I secretly admire some people.
I was just retrieving my towel from the bamboo sticks outside the kitchen windows to bom-bom. The outer walls of the building had undergone rhytidectomy and whitening. As of today, it boasts of a pallid, dystopian blue-grey complexion. Then I went into the enclosure and maltreated my skin cells with shower lotion pudding. So I saved the observation for writing this now. No wonder they woke me up yesterday; the foreign workers who were scraping tint off my windows early in the morning. Outside my house. Five (it's higher than you think) storeys up on a rickety platform. Valiant beyond measure.
Then there’s Ajeet. The Indian floor-sweeper who greets me like Spongebob on coke every morning at the void deck before I drag my tuckered out atman to school. Amazing enthusiasm, I think. Ajeet's not his real name though, but he looks like one. Thin angular face, tributaries of wrinkles, once my height, maybe thrice my age, expert with the broom and the pan. Sounds like an Ajeet to me. Maybe it’s the cleaving prick of double vowels. Well, as long as it serves my memory.
Oh yeah. Ever noticed leaflet-distributors? Flick of the wrist; here, it’s paper, take it, now. It floats momentarily at your belly-level; maybe half a waist-length away. For a second you’re compelled to grab it to help the poor man finish his job. For a shorter second he detects your hesitation. No I don’t want to hold anything. Your feet agree. Sleight of hand; the pathetic slip of vellum withdraws to prone position to join its wad of clones. A blur of white and black. He preys on the next all-suspecting commuter. And the next, and the next, and the next. The escalator is my futon, he says. What professionalism.
And I continue to survey the golden mean between being humble and diligent.
In church.
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