Worst Case Scenarios

Having planned for a week long vacation with my family almost a month before, worst things start happenning.

Just before start of vacation there's network outage in the company, I cannot do any work and the work pressure mounts.

One day before I have to leave the network is alive again and to add to my woes there's a deluge of mails asking me to do "some" more work! That day I stayed back in the office till 5 in the morning to finish most of what I could finish. The vacation seemed to be too much far, too much needed.

The next day I come to office, in half sleep, with my luggage, work for few more hours,well actually 6, before I plan to leave and catch my train. I meet my Lead and say "I gotta go, have train in 1 hour". And he looks at me with hollowed eyes. "Are you leaving" with an expression on his face which suggested "Is it necessary to go?". I make a sorry face, an expression that suggested "What? I couldn't hear it. Anyways I couldn't understand it. You know I as planning for it for last 1 month" "BYE".

I reach the railway station.

I'm very tired and want to sleep. Habitual of the habit (!) I browse through the reservation list to see how many F's are there in the list. None of my interest. Too old or too young. There is a group of students in the next coupe. They make my life hell. Playing Antakshri all night. Yelling at the top of their voice, the act they fondly called as singing, they ruined my night. Humble request falls falt on its face. Its already 1 in the morning; I had boarded the train at 5 in the evening. I fell asleep. The cries and yells were now acting as lullabies.

Morning 5'o clock. Its time to alight the train. Destination.

2 days into the vacation.

Accusotmed to doing something in the office, being busy, I end up in a shock. Boredom, nothing to do. The evenings turn into a torture. I am forced to watch those mega soap operas on Sony Television, Start Plus... all those which mysteriously always start with alphabet K. Kyonki Saas bh kabh bahu thi, KKusum, Kahani ghar ghar ki. Amazingly all the serials seem to have same cast same plot and possibly same ending!

Twice in a day I start a discussion with my uncle and loose the battle. But like Rana Pratap who ate bread made out of grass but didn'tsurrender, I continue my war.

The TV remote control malfunctions unannounced. I can't watch WildOn or Poor Man's Bikini Beach on AXN. To those who find it difficult to understand why, we in INDIA still avoid doing some things infront of elders, which might be as mundane as smoking, even when we are parents of dozen children!

I go to a VCD/DVD shop to get some movies to watch. The store (?) has none except "Bride and Prejudice" and that too in hindi "Balle Balle: Amrtisarto LA". I thought "Dheere Dheere yahan se sarak le".

Come Diwali and I am in no mood to fire some crackers. "Loudmouth, what happened no crackers?" For once I had a good feeling of refraining from polluting the air, not burning those fancy fireworks, the products of an industry which employs a lot many children. Well this was a ephemeral feeling. But those raid of questions certainly made me feel like grabbing all the crackers from everybody I could catch and fire them all at onego.

Finally, Diwali and come a lot many invitations for dinner and lunch. Eating is my favourite hobby pastime and also possibly the only kind of work Ienjoy. In fact I at 3kgs of bitter gourd (karela) in this one week.I'm so fond of it. The connoisseur of food had a good time eating all the dishes and that too in huge quantities.

Back to usual. Same old food served by company caterer, same old cubicle...