Work ethic

Working in an office of any great size is a fascinating experience. You find a lot of different people to look at, to watch, to make fun of, even to talk to, without really getting too involved or interested. For me, it was good to work out of various places, being consultant to publishers, newspapers, magazines, websites or whatever I did. Perhaps the most fun of all my assignments was when I wrote fortunes for the fortune cookies that my friendly neighbourhood baker in Mumbai suddenly decided to make. Even more fun was finding those same cookies with those same fortunes in a swish restaurant in Delhi, so far away, in a different space, time and context!

That apart, ever since I walked into the office that houses this paper, which is, in essence, a huge hall teeming with people all clacking busily away on keyboards (though whether they are working, chatting or playing games is up for debate), I have been meeting people that I may never have come across otherwise. There is the business editor, a shy man with a sweet smile and an iron grasp of his team and his pages. And there is the man in charge of the Sunday edition, a silver-haired gent with a wicked twinkle in his eye who wanders about yelling at his reporters, flirting with the pretty girls who populate the place in abundance and getting his paper out on time to the best everyone can create.

And there are so many others special to me in some way. There is the lady who sits ensconced in her cabin at one far end, sniffing with the fresh paint on the walls and driving her team to higher levels of achievement. There is the lady who sat, for a year or so, at a table on my route between my desk and the coffee machine; stop and she would give you updates on the state of her larder, the pages she worked on and the politics in the establishment. There is the venerable editor who beams over his beard and tells the most scurrilous stories, the gleam in his eye negating all the avuncularity of his everall mien. And there is the lady who runs the women’s magazine, all stern business and fashionable wardrobe, but a warm, friendly, knowledgeable person under all the starch and frosty eyes.

For me, it is the people I do not work with who make the day more fun. The canteen boy, who bounces up to me every morning with a cheery smile and a list of the day’s culinary offerings. That I rarely ask him for anything never deters that routine; he is always ready with a grin and a tray of sustenance should it be needed. The man who walks up and down the room just to smile at me, his glasses reflecting a light that makes me consider being friends. The accounts lady, as I call her, who always scolds me not just for being late in claiming payments, but for being single and happy about it. The boy of all and sundry work, who never fails to have the chill of the air-conditioner lowered when I start growing frost around my mouth. And the receptionist, who always, but always, greets me with a giggle and tells me she loves my shoes.

It all goes into making working here fun. There the parts that are not fun, but those come into a different blog. For today, the sun shineth, the day gloweth and life is full of laughter.