Jotting a day in my work life

I give myself no buffer time…and buffer here includes time to stay in front of the mirror more than the time required to pull my comb off the dresser, or time to make nice cuppa or even the lavishness of fixing a lunch. That’s how a weekday starts. Giving myself half hour to from the time I get off the bed to get out of the house and onto the road to work. I mean a long winding road that I take to work. I ride (I should mention…drive as well. For all those who still exercise their jocular vein about wondering if I drive). I start usually unfazed by the 26km ride. I don’t get tempted to race with people of time.

I just follow my bike’s rules. I have Honda dio and I know it cannot do more than 70km. I don’t zig-zag or tease other drivers with speed. I am just a conscious rider always acknowledging that fact that the road to work is my personal yard. The road is weird…the first half of the stretch from home to work has 2 signals. The second half has around 7 and a two flyover construction points. My peaceful self, singing (one to two lines is all I can memorize…) and suddenly realizing that it is the road to perdition (for the love of the word and the lack to finding another beautifully fitting word here). All drivers on the road (most of them) are rogues. There are days I anoint on my mindless 26 km ride…some are ‘lorries day out’, ‘rogues day of fun’, ‘bad dressers day out’, ‘breakdown day’, ‘dress down day’, ‘brainless people’s day out’, ‘less clothes day’, ‘ogling men’s day out’, ‘good looking guys day out’, ‘my sad days’, and all that and more.

I traverse through the parked, over speeding, moving, not so moving, kinda vehicles and reach work. Oh no… not yet. Am in front of my office but on the other side of the road. Have to go ahead another half a km and make a ‘U’ turn and then get to my work spot. Once in…usually am (un)welcomed by the guard. Let me script the answer to the previous statement. The entrance to the business park has a guard station and there are many of them…who on some days insist of being on duty. There is a synthetic road hump, strategically placed. The sunlight pokes into your eye. The guard stands at the base of the hump, literally. There is no way you have single hand a bike on the hump and escape the glaring sunlight and then use the other hand to pull the id out. If you insist on clearing the hump and then doing the unnecessary task…the guards will sometimes dauntingly stare and utter undecipherable words. Which I am sure is something unpleasant.

As I make my way in and park the bike and walk and climb up the stairs to reach the 3rd floor (a mistake..out of the routine I followed the last 6-7 months), I then go to the fourth floor. Welcomed by the empty cubicles, I settle to pack my keys in my back and launch Outlook. This makes me feel at work. After ensuring the quarantine mail from Aditi, I settle in to a breakfast, usually of idli and the sometimes edible chutney, at the café on the 8th floor. Then, I see people trickle in to work… The sounds of noise from the team in the next cubicle wakes me time and again through the day.

This is just like 10.30 am.

To summarize the rest of my day… lunch, chats, test drives (these days), treats (sometimes) all this together with music, is the rest of my work day.

At 7.30 or 8 I start back toward home..and pretty much live my journey to work again.