Page 27 - You Only Live Once [BooksLD]
P. 27

humble.  He  slides  the  cabin  door  and  peeps  into  the  room.  ‘Lunch  at  2
                p.m.?’

                   ‘Where?’  I  get  excited  as  I  wonder  if  he’s  taking  me  out  to  the  fancy
                newly inaugurated fine-dine restaurant Colorin near our office. He has this
                habit of surprising the team with elaborate gestures.
                   ‘Cafeteria,’ he says without an expression and walks off silently.

                   ‘I guess he is going to take the information out of me,’ I whisper under
                my breath.

                   The gentleman that he is, he would be more concerned about me joining
                a  drug  cartel  than  not  meeting  the  sales  targets,  I  know.  However,  I  am
                never absent at work. So he ideally has no way to raise the topic and warn
                me against the same. His expressions reveal that finding about my stand-up
                act in Goa is the only thing.

                   A poster with an Oscar Wilde quote that reads, ‘Be yourself; everyone
                else is already taken’ hangs on a wall of the cafeteria, right below which I
                sit to talk to Akshaye. I have been looking at the poster since day one. It’s
                funny  that  this  quote  adorns  the  wall  of  a  bank’s  corporate  office  where

                hardly anyone is being themselves.
                   I point to the poster as I start a casual conversation with Akshaye.

                   ‘Be yourself. Am I being myself since the day I started taking my own
                decisions?’
                   ‘You were always being yourself. Even if you’re doing what others want

                you to, you’re taking the final call.’
                   ‘You mean to say that I’m being myself since the day I was born.’
                   ‘Yes.’

                   ‘Of course not!’

                   I wanted to bring a significant change to my life, a change that would
                empower  me  to  live  the  way  I  would  love  to.  But  I  have  had  a  fading
                interest in everything. Nothing had excited me for more than a certain time
                period. It had happened to me in the classroom as well. My love for Math
                was not natural but fueled by the fact that my dad would have freaked out if
                he came to know that I didn’t perform well. I would not have been able to
                get a well-paid job if I dare not be a top scorer in Math. I loved Geography

                like no other subject, but there were no conventional careers in Geography,
                not to my family’s knowledge at least. Biology had grown on me at one
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