office meetings...

Another meeting scheduled. Just about the hardest thing to do on a sweltering noon, right after lunch. Matters didn’t improve as thirty of us packed into a meeting room designed for ten. And ten more joined on the phone at regular intervals through the length of the meeting.

The chairperson had recently attended a global meet and this meeting was aimed at propagating the propaganda to the grassroots. I am one of the roots here. I try to keep awake by taking notes. Some were not exactly what my superiors had in mind, but general tips on getting through meetings successfully. Only those who are endowed with the strongest disposition will come out unscathed out of the million meetings that you are forced into during a lifetime. For those who are less fortunate there’s always a few tips the likes of me are willing to share. For eg: There’ll always be some speakers you’ll learn to tune out and some you’ll learn to automatically tune in. The latter are a rare species, may even be extinct, so you can forget them. The former are an important one too, actually more important, coz without them, you’d have nothing but a bunch of silently meditative people sitting around tables,  trying hard to avoid each others gaze, scribbling furiously away in their office stationery.

The agenda of the meeting is immaterial. Or ‘Confidential’. That’d certainly look better if my manager ever traces this piece of writing back to me before I have a backup offer. Anyway, after 70 minutes we were done. I had my pen which I’d lent to the Attendance Attendant in my peripheral vision the whole while. I have an extreme fear of losing things. Pens lent to people, chappals outside temples.  In agreement with Freud, I have traced it to my childhood incidents of lost pencils and rubbers when my dear Ma scalded me with red-hot iron. Okay, that’s a little carried away. But I have it on good authority that she looked daggers at me as she blew away at the hearth in the kitchen many a day.

The best part of any meeting is the end. When you are released into relative freedom. This one was especially good coz our chairperson magically whipped out a huge bag of chocolates and passed them around. The aftertaste of caramel still lingers in my mouth as I end this and there’s another saved for the next break or maybe a meeting.