good AFTERNOON

So, I think, I am finally a Sub Editor. (‘Think’ because, I am yet to be told how much I’ll take home every month) My first full-fledged job, this not only sounds good, but also feels good

My office is bang opposite the lanes of Flora Fountain, where newly released paperbacks can be acquired for measly sums. I have to reach office at three in the Afternoon and leave in the night and reach home amidst an entourage of barking dogs. I try not to show them that I am scared, but I think they are smart enough to gauge my stiffness.

It used to come naturally. May be it comes from the habit of looking out for mistakes in signboards and hoardings. My father would always point out such mistakes and we would together scoff at them. I see that he has started this with my sister now- he keeps pointing fingers at typo errors in newspapers and challenges her to spot the mistake. A spoilsport that she is makes wry excuses to wriggle out of these impromptu ‘home-works’.

I sit in front of a Windows 2000 computer with the games option in it manually deactivated. And it has no Internet connection. To my left, at a distance of 2-3 metres hangs a laminated picture of a smiling Behram Contractor, better known as busybee. From where I sit, it seems as if busybee is looking at me!

The people in the office are cool. The reporters are young and enterprising. The photographers are talented and talk less. The page makers are experts and fun to be with. The boss is trendy and intelligent. Oh and the receptionist says “Good Afternoon” after me every day and tops it up with a smile.

Here, I let the bitch in me come and crib about what I do not like in the place. The place rocks all right. But it urgently needs a canteen- a place to provide us with coffee or tea or snacks to keep hunger pangs at bay. Oh and I wish the boss would pay a little more attention to the content. I wonder if it hurts the late Mr. Contractor to see juvenile mistakes in the paper that he painstakingly founded and edited long ago.

When I told my father that I had an interview call from Afternoon, he said, “Oh, Afternoon Despatch and Courier?”

The place needs a little more scope for recreation. I don’t ask for a pool table or a swimming pool. But we can have tiny games on our computers? Or a few more tables in the ‘canteen’?

Well, today I discovered that the page-makers’ room has awesome speakers to catch some music. The AC there is turned on high. So you can also catch some cold there! (sniffle).