How my boss taught me with a cigarette stick

I’ve learnt the least common denominator of a common normal human being is a good joke.  With the prefix ‘good’ being ‘yourself’.

So I pepper my speeches with an overdose of my fallacies and even those of my family’s and colleagues’. In fact, my local club is so familiar with the people whom I sit, eat, sleep and work with, that they guess my protagonist before I could even gesture.

Recalling one such incident

Here’s a pick from my first workplace that I’ve recounted several times over…

The first editor whom I worked with [am too modestly averse to use the cliché - ‘whom I had the privilege to work with…’]. And trust me, I don’t fool my readers. That’s  against my salt.

Well, he was a gentleman, nevertheless. Always marching in on polished black pointed shoes, thick rimmed glasses on the bridge of his nose, wearing full-sleeved striped shirt and thigh-hugging trousers. Now, that’s something I’m in the process of understanding. Why do men flaunt their figures?  Check this space, I’m nearing the secret.

Okay, getting to the man, he wasn’t that gentle ‘cos his pet peeve was to teach me English grammar, with a pencil, cigarette stick and coffee cup.

I’ve lost the number of times he tapped the burning stick on my story to explain a compound adjective. The complexity of the term would be lost on me while I gaped at how his hooded eyes protected the pencil end from rupturing his eyeballs as he drained the silt off the cup onto his smoky teeth.

One day, he was his usual angry self. He wrote [I’m yet to see a man with such a beautiful handwriting, I admit] the sentence - ‘The truck driver had a near death experience’ and asked me, puffing in his stick, “Is there a mistake in this sentence?”

As I sat recollecting all the grammar I learnt and unlearnt, he was fast losing patience. I heard him, stern and coarse, “Did he die?”

And my mind raised in a totally different direction. “Need to check with the reporter.”

“You asking me to check….” He was glaring from across the table.

“No, I mean, I’ll do it.” I replied in all innocence.

“When did those **** write in English? And the light blinked inside me. Meanwhile, he had lost it completely. He began underlining the sentence. With each puff he scratched harder on the paper. For the life of me I couldn’t think of the answer as his actions were more gripping. He was tapping the cigarette end into the coffee cup after each puff as he held me with his burning gaze.

After a minute of scratching and tapping and staring, he barked, “How many times do I explain this”, and emptied the cup into his mouth.

His bushy ash-laden moustache, set above angrily quivering lips and those blazing eyes looking for cover was a sight to behold.  

Thanks to Mr Banerjee, I’ll never miss hyphenating a compound adjective.

I don't hate my friends, though

Friends are like lighthouses…a quote that appeared on my Facebook page got me thinking.

I first checked it up. Indeed, there does exist a quote by Tom Baker. It goes thus… “Friends are like lighthouses, with the sources of light coming from their hearts.”

Here I review the lighthouses in my life.

I have a couple of souls – indeed lighthouses - who do wonders to my wellbeing. Spending just a few minutes with them, even if it is over the phone, gets me kicking and rearing to surge. Their light, indeed, transcends and lifts me. God Bless them!

I have a few other dimhouses whom I spent hours on end and remain unmoved and untriggered. I grope hard to find anything substantial in our talks that I could use to justify the time spent.

Yet there are a couple of darkhouses who sap my energy within seconds of our interaction. They leave me mentally and emotionally exhausted. I don’t make an effort to even analyse the conversations.  

But I am friends with all the above types. It doesn’t matter to me how well their hearts are lit or how much of light their toes emit. They are friends alright.

There is one other category, I identified recently. Torch-bearers. Since they focussed on my passion, I involved them without much ado. And…

Here’s what happened…

The first person - I considered a dear friend for almost four years. We spoke at length regularly. Even shared a few secrets. But when my book happened she ‘knew better’. How I should have done it, how I should go forward, whom I should speak to henceforth… she even prophesied my career if I were to ignore her instructions. Soon suggestions and advices turned into orders and commands that quickly became abusive. I was forced to walk off. 

The second person - Befriended me while I was promoting my book. A man of words, he impressed me with his knowledge, an illustrious career graph, revolutionary social thoughts and constructive criticism of my work. He tirelessly encouraged me to pen more with inspiring anecdotes, while he etched out plans to broaden my reach. However, by the end of the third month into our friendship, his calls became uncomfortably frequent. Never mind. I said, he’s well read. Then, his comments turned suggestive. I pulled the plug.

The third person - A senior who has known me for the last five years. We shared thoughts on poetry. Every conversation we’ve had, he promised me to do all he could to see my writings get noticed. Even as I had been alerted that he is a misogynist, I chose to give our friendship a chance for two reasons: Seniority. He's a seasoned journalist [I will continue to respect him as a professional who knows his job]. Two: His promise of guiding me in my endeavour. Even after my book was published, he did answer my calls. But the moment we got past exchanging pleasantries, he got busy and asked me to call another time. Date and time at his convenience. I repeated the act a dozen times. I have deleted his contacts. 

So returning to the quote, ‘friends are like lighthouses…” Please shed your own light!

PS: I hate none of the above though, as they've taught me some lessons. I'll spell them out later.