Nocturnal? Not me!

Last week I had to work in my first ever night shift and I was as nervous and excited as my friend when she was ponnu paathufied - the traditional “seeing the bride” ceremony before a marriage where the groom’s immediate family (of at least 30 people) visit the bride’s house and ask the bride to do everything from sing to dance to even code a bug-free Java program (God, I am never going to get married) to climb Mt.Everest (That, I may be able to achieve). Anyway, I had a longish weekend from Friday evening to Monday night. And finally, as with all weekends, Monday (night) too came too early.

And I was at office sharp at 8:30pm, waiting for my first ‘ticket’ (To know what this ticket means, read: ITMARK me!) with all the curiosity of a little pup in a new home. And then work started flowing my way and never stopped until it was 6am the next morning. It was as if I was bowling the best I could, but I had an in-form Jayasuriya batting; with my captain shouting (swear words, obviously, duh...) at me at regular intervals. Talking of which I am thinking of the Indian Cricket Team’s performance (or rather the lack of it) at the ICC T20 WC, which I shouldn’t be unless I can afford my posts to contain really objectionable words.

2 nights passed by without any major hitches and on the 3rd night, it was a little less hectic and I was a little more hungry than usual. At around 2-ish in the night, my stomach started making these strange noises, not unlike Barkha Dutt does on her shows. Also, I realized it was as empty as her head. I then understood what they meant when they said “Empty vessels make more noise.” However, I was prepared for such ‘situations’ and had bought a bag of Potato Chips (I could actually use a lot of calories, you know) for the night and started munching on it like I’ve never seen food before. I felt quite full at around 3-ish (actually, the chips packet had become empty) and I headed to the pantry to have some tea. On the way to the pantry, I was startled by a hyper-active frog and almost fell down (which was so not funny!). Apart from the frog thing, there was nothing much eventful that night.

The next morning, I slept till 10:30am and then got up to have breakfast (No sir! No matter what, I never skip food) only to find my stomach turning and twisting and before I could know, I was puking all over the place (quite disgusting, yes!). But still, I went ahead and had some curd rice and was about to take a bath when I heard the water pipe farting big time; there was no water in the tank and there was no power to switch the motor on – which also meant no sleep during the afternoon. We (I, the cute-guy-next-door, his roomie, another neighbor) did everything we could from bringing an electrician to calling up the EB folks and nothing worked (I could actually understand how helpless Dhoni felt during the WC matches).

That night, again I was at office at 8pm and called up my PM, who has been extra-ordinarily kind and gracious and supportive (I hope he reads this before writing appraisal comments) and told him (actually, reminded him) about India and power cuts and took leave for the rest of the week and bunked night shift. Now I am back in the day-shifts and am sleeping through the day at work (which is not very unusual), but unable to sleep during nights (and that is killing me). And I feel so bad for my BPO friends. May God give them the strength and courage to go through with it. :-)