Life
is always known for its unexpected twists and turns and any change, whether in
personal or professional space, is bound to come with its challenges. But I was
always a veteran and thought I could tackle such changes easily, having shifted
my house 22 times in a span of 43 years; yet, what I encountered recently left
me RATtled.
I
was quite excited with shifting to the 8th floor and lent hand to my
colleague,s who were either busy or less experienced, in tackling this daunting
task. The first thing we noticed was the change of view, the calming sea spread
out in the distance and a new place - all to ourselves. Well but that was not
to be; while we were almost looking forward to visitors, in the form of our 3rd
floor colleagues and students, we were taken aback by a totally unexpected
visitor – a RAT!
It
wasn’t as if we hadn’t noticed the two holes that lined the outer wall of our
office and we had even made efforts to tell the Maintenance about them, but
well, they too were busy trying to ‘manage change’, so as days turned to weeks
and weeks to months, we let it pass by.
Often
visitors are noticed by their presence and their unwillingness to leave,
harassing the hell out of the people they visit, but here we were, in a
predicament, unique to ourselves. Our visitor was noticed by his/her absence (see
I can’t even identify the gender, so unseen was s/he), underlined by the traces,
s/he left for us.
In
the beginning, it was crumbs, then large chunks of food, then upturned dustbins
and finally the place being littered with s**t and p** (you see s/he wasn’t
toilet trained)
At
first, like with guests, we were tolerant; armed with sanitizers (a cleaning
boon for the modern citizen), we cleaned out our workstations, after the
housekeeping had swept out the remains (of all sorts) of the previous day.
Then
the problem grew worse and so did our desperation. Our actions were now
supplemented with phone calls, which were greeted with affirmations without
action... (so typical of an Indian setup) and then by emails that brought
authorities rushing up to our rescue.
The
holes, after a quarter year of sustained, relentless and untiring efforts, were
finally plugged. But you see, they were closed only partially and our guest
had, by then, learnt the intricacies of the layout. S/he had become more
familiar with it than us (after all s/he was equipped with the age old wisdom, ‘when
the cat is away the mice are at play’ – the only change being there were many
cats (many of us) and it was a mouse – only one.
We
thus had become strangers to peace, the proverbial hunters, equipped with
varied degrees that specialised in management (except, of course, on how to
manage rats)
Finally,
our murderous instincts took over and we decided to poison our guest – for that
seemed the only way.
Yet,
much to our surprise and awe that soon turned to chagrin, our guest had
digested the rat poison, we had set out for him//her and, as a vengeance, left
a mark on each table. We beat a hasty retreat. And so the battle continued - human
beings (man) against nature or the modern battle of space and we hoped that all
management, we had ever learnt and taught, would help us to tackle this issue.
Ganpatis
had come and gone along with their vehicles - the mooshik (rat), but our friend
continued to be our guest. Currently the battle seems to have swung in our
favour, for s/he has not been seen or heard (of) recently. We hope that unlike
the Atithi in ‘Atithi Tum kab Jaogey’, we are not forced to make him/her a part
of our life...
