Saturday, May 27, 2006
Just Another Moment
It is a wonderful day, I thought. My hands were engaged in tying the shoelace with a practiced perfection, my face looking up - in the full size mirror fitted in the wall. I was gathering and memorizing which part of my hair was not looking as good and needed attention once more finally before leaving. I tied up the laces and combed my hair, whistling a tune from one of the popular songs. The movie last night was hilarious to say the least and I had a good sleep also for a change. The unshaven face was two days old and needed some more time. I didn’t have time.
I picked up my bag and rushed out, leaving the door to shut by its own. I went a few steps ahead and turned. I had to rush to save the door from banging hard into the frame. The wind was strong and I was able to stop it just a moment before it crashed, waking up the inhabitants, all of who were fast asleep and some of them may be snoring. I looked at the watch – 8:27. “Nordic Production Adhoc Job on 25/04/06 Batch – MUST READ!” was the title of the mail my manager Wei Chi Sou had sent yesterday at 12:15 pm. It was a long mail in the Tahoma font, size 10, with multiple colors – black for the general text, bold blue for the important numbers and a flashy signature at the bottom mentioning the name of the sender along with all the possible contact details modern technology can provide. Point number three had caught my attention – “Please come to office on time at 8:30am or latest 9am on Wed. If you are late please inform the support team”. The mail was also copied to one of the senior managers so that all the team members comply.
No way was I going to reach the office on time. I took the stairs down and reached the twelfth floor. The elevator in our block does not go to all the floors. I pushed the round button besides the door, which lighted a red colored LED. The wait was ON. The lift went right down to the first floor from the ninth and then came back to the twelfth – boring work this lift does – I thought. Boring enough to compare it with the work I did in the office these days – attending meetings and filling excel sheets with irrelevant data and dates. Finally, the LED went OFF telling me that it was about time. The journey towards another long day is going to begin.
I was whistling a tune in the lift, when I felt my legs go heavy. The lift was stopping. The display on the top of the lift door was stuck on nine. The lift finally came to a halt and the door slid from right to left, revealing an old woman. The woman might be in her late sixties, I gathered. The skin on her face was like a stretched nylon put on a bony structure. The nylon was slit at two places just besides the nose – the place commonly known to house human eyes. The lady looked at me. I looked at her.
I was on the road to the Metro, thinking about what had just happened. The lady had looked at me. She was not deaf and dumb. She had a made a gesture with her hands – which signaled to me that she wanted to go to the fifth or the first floor – somewhere downstairs. I put my index finger on one of the buttons – to stop the door from closing and help the old lady get inside the elevator comfortably. Then suddenly she stepped back and made another hand signal – NO. I was not able to understand what had happened suddenly. “Do you want to go down?” I asked out of courtesy. I was already getting late, and here the old lady was not ready to come inside the lift to go downstairs. I asked again “I am going down. Do you want to come?” She turned away from the lift and looked towards the other side. The moment was embarrassing for me. I didn’t understand the old lady’s logic for not joining me in the lift.
She had refused to come with in the lift. I had faced and felt it before in the buses and Metros where the natives avoided any kind of neighborhood – with me at least. I had become used to it, and had never cared about it. But I had least expected such a thing to happen in a lift – that too from an old lady. I looked up to avoid myself from bumping into a wall, turned right and started again. I saw another lift. The lift was getting crowded and I saw that at least seven people had gone inside in a lift, which could hardly support four. The scene was like a moment when your mother rubs an antiseptic on your cut or bruise. There was a notice board on the left of the lift, which had taken seven people upstairs. The board had a large picture of a mosquito and the words were written on it – “Singaporeans: Beware of the dirt around you”.
I picked up my bag and rushed out, leaving the door to shut by its own. I went a few steps ahead and turned. I had to rush to save the door from banging hard into the frame. The wind was strong and I was able to stop it just a moment before it crashed, waking up the inhabitants, all of who were fast asleep and some of them may be snoring. I looked at the watch – 8:27. “Nordic Production Adhoc Job on 25/04/06 Batch – MUST READ!” was the title of the mail my manager Wei Chi Sou had sent yesterday at 12:15 pm. It was a long mail in the Tahoma font, size 10, with multiple colors – black for the general text, bold blue for the important numbers and a flashy signature at the bottom mentioning the name of the sender along with all the possible contact details modern technology can provide. Point number three had caught my attention – “Please come to office on time at 8:30am or latest 9am on Wed. If you are late please inform the support team”. The mail was also copied to one of the senior managers so that all the team members comply.
No way was I going to reach the office on time. I took the stairs down and reached the twelfth floor. The elevator in our block does not go to all the floors. I pushed the round button besides the door, which lighted a red colored LED. The wait was ON. The lift went right down to the first floor from the ninth and then came back to the twelfth – boring work this lift does – I thought. Boring enough to compare it with the work I did in the office these days – attending meetings and filling excel sheets with irrelevant data and dates. Finally, the LED went OFF telling me that it was about time. The journey towards another long day is going to begin.
I was whistling a tune in the lift, when I felt my legs go heavy. The lift was stopping. The display on the top of the lift door was stuck on nine. The lift finally came to a halt and the door slid from right to left, revealing an old woman. The woman might be in her late sixties, I gathered. The skin on her face was like a stretched nylon put on a bony structure. The nylon was slit at two places just besides the nose – the place commonly known to house human eyes. The lady looked at me. I looked at her.
I was on the road to the Metro, thinking about what had just happened. The lady had looked at me. She was not deaf and dumb. She had a made a gesture with her hands – which signaled to me that she wanted to go to the fifth or the first floor – somewhere downstairs. I put my index finger on one of the buttons – to stop the door from closing and help the old lady get inside the elevator comfortably. Then suddenly she stepped back and made another hand signal – NO. I was not able to understand what had happened suddenly. “Do you want to go down?” I asked out of courtesy. I was already getting late, and here the old lady was not ready to come inside the lift to go downstairs. I asked again “I am going down. Do you want to come?” She turned away from the lift and looked towards the other side. The moment was embarrassing for me. I didn’t understand the old lady’s logic for not joining me in the lift.
She had refused to come with in the lift. I had faced and felt it before in the buses and Metros where the natives avoided any kind of neighborhood – with me at least. I had become used to it, and had never cared about it. But I had least expected such a thing to happen in a lift – that too from an old lady. I looked up to avoid myself from bumping into a wall, turned right and started again. I saw another lift. The lift was getting crowded and I saw that at least seven people had gone inside in a lift, which could hardly support four. The scene was like a moment when your mother rubs an antiseptic on your cut or bruise. There was a notice board on the left of the lift, which had taken seven people upstairs. The board had a large picture of a mosquito and the words were written on it – “Singaporeans: Beware of the dirt around you”.
# posted by Makrand @ 10:28 PM 
