathered looked happy worried. All were relaxed, and talking
to each other, as if nothing happened. Just then I overheard someone saying,
fire exercise.
THIS WAS A DAMN FIRE EXERCISE!
And everybody except me seemed to know about it. And it
happened right on that day when I went early to office. I walked back, with a depressed mind.
A usual day at office passed by. I reached room late. And we
had our weekend plans, waiting to be executed, the next day.
Hopefully, this will continue in the next post.
