Before the meeting...

A few days ago, I had my first meeting with my editor, with three other new recruits. One of them was a friend….no an acquaintance, and the other two completely unknown to me. We were sitting in a close room which looked like a typical cabin in a typical corporate house. The walls were white in color; the door made of light steel, a light shade of grey, with ‘Conference Room’ written in white, on a dark blue board. The room itself was not big. It was one-half of a long room, and was divided by a partition of sorts. It had a wooden table in the middle of it, which looked like someone got bored while in the process of making it, and therefore decided to leave it half-way. The result was it could neither be called a long table, nor could justice be done to it by calling it small. It served the purpose of both, depending on the role it was called to perform in different situations.
There were five seats around it. Two on each side and one on the far right of it. The seats were in blood red color and black handles, which rounded around them on both sides. They were the typical corporate sorts, which gives your back a very good reason to complain about the discomfort it endures while sitting on it. Also, when the message of such sorness is sent to your brain, it helps it in revising all the forgotten notes it took in profanity in your not-so-classy circles.
There were large windows in the room, on the left hand side of the wall, and were hidden behind shades. They were fitted in and therefore could not perform their duties fully, adding to the expenses incurred by the company on electricity bill, as the sole savior of the people in the room was now an A.C. The A.C also was not an ordinary one. It had a mind of its own and I think that it was tired of people asking for its services too often. So it switched off the moment it saw that the people in the room have stopped wiping the sweat from their foreheads and have just started heaving a sigh of relief.
The four of us took our seats, two on both sides. Whether, it was the conspiracy of the forces of nature or the company’s unconscious effort to balance out the different temperaments, I don’t know, but it so happened that there were two girls and two boys each on either side of the table that day. The boys were being chivalrous (quite surprising as most of you will agree with me that finding chivalrous boys these days is like finding a pin in a haystack.),and remained quite for most of time.
Now, Sneha being a shy girl isn’t really comfortable talking to guys. And I, although the word shyness rarely ever crops up in my dictionary, wasn’t left with much to say, as I was surrounded by people who by the looks of it, had sworn never to open their mouths ever again. So all of us were left to dwell on random deliberations that came to our minds as we were not forced to stir our thought process in a specified direction.
So, I started my favorite activity. Observing my colleagues. I love observing people. It’s so much fun to just sit quietly and see how people react to their surroundings. Saurabh, one of the boys (the more chivalrous one) and the quietest of the group was sitting on the edge of his chair. He appeared to be devouring an article in the ‘TOI’. His position was quite precarious and a sudden movement or a frightening ‘boo’ from behind could have landed him right on the cold floor. I imagined his embarrassed faced on the floor and a clumsy effort to get up, and silenced a giggle that was threatening to come out any moment. I looked at his hunched shoulders and his extremely formal attire (very much unlike me) and thought about this t-shirt I had seen the other day in ‘Westside’. It read ‘Be nice to nerds, they can be your future bosses’.
Now I shifted my gaze to the other character sitting next to him. It was easy to recognize that he was the extrovert and the outgoing one of the duo. He was comfortably seated and was half-spinning in his chair. Although he was wearing formal clothes, he was wearing it with an air of a person who was used to wearing casuals more than formals. Therefore the formals that he was wearing transcribed its basic nature of authority and discipline into a relaxed and laid-back one. He looked like a guy who was uninterested in any kind of sermon to be given to us by our seniors or the editor. One peculiar thing I noticed about him was that he was mostly always smiling with his eyes half closed. It looked like he was a saint giving gyaan to his disciples about the various complicated situations that one faces in his or her life. I was quite amused by him and smiled at his laid-back attitude, not unlike mine.
Then my attention turned to Sneha, who was sitting right next to me, I was pretty sure worrying about anything and everything in this world. She was quite unsure about meeting the editor and this was written all over her face. I could actually see her mind racing, thinking about thousand different things. What will the editor say to us? Why are we here? What will he make us do? I don’t know anything about technology. What if he asked me something about some latest technology? How will I answer him? What will these guys think? They are surely more proficient in this subject that I am. I knew I should have read more in the technology. I wonder how I will catch up with all this tech jargon and latest tech news. I also wonder whether this will help me if I want to change to mainstream. Will the mainstream guy’s prefer me if I come from such a niche background? But GP sir said they will. So, maybe they will. I hate the food in my PG. I would like to have some north Indian food. I wonder why these guys took up this job. Are they interested in the mainstream? Maybe they are. It’s quite late now. Where is our editor?
I was enjoying myself seeing Sneha play with her hands on her lap and her body stiff with tension, when the door opened and a kind smiling face entered the room. I turned my attention to our editor and like a good gal ended my interesting journey, where I so unceremoniously threw my fellow colleagues into my own imaginative mind-reading fantasy.