It’s ten in the morning and I am in my office. Don’t have much to do really. All of the tasks that I have to finish either have a deadline far from today or some input is required from my supervisor to proceed. So I am just waiting for either of those to happen. I thought I would go get some coffee. Strangely, even after the morning bath and a zipping drive to the office on my Kawasaki Ninja, my brain refuses to wake up completely. I had a good sleep last night aided by the weather that is getting colder by the day and I can’t think of anything that would make my biological CPU sluggish. May be I should get some coffee.
So I go to get some coffee, right. The first coffee dispenser, which is much closer to my desk, is out of coffee. I never make my own coffee at the office, for the simple reason that I don’t trust my coffee making abilities. I am taste-fully handicapped as it is. I never seem to get the right mixture of things that make a good coffee. The sugar isn’t enough or too much, cream isn't enough or too much or sometimes even the coffee itself isn’t enough or too much. But I try everyday. I move on to the next dispenser, for which I have to walk a couple of corridors. The coffee pot in that break room has about a half cup coffee left in it and it is pretty clear that it has been sitting there for some time. Anyway, for my half asleep brain, it wouldn’t matter as long it has a good concentration of caffeine in it. So walk up to the counter, away from the coffee pot, where the tall white paper cups are kept, clearly marked ‘For Hot Drinks Only’ and grab one. Then I see a just-walked-in girl, more like a women, near the coffee pot filing her flask with something that I can’t see. OMG, she could be taking the last of whats left in the coffee pot.
I speed-walk to her not exactly sure of what I am going to do once I get there, but not less than a foot from the target, I notice she is filing the flask with hot water. See, there is a sink right next to the coffee machine, and she is just stocking her water reserve. With a sigh of relief, I decelerate to normal walking speed with the paper cup in one hand, nothing in the other and when I was within touching distance of the pot’s handle, without warning it happened. I had an EPIPHANY. For those of you who didn’t watch ‘The Simpson's Movie’, an Epiphany is ‘a sudden realization of ultimate truth’. So, that’s what I had. Everything became clear, and it was simple. All I had to do was put the sugar and cream first into the cup and then fill it with coffee until the color becomes the right shade. The logic is undeniable and yet it is so obvious. I make a u-turn and head up to the counter with nice little racks of ingredients.
There is an assortment of sugars. Zero calorie sugar, brown sugar, alpine sugar, crystal sugar and just sugar. I used to have the zero calorie type, to pretend that I am health conscious, but from an informal informational session with a friend of mine, I learned it is not good for health. Negative calories do not exist, positive calories can be harmful and zero calories are bad. Looks like the end of the world is near. Now I only take pure or cane or sometimes brown sugar. Although obvious, for legality sake I have to say, it is not the brown sugar that’s illegal. I empty out four packs of dip-type tea-bag sized pouches of pure sugar into the cup I have been carrying around for a good 5 minutes now and then I add some more. Strangely, there is only one type of cream. The bad one. I eye ball some of it into the cup while trying my best not to inhale the puffs of cream powder that invariably gets dispersed into the air, due to some physics law related to gravity and mass. I fail, and some of it get into my nostrils making me turn about and sneeze a couple of times with the, un-apologetically forced, ‘excuse me’ wedged in between. And that is when I noticed it.
While I was busy executing my epiphany dictated actions, three people had entered the room and were into third gear at their conversation (too much motorcycle metaphors?). As often as a conversation does, it made people thirsty and one of them reached for the three-quarters empty coffee pot on which I had pinned all of my hope for awakening my brain (and content of this blog). It was exactly as it was predicted in all the Hollywood movies that had the line- ‘the Beginning of the End’. My whole life flashed before my eyes. That person, lets call her- ‘she’, had the pot in her hand as she continued her argument with her ‘friends’ oblivious to the fact that my heart was where that coffee should have been, in my mouth. Everything happened in ultra-slow motion as she poured the last few milliliters off the pot into her cup and it was over. It was one of those days in which even epiphanies are fallible. Only the Catholic Pope is left.
Head fallen, heart broken, almost asleep I walked like a banker who invested everything he had in Lehman Brothers’ stocks, still holding the cup with sugar and cream, no coffee nor hope. Someone passed by me and I heard ‘good morning’ vaguely, so I replied ‘morning to you too’ silently like a M.Night Shyamalan movie character, walking slowly, I reached where I am right now, My desk. Some process is running in my screen and there are bunch of emails in my ‘In’-Box of the email client. None important, so without paying attention I am deleting anything that does not have the word ‘we regret to inform you’ or ‘free credit score’ in its content. I am already done with the usual email, cricket score and top news stories checking ritual in the first hour of the day and like I mentioned I can’t proceed with the tasks that I have in my list-of-tasks; I am at complete loss. Nothing to do but think.
Moving to THE US of A, I always thought, would make my life such a great one. I would have anything I want. All great things would happen to me, I thought. Instead everything that can go wrong has gone that way. I live in a desert, with mostly people not very friendly, at least not in the same age group. I am stuck with a job about which I am not going to talk about. Living in an apartment with 5 people whose last name I don’t exactly know, sleeping in the carpet with a TV that can’t run for more than an hour, my daily diet include unhealthy, more importantly, tasteless, American made, or modified (as in removed all the taste) Indian food and the occasional (read plenty) snacks rich with transient fat. In my leisure hours, I watch re-runs of movies and tv shows in my laptop, for which I still pay interest on my credit card, and interestingly, I watch re-runs of movies and TV shows in my laptop when I am busy as well.
Leading a depressing life, with no thrill, no girl friend, no excitement I don’t see the end of this dark tunnel. The light has diminished long back and seems like I am only waiting for the inevitable time of departure as I mindlessly wander through.…
Wait, do I smell coffee…or am I dreaming. I see someone standing near the coffee machine that is close to my desk. Is this heaven? I hear the sweet music of freshly brewed coffee pouring into the pot of love and purity. Yes, I smell the mesmerizing aroma of heavenly caffeine. Yes, it seeks us. It calls to us.
Yes, Precious…Come to Papa.
