Thursday, August 25, 2011

Elevation...

Every morning I meet this middle-aged man in the elevator sharp at 8:20 a.m.: he is there with his copy of the Economic Times, his lunch box and his laptop bag. We exchange polite smiles, sometimes we mourn the weather or the traffic and sometimes we just stand there silently. He is the most soft-spoken, harmless-looking gentleman and yet he scares me. He is the nightmare; he represents everything that I dread fifteen years from now: the pink paper, the lunch box, the 2 BHK apartment in suburban Mumbai and most of all the tired, quiet resignation to the mundane life. That elevator ride almost becomes a time machine ride: a peek into the future which I am headed towards, but don’t want.

What can possibly be worse than this existence, I ask myself. Well, I could end up being his wife…

10 comments:

Sweta said...

First time visitor to your blog ! And loved reading it ! Keep up the good work :-)

SG said...

Agree to everything Sweta said!

Nefertiti said...

@sweta

welcome. n thank you for reading and taking the trouble of leaving a comment. it's a pleasant surprise for an unpopular blogger :)

@s4ur4bh
a) if u r leaving a comment, the least u can do is take the trouble to pretend to be interested, n not pile on the sincere commenter.
b) There is no need for immediate comment reciprocation on blogspot. we r no longer in (b) school.
c) Thanks for dropping by.

MS said...

hey! nice post!
The wife-nightmare part made me laugh! :D
Keep writing! :)

jo said...

Pink papers are the worst..bring on mumbai mirror :)

Nefertiti said...

@MS (mahendra singh dhoni/ microsoft? morgan stanley?)
welcome and thank u... though nightmares are no laughing matter.

@jo: when I am his age, I hope i would b reading Goa Times or Coorg Times or "some such exotic beach" times... EVERYDAY!!!

ssoggo said...

I know it'll be the creepiest thing you've ever heard, but that sort of mundane existence seems a bit tempting to me..
Imagine. You know exactly what's happening in your life. You have every single thing planned out, right from your child's schedule to the weekend trip to the annual holidays. You have everything in its place; a job, a home, a family.

Comforting, it will be.

Have you read Broken Routine by Jeffrey Archer?

Nefertiti said...

@ssoggo
it's not creepy... in fact that's how I thought my life would be till last year n was perfectly ok with it. it sure is comforting.

n no, i haven't read the book. should i?

ssoggo said...

It's a short story by him, about how a comforting routine gets disrupted in your lift-wala-guy's kinda life.

Nefertiti said...

@ssoggo
thanks... will definitely look it up