Well, these days we have drills and guidebooks for everything. From cracking an exam, impressing women, making million dollars sitting at your home, scamming, and corning to those safety drills and emergency evacuation drills. Our very nature and obsession to control and rehearse everything possible continues to drive me crazy.
Emergency alarm goes out, someone listening to Menson or MegaDeath at full volume also couldn’t have unheard the alarm. Half of them new exact time when the alarm would go out and rest knew anytime in next two hours it would. Half ready to evacuate and quarter of them checking their watches every five minutes and rest either staring at their liquid crystal displays and hitting keystrokes after keystrokes for greater good or because they were just as idle as me.
We run. We evacuate. Some take photographs. Some laugh. Some gossip. Some crib. Some get much awaited chance to strike a conversation. Some chatter on phone. Some watch. Some are still lost. I, I want to go home.
I can’t help but watch people. It is addictive I tell you. It amuses me to see how amongst thousands of people, they slowly start gravitating towards one another or in other words get repelled from some other ones and others. Folks up the food chain seem to settle down in a corner, checking if their latest Van Heusen didn’t catch some grease from the emergency evacuation, if the shoe polish is still ok, if the expensive scarf is still intact. Social butterflies just can’t seem to get enough of action. So excited they need to probably text it to their mates who probably work around the same complex. Disastrously good looking girls, I mean the ones who know that they make heads turn, start drifting to one side of the field. Gossip junkies won’t let a minute go to waste. On the other corner, you see folks desperately waiting for their next nicotine stick, discussing if it would be alright to light one while the guy on the stage explains types of fires and demonstrates how to extinguish fire. You see the working class, the cleaning and maintenance staff hanging by the fence, probably looking at us and smirking, bunch of so called intellectuals dressed as such a real life misfits. Security doing rounds, who has probably worked hardest for this ten minutes evacuation drill. Eternally lost, cynical, sarcastic social misfit like me standing by the side and watching…
Watch as thousand people breathe and sweat and yap in the small front yard. Stare as they laugh or frown.
What they or no one understands is when one of the five elements decides to pull the switch. You are not going to gravitate, you are not going to drift, you won’t have time to laugh or frown. You will run. Crowd won’t have a face. You won’t know whose lips, ears, groin or eyes you’ll be stamping on. You won’t know whose blood you have on your Ritu Kumar or Peter England. When smoke fills up the floor and you can’t see the ones working a few cubicles away, you won’t hear any voices but just the chaos. And the thing about chaos is, it’s fair. It doesn’t have a face, doesn’t leave one behind, just the scars.
At least then we won’t drift socio-economically or pseudo-intellectually.
Now, that’s a drill. We just need a push.
Neo
Love this! How do you write such heavy-duty stuff Nachi?
ReplyDeleteBTW, check out the reference to your post on my blog here:
http://willyoubethesame.blogspot.com/2008/09/fire-in-mountain.html
There is something incredibly disturbing about nice people. Not good people, just nice people. People who are always cheerful, always happy, always pleased and pleasing, for no apparent reason. Happiness (at least the physical manifestation of it) sits as easily on their faces, as a designer scarf on a diva.
ReplyDeleteI cannot but think that these people are incredibly phony and scheming. Not because they're being nice to you because they want something from you. That's direct, and understandable.
It is their pleasantness itself that expresses extreme distrust towards people around. I do not buy that these people really always feel kindly towards their fellow beings. They just don't trust you enough to show you their true feelings. They're constantly denying their true feelings, because they've already written you off. You won't understand their pain anyway, so why bother trying to communicate it to you? You only have enough intelligence to comprehend the sugary sweet concoction they serve up to you, and they keep feeding it to you, spoon after spoon, wave after wave. Until you're drowned in their niceness, and their unrelenting pleasantness chokes you like toxic fumes.
So, I stay away from nice, pleasant people. I don't talk to them, I don't give their niceness a chance to choke me. Some people think I do this because I'm jealous of other people's happiness. I'm not. I am scared of therm. Scared of the rage they have to hide inside them, under layers and layers of sweet smiles. Scared of being written off and distrusted even before I am given a chance to prove myself.
Or, maybe I am just jealous, and this theory is nonsense. Who knows...
Excellent. When I used to work in the big G in Dublin fire drills where pretty much similar, probably more reliably happening at the scheduled time. Being part of the nicotine addicted I would go: "Should we go down for a ciggie break?" And my buddy will answer: Oh wait, there's a fire drill in 10mins anyway!
ReplyDeleteThanx McSilly for taking a moment out to comment on my blog. I miss my time in Dublin with G as well.
ReplyDeleteHey this is so simply and nicely written!!
ReplyDeleteN I couldn't agree more with you about watchin ppl. I too have this habit and I feel it really helps you to get an insight into people and their behavior......
Helps your relationships at work and personal ones too!
brilliant post :D
ReplyDelete