The stomach starts rumbling, I glance at the clock on the wall. Then my eye catches the other 3 clocks next to it, all showing time from different time zones, and I decide to look at my mobile.
Yups...its lunch time. Gather the other misfits, go to the cafeteria. Lurk around till we get a table. Start the eating. Then starts the talking.
'Suno yaar,' says the Punjabi.
'Why do you Madrasis always eat with your hands?' he asks, ripping his roti apart with both his hands. 'Have you never heard of spoons?'
I smile, taking a mouthful of my lunch with my spoon.
'Chennai aa? Dont talk about Chennai!' exclaims the Bihari, ever waiting for the opportunity to say that.
'Do you know how dirty the place is? The whole city smells', he says, trying not to scratch the rashes he acquired after coming down with Dengue during his visit to Bihar.
'Yes I kno! Its an awful place. I hated it.' says the Punjabi, who had stepped into Chennai for exactly two hours, enroute to Pondicherry.
'Yeah..I spent an year there. There arent even enough movie theatres in Chennai', says the Bihari, who had just watched Barfi, in all probability, in a half decent theatre where humans, mosquitoes and cats watch movies together. Only the mosquitoes and cats dont have to pay the hefty 250 (at the minimum) bucks we humans pay.
'The food is really expensive too.' says the Kannadika, eating the subsidized office food.
'Really? You think Bangalore food is cheaper?', I ask, thinking about the Bangalore restaurants whose Chennai branches have the same food at cheaper rates.
'Do you know tender coconuts cost 10 bucks extra?' she asks, while I think about how much more vehicles and fuel cost in Bangalore.
'Arey I went to visit my husband in Chennai one weekend. Went shopping in T.Nagar. The place is soo crowded!',exclaims the Andhra girl, who had taken 40 minutes to travel the 4 kms from home to office that morning, because of the endless, time unbound Bangalore traffic.
'I dont think I ever want to go to Chennai after listening to you guys. Is it really as bad as you say it is?' asks the Dilliwala, picking on his food.
'Oh the weather there is horrible. It is only hot, hotter and hottest' says the Bihari. 'Only aliens can survive there'
I smile again, my thoughts drifting off to what the Mother Ship I landed on would have looked like. And if Sheldon Copper was ever a pet in it.
'And your accents are sooo funny!' says the Punjabi, through his thick Punjabi accent.
'So? You have an accent too', I say, unable to resist anymore.
'But yours is funnier. I dont even know if you are talking in Tamil or English right now', he laughs at me, in the same Punjabi accent he doesnt think he has.
I smile again, thinking next time he says he has to pill a paaram* or i-ron his clothes, I should probably record it.
'At least I have company to talk to and eat with in this black and white work place', I think. 'I should probably divert the topic before I pull a Chandler and get sarcastic about their comments..out loud!'
'So do you guys watch sitcoms?', I ask out loud. Now there's a topic that can while away some time.
'What? What are sitcoms?' ask the Kannadika and the Andhra girls at the table, in unison.
And that, my dears, is when the lights around me flickered, the skys came crashing down on me, and when I hoped the Mayans hadnt just run out of ink or parchment or whatever it was, and the world really is going to end coming december.
*pill a param: fill a form
** The post is non fiction and based on actual conversations. Any resemblance to real life characters is purely non coincidental :D
