The office boy has been sulking. Last week at my Art of Living Course we were given some homework to do. “Practise Random Acts of Kindness” said our lovely instructor. My mind flew immediately to my current situation with the office boy who that day I had wanted to deliver one tight slap to. I knew immediately that my random act of kindness would be directed towards this boy, rather than continue to threaten him with physical violence I would walk the path of peace, I decided smugly. I would see him in a new light, one where he needed my wise guidance, one where he would in fact be my teacher in my never ending search for patience.
I lasted a few hours before he managed to frustrate the hell out of me. Still I kept reasonably calm, “Please do not darken my office again” I told him and sent him back to the reception desk while I went on doing the work I had assigned to him.
Now I am not such a monster that I can maintain a bad mood all day, so he waits for me to soften and remarks about my bad mood in front of some of the other office staff. Again I took the path of the peaceful warrioress and explained to him that I was frustrated with him because he never followed instruction, because he could never complete a simple task and that it was actually no joking matter. “Where I come from,” I explained to him. “If I am doing someobody’s job then I am entitled to their wage as well. Since I have been doing your job then perhaps you should give me half your salary.” He did like all good Indian men when confronted with the unreasonable reason of a woman and ran away. The next day by the close of the day and with a whole weekend ahead of me where I could be free to be me, my mood softened again. I gave him one tiny task.
“Ring and see if my driver is ready to take me home,” I asked him and went to pack my things. I return to the reception only to find another guy at the desk. “Where is @@##**?” The guy shrugs his shoulders. I wander off to get a cup of tea. Fifteen minutes later I go back to reception and there is @@##**. He sees me and immediately lifts the phone and assumes the “I am so busy that you dare not interrupt me” look, his Shah Rukh Khan eyebrows working overtime. I throw in a little eyebrow language of my own and raise my hand in the “What”” sign language of India. He avoids my gaze and pouts and shouts down the phone. “My driver?” I ask him. He sighs with weighty impatience and bats my query away while my blood pressure rises. “I am DOING IT NOW!” His tone warns me that he is not about to be challenged in any way and my slapping hand itches. Eventually the driver is contacted a good twenty minutes later and I am late now for my friday night activity. I roll my eyes, slap my forehead and trail along behind my driver. That night I email the boy and give him a task to complete on Saturday with full instructions so that he can stay on task.
On Monday I greet him and ask him if he managed to begin the task I had set him. Excuses fall like rain. My fault, I think for telling him to take his time and to pay attention to the process. I decide also that to keep harping on at him is also a waste of time and set about the task myself. As I work, I discover that he had spent the day photo stitching some promotional stuff, preparing a CV for some girl who wants to be an air hostess and probably the rest of the time on facebook, there was nothing approximating anything I had asked him to do.
Today while I am putting the finishing touches on this task as well as dealing with other pressing issues, I hear him shouting in his strange mix of Hindi and English to some woman that she must “Seek (his) brother out and interact with him”. A rustle of amusement washes through the office. He keeps on with his shouted conversation, interrupting himself to deal with company business. Eventually he realises that he can’t multi task this baby and gets someone to stand in for him at the reception desk so he can go outside our office and continue his shouted and increasingly hysterical conversation there. He is obviously of the school of people who think that to litter a Hindi conversation with English is part of a game of one-up-manship designed to let the person to whom you are shouting realise that they are dealing with one of the educated classes. I don’t know whether to pick up a pen and record his conversation or to laugh at the absurdity of it all, but he continues in such a way that it is impossible to concentrate on HIS work that I am doing.
The blood pressure I have so successfully controlled since re learning how to breathe fizzes up and before I know it, I am outside face to face with those eyebrows. I take his cellphone from his hand and tell him in the kind of forceful whisper which is designed by mothers and school teachers, “DO NOT SHOUT OUTSIDE THE OFFICE, DO NOT SHOUT INSIDE THE OFFICE. If you want to shout and go about your private business in company time then please go out the back where the cleaners spend all day shouting on their phones.” He attempts to stare me down, seems shocked at my display of appalling bad manners by interrupting his drama. When he sees that I am not about to be eyebrowed down, he pouts instead and sighs like a long suffering saint and goes back to his post.
Tomorrow the full moon in India marks the Guru Purnima, the moon of the guru. In India there is a belief that anyone who teaches you something that will help you along the rutted road of life on your way to enlightenment is also your guru. I feel bad because I failed in my attempt to learn the art of patience from my guru, but at least I have practised some random acts of absurdity and can see the humour in the situation. I have a very firm belief in a God with a sense of humour and India also reminds me of that every day!