So I work for this corporate where everybody starts every 'english' sentence with 'so' and randomly places 'like' and 'this' wherever they want to. That is why I started talking about myself with that word. Now, you might wonder why I am trying to mimic people who speak fashionably 'wrong' english? Hold your horses, the rest of the narrative will clarify.
Well, the job I do makes me compare myself to the cellophane man in "Chicago". Ok, beofer you start hunting me up to hit me let me tell you what exactly I do in this corporate.
I do the dishes.
Yes, that is what I do. I clean the dirty dishes as and when they are placed on the counter. Inside the cleaning room, I rule the roost. Not that there is anybody else to rule over. Just the fittings, dishes and dish-towels.
It is good. Makes me feel at peace with myself and the world. All that setting things in order and cleaning up whatever needs to be cleaned. Just a digression, don't u think Holden Caulfield would have loved to have this ability? See dirt - clean it!
Sometimes, I wonder though -- do people really know I am doing such as service to make their life more comfortable in this place? You see, they don't see me do all this cleaning up. They come and place their plates on the counter and I pick them up, clean them and place them on a different counter for the catering staff to place them back on the dining tables. Of course, I know the catering staff rather well. With them I do not feel invisible. More like translucent, if you kow what I mean. They do their job, I do mine. But of course, they know my name and the way I do my hair and such things. Frankly, that is more than enough. They do not interest me.
What interest me are the voices I hear from the other side of the counter, floating up through that little counter-window. The bits of gossips, the little secrets, the complaints, stray bits of information. And the people from whom these voices emerge.
I create entire stories from the tones of these voices and the variations in them. Some have unusual accents and some copy those unusual accents. The ones with these mixed accents are the more interesting, naturally. Gives me a lot to think about at work and also for whenever I have nothing else to do. The whys and whos and wherefroms of those voices.
Now, after patiently reading through all this do you begin to understand why I would like to belong? Is it too much to expect to be recognised as a listener, an observer, a partcipant?
And it is not just the voices. I play another game with the people whose dirty dishes I clean. Will tell you about it some other time. So long then.