Catharsis

     At the outset, i accept, no one can and should try and justify losing their temper. But when someone comes into your office every now and then, and tries to pressurize you to do something that you have to take time over, and speaks to you rudely on top of it, at a time when you've been working up frustrations for a while.. Well, I lost it and yelled my head off.

       Thinking of it now, it makes me laugh how both of us traded threats - he telling me how this'll cost me my job and I telling him to shut up and get out and how the two others standing inside quietly sneaked out leaving us to our shouting competition and the entire staff peering in through the glass door. The further away in time I am from the incident, the more stupid I feel and the more it makes me laugh. But I must admit that, keeping the 'right thing' and the 'maturity' I should maintain aside for a bit, that one good outburst was a real catharsis for all the negativity that's been building up for a while now. Out it spewed and refreshed me. What I'm afraid of is getting addicted to this. So easy to spew forth the venom but so hard to undo the damage. Hope I 'grow up' soon enough to inculcate this before  its too late!

New Places New Faces

     Its funny how one ends up making friends in the most unexpected ways and most unlikely places. The only problem is, because of its very nature of unlikeliness, its highly misunderstood. And sometimes, it becomes very challenging to strike a balance between 'its my personal life and others can take a hike' and 'oh my god, now everyone'll know and what'll they think'. I'm not quite sure when I'll learn to fine tune this.. But I got to say, I consider myself really lucky, because I know that people go through their entire careers not being able to find someone to even talk to..

The Inquiry

     I know, some days are always worse than the others. Cannot be helped. But of late, its beginning to trouble me. Quite a bit. Mainly because its been months now, and I seem to be spending a good amount of time doing Inquiries. Problem is, I end up with findings which show maybe a little bit of carelessness on someone's part, but no malafide. Nothing that anyone has to be hung for. However, no matter my protests, I end up giving my findings as it is and see people getting disproportionately punished for it. All I seem to be doing is negative work.. and its kind of bogging me down.. It wasn't meant to be like this.. There was meant to be  a lot more 'meaning' to my work, it was supposed to be constructive for the public at large. Right now, I am nowhere near that..

Land of Melas and Brooms

     It happens every time I travel out to the countryside. I go for some purpose and always end up finding something totally unexpected. Sometimes fascinating. It happened today again and I'm so excited about it that even though I've to wake up at 4.00 am tomorrow morning, I'm driven enough to finally open a blog and put down what I saw.

     There is this small Mela, which receives about 50,000 odd people which takes place at Kartik Poornima every year. I'm ashamed to say that although it takes place in my area and it started today, I had no clue about it till someone else told me about it. I finished up the work I was bogged down all day with and rushed to the place. Cruising along the highway, half hour later we swerve left into a smaller road going downwards. It was only then that I realised that this was actually a mildly hilly tract. Drove another five minutes and we pass by a curious sign board attached to a gate saying 'The Desert Museum'. I wondered who may thought of putting up a Museum on the road to a small village, so far from the City and made a note to try and drop in.

     We went further down, right up to the Mela spot. Took a walk along the main road, absorbing the place. This Mela attracts mainly local crowds, but quite a number of them even from far off villages. Buses packed inside out, people walking up to the tiny temple enjoying the sights of puppeteers and chewing tons of popcorn. It seriously amazed me how many popcorn sellers there were. The temple's perched atop a small hillock, with water flowing under it, in which they all will take a holy dip. This is believed to be a perennial spring but interestingly, this year the Gram Panchayat actually filled it up with water transported from elsewhere!

     After chatting with the guys on duty and the Sarpanch, we started our journey back. This time we stopped at that curious Museum. It turns out that this is a Museum of Brooms!! Despite being here for a while, I had never heard of it and I have to admit, I am thrilled to bits with my discovery. Incidentally, the person who runs it was there himself this evening and I got a nice round of the place. This 10 acres of land, developed by an NGO which works of study and preservation of local folk lore, was beautifully built and maintained. All strutures are made in the traditional way that village used to be. The Brooms are categorized according to the food zones that the State can be broken into. They were put up in small huts fashioned as real rooms in a village house. The house itself was completely rural: grooves women make on the plaster of the outside wall with their fingers, utensil stand made of horse dung and clayey soil mixture, grain bins made with donkey dung and clayey soil, the works!

     Outside, we walk a short distance to a large stone serving as a bench. It overlooked a large body of water, almost like a pond. It turns out that it used to be a mining pit, now deserted. They had developed the pit and now used it to store water. I sat there, watching the myriad birds that the water attracted. The breathtaking sunset melted away my tiredness, as it did the day. A few moments and then I had to be off. But this one unexpected little find turned a day fraught with deadlines and dog work into a happy ending. Definitely going to return there soon.

The 'Party'

   I suppose its the tradition and I'm getting unnecessarily sentimental about it, but somehow, I can't help feeling touched about the little meal my staff and I had together today. With lots of luck and support from superiors, one of the trickiest assignments I've had to handle so far was successfully completed end of last month. And despite the misgivings and complaints many had against my staff - not all misplaced -  and the pressures I had to put up for them, I would be lying if  I even think this would've gone off well without them. Ultimately, as a fresher, I depended too much on my staff. Its only because they could respond to things properly almost all the time did we manage things decently. Learnt a lot from that experience: how good leadership makes good staff and good staff is what brings success.

   Anyways, I suppose all these things were on my mind as we all sat together at 'Bhoothnath' for a traditional meal of Daal - Baati - Churma, near a tiny pond and surrounded by rocky hills. Lots of food, lots of chillies and lots of laughter at this get together that everyone called a 'party' to my amusement. Stuffed myself to death.

   We're all now back to the grind, gearing up for the next round of this task, bigger one than the last I'm told. But for me, the best thing about this one meal was that ir seemed to have put away all the hard feelings I may have caused last month.

The Night Rush

     The idea of working late isn't something that makes anyone happy. Neither did it me. But strangely enough, staying up last night till 1 am checking out all the forms collected, picking out the mistakes, curing them as far as possible and keeping it ready for today, people running about finding the necessary forms, the sigh of relief and the quiet that descended upon the office when dinner arrived, the endless cups of tea.. somehow, I have to admit, I quite enjoyed myself. When I finally reached home at half past one in the morning, I simply couldnt  go to sleep despite being dead busy since 9 am, what with the adrenaline rushing! And frankly, I'm happier and more experienced to handle the next such assignment that comes to my way. Elections, I have realised, is a lot dependent on experience.  

Yet Another..

     Two things that are never-ending in this State and I suppose, in this country are Melas and Elections. They just keep coming at you. I spent last year involved in one humongous Mela and 2 huge elections. This year began with a small Mela, spilled over into a big Election and another follows soon after. I really wonder why there isn't a staff dedicated to this job..

    Talking of Melas, Elections is no different from one. Involves massive management of thousands of people, planning ahead to the minutest detail and getting behind and yelling at every one to get all the work actually done - almost like a huge Indian wedding. I'm still to find one single person who knows exactly all that everyone else under him/with him actually has to do.

    Today another round of Elections began and the day was spent with a bunch of us: me and my team sitting and chatting away, while we waited for people to turn up, about our respective experiences of Elections. And after ages I laughed and laughed till my eyes started watering and stomach hurt. Each of us has experienced the ruckus that miscreants simply love to create outside the polling stations at the drop of a hat; unbelievably dumb people who go through hours of voting without realising that the votes are not being registered; drunkards among the workers who disappear without giving the proper forms and others spend the night hunting for the guy in every corner of the city; those who come in big groups and hurl the choicest abuses on the staff for keeping them waiting... so many more. I remember how hassled and harrassed I felt then. But a day like today, when you sit down with the people you otherwise yell at all day, and share these stories and laugh out loud with them.. it makes it worth it to have had these experiences, just to be able to share them.

      It's a rare day and one to remember.