The Solitary Dinner

“#1 please … no cheese and coke with no ice”. Sanjay now remembers the usual questions from the lady behind the counter. In fact he knows a lot more. He is accustomed to see this African American woman in her forties as he visits the Macdonald store at half past eleven at night every day. The store must have several other employees too but she is the only one at the counter during the hours Sanjay graces the store with his presence. After every customer, she would shout “Can I help next guest please?” in a very harsh tone which always makes him feel repulsive. As if to counter that, she always backs it up with a “Hi! How you doing?”, with a stretched ‘hiiiiiiii’, sporting an even more out-stretched smile on her face. Initially Sanjay had replied back, acknowledged her greetings and on several occasions thought that she actually recognized his face. Now he knows better. She does that to every customer. There is no special bond with a regular customer. She doesn’t even mind if you keep a straight face and go about business without any personal touch. To put it simply, she doesn’t care for Sanjay beyond the point he orders his regular #1. And he loves it that way.

It was a great respite when the company decided to move him to New York. Even though he lived alone in his tenth floor apartment in Bangalore, many of his college mates were in the city. They always had an excuse or the other to invite his attention. He could avert most of them with his often true and occasionally made up urgent assignments in the office. Eventually most of them stopped calling or contacting otherwise save for forwarding emails. Still a few persistent ones held on. New York saved him from them. Here nobody knows him. The liberty of anonymity is thrilling. Two guys live next door to him. Both are in their twenties. One has a shaved head, thick metal earrings and four rings on each hand, each ring engraved with a letter to make up the words ‘ZAAP’ on the left hand and ‘ZOOR’ on the right. The piercings through his eyebrows and the lower lip always give Sanjay a tingly feeling. Two huge dragon tattoos on both arms complements his sleeveless Harley-Davidson tee-shirts while an eagle medallion silver chain jingles around his neck. Sanjay is sure that the guy has guns, or knives at least, hidden somewhere in his heavy jeans and boots. The other guy is rather skinny and prefers an ordinary get-up. However, as if to make up for his otherwise highly ornamented friend’s shaved head, he did quite a bit of work with his hair style. He has a standard Mohican strip running down the middle of the scalp, the hairs converging into five separate specks pointing in five different directions. In addition, he has two supplementary narrow strips of hair running parallel on either side of the center one. Presumably, that wasn’t enough to match his friend’s charisma. So they were emblazoned with a motley collection of colors. It looks like papa rainbow is out taking a stroll with his baby rainbows.

So far, Sanjay has never exchanged a word with them. As he was moving in the first day, his neighbors eyed him once and immediately discarded the formally dressed, timid looking Indian as out of their league. Sanjay was relieved too. He would have hated a middle-aged Indian uncle walking to him with his mouth ajar enquiring about his whereabouts and the aunty asking, “beta, why don’t you have lunch with us today?” This was much better. On a few occasions he could not sleep due to the loud party music. But he can handle apathetic indifference better than unwelcome attention.

“#1, no cheese!” … Sanjay collected his order and walked straight to the table at the corner. He likes this particular table as he can sort of blend in with the store walls. In the office, he is really content in his separate cubicle. With his PC, the laptop, a comfortable revolving chair, a telephone, documents organized in folders and a dustbin, it is perfect for him. He has a calendar stuck on the wall with some important deadlines marked on it and another paper with a few necessary phone numbers like that of his immediate boss, the IT maintenance department, the pantry service, the internal mailing system and stuff like that. As he took his first bite off the burger after carefully spreading the fries on a napkin and squeezing out some ketchup on them, he wondered how people could keep functioning in a messy workplace. There isn’t a single male co-worker in his office, and here New York being no different from Bangalore, who he could bet would find a piece of document when needed. They would hunt through their pile of papers on the desk, fumble with their folders, haphazardly open and close the drawers, lift up their keyboards, look under the coffee cups and food packets from the past three days, eventually inside the dustbin, proclaiming without a cease that they had seen it but a few moments back before starting the whole cycle again, unless they remember that they have a soft copy and take a fresh print-out. The story with the more mysterious kind is different. Sanjay sighed. First of all, it is difficult to find a woman in her seat alone or find her at all, if she knows at least two other women on the floor. Secondly, if you do find her, it is a rare occasion that she is not on the phone. You have to endure the frustration as she would continue talking for another half an hour albeit with the courtesy to gesture an apology and signaling that she would be done in a minute, every five minutes. Once she is done, another round of verbal apology would follow with vocal and facial feats of acute emotions. Finally she would listen to you and if you are in the HR department, on most cases you would be, almost invariably she would direct you to someone else who would be the ‘right’ person to take care of your trouble. If it is another woman, expect similar treatment. Assuming that you have the ability to resist the compelling urge that is building up inside you to shout, to turn down a table, to punch someone hard, to pluck at your hair, to do something destructive in general, you might ultimately get to the right person. By the way, this right person might very well be the first lady you encountered because this i-am-not-the-right-person-to-do-your-job often goes in a cycle. Now that she is sure that she has to do the work, she would ask for a few details and would go about wandering in her computer screen figuring out what exactly to be done. In the meantime, you could concentrate on more interesting objects in the world, say for example, her friends, husband, kids or grandkids along with herself in a nice framed picture, the contents varying according to the age. The pets are also not very uncommon. You could comment on how beautiful, smart or cute someone looks, depending on as the case may be, faintly hoping that it might speed up whatever she is doing on her computer. Be careful though, the discussion might divert to when and where the picture was taken, how the person in the picture affects are life and accounts along similar lines unless you are cautious enough to pull it back in to the job at hand. Rather watch the twenty something birthday cards she received this year, her oversized or tiny little purse that goes with the color of her dress, the magazine peeping out from underneath or the uncapped nail-polish that she had reluctantly put away because of your interruption. If everything is sorted out that very day, consider it one of your luckiest. You should not forget to thank her for the enormous help lest you further mar the reputation of men as an ungrateful and callous breed.

Finished with the burger and killing the fries one at a time in an almost involuntary motion of his right hand, Sanjay drifted back to the last New Year party in his office. Parties always make him tensed. The prospect of socializing drives him nervous. He never knows what to say when he meets someone, known or unknown alike. As Sanjay remembered the girls in his office giggling and chatting in that party, he wondered how there can be so much to talk about when two persons see each other everyday and spend the better part of their day sitting almost next to each other. And then there were these resting breaks during the office. It is beyond his most deliberate comprehension why the girls are so keen to use the women’s room as their favourite meeting ground when there are obvious better choices around. Secrecy is something. But why bother! They will sooner or later spill the beans to their male counterparts. What’s the fun in the gossip if not enough people know it? Sanjay used to have his fair share too thanks to Dilip who shared his desk back in Bangalore. Whenever he started “Dude, have you heard …”, and he did start every other day, Sanjay knew a new story was coming his way. Who said gossiping was the domain for girls! They should be up for some serious competition.

“Excuse me! Can I sit here?” ….. “Excuse me!”

It is an Indian girl almost Sanjay’s age, wearing a jeans and a white shirt. She held the chair opposite to Sanjay’s in an angle and had almost landed her tray on the table. She has that cute warm appearance that doesn’t dazzle you but soothes your senses.

“Ahhh … I am expecting someone.”

“Oh! Sorry!” Half embarrassed, half surprised she made for a table next to the glass wall.

“How lame was that!” Sanjay mused dejected. He could have let her sit and talk for a few minutes, or could have left the entire table for her; he was going to leave anyway. All in the world, he had to say that he was expecting someone in a Macdonald store at midnight with a finished plate in front. Now that he will be leaving in a minute, what would she think about him! But then, who cares. What difference would it have made to talk to a girl for a few minutes? Sanjay shouldered his laptop, disposed of the leftovers and made his way to the front door carefully avoiding a look towards the girl. Tomorrow is Saturday, but he has got office.