3 X 2

Today I got myself relocated to our office in Bombay. Bombay being my home town and place of birth has always been my favorite city. In fact I have also limited my job options just to be able to live in Bombay. I live in Bombay as much as Bombay lives in me. For me, in the true sense it is a Maximum City.

But for the first time in my life, I got a rude culture shock from working in an office in Bombay. To begin with, I suddenly find myself displaced from the corner cubicle into the middle of a long row of 3 feet wide pigeon holes (PH). One may choose to call it "Quarter Cubicle" or "Shoe Rack" if not pigeon hole. If I stretch my hands then I will probably poke the next 2 guys in their ears, I had to refrain from any stretching exercises through out the day. I kept my cell phone on silent mode so that the hardworking pigeons do not get disturbed. That too didn’t help because my phone being on vibrator mode, when I got an incoming the four blokes around me seemed to tremble with the vibrator effect.

I switched on my desktop and tried moving the cursor, the mouse just won’t respond. I sucked in my stomach, squeezed myself under the desk, and groped behind the machine to make sure that the mouse wires were well connected. I think I even scared a lizard while I was feeling the behind of my machine. All wires seemed well connected so I again trudged my way back on my chair. The sudden relaxation of my solar plexus might have passed a gust of wind in the floor, if you know what I mean. After 15 more minutes of fiddling the guy on my right rudely asked me to stop screwing with his mouse (no pun intended). It was then I realized that my mouse was between the monitor and phone, on top of my file and right under my elbow.

Since it’s my first day, so the unused pigeon hole also has a conked off printer, some abandoned printouts and a phone with no cord (no, it’s not a cordless phone) to give me company. I am hoping that by Monday this mess will be cleaned up and the cubicle will appear bigger. The tray to keep my keyboard was hanging on just one screw, but thankfully the carpenter was available to fix it soon. Someone has locked the drawers and probably swallowed the keys or thrown them in sea out of spite. I will have to get duplicate keys done.

As I retrospect into my career, I can say that the one thing that definitely shrinking as I move ahead is the size of my cubicle. Sometimes I think that this is the corporate way of making sure that my ego is just big enough for the size of my cubicle.