The Call

I can broadly divide my life in R into two segments so far; one - an idyllic life with quaint pleasures and undulations, lackadaisical joys and soft sorrows, and the other – a violent onslaught, a race against everything worth racing against, bitter pain, gushing bile, infinite chaos and ultimate jubilation. While a timeline which I have carelessly doodled over Ms. Gandhi’s face on Hindu’s first page can hardly tell me which month of which year such a transit happened changing my Zion of freewheeling disorderliness to an imploding passageway of incessant chaos, I have a nagging feeling that I know when, what and how. That cognition doesn’t end there, but goes on to tell me that perhaps the halcyon days are back, after that wonderful, wonderful odyssey.

For I feel a lot stronger after taking blows on the chin without getting KO’d, a lot wiser after leading a myriad underlings to the finish line letting them believe that their halfwit overlord knew more than they did, a lot more impervious after acting like a clumsy clod on the line of duty and giving two hoots to the world as a whole and a lot more outgoing by the sheer compulsion of having to talk to every random person I’ve had the fortune of coming across, to some whom I still might and others who I never will, I relished the trip. I’ve been there and back again. And I know for sure that Experience is the greatest mentor.

But even a legendary mentor remains silent about certain intricacies of the trade. It didn’t take too many of my grey-cells to realize that Cognizance 2010 was part of the latter period of the aforementioned classification, not the period in whole but an indispensable part. And most of my job in Cognizance was to sit on an exorbitantly priced, obscenely comfortable and universally pursued black chair and push buttons on the thoroughly scratched Nokia N sincerely hoping that the person on the other end had enough money to spend and wouldn’t be parsimonious about going ‘All In’. In the end, one just fervently prayed that the bloke receiving the ring hadn’t had a row with his wife over the breakfast table. But nothing deterred those calls. And I believed I could talk anyone into anything.

Things have changed. My fabulous superstructure, it seems, was built upon a crumbling, half-wet foundation – and the castle won’t stand. The fact that I could once talk people into letting their money gallivant didn’t help when that phone call was made. All I wanted to do was to walk back to the crease in style for the second innings! Strike, strike, strike!! and I’m out. Thank you!

I’ve never really been a good phone-person from the days I can remember. But this was the height of frustration. When the normal howdy-whadoyoudo’s ended, I found myself hyperventilating. I tried unfastening the collar which I never wore and hopelessly tried freeing my trachea from that pretzel my imagination had deftly inserted. In the end though, logic prevailed in my utterance and I’m sure that the lack of Video communication would have made me sound fine on the other side. Until then. The conversation appeared to be taking a general route through the hackneyed happenings and mis-happenings of the past decade or so, mildly detouring through Nebuchadnezzar and Idi Amin – but ever so ephemerally that it was hardly discernable, when suddenly there was a lull.

A deafening silence which followed was rather unnerving. The worst part was the lack of any effort from the other side to soothe my nerves as I looked despondently for help. ‘Coupling’ came to mind and even ‘Friends – with Monica’s Cousin’ but I remembered none of them well enough to ape my way out. Then I coughed. Then I clung on to the lifeline and discoursed my way out, talking about the changing weather and susceptibility of even the most robust immunity system. My jokes had gone from ineffective to disquieting. I reconciled to the fact that a man like me has no hope. I dragged the conversation on for a few more minutes, but I was huffing and puffing in the end… turning purple by the effort it was taking.

Then, I gave up. I don’t remember how that happened though. The last lines I remember were directed against Alexander Graham Bell.