Tak tak tak

Cliched!!! Perhaps that would be an understatement to describe the kind of work that I do in the office. The other day I was doing this task of "batch monitoring", when the guy who cleans the office entered the place. After collecting the trash at various desks in a plastic tray kind of a thing ( don't know what this is called), he went to straight to the dustbin at the corner of the room to empty the trash. There were some dusty paper pieces that wouldn't come off the tray easily so he started tapping on the other side of the tray in order to empty the trash. "Tak tak tak.. Tak tak tak" . That's how it sounded as he tapped the tray. Hmmmmm... Wait a minute. I could hear a similair sound orginating from another source. I realized that even I was generating the "Tak tak tak... tak tak tak" hitting the "Enter" key repeatedly. "Good God... What a royal analogy !!!" I thought. There was not much difference in the kind of work that we were doing. He at least had an objective ,that of emptying the trash. Why was I doing this work? No idea!!! "Tak tak tak... tak tak tak". I started hitting the ENTER key more rigorously.

Long long ago, before I started doing this kind of work, there used to be a time in the academic year when I had to got to the school early in the morning, come back in the afternoon, have a nap for about 1 hour and then start studying for some kind of tests known as "Annual Exams".( I never did the last thing though.. used to play Gully cricket instead). The time of the year was called "Summer" and the schedule that we had was known by the name "Morning schools". I never realized at that time, but now I really feel those days were cool. There used to be this "Beat the Heat" slogan doing the rounds in ESPN and STAR sports which meant that there was plenty of cricket action round the corner. The timing of these cricket matches would invariably clash with the "annual exams"(and India -Pakistan clash before the damned social-studies paper). My parents, uncles and aunts would always grumble everytime me or my cousins swtiched the television on to catch the latest score. Many years have passed since these things happpened. No one grumbles now. I don't swtich on the televison either. I just do an "ALT+TAB" to alter from the mainframes screen to cricinfo.com. I see my Project lead walking towards my seat, I do an "ALT+TAB" again and continue with the "Tak tak tak... tak tak tak".