Delhi Diary 8: The Days of The Trinity

Delhi Diary 8: The Days of The Trinity

This one is at the behest of my dear senior friend Bharat da who takes immense pleasure on hearing again and again the strangely comical plight that I bore and I made my own during my encounters with three of one kind and that was some deadly contest than spanned for five days! I hesitated because no matter how many apt modifications I make and how many sympathetic words I use, I would still have not succeeded in not characterizing myself as a fool. Only a month ago I had declared to the world with a status update that “I have mastered the art of nagging any indifferent clerk and haggling over any price!!!” But, it was my mistake of being so positively arrogant. I never considered the female kind!

            On the evening that the HOD of Surgery told me that I had been selected as a Senior Resident, I was greatly elated because finally the monotony of sitting idle was going to give way to a workaholic’s resurrection. I decided to join the very next morning.

            Day 1: At 10:00 A.M. I was in the Medical Branch office and greeted everybody with a smile. The three ladies seated there smiled back at me and that was all! For every other gesture that I made the result was a totally opposite one; for every question I put, there was a reluctantly spoken ‘no’ or an implied ‘no’ with nonchalant silence. The more I persisted, the more they receded into a shell and my acoustic waves only reflected back to me! The lesson of the day was that they had not typed the result sheet till then and an appointment letter could only follow later. I returned back being hurt at having failed to charm the ladies! But then, they were middle-aged!

            Once at home, I had to narrate and explain to Mohsinur, Gautam, Bharat da, Suman, my parents and many others the things that transpired and I felt a sense of self-pity which was however transient and died in seconds because after all a job was beckoning.

            Day 2: At 10:00 A.M. after shorter smiles were exchanged, and they were also lesser in number due to the fact that one of the ladies was missing, I learned that the same absent gentlewoman was the sultana of that office and there was no way around that distressing realization. My joining had to wait another day!

            Day 3: At 10:30 A.M. no smiles happened. I was told to make another demand draft by cancelling the previous one because the amount of security money had been more than doubled. On returning from the bank, the ladies played hide-and-seek and they were pretty good at it! I, being a laggard at the game, had no choice but to return home to contest another day.

            Day 4: The previous day being a Saturday, I could only cool my heels at home.

            Day 5: I was so well-prepared! All my forms were ready and I could see no missing link. The ladies however were all together a trinity with foxy intelligence and I saw Sherlock Holmes, Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple all at once when they showed me all kinds of deficiencies in my humble submission! They would not agree to the fact that I had forwarded a letter from the Deputy Medical Superintendent asking them to let me join as soon as possible irrespective of official hassles! I had thought that was my master stroke! They however showed me the letter was all my writing and the DMS had only written ‘forwarded’. I returned a few minutes later with an inscription ‘allowed to join’ and I won the contest at 3 P.M. too late to join the department.

            Once at home, I wondered who won it! Once a clerk, always a jerk!