Saturday, May 27, 2006

A mother crying, her son consoling her, "Papa will be fine soon".
Some holding back tears, some writing the name of their respective god in notebooks. Some meditating on beads. Each praying in his own way to postpone the inevitable end.

Friday, May 26, 2006

Immortal Egos

The recent reports of all and sundry in Gujarat wanting Aamir khan to apologize for some stand he took, took me back to an episode during my first job.

I worked as a housekeeper for a five star hotel in Mumbai and on that particular day was assigned supervision of floor 2,3 and 4. In the suite 202 we mostly had this regular guest Mr. Panicker. Now regular guests are treated as gods, if they say green is blue then that’s how it is.

On that day there was a complaint from 202 that the AC was not working. Everybody that includes the Executive Housekeeper (HOD), senior housekeeper, the resident manager (Dr.Mamik, nobody knew why he was called a doctor, but he insisted so everybody went along) and the head of maintenance were in the room pacifying the esteemed guest when I was summoned.

The moment I entered the room, the attack of the killer resident manager, he wanted to know how I cleared the room when the AC was not working and I should apologize to Mr. Panicker for the inconvenience caused. All I said was when I checked the room the AC was working absolutely fine. The HOD was startled she had assumed I would very meekly apologize for something that was not my fault and they will in addition give some complimentary services to the muftkhor and everything will be fine. But with my retort I managed to put them in a fix, at the moment one of the engineers came and informed that the AC was working fine when I had checked it, so it was not my fault.

How large must be the size of such people’s ego. Such self-importance, how vain and how stupid and how human.