Top 10 things on your mind when in a meeting!

1.     How to go out of this meeting?

The moment you enter the meeting you start thinking about routes to escape from one. You start searching for reasons to excuse yourself.

2.     Why is the clock moving so slow?

Or why is not moving at all?! The time comes to a standstill. While in a meeting every minute seems like an hour. You look at the watch, a few people talk for hours; you look at the watch again and realize those hours lasted only 5 minutes!

3.     Oh God! Why me?

In every meeting (especially stand-up meetings) limited work is assigned to every individual. The workflow always breaks down when it comes to you. You always feel you’re noting down more tasks than the person next to you.

4.     Chipped nail-paint and shiny shoes

You have no time to talk to your colleagues when working but when in a meeting you tend to observe their personal appearance thoroughly. Now you know that your teammate needs to paint her nails well and that your boss uses a better show polish than you do.

5.     Whatsapp, Gmail, Texts, Line, Hike, Twitter etc.etc.…

Suddenly you realize that all the messengers on your phone require attention. You have this urge to check the messages received every now and then. Somehow, receiving a message when in a meeting makes you feel important.

6.     Can I sleep, please?

When in a meeting all you want to do is doze off! It doesn't matter even if the meeting is the most important meeting of your life. All you want to do is sleep! The chair and the conference table are comfortable enough.

7.     He/She is looking/smiling/talking too much

It’s a meeting and everyone chips in and then some people chip in too much. Suddenly you notice someone smiling a bit too much at you or someone else. You wonder if the smile means more work or a new crush or just that he/she had a nice treat last night!

8.     Blue-sky, blue sea, green trees…

Sometimes in the middle of the meeting you find yourself staring at the vastness of the blue sky and the sea. You try to figure out if the sea shows all the shades of blue or if the sky is dramatic enough. You become very observant and realize that the factory outlet near you is polluting the air far more than you thought it would.

9.     Does he know anything at all?

You never pay attention to the content of a conversation but easily pick up the grammar and spelling mistakes that people make. If someone fails to use a feature of Excel or Word efficiently you wonder if he is even worth sitting in that chair. You have an urge to tell the person steering the meeting a short cut that he/she can use to do this mundane task better.

10. What was I thinking again?

And you will never get an answer to this question.You’ll seldom be able to recall the path your mind traversed before coming to the final thought that you think about. Generally you even forget the main motive of a meeting.

The call

It was just another ‘grass’ party. Alcohol is for the kids we believe. A lot of newbies joined the club this time. The only different thing about this one was the fact that it ended upsettingly early. Not many antics stole the show (or maybe I could not see them). The ambience was awesome and looked even cooler after getting stoned. The lights soon turned into bokeh and the music slowed down. The world lost its pace and so did I.  I dozed off in a short while.

The hammering ringtone woke me up. Of course I did not know that it was my ringtone. I tried to reach my phone. Thankfully it was nearby. I tried to open my heavy eyes. Though I could open only one eye it was sufficient for me to see another stoned friend of mine dancing on the tunes of my ringtone.

I spoke in a sleepy voice and expected the other person to hang up immediately and feel guilty for waking me up in the middle of the night. The conversation begun.

“Hell…Hello… “

“Hi”, said the perked up lady.

I could not check the name of the caller before picking up. “I am sorry. Who the %$&@ is it? And what the hell is the time?” I secretly hoped that it was not a relative of mine because using such language even in the middle of the night would invite criticism and long lectures.

“It’s me. And its 3 AM.”

“Who me?”

“ME ME.  Who else calls you at this hour?”

My eyes were still closed but still I wanted to know who it was. I opened my eyes with utmost efforts. I saw the screen to check the caller. Hell! The screen was so cluttered that I could not find the name of the caller. I could see some numbers flying but that’s it. Giving up I went back to listen to the lady.

“I am sleeping. I’ll kinda…call you back..?”

“Nooo! Wait… I had to tell you something important”

“What?”

“I am pregnant.” she said.

Stoned or sober this statement is alarming for one and all. All I wanted to say was ‘Hope you are married’. But I innocently said, “EH! What?”

“I am with a child.”

This reminded me of Phoebe from FRIENDS. Whoever it was had stolen the dialog from her.

“I am serious and Mom and Dad don’t know yet.”

“Okay… Tell them and Good night.”Again an attempt to hang up.

“I wanna have this baby.” She said this as if the baby was a chocolate.

“Okay”, I said still trying to figure out who the lady was.

“Let’s get married.” She said.

“Okay” Anything to make her hang up the phone and go back to my stoned self.

"What? I thought you would freak out" she said.

I was thinking if I was supposed to freak out. Pregnant girlfriend and marriage proposal on the same day might make a guy suicidal.

“By the way I am not pregnant. But now that you want to get married we will get married and I am buying the Sabyasachi Lehenga that we saw that day right away. I have your credit card.”

“Sure” all this was too fast for me to comprehend. But I was still wondering if I wanted to get married.

“Thanks baby. Love you.”

“Ya okay. Bye.” I think I hadn’t heard the ‘love you’ part properly.

“I wanted to know how cool you were with me buying a Lehenga worth a car. Now that I know you are cool I am buying it.”

Now she was getting on my nerves. You don’t do this to your boyfriend in the middle of the night.

“Okay” and I hanged up the phone.

I woke up the next day with a heavy head. A few heads were missing and the rest were resting in peace. The friend who was dancing on the bollywood number was trying to wake up too. The call was the first thing on my mind.

“Dude, my girlfriend called me last night.”

“Oh! Since when do you have a girlfriend?”

He was right. I was single ever since I remember. I reached my pocket for my phone.

I realized that I had not got my phone to the party. The battery of phone was dead so I decided to charge it.

“Who was the guy sleeping beside me last night?”

“Dunno bro. Some new guy. Why?”

“Nothing.”

“What did the girl say?”

“Don’t remember man. I was too stoned.” I said. I thought I shouldn’t tell around about the misery of the guy. He would have received a message from the credit card company anyway. And he would know that he was getting married too, since he was the groom.

10 things that happen to you in Mid-twenties

1.      Howmuchever your salary is you feel you work for peanuts. Money is never enough. You hardly save and money is too little to even be tracked by an app.

2.      ‘Face Book’ suddenly becomes the ‘Wedding Book’. The notifications speak only of ‘wedding’, ‘engagement’ and ‘pregnancy’.

3.      You travel and you travel a lot to attend people’s marriages. You take random trips and suddenly feel good about life.

4.      You detest going home and attending family functions because all parents/relatives/people who call themselves your family talk only about your marriage. Your marriage seems to be the sole purpose of their lives.

5.      You have at least one dream that seems impossible to attain. And even the attainable ones seem to be impossible. Example – Eating healthy, going to gym regularly, saving money etc.

6.      Friday and Monday are the longest days of the week and they squeeze Saturday and Sunday between them to death.

7.      Every conversation begins or ends with laundry, bills and recipes.

8.      You spend quite some time contemplating your future with the wrong ones or the ones who could have been right. And in the end you feel happy to have chosen the path you did.

9.       You feel you are caught in the wrong field. You always want to switch your industry – from IT to writing, from sports to acting and what not.

10.  You never know what you want out of life. It’s amusing when your parents ask you about it.

Love Happens

So, I am all set to get married. I talk to a hundred guys, shortlist few, meet them (and they bring me tea), get disappointed and decide to go for higher studies. The guys earning in dollars and living in posh houses cannot fancy me enough. I come back to my second home and decide to click Christmas. Because I have managed to reach a church at midnight I decide to pray. Out of amusement (and slight desperation) I pray ‘Oh God! Please let some guy come into my life forever’. Because I fail to click good photos we (me and my friends) decide to go to the beach but end up at the international airport. Right in front of the not-so-stinky loo I lay my eyes on this really cute supposedly co-worker of mine (and we have hundreds of common friends BTW). We talk and then we cannot stop.

Err…Wait! I still have at least 20 prospective grooms in my contact list. Was I not supposed to choose one of them?

I had purposefully not even interacted well with guys in the past 1 year because I was seeking a groom. Flirting was not an option really, not even with any of the grooms. I did not want to be the girl who flirts around with a lot and marries one who she never flirted with.

And then I start talking to this really cute guy…and talk and talk right into love…all this in front of a public toilet at the international airport. Somewhere between the public toilet and CCD, 4 AM and 6 AM, ‘Can I have your number’ and ‘Give me your number’ Love happened.

Yes, Love happens at bewildering places and at weird times.