Young Siddharth’s Brave Adventures in the State of Bengal

Not quite so long ago, our dear protagonist was informed by his lord and master that he would have to take part in what is commonly termed as a DUE DILIGENCE which would involve travel to the state of Golden Bengal. Gleefully, our youthful prot. clapped his hands (metaphorically) and packed his bags (actually) and set off for the land of Tagore the Howrah Bridge Durga Puja Eden Gardens with its 150,000 crazed fans british era heritage british era leftovers walking around british era heritage again only this time with cheap posters and underwear hanging off of it. Calcutta.

Three days from the time that would be indicated in the afore paragraph Young Sid finds his life a blur consisting of 9 hours of crunching away at a computer and a few hours in front of the tv at the Taj drinking overpriced undersized beer. DO NOT MISUNDERSTAND ME. Young Sid enjoyed the pointless routine in that people were nice to him and that faceless clients paid for his underwear getting laundered and returning with roses pinned on them BUT

But somewhere inside our dear P, something was burning. Call it the spirit of freewill. Or the restlessness of an erratic genius. The grim sense of realization that dawns upon great people like the late great Che and the current Young Sid.

Peering out the window at the gaudy filthy bustling alleys and the clouded evening sky young sid decides that Enough is Enough. With a great sense of purpose he heads out the office for a Walk and a Cigarette break.

Once outside, YS sees many things that please and interest him. For the first time in three days he finds himself not the very centre of attention by virtue of his very presence. Taxis oxen pavement dwellers chair merchants and tanpura makers manage to find an equilibrium of peaceful coexistence despite their otherwise divergent purposes in life. As an enterprising fellow attempts to sell passers by a plastic chair or two, a child the size of a football shits off the pavement and onto the road as the mother and extended family nonchalantly continue with their range of non-activities.

Lighting a cigarette, our dapper protagonist strides up the road. Smiling to himself. The potent combination sights sounds and smells that Calcutta has to offer to him has resulted in the penning of a small historo-anthropological masterpiece in sid’s mind. He walks on.

TWO MINUTES or FIFTY METRES from his office it starts to rain. Not the gentle, loving rain that caresses the faces of youthful lovers in sweet stories of love, dear reader, no. The skies Open and our hero is forced to take refuge under a thin sheet of tin whose presence in life is totally unexplained except for the fact that it offers relative shelter at times such as these. Sid squeezes himself under with what seems to him as half the male population of Calcutta and continues to smile beatifically and puff at his somewhat soggy cigarette from time to time.

An old man wearing a vest and a lungi and carrying a very large sack of Something That Would Be Rather Important to His Life and Livelihood tries to find himself a place under the makeshift shelter. There is none. Our sid, being the kind hearted fellow that he is, decides that this old gent needs shelter more than he does, and, with true corporate-lawyer-style chivalry (social responsibility) streaks across the road to find an alternative. Five seconds and a wet shirt later sid finds himself in a large red post office. A musty remnant of the colonial era currently occupied by a number of soggy Bengalis patiently waiting for the rain to subside.

A cheeky stream of water starts to slide down the back of Sid’s you know what and the beatific smile loses itself for a few seconds.

His polite enquiry for a postcard is met with an old lady screaming at him from behind the counter and no postcard being transacted.

Fifteen minutes later sid finds himself doing what he was doing fifteen minutes earlier and small visions of empty office unfinished work angry client and general unemployment emerge and bother our dear hero.

Another five minutes of the general misery suggested above convince our turbulent genius that Enough is Enough (again). Bursting out the post office he skids around the corner of the pavement skitting up the road in a nimble dash that might just have left Jesse Owens breathless. Jumping from patches to pavement still relatively unbothered by water, to piles of roadside debris Sid manages to keep his suitably expensive leather shoes relatively safe. YOU STILL HAVE IT IN YOU, YOU OLD SOD!! HAHA!! our intrepid protagonist jubilantly tells himself as he jumps off the footpath and into a recently formed stream of Very Healthily Black Water.

Young Sid sees his shoes and the area approximately four inches above his shoes disappear. His spotless white shirt is now horrifically transparent, his hair plastered around his face. Walking up to the office looking like a strange variety of pornstar his shoes go Galomph Galomph with the nice water from the street. (In keeping with the spirit of factually accurate reportage, your humble servant must add as an aside that our hero had jumped into the black rivulet just a few metres downstream from the little pavement dweller kid’s shitspot).

Staring pointedly at nothing at particular above him, our hero manages to successfully navigate through Very Bewildered Stares to his cabin and proceeds to take his shoes and socks off for a meeting or two with assorted managers and vice presidents.

fin.