Kaar Ke Side Effects- 1

It is exactly seven months and I am still (hesitantly) in the No. 2 seat in the office. At first I had thought the arrangement would be for a few days or a week at the most. But the days have turned into weeks and the weeks have turned into months, six months in fact which is more than half a year. Half a year isn’t very long but if one considers the fact that I've been in this posting for a little more than two years it is long enough. Never in the nineteen years of my service had I dreamt that one day I’d be shouldering more responsibility than is due. A couple of days back I learnt the welcome news that someone is being posted in the No. 2 seat. I am feeling terribly relieved and feel like an enormous rock has been lifted from my shoulders. I am eagerly awaiting to go back to being No. 5, not that it is any less burdensome. But it’ll seem less intimidating sitting in my other seat in a tiny cabin that has a window with a nice view of the Hussain Sagar lake. In fact after shifting to a new block I've not spent more than half hour in that cabin. In the next few days I will be comfortably ensconced in that glass cabin looking out at the placid lake. As No. 2 I guess I've had a fairly smooth run not considering the usual irritants common in any organization. I've sat in some really important meetings with important people and got the opportunity to observe very closely how major decisions are taken, had been to Delhi on a couple of occasions, and once to Tirupati, been on television, and also had my name in the newspapers. Last week Keshav, my close friend, called me to tell me that he had read my name in The Hindu that he read in Goa. It gave me quite a thrill learning folks in Goa could have read my name though I’d rather my name gets into the papers for my novel. I will miss none of it, except possibly one thing- the car. I’ll be lying if I say that won’t miss the car. It’s done quite a few things to me which I will write in a separate post later. But I do not mind going back to riding to office on my trusted Hero Honda motorbike. What I would miss most is the 15-20 minutes of time I had on the ride to office during which I could read. I’m astounded to realize that during the six months that I had been No. 2, I've managed to finish six books reading for just twenty minutes in the car. I've finished Helene Hanff’s ’84 Charing Cross Road’, Anthony Bourdain’s ‘Kitchen Confidential’, P.Sainath’s ‘Everybody Loves a Good Drought’, Stephen Fry’s ‘Stephen Fry in America’, Joan Didion’s ‘Slouching Towards Bethlehem’ and also ‘Best Food Writing 2007’ that I read in the car only .