An awesome foursome for the holy bean counter

Ammu’s life had seen the dawn of its 26th year at Cinderella hour. The conventional best wishes were pouring in now as the sun shone brightly on the horizon. The ritual of wishing her happy birthday was in actuality a solemn reminiscent of the fact that she was older than most others that she hung out with. It was an event that had elements of surprise and happiness or so it seemed, judging from the generous amounts of verbal and some not so verbal expressions that punctuated the entire conversation. The topic moved on and settled on B who eventually turned out to be Ammu’s beau. The discovery of B’s true identity was quite like the climax of a thriller movie. All this because through most of the conversation, it seemed from B’s antics that were being quoted with reference to a few contexts that I was not privy to, that he was Ammu’s newly acquired puppy.. happy, slobbery, and frolicking.

We moved on at the conventional pace that allows one to transcend from a mundane cab ride to experience what back seat driving in a F1 race could feel like. The manual transmission that propelled the cab to the whims and craziness of the driver of the day seemed to be in total collusion to the mood of the conversation. It seemed conspiratorial because each time the gears shifted, the discussion wafted from one person to another.

At one point, we were positioned at the start of about 400 meters of straight wide road, which culminated in a traffic light. The stretch was as usual cluttered with slow moving traffic in all lanes, and at occasional spots even in the anti-lanes. I instinctively knew we were approaching the “holy speed” moments. I term it so, because when you hear the gears change and the engine rev for a F1 dash, I gasp OH GOD!! And, this happens unfailingly everyday. I know consciously that this is not a reflexive response, because no body I have met or heard about so far have been able to go so far as having a conditioned response to near-death experiences.. lesser so on every single work day. It also usually happens that when we stop at the light or occasionally pass it, I mostly manage to squeak a “thank you God” between my winded breathing.

While I was going through the trauma, the gears had shifted several times. Sometime at the end of this out-of-body like experience, cognizance returned to me when the topic had moved to Ramesh’s relative incompetency in his job, and how he (his attitude) had changed since his marriage. The gears of “the groups” relationship with Ramesh rested at neutral, but there was this uneasy feeling that it was switching to the reverse. After Sandhya, it was Dhruv’s turn to get analyzed in all elements of their persona and by then there wasn’t enough time left to dissect another mortal into his/her elements.

We were signaled into the fortified campus with a jerk of the head that hovered somewhere between a nod and a bob. KK was rendering his high pitched Khuda Jaane.. for the second time since the radio stationed had changed gears and moved from playing the top hits to a request show. Neither a slide show memory recall of the beautiful locales that the Khuda Jaane song was shot in.. nor the unwillingness of my senses to participate could drown or shut off the mobile conversations (where I had neither dialed nor received the call) that were inflicted on my senses in the cab each day from getting recorded in some far recesses of my mind.

I was privy to the conversation not by choice.. but simply limited by the fact that our cab had only two rows of seats. The front row had two seats one for the driver and the other for the navigator. I personally prefer not to sit in the navigator’s seat for the fear of having permanently dilated pupils (which result from the shock of routinely getting wedged in the rear side of a truck and then pulling out the last minute). That leaves the second row and only row… and since we are usually only two individuals in that row (my co-passenger belongs to the fairer sex), there isn’t anyone in between to serve as a barrier or absorb any of the sound waves within the cab.

At the end of the awesome foursome (don’t get weird ideas, I am simply referring to the the cabbie (1), my co-passenger (2), I (3), and of course the mechanical but alive and humming cab(4)) it was that moment of the day again where I found myself helplessly uttering “Thank you Manju, we (I and my co passenger who happens to be a team mate) will see you again at 8 PM” to the cabbie. I think I had resigned to the fact that this was God’s way of making me shift gears from a “holy speed” moment to a “holy hour” package??!!

When I walked in and flashed my card and the door allowed itself to be opened after the customary beep another thought crossed my mind. Our work place is moving further away from where it is now… God, did you destine for me to be a “holy bean counter”?