At work......

Getting humiliated at work is an age old phenomenon and a trauma every individual has to go through at some point of his or her career. I obviously, specially made no exception. What possibly would lay eggs for these words… a recent encounter, on a day which was supposed to be a good day at work. I was full of life and ready to have a beautiful day, more so as it was a day when I would start work at a very ‘human hour’, a luxury denied to us in lieu of many many other perks my job has to offer. But my happiness soon vanished through a terrible introduction with a very senior colleague who perhaps hated the very sight of me so much ( we were meeting for the first time…. ) that he launched on to me like an Al Qaeda missile not deviating from its goal of destroying its target even for a split of a nano second.
I couldn’t believe anyone could be so horrible and judgemental. I gulped down the insults and tried to stay calm. I.e. not cry. Apologizing was out of the question for I hadn’t done nothing let alone anything wrong. Confronting him would mean raising umpteenth complications including my possible temporary suspension from the duty (welcome to Indian bureaucracy )! It didn’t matter that he was an absurd incompetent old fool with an undue revenge policy. So I thought to myself that all I had to do was to let him finish and be as indifferent as possible. I looked straight at him, at times staring out of the window behind him. I think that triggered off some more explosive of bitterness in him since he launched onto another monologue, adding more insults and accusing me of having attitude problem. I had a difficult time controlling my tears later on while my other senior colleagues tried to pacify me, telling me that he had a reputation of being so uncouth and addressing him with a certain not so nice yet suitable adjective starting with a ‘C’!
I started imagining giving it back to him, the same shit that he was throwing at me, if he continued in his negative pursuit. I was ready to walk out of the job on the spot! I could even adopt a reverse psychology, smile at him and ask him how he came to be so bitter in life and tell him there was so much to love in life…. Does he know how he lost it? Lolz. Thank heavens for your imagination. Eventually I avoided him in order to save myself from his unsavory wrath and abandon the thought of quitting the job that I actually don’t hate and love more often, because of some low class under qualified fool. Though it would prick me for a couple of months when I would think about the incident, time would heal my wound and I would soon become indifferent to its memory. In the later part of the day, he treated me as if nothing untoward ever happened between us. He actually told me, ’……. u know many other things annoy me…..’ I guess that’s how close he came to an apology ( the one I shall not grant him ). Given the kind of profile my work has I may not meet him for a really long time or ever for that matter. But everyone may not be this lucky. Facing a mean individual everyday of your life can not only be stressful but also sheer harassment, hindering your normalcy and checking your performance. Well, I say welcome to India where every individual starts his day with a wistful vengeance unparalleled to anybody else’s.