View from my window

I sit next to a window at work and every now and then peer out to see what the outside world is up to. Not that there is much to see, since we overlook a parking lot and garden, with a factory and chimneys beyond the retaining wall, but it can often be more exciting than the view within, which is mainly people hacking away at keyboards or else standing around in groups chatting or, at certain times of the day, sitting in clusters and yelling madly in what is defined as an ‘edit meeting’. Occasionally there will be a wild outburst if there is a cricket match on television, or if there is a birthday, after which the housekeeping crew bustles about trying to get frosting out of the anonymously coloured carpet. Beyond the small upheavals of life, it is routine in here, nothing really exciting happening other than the daily grind of a broadsheet being made ready for production.

On an average day – which is what most of them are – life outside is far more exciting. Right now, as we speak, there is a gentleman in a brilliant pink shirt and blue tie (his trousers are unremarkably black) walking up and down the garden, talking animatedly on his cellphone. Nothing unusual about that. Except that every now and then he peers at another mobile phone in his other hand, texts out a message and then continues his conversation. Somewhere along the way, he stops, unhooks his first phone, speaks briefly into his second and then reverts to type. Which makes me wonder what he is saying to whom and why he cannot sit in the cool confines of his office and do it, instead of wandering about in the heat of the late afternoon.

My driver was telling me recently about some drama that happened right outside my window. You didn’t see it, he was astonished, but then he did not realise that every now and that I get pulled into one of those rather meaningless edit meetings and an dragged away from my little panorama of the world outside. Apparently, there was a human drama that unfolded late in the morning. A couple from the office next door had a little spat outside and there was violence, he exclaimed. First they came out, smoked cigarettes, drank coffee – or maybe it was tea, he speculated – and then chatted briefly. The talk became an argument and finally a bit of a fracas, as the woman hauled off and slapped her male companion. He, startled at first and then obviously furious, returned the favour – he hit her full on and she stood there, I was told, her mouth open, one hand to her shocked face. Then he put an arm around her and she leaned against him. They chatted a little more, smoked another cigarette and then went back in to the office they came from, evidently friends once more.

Perhaps more worth watching is the animal life outside. Apart from the birds, there is often a dog outside, playing in the garden or romping in the parking lot, frequently with a puppy or two in tow. The first litter that we saw was given a lot of attention by the staff of the newspaper – one or the other would run downstairs with milk or biscuits and feed the babies, while others played with the dirty, semi-starved little creatures. But by now so many of these litters have come and gone that we are all rather blasé about them, admiring the puppies, coochieing with them if we meet them at close quarters and then more or less forgetting they exist. We cannot do more; we have only that much angst and time to make them more special than they are already as young animals just starting to make a life for themselves.

For now, life outside my window is a diversion from the humdrum working day. Once in a while, it colours a blue mood and sometimes lowers my otherwise blithe spirits. But it is always changing, always new, always different, just like life itself.