Away on the Highway- The New Post

Away

Until last week it used to take just twenty minutes for me to get to office on my bike. Now it takes three hours by bus to reach my office at my new post, a hundred and thirty five kilometers away from home. It also means that I cannot make the journey every day, of course. Apart from the long journey, the other difference is that I miss the usual hustle bustle of working in the head office. I am posted in a different office where there are just a little more than a dozen people in a small office. There isn’t much work and I guess I will be bored beyond belief. But then, the bright side of it is that I will have plenty of time on hand to read as much as I can.

I guess there is some kind of a loss when one is posted out of the head office to a field office. There is the loss of pride of working in an office that matters. There are also other losses as well. There is the loss of authority, the loss of a feeling of responsibility, the loss of allowances etc. The biggest one is the loss of the joy of being with the family all the time. It is something I have to reconcile myself to and I think it will take sometime to get used to the fact that I cannot have dinner with my family every day. If there are some losses then there are bound to be some compensations. But as of now I don’t see any.

On the other hand there were a few things that promised adventure. Attached to the office is a jeep and also, I couldn’t believe it, a bus! It had been a childhood dream to drive a bus. Since I am almost No.2 in the new office I guess I can throw my weight around and get behind the wheel of the bus when the opportunity presents itself. Or maybe I have to create the opportunity myself which seems more likely. Another promise of adventure was revealed when someone in the new office told me that snakes have a free run of the compound where the office is located. Our new office is in a vast ground full of thorny bushes and other trees. Actually, there is a towering, reddish ant hill under a tree right in front of the office. I am eagerly looking forward for my first sighting of the hissing crawlies.