New Job

Been a long time till I realized that I had a blog & it needed my attention, of course the same goes for my toenails & my fingernails, thankfully the hair fall off & take care of themselves. In the very near future I will not have to worry about the hair part at all. But I have decided to make amends to the situation & here is my first attempt at creatively using my office time in this new job, by clipping my toe nails that is.

Anyways I have quit my earlier job, left my Reay Road station behind, left my beloved Harbour Local even farther behind, my salary, my traveling allowance, my half yearly bonus & leave salary the farthest of them all. Now I am dependant on the BEST buses for my commute (bloody expensive as compared to the trains). So, nowadays instead of having full body massages I have to content with exercising my biceps & occasionally hurting the ligaments in my shoulder, which also means that my bowling career may come to an end in the near future (the hurting happens only on the stretches where the roads are bad or the driver decides to do a surprise braking test for evaluating the conditions of his brakes or alternately the alertness of the commuters). Also, I learnt that traveling on the bus’ footboard is worse than traveling on the footboard in trains especially on the bad road…almost got thrown off the bus as a result, whereas sitting in the middle of the last bench is as bad, only difference being you’ll be thrown off the seat & on the aisle floor, what is worse is I lost my seat till I got back up. Since then I have started giving the conductor loose money from my ticket to tell me which passenger is likely to get off on the next stop or the nearest stop, so that I can go & stand near that particular seat (bad habit I inculcated in the train). I hope Abs buys a car when he returns to India & giving me a lift from office to CT. Asked the same to one of my friends here, he even agreed to buying a car on the condition that I’d pay the fuel bills, but if I don’t agree to the condition I’ll save on the fuel bills cost & I might be able to buy a flat opposite my office in about three months (at the projected average fuel price over the next three months), this may also be the case if I stop smoking & start saving that money, but then cutting down on one necessity to invest in another is an illogical step (plus if I quit smoking I’ll live till the loan term is complete & I’ll have to repay the full amount to the bank instead of Appoo and/or Iyer repaying my housing loan as my guarantors-designate).

The commute time which earlier was 30 mins. in my beloved harbour local has now increased to 2 hours give or take a few seconds. Even 2 hours are on the lesser side…sometimes the traffic cops decide to take the matters in their own hands & switch off the traffic lights & direct the traffic themselves which increases the commute time by another ½ hour (so the habit I had learnt in trains of going off to sleep while standing is of a lot of help to me). I wish the traffic cops would stop doing their work sit on their bikes behind trees, poles (How can the pot bellied pandus hide behind light poles is one of the paranormal things I am currently investigating) etc. to trap unsuspecting traffic offenders & help the traffic move more smoothly (yea, pandus & me have something in common, people feel that we’d be of help if we stopped helping).

In the morning there’s a stop where this group of daily wage labourers get onto the bus, everyday, like myself (whenever I look at them I feel I am worse off than them coz I don’t get paid till the month end, if ever, & if I quit in between…no pay, no leave salary, no bonus. Plus they are even covered by the minimum wages act, which, I assume; my previous & the current boss have never bothered to read). I did not mind standing next to them earlier but after I realized that they carry hot tiffin in their innocent looking half molten plastic bags, I have become more careful of not standing next to them. The first time such dude came up & stood next to me I had a very hard time trying to figure out why there was this burning sensation next to my thigh. I thought of everything from the lighter in my pocket mysteriously catching fire to the paranormal event of auto self-combustion only localized in nature near my thigh. Then looking at my worried face the worker began to explain to me…realized he was chewing something…bent to spit out of the window …in the process scaring the guy sitting in the window who misunderstood that the worker had bent over to kiss him…happy that the dude just spoilt his shirt cuffs & not his day & explained to me in some strange language of which I understood only the word “tiffin”. Anyways I have understood enough to keep away from this people lest they burn some other “sensitive” body parts. No wonder they get space to move around the bus.

Cannot believe its been three weeks of no dusty by lanes of Reay Road, no more of the magic potion which tasted like kerosene mixed with milk & burnt tea leaves which I suspect is an indigenous & patented product of Reay Road. No more jokes on nepalis, in fact no nepalis. Only good thing to happen was the seat given to me faces the window, which overlooks the Powai Lake, damn cool view (unfortunately not good enough to replace the nepali jokes)

During the past 3 weeks, fortunately, I missed reading all the crap that was written on the blogs to defame me. Firstly Appoo comes up with my imaginary girlfriend, Vijaylakshmi. Which got me thinking for the next several days & later I heard from Iyer his explanation for the same & still the name doesn’t make sense. Why Vijayalakshmi? Why me with Vijayalakshmi? Why not Iyer with Vijayalakshmi? Mrs.Vijayalakshmi Iyer sounds good. Speaking of Iyer, he in some post becomes my angel. This post has given me lots of nightmares, Iyer in his banian & “phantom chaddis”, cigarette in one hand with little wings that angels have been shown to have in movies, only that Iyers’ are bat like & this angel speaks with Sanjiv Kumar accent. Those who know me will tell you that I wouldn’t lift my finger to save myself let alone a chick named Vijayalakshmi, who is angry at the proudest moment of my life, my only act of vandalism, my only felony (till today).