Those 5 peaceful minutes

Oh how much she hated Mondays… Especially after the awesome weekend she had, she was just dreading the first day of the week.

After the epic party on Saturday, after the whole day relaxing spa given by her best friend on Sunday who in the world would want to get back to real life especially to work.

Bala didn’t have a choice. She groggily got out of bed silencing the alarm clock that was blaring out weirdest noise she has ever heard because it was 4 am. Her shift started in 2 hours and she had about an hour to prepare lunch and some 20 minutes to get ready before her cab arrived.

Hurriedly putting on her high heeled shoe matching the polka dotted shirt paired with a black pencil skirt she made sure she had everything and got into the cab.

Only after did she get into the car and thought that she had settled down, she realized that she had mismatched her high heeled closed toe shoe with a peep toed one. Smacking herself she just thanked the heavens that she had no meetings scheduled today and in fact not many would be coming to the office since the spring break was about to get over and people won’t be filling in until the next week.

As she paid the cab fare and walked in she made sure her laptop bag, her lunch box, her identity card were with her. Once she got to her desk and opened her laptop she started searching her bag for another gadget. Her heart almost stopped when she couldn’t spot her iPhone anywhere in her bag. Hurriedly she dialled her number from the desk phone only to get an engaged tone.

Just as she spotted the security personnel she asked him to dial her number through his mobile. Ignoring his stares, she pressed the basic nokia mobile to her ears as someone attended the call. Turns out the cab driver had given the phone to the security guard at the main gate before leaving the premises.

The small problem was that the main gate was about 1.5 km from her office building. She pleaded the security guard to come over to her building to hand over her phone. While thanking this guy standing next to her, two other guys came to hand over her phone.

Thanking them all she went to her desk and had forgotten that she was supposed to have logged in 20 minutes back. Hurriedly logging in, she only found that her partner hadn’t logged in yet and she was going to be in trouble because the manager had been waiting for one of them to log in.

“Great!” she thought as she read through the mails while getting a good serving of advice early in the morning from her manager.

“What a way to start the week!” she exclaimed to no one in particular in the completely empty office as she went on with her work.

Hours went by and it was time for her to get off work. Her grumpy mood just got uglier when she received a client mail stating that work had not yet been done. She had made sure to submit the required draft on Friday itself. Now she wondered how it never reached the client.

Digging through her files she found the draft as her manager started barking at her. He hadn’t sent the report. She knew whose fault it was. But she had no option. Editing and re-editing the 75 page draft she clicks on send and apologizes to the client.

As she gets off work she is almost drained. Standing at her front door, she digs into her bag only to realize that she never took her keys with her this morning.

Her feet were aching and all she wanted was a warm bath now. She was soaked in her sweat due to the highly humid climate. She kept on ringing the door bell for about 20 minutes and finally called her flatmate.

Shriya had to almost scream through the phone because she was stuck in traffic and Bala heard only honking sounds in the middle of something Shriya said.

Letting out a heavy sigh, Bala took off her heels left it near the front door and climbed up the stairs. She needed some fresh air and the terrace was the only accessible place for her right now. Leaving her bags near the ladder she climbed up the same and sat on top of the over head tank. With a soft melody playing through her headphones she just sat there watching the greyish blue clouds passing above her.

It looked like it might rain. But the clouds weren’t that dark that it would rain any moment now. With a slight breeze she felt the entire day’s tension leave her.

She realized that she hadn’t sat in this spot for quite a long time. Almost a year! She used to come here often before she started on her job. The place where she enjoyed her sunsets! Sometimes she used to come there to catch sun rise as well.

She looked around and saw that her building was no more the tallest in her block. Earlier when she used to come her’s was the only multi storey building. But now there were a lot of other buildings that blocked her view of the scene she usually got.

Just as the 5 minute song got over, her flatmate called her asking her to come down.

Bala sighed again as she carefully climbed down the ladder. Her best 5 minutes of the day was over. Suddenly she wished that Shriya had taken a little extra time to reach.

The only peaceful time she had that day had gotten over so soon.

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For starters, this is almost how my monday went this week. And those 5 minutes on that tank was the best time ever. 

I even have pictures. Managed to take a couple photos before my dad called me.