For those of you who don’t know. I took up a new job recently. I am now the communications manager for SCORE Foundation in Delhi. It’s a great place to work and I’m deliriously happy to be going to office at 10 in the morning as opposed to the ungodly hour of 8:30 that I did in my previous job. But that aside, as I was sitting in office yesterday, reminiscing how I got to be there exactly, I remembered the day I had gone for my interview at SCORE. What came to mind were rather funny (If you are sadistic kinds who derive pleasure out of torturing others) events that made up the day. So although I had wanted to write a profound and moving account of my time so far at SCORE, what I’m writing instead is my account of that day.
I had seen the Life of Pi a couple of weeks before that day with the most mad bunch of people I've had the good fortune of meeting (yes guys C2: GDS rocked! I miss you already) and while I was watching the movie I thought to myself, my life is never going to be this interesting.... Well that was a couple of weeks ago and well today it just got a lot more interesting, and I don't mean interesting in a good way.
So as most of you may already have heard or experienced the traffic in Delhi is a bitch, well today.... today it went to a whole new level of hell. Thanks to the protests around Delhi against the rape of a 23 year old recently, coupled with the shutting down of 9 metro stations around central Delhi and the rerouting of traffic away from Connaught Place (the center of Delhi, and maybe even the world if you ask me), and if this wasn't enough the Kalindi Kunj bridge was closed for renovation. At one point I actually thought the best way to get to Noida was to parachute down from a chartered helicopter. For a while there it actually seemed impossible!
I started the day after 3 and a half hours of sleep, and still managed to get out of the house in time for a job interview slated at 11:00 am, which knowing me is in itself a great feat. However apparently god did not see it that way. After being stuck in bumper to bumper traffic for the better (or in this case worse) part of 1 and a half hour, I finally arrived for my interview at a location no more than 20 minutes away from my home, 40 minutes late. What I failed to recognize at the time was the fact that it was all downhill from there.
Leaving the interview location at 3, I brilliantly deduced that I could skip the traffic jam by taking a somewhat lengthy detour through Jamia to Kalindi Kunj. Yes I’m the only idiot in Delhi who did not know that Kalindi was shut down. After 3 hours of cursing, crying and flapping my arms around in outrage I finally reached home. Only to start back the way I had come, this time with my dog in tow. My 12 year old Dalmatian needs to go to the vet twice weekly and of course he had to go today! I mean when god gets it in for you.. he goes the whole 9 freaking yards!
This meant spending a total of another 2 and a half hour in traffic. What was different this time around though was that I did not spend the time shouting profanities at innocent passers-by, breaking down in fits of hysteria or flapping around like a chicken. This time around I spent the time conversing. I had a rather deep conversation about life with Jimmy, my dog. And it was then that I remembered Richard Parker, the Bengal tiger from Life of Pi. I realized what I hadn’t during the movie. That companionship really is important. Isolation turns into people we ourselves would hate.
And on the heels of that epiphany came another thought. I and Pi Patel weren’t all that different. No hear me out. He was stuck alone at sea with no one but a ferocious tiger for company, while I was stuck in a sea of cars, where although there was half the population of Delhi surrounding me, we might as well have been a million miles away. I was still alone in a little Alto with no one but a dog for company (and yes he is ferocious. Ask all the people he has bitten over the years!)
And well I thought back to what I had said to myself in the theatre so long ago in December. My life had just turned as interesting as Pi Patel’s (well maybe not interesting enough to write a book or make a movie or anything, but atleast interesting enough to write a blogpost!), and to that effect I said, Pi Patel eat your heart out! :P
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