MONSTER OF A MONDAY

I don’t care if ire comes my way.

I don’t care if abuses come my way.

I don’t care if stones come my way.

I really don’t care, if someone really makes a big issue out of what I plan to write in the next few paragraphs. The issues are practical. The complication is of general interest. And if someone begs to differ, I am not going to resist it. Because I am going to dare and bare my feelings about a Monday that I wish should have never followed a Sunday.

It is not a general belief for me but a reality that on Monday mornings, I either tend to get late or get late by default. Obviously being the first day of a working week, I am in a mood to be a part of the rat race and impress all the concerned in office about my punctuality. Frankly speaking, it is a myth. I want to make it to office on time to leave on time and console myself that I finally lived through the Monday.

From Saturday evening, I begin to struggle against the fact that Sunday is round the corner and it will come to an end like a bursting bubble. Therefore I avoid sleeping early on a Sunday night. I refuse the temptation of relaxation. I rebel against the Kingdom of Sleep. I resist the imagination of dreams. Frankly speaking, Monday mornings begin with nightmares. The trains are flooded (and not crowded). People are sweat-bathed and not bathed. There is a stench of pretentious dedication in the first class compartment that I travel in. And the much audible laughter of fellow travelers is just a cover-up of primal fears they hold within for a Monday.

Come Monday and you rush through the office door. A biometric machine eagerly awaits your thumb to touch it. On many occasions, I have tried to tease it with my middle finger. After settling down and having switched on the computer, a military of emails start descending in the inbox. As a note of immense dissatisfaction, I would frankly say that they give out nothing but paint a sad picture of how bleak your morning is and how idiotically you had fared in the last week.

Monday… A colleague says, “I die to come back to office on a Monday”. Possibly because there was nothing interesting left in this world for him to do. Or he has been abandoned by his love interest. Or his parents think, he is good for nothing. Another one comes up with that usual query of – Hey dude, how was your weekend? What did you do on your weekend? Brutal but true, I find these questions extremely stupid. If at all, I have to mention a movie that I liked immensely. The reply will be instant – What a bore movie man, how could you sit through those two hours of agony? To be truthful, he too might have seen the movie and sat through the same two hours, understanding nothing and considering himself an esteemed film critic had decided to write off the maker of the movie.

Monday… Expect the taxi driver to be generous and promise a smooth ride to your office. I am sorry to say, their asses harden up. Their egos are inflated. And it is only on Mondays that they refuse to use a flyover and fantasize getting stuck in a traffic jam to drill a hole into the traveler’s bruised pocket.

Monday… You will find the most unexpected colleague to be present in office on time, who might have never made it on time in the last one week. He will wink at you. He will sport a broad smile; take a sip from his ugly cup of sugarless coffee/tea/urine and ask you the first question you might have dreaded for centuries and deliberately in Hinglish – What boss… weekend bahut dhamaal spend kiya kya? Such idiots should be hanged till death from an electric pole.

Monday… Trains will take you on a teary ride. Be it monsoons or no monsoons, they will run late. The announcer will assure you of a 15 minute delay. But most of us have never been surprised when the train must have arrived exactly 25 minutes late. The crowds will swell. Indiscrimination on grounds of groups, age, sex, caste, creed, color, religion, faith and beliefs will be rampant when the question of offering a seat shall arise. By chance, if you happen to occupy a window seat and kill the prospects of a regular occupant, they will kill you with their words, highly vocal abuses in-directed towards you. At a point of time, you will feel like committing immediate suicide. And the train will take its own sweet time to see to it that you are marked late on arrival in your office.

Monday… You will dress well. But a tobacco chewing Romeo will spit and your attire will resemble a canvas of modern art. You will feel like a loser and vow to never dress well on any other Monday or be it any other day.

Monday… The boss will not cease to take potshots at you. He or She will begin with a curtain raiser to the torment – Remember that day on Friday, you left early and the work got stuck… He or She will remind you of a holiday that you might have availed on a Friday eons ago. He or She will then train their guns on some useless P’s of recent professional jargons – productivity, perfection, precision and practice. He or She will give out a speech on Time Management, Brand Development, Relationships with Client, Pleasing the Seniors and Business Development. And by the time, they end you will find yourself sweating restlessly in the rest room, trying helplessly to deal with a urinary tract infection cause due to the delay caused by His or Her confusingly boring conversation.

Monday… You will miss the whole point.

Monday… The office looks like a graveyard. Actually most of the offices that we travel to are makeshift arrangement. In these makeshift arrangements, the egoists are busy weaving cobwebs of supreme complications. We end up being trapped like a bacterium spreading fly or a paint licking cockroach. These offices are not clean on Mondays because the housekeeping staff might not have arrived on time or they might have been abducted by aliens. The dustbins are unclean and the leftovers of a freaky Friday look up to you and demand – Clean us, Liberate us, Discard us and please Hate us. Secondly the already dull ambience will appear at its dullest best. The mood will be grim or grumpy.

Monday… A meeting will be conducted in the conference room. Some minds will speak. Most minds will mute their rebellion. And some idiots like me will yawn or fantasize about a holiday in Singapore. In the meeting ugly charts will be put up. Another presentation will be made on the scope of work or an ugly head will mess up with some connection and suddenly put up a WIP chart (Work in Progress chart). A serious face will glance at even more serious faces. And a funny face like me will look at no one and doze off in the chair that is offered to me by my immediate colleague.

Mondays… I believe have lost their charm. Ever since timesheets have come into existence and a hire-fire policy have been put up in place, all the Mondays sunk in the deep ocean of sadness. I have myself lost faith in every arriving Monday because none of them have been cheerful. In the last three years, every single time that I have signed the muster, placed the finger on the biometric machine or swiped my card… one dream has died, an imagination has been sacrificed, an idea has disappeared, a passion has escaped.

Can we not go back to the valley of beautiful Mondays? Can we not go back sailing in the stream of balanced schedules? Can we not go back to the village of appreciations? Can we not dream of a better Monday? Can we not fuel the beginning of better Mondays?

But for all that to happen… we need motivations on Monday, magnificence on Monday, melody on Monday. And we don’t want people who will kill the Monday mood by quoting something stupid…

It is hard to believe how Monday has become a monster of recent times. If not anything, I wish to end this blog post by saying – Let’s add a little fun to this Monday and put the bossy remarks behind.

If a Monday is lived well, the rest of the week grows smooth as well.

Wishing you all courage, I invite you to another MONDAY. Survive well.

-vociferous