Now she took her pallu, wiped the sweat off her brow and got ready to hit the right keys. It was hot outside but not in there. I thought it was like ‘the hero wipes his mouth with his dirty left hand before he gives the villain the knock-out punch’ build-up, so I comfortably ignored. I had just started to dictate when she stopped me. “No Madam, I will do it!” And from then on, she never stopped talking. Right from how-hot-it-was-these-days till how-dumb-are-they-to-ask-you-to-get-such-clauses-on-a-stamp-paper. In between all this, she would pull her pallu from below her right elbow, take its one end in her hand and keep wiping her face as if rivers of sweat were running down her brow. Actually, by now, the room was so cold with the AC blasting right above our heads that such reaction looked completely uncalled for. It was more of a habit than a need I realized.
I must accept the fact that she had an amazing typing speed. Her fingers just glided over the keyboard covering the entire circumference and hitting the right key on every instance. That too without looking at the keyboard. She gave me the occasional see-how-good-I-am look along with her full-toothed grin and I reverted back with an I-am-clapping-but-its-in-my-head look. All this went on amidst her chanting the contents of the printout which I had by now read a hundred times. Whenever she saw my bored face, she would shoot back saying," You must always proof-read Madaam.... once we print it no, nothing can be done!" Again the mandatory grin and then back to work.
This went on for sometime till she suddenly realised that I was intently looking at the keyboard. Actually I was absent-mindedly staring at the keyboard and nothing else, but I did not bother telling her that. She said, “Do you know typing?” This question was thrown at me so ‘suddenly’ that I could only manage a WHAT? look. And without asking any further she took off, as by now the GURU in her had taken over. And before I knew, I had got into this ‘Typing in Microsoft Word’ training by Madame Lakshmi. “So let us start from the scratch”, she said as an afterthought. “Have you ever used a computer?” I looked at her, with my eyes bulging out as though they will fall off the sockets any movement and with my jaw almost dropping down to my chest. Looking at my [over] reaction, she [according to her] corrected herself, “Now-a-days toh naa, everybody know how to use computers! But you know you should, no, know Word.” I was so disappointed. After having slogged it out for four years in engineering college, when someone tells you that you are one of ‘everybody', you see your four not-as-tough-as-they-sound engineering years, being mercilessly wiped off from your memory . But even though I was down, I was not out. I told her I had worked on Word before. “You know what CNTRL J does?” and I truthfully said no. I was feeling miserable by now. Just Imagine!!! You tell someone you know something and that person pops up exactly that question which you do not have an answer for . Now that I had convincingly failed to convince her, the session became mandatory for me.
At first I could not get to terms with the fact that this was actually happening to me. But gradually I kind of started enjoying it. She told me stories [I do not know how many were true, though I felt like believing in all] of how she impressed some relatives who had come over for lunch with these ‘short-cuts’ of hers [Word’s, to be honest]. Though she was trying to show off her skills big time, there was this child-like innocence in each word she said, from which I could not turn away. Finally she finished her typing. Now, she needed to take a printout on Ledger paper. So she started hunting for that. She carelessly lifted all the papers that were scattered over her cramped-up table making it all the more impossible for the ledger paper present, if any, to make itself visible. The peon came to her rescue. He, like Flash [the comic book], started zipzapping from one room to other room of office, much to everyone’s displeasure but me. I was finding the whole scene amazingly funny. Lakshmi yelled out after him, “Arre Sanju, tum aisa kyun karta hai…Dheere se kaam karo!” Then she turned to me, and almost caught me giggling under my breath. I somehow ate my smile and faced her with a somber expression just to get screeched into my ears "He no, always keeps running!! Even when there is no need to….." And then she again set out after him. Finally the triumphant peon emerged out of nowhere with a whole bundle of ledger paper and Lakshmi appreciatively took it. She took a printout immediately and started checking the final draft again. It was more than just work to her. It was like her brainchild and as she looked on I wondered whether every successful assignment gave her as much pleasure as this had. The happiness was evident on her face.
She had derived great pleasure out of a small work that she had done and she looked content with it. Lakshmi was beaming looking at the draft and it was kind of contagious, as I too could not help smiling looking at her. She said that [the mandatory] if I faced any issues I should come back to her and she will be more than happy to help. But when she said that, I knew she meant it. A thank-you smile was all that I could manage then. As I got down the stairs, I thought why I felt so nice meeting this lady. Probably because she had in turn given me a reason to smile. A rendezvous to remember. A reason to write. A subject to blog.
