Lift Main Kabhi Kabhi!

One hurried morning, I barely arrived in the vicinity of my workplace. Like many others, I looked around for a lift. As one arrived, I  got swayed inside like a tide, reminding me of Indian Railways :). Finally I am in.. I sighed! I was getting late to work..anxiety levels were rising. I needed to be in now. I assured myself.. “Just few more minutes honey and you ll be there”. Tried to relax myself by looking around a bit, and it appeared like we were worms packed in a jar with a lid tightly closed. Barely any space to move!

I was trying to stand still at my allotted space. And then came our first halt. I had to strain my neck, avoid obstructions, and reach to digital panel displaying the floor. Dumbstruck, I saw “1”. I tried to catch a glimpse of this honorable person! As I saw the guy leaving… I wanted to admire him for his “make full use of the resources provided” attitude! How else can you aptly explain using a lift to reach THE FIRST FLOOR? I took a deep breadth, and re assured myself.. “just a few mins more and you are out.. ” .

“Hey you know that Aman finally came yesterday. He did not even ring me up before arriving…….  …. My boss is on leave. .. …. ……. He has absolutely no sense getting things done. …    …. Those guys have no soul.   …    …..”  

I was aware that turning around meant spraining a few muscles, but honestly I couldn’t resist the temptation. In this jam packed lift, where I could barely find my share of air to breathe, these brave souls had enough to churn out multiple sentences! I looked at a few faces who were in the vicinity. Some tried to make a little sense of the characters in the conversation. Other’s however chose to ignore with a stoic calm on their faces.

I was battling somewhere in the middle. I wasn’t able to ignore them, honestly! Meanwhile, the conversation swayed from their offices to mother in-laws, kids, neighbours, movies! I literally gawked at the duo. Call it admiration, irritation or BOTH! Just then, the lift opened again. I popped my head out to catch hold of the floor number once again. Alas! Finally, I could step out.

In case you are not the fairer sex and smiling already with “These women, I tell you!” kind of reaction. Word of caution! I have another story to tell. Central characters this time – “men”. So the point is, this phenomenon is not feminine!

Are we so comfortable opening up in front of total strangers? The total time you might end up spending in the lift would not be more than 10 mins. Even those ten mins are too long to remain silent? Unless there is a sense of urgency, can’t we thwart the ‘public‘ display of our ‘personal ‘ information?
Which makes me wonder. Has the social media made all of us a bit more ‘open‘? Maybe now we are more comfortable sharing the nitty gritty details of our lives on our walls or tweets. We have, in my opinion, pushed our line of “personal and private” a bit further.

Okay, so coming back to my story. I still take the same lift to office.(The fitness freak in me prefers to rest in morning, you see :)).. People still take lift to “first floor” (Phew!).. And every other day I still get an involuntary subscription to someone’s personal channel. 🙂