Another Day at Work

“Sorry, I didn’t get your name,” she said with an accent that sounded a little too normal than what is heard in this part of the world.

Mentally, I was in the vacant space between two very interesting tasks I had listed for my workday. Physically, I was in a crowded cubicle in a cloistered corridor in a cramped floor of a marketing office. Hey, the world itself is crowded and the planet is cramped, what am I complaining about!

I was expecting yet another of the continuous stream of pretentious agency folk that were filing along this corridor over the past couple of days. They had no choice as it was the only path to the coffee machine and I had no choice as there was no other seat vacant on the floor. Sometimes, the voices carried over from the closed meeting room next door, perhaps when someone wanted a quick escape from all the storm in the teacup inside. Strong, confident, assertive and the kind of adjectives that self-help writers attribute to successful orators could very well have been written about these voices. I was later told that none of the content was nearly decently good. Sigh! And so the hours drifted noisily by.

In all this flurry of activity, the voice this morning was, well, different. For one, it wasn’t carried from the bad acoustics of the room next door, it was right next to where I was. And neither was it any of the ‘pitch’-tones people assume when they hijack the stage in this line of business. It just sounded like the tone one uses to ask for directions to the nearest metro, or to the nearest coffee machine, maybe. It was authentic. I looked up and saw a lot of people talking animatedly and located the face behind that one voice. 

Locks of ruffled golden-brown hair falling around her face, dark eyes, sharp features- well, everything traditionally considered beautiful. All stereotypes, but then again, what made it all any good is how effortlessly she carried it off. Her beauty, as it appeared, is her brains- A strong, independent young lady indeed. Born a century or two ago, she could have been the chosen muse of a maestro or a poet. Now, she’s a fine woman making her way in business.

My friends-those that know my idiocies and idiosyncrasies- tell me that I’m bad at writing poetry. I must admit, I managed to pen only two decent verses over the years. But I tried today yet again; I gave up in an hour. Then I realized I could always write good prose as I had for years now… in classrooms, in exams, in business. “Why not!” I thought, “a tribute it would be.”

Later in the day, I found her business card on a desk near mine and picked it up. It looked minimalist and well crafted. ‘Co-Founder and Business Head’, it read. I turned it around and found the following two lines:
She left him for a better writer.
She left him a better writer.

 Talk about serendipity…

-Mach

Gurgaon, Oct'16
Location: Gurgaon, Haryana, India

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