Post at the time of pandemonium

I am writing this post as an outcome of Munchmany’s comment on my last post. “Please do write more...” she implored! Munchmany – a good colleague and regular visitor to my blog.

Since the end of last week, I have not been able to visit blogs – neither mine nor anyone else’s. It is the usual – I have been totally consumed with office work! I do not fancy such times but they come when their time is due (sadly). The surge of work creates nothing less than pandemonium in my peaceful existence. I start to perceive everything as really BIG and really STRANGE than how I would see them under normal circumstances. The pandemonium starts at the workplace and consumes all my waking hours, not to mention my sleeping hours too.

Last night I had a nightmare of having lost our family dog, Budi Boo to a strange curse that seemed straight out of a science fiction! I woke up only to realize that I was having a nightmare! Strange, but Thank God!

I am a one-member team in a project with two parallel running courses. No one thinks that there should be another team member because I am performing the task of three people. Because I don’t ask, I don’t get. Deliveries are talking place smoothly but I am being asked to “contribute” more. Because I contribute more than asked, I am asked to “contribute” even more! Strange! Strange! Strange!

Over the weekend when I opened my bag to pull out my ATM card, I got one big shock of my life! There it was within its cover but vertically split into two pieces. I ran over the events in my mind to locate what could have brought about the extraordinary state my card is in. The only event I remembered was my falling over a few glass steps at a showroom and falling on my bag. Why do I have this puzzling connection with glass!? Strange!

I was meeting up with a friend on Valentines Day who announced that she is getting married very soon. I thought she is tying the knot with her last boyfriend who I had come to know of through her unending stories. She laughed me away and announced that this is an arranged match she is getting into because “he” cooks well and has promised to cook all throughout their married life. Times have changed! Strange!

Speaking of Valentine’s Day, the hullabaloo created over it by the goondas (aka the moral policing brigade) in the society seemed to fall flat. I went out into the city that day and it looked like any other normal day. At least on Diwali day the entire city is decked up. I am sure it is a very small percentage of people in this country who have any notion about Valentine’s Day! What is this talk of Valentine’s Day invading our culture, if at all it does! Awfully strange!

During this period I watched a documentary titled, “White Light, Black Rain,” a poignant compilation of the voices of the Japanese people affected by the atom bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the fag end of World War-II. Most of these people are old now but they carry scars of the devastation on their bodies and minds. The documentary is a powerful caution about what can happen as a consequence of a nuclear war. In the documentary, young men and women from Hiroshima are interviewed and asked what they think about dropping the bombs on their land. All of them looked at each other and drew a blank; they said they cannot recall having heard about the bombs being dropped in their country. That was simply strange!

One of these days, I heard that the domestic help at my parent’s has been caught red handed slipping out money from my father’s purse. The reason for worry was that they did not dismiss her! Amid media reports about the various risks senior citizens living alone face, a domestic help indulging in theft was indeed a cause for worry. Soon, more information about the help started pouring in from the neighborhood – she is known to have hidden valuables inside dustbins conveniently seizing them when she went out of the house to empty the bin. Considering that she is quite a well-to-do person with no apparent un-met economic needs, I wonder if she is a kleptomaniac. I wonder whether there is a cure. Strange obsession.

Last but not the least, that I could write a post at the time of pandemonium is plainly strange. Thank you Munchmany.