Date with Work

After a long, hard days work, when every muscle in your body aches, all you want to do is get to the cozy comforts of your home. Have a hot shower, listen to some good music, make some coffee and sit in the balcony and light a smoke. Ahhh. Bliss…

But this bliss is short lived. You receive a call from a client, who wants something urgently, and you being the nice, sweet agency guy that you are, tell the client that it will be done and mailed to her first thing in the morning. You need to make a choice now and you are left with two options. You either go home and indulge in all the above mentioned things and do the work in the morning or stop your bike and step into the next coffee shop you come across and get cracking. Either way the possibility of getting back to work is ruled out.

So, you start riding your bike slowly and after a while spot a coffee day, Your more a barista person than a café coffee day person, but you need caffeine real bad and you dont care a damn. Thats the first mistake for the evening!

You park your bike and after walking past a lot of rich, spoilt school kids and the heavy trail of strawberry hookah smoke, you find a corner table and leave your stuff and settle down. You look at the watch and it shows 8:30. You think to yourself, ok another one hour, a couple of cappuccinos and then youre through from that place. You look around you and see a couple not bothered about the place and having a cozy making out session. You smile and think to yourself, search the keys to your house from your jean pocket and are really tempted to offer them the key and politely tell them to get a house instead of a room. But you shrug your shoulders and dig your scribble pad from the bag instead. Just when you are about to write a line of thought, a deep voice disturbs you and waits for your order. You dont raise your head, but order a cappuccino and also ask him to get you a cold glass of water. The strawberry hookah is now beginning to give you a headache. You start working. Ask questions to yourself about the product, the client, their service (thats how you work and crack concepts). You have a whole barrage of questions before you and you start answering one after the other. Suddenly there is a loud shriek of a microphone. Your ears become sour. You immediately cover your ears and spit some water out. You look up to see a guy with thick glasses and an even thicker moustache standing at a corner of the coffee shop with a microphone in his hands and a headphone on his ears. He has a laptop on a table in front of him. There are bunch of people around him and also a really beautiful young woman, making circles with her hair. You see relief. But you’re still not sure as to whats going on.

The man introduces himself to the crowd sitting in the coffee shop and tells everyone there is going to be a karaoke session that is Instore for everyone. You love music and you dont think your a bad singer at all, so you thought this could be a slight relief from the concept that you were working on. You keep the pen down and close the scribbling pad. The young woman starts off with -Hips dont lie, You thought the song made a lot of sense. Youre not really a fan of shakira, but you are of her hips. The young woman sings really well and you were thinking to yourself this is going to be fun. And as always bliss is short lived. The man with the microphone starts singing after the shakira song gets over. Your reaction, you feel like strangling him and putting a bullet through your head- thrice. It is terrible, it is hilarious. And strangely this does not bother the man at all and he is having a blast. Screaming, shouting, oh am sorry he is supposed to be singing. You become happy about one thing though; his singing makes the school kids smoking the hookah, stand up, laugh and leave. The air smells divine with only cigarette smoke. But what do you do with the screaming man? He then calls a few people from the audience to come and sing. You start praying, somebody please go on and grab that mike before he starts singing again. There are a few guys who are keen and you applaud them to the stage where people have to sing. This is the second mistake of the evening. The brave ones who actually come in have no idea about the song that they choose and make up their own lyrics and it gets pathetic.

For the next one hour that youre there, you cant work, you cant drink water, you cant sip your coffee, and well you just cant handle it anymore. Until the man walks up to you and asks if you would like to sing for the crowd. In the bottom of your heart you know that you are a much better singer than all the other blokes who have sung so far, but then you really dont want to push it. So you just smile and tell him that youre really a bathroom singer. The girl, who is sitting beside you in the next table, feels disappointed. You think maybe she wanted you to sing. The cycle continues and more people step on the stage and sing some more songs, there is vande mataram – a song only Rahman can sing better, there is Who lamhe one of your favourite songs, but well its just not your day.

You ask for the bill and decide to move out, when the girl walks upto you and looks you right in the eye and says, I thought you would sing something for me. Mistake number three that seals the day!!!