Okay, I'm going to try and not make this a senti thread. God knows there are enough of them. Some of them quite excellent in their tear jerkiness. (Meaningless aside. I had a batchmate called Tuhin Sen, and we called him Senti. Though he was anything but.) +
I went back to our office last Sunday. To tell our landlords we had decided to give up the place. And I walked around the deserted office, taking pictures and half imagining this thread. Maybe my wife is right when she says Twitter rules my life. +
Of course I couldn't say, Ramanandji, chai pilao. Because he is back in Madhubani, Bihar. And I have no idea if he will ever come back and serve us tea again. In the all too familiar cups. I always wanted to get fancier cups, but never got around to getting them. +
This was our third office space. And we had carted some of our trademark belongings here too. The cartwheel for instance, which @nadeemcon (or @sourabhonnet ?) scrounged. And my Grandfather's table which has some ambiguous symbolism associated with it. +
On the table are some old worldly things. A manual typewriter, a landline, a table lamp. We ad folks love nostalgia.
A mousetrap. Because someone said Build a better mousetrap, and the world will beat a path to your door. And a print of Norman Rockwell's Blank Canvas. +
It felt strange. Because we never thought we wouldn't be coming back here. We just decided abruptly that we'd start working from home. Guys took their machines home. And that was it. We thought it was for 3 weeks tops. Poor Parineeti. She misses Ashish. +
In our wishful thinking we created a lovely library in the basement. And for three years we kept telling ourselves we'd spend time there. Of course, we never did. Long lunches and mindless surfing always won. +
Sure enough, we have the essential agency props. Guitars and bean bags. To be fair we used them a lot. Way more than the library. We have an electronic drum kit somewhere too. And for a while we had tablas too. +
Office felt enough like home for some of us to bring pieces of furniture here. Just like that. Not an interior decorator saying Let's get some chor bazaar chairs in here. Just guys confusing home and office. +
I saw Mehboob's corner. What an amazing dungbeetle he is. His stuff has also come from office to office. That's where he gets his strategic insights from, I guess. Good luck to him, shipping all this back. +
I poked my head into the conference room. With its table-tennis top table. And the Calvin and Hobbes strip on the wall. I don't know if it amused or frightened our clients with its message. +
I was amazed by how quickly we adjusted to the idea of wfh. The same people who spent weeks trying to create the perfect work place. Let's have a nook here. A couple of benches there, just for fun. A picture of a happy girl here. And a bike hanging from the roof. +
The books we used most were on our desks. Not in the cosy library in the basement. For now, they've all been replaced by Brin and Page's ubiquitous invention. But in the next month, we are hoping we'll find a new home for all of them. +
We started in a small apartment in a residential colony. We then moved to a proper office. And then to this place you've been seeing pictures of. Now it's time to go back to a small place. Not because economics demands it. But because the world shrugged her shoulders.
ANTHE.
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Today is a good day to tell you the story of how my 85 year old grandmother helped us win the IPL. I will not tell you which edition it was. I am sworn to secrecy. +
I was on the bench the entire season. I didn't play a single match. I fielded as a substitute, for a couple of overs in our tenth game. I took a catch and saved 7, maybe 8, runs. I didn't get picked at the auctions ever again. But it was my paati who helped us lift the trophy.+
I should probably go back to where this story starts. My childhood. I was a habitual liar. And a really good one. My amma and appa could never spot my fibs. And I got away with a lot of stuff. +
When we were dating, I thought Vir's time saving hacks were oh-so-clever. Silly me. I treasured every second he saved in queues, theaters, parking lots, shops, and restaurants. A minute less in traffic meant a minute more in his cozy apartment. +
I didn't realise I was slipping into serving a sentence of stolen seconds that would hang heavy the rest of my life. His urge to crunch critical paths went from being cute to nails-on-chalkboard even before our honeymoon ended. +
Vir's mind was always on the next thing he had to do. He was thinking of dessert during the main course, which credit card he would use during dessert, and calling the driver while settling the bill. +
Last month my wife and I visited an antique shop the size of a double bed. The walls were lined with shelves precariously stacked with figurines, statuettes, clocks, carvings, toys and bric a brac. In no sense of order whatsoever. +
Every available inch had something stashed there. When we were in the shop, the owner had to stand outside on the road. We picked a few things that caught our fancy. Correction. I nodded at a few things that caught my wife's fancy. +
A wooden frog that croaked when stroked. A wall hanging made of coconut shells. A rusted tin toy. A brass statuette. A porcelain pig. An old watch. +
K.L.Cycle was a familiar sight to the locals. He looked forty when his lips smiled. And sixty when his eyes did. When he sang a Saigal song, which was often, the world turned sepia. It was only a matter of time before some wisecrack gave him his name. It stuck.+
He wore a theadbare three piece suit even in tar-melting heat. And a sola topee that had seen British days. A 25 litre ice box rigged to his cycle held his daily needs. Among them a notebook, a newspaper, and a pen. +
He wasn't cuckoo like the man in dreadlocks who believed he was managing all the traffic at Lucky signal. Or the woman who talked to her reflection in the talaab. But that didn't stop kids from yelling 'Pagal Cyclewala' when they saw him. +
Dhruv reached into the box of rubber bands. There were just three left. He smiled nervously. There were almost a dozen a few days ago. He coughed involuntarily. No cheating, he reminded himself. +
He fastened the packet of sugar he had just opened with the rubber band he had just extracted. Now there were two left. He coughed again. +
Was he imagining it, or was he getting worse? Was the silly game he was playing with himself getting out of hand? Was it killing him or keeping him alive? How long had it gone on now? 15 months, he reckoned. +
I saw this full page ad in the ET today. As a copywriter, I felt obliged to read the copy. Needless to say, I couldn't leave something as juicy as a Silver Snoopy award ungoogled. +
So here's what it actually looks like. It's a sterling silver lapel pin that has actually been in space. An astronaut pins it on to the recipient. In recognition of work that contributes significantly towards space safety. +
Charles Schulz, an avid supporter of space programs, designed the pin himself. There's even a statue of Snoopy the Astronaut at Kennedy Space Center. I guess this is America's answer to Laika. +