Dud Sea Scrawls The Writing, clearly, is not on the wall!

One of the best things to happen to a bachelor is having a flexi timings job. To be precise, independence to go to office at anytime you feel like gives you so much mental satisfaction, irrespective of the fact that you might have to stay late or don’t want to use that independence for whatever reasons. It is more like a child not wanting to go to school when asked to do it but would definitely go there if given a choice and liberty to take a decision.

So I go to bed without bothering about keeping an alarm , actual or mental, and have good 8 hours sleep from the time I go to bed be it 11pm or 2am. I had this bad habit of finishing off the book in one go skipping next day’s class but off late I have discovered the joy of reading few chapters every night and duly continuing it next day.

One thing I really like and am glad I can do it now is reading the morning newspaper in bed , not just glancing but reading it end to end. After waking up first thing I do is to grab the paper and get back into bed. First a quick glance of all the pages mentally making a note to come back to interesting items and then reading everything in detail and ending it by reading the supplementary sections of the paper. Sometime I feel sleepy after reading the paper and I duly get back to sleep mode which might be as long as 30 minutes !

A quick glance at my mail tells me how the day it will be in office. Here too I first look at number of unread mails first! Anything more than 30 means there are some extra mails as I generally get 30 different reports over night. Now the trained eyes know which mails to look at first hoping there wont be anything from the team. After all nobody wants to start the day looking at possible issues. Some days it will be a late reply from a friend from other part of the world who loves to sign off with “Drive safely and sleep soundly” and I read this mail in the morning !!

Best thing ( sometimes ) is I drive to work and worst thing ( sometimes) is I drive to work.
It takes me 27 to 35 minutes depending on the traffic. Actually as a habit I keep my mobile in my pocket just before I leave the house and again it’s a habit to look at the time before keeping it. As soon as I park my vehicle I take out my mobile and change the settings to silent mode. I watch the time then too. After doing it for many days I was thinking about the time I take to travel everyday and it was almost always same. I remember reading buck’s (??) blog long time back when he had written that his uncle/cousin drove the car left and right and yet reached home only 2 minutes before them! It seemed so true. How much ever I curse the traffic or whatever speed I like to go I would not reach office earlier and at the most I might save 5 minutes, so why make the mind agitated early in the morning ?

I cant say I love the drive but I can certainly say I don’t despise it. Its has its own joy. Everyone slows down in front of the Ganesha temple to turn towards the temple , bow to God and touch the heart with their right hand, pillion riders ( especially girls ) will be busy sms’g when the rider is busy negotiating the traffic, children having breakfast in the car, Indian Airlines ( now its just Indian ) flight starting its descent, people eagerly expecting their bus at the bus stop etc.

What I expect the most is this traffic Police officer stopping the vehicles at this particular junction so that school kids can cross the road. Its true I will have to wait for an extra minute but one look at the smartly dressed small kids holding hands of their brother/sister/friend and crossing the road will make you smile. I don’t know how many parents will be silently thanking officers like him everyday. Other thing I silently laugh at is people crossing me left and right to park after me in a traffic signal! I tell myself ‘go, how far will you go before I catch up’. Within few seconds of light turning green I catch up with them easily and zoom past them…..only to see next signal showing red few meters away
A few Hi’s, Good mornings, ‘Howz the day’ later I logon to the machine! Man, its so wonderful to be inside the office! A look at Indian Express, TOI, rediff, DSS ,strictly in that order, starts the day!