A piece of my heart has cracked today

She came to my life a long, long time ago. Fat-bottomed, un-pretty, there was nothing spectacular about her. No one would give her a second glance otherwise, apart from her physical size. She was well, rather plain, to be all honest.

I encountered her first at a quiz in IIFT, where we did not qualify for the finals. It was a business quiz, and I was at that point in time not quite well versed in the nuances of business to really be counted among the big guns. I still remember how she actually came to be in my possession. Now all of you who have been reading this blog know that I, even now, near-enough suck at business quizzing, and am (gloat, gloat) rather good at sports. So, there was this sports/business question that was asked by the quizmaster, Gautam Ghosh, in that quiz. It got passed around, nobody answered, and then, when the question was thrown to the audience, I came up with the answer.

And as my gift for answering that question, she came into my possession. Bland, fat-bottomed, she had a blue tattoo of 'naukri.com' on her, and the only saving grace, the only bit of adventure about her was this t-shirt message that she bore. It said 'TEAM WORK is a great leveller. It means never having to take the blame myself!' Nice, na? Especially at the early days of Bschool (this was 2003), when one is exasperated with groupmates / project-mates who are living examples of the term NPA (that's non-performing asset, if you did not know).

I am meandering, so to keep a long story short, that's how I came to own my coffee mug.

Impoverished Bschool students like us had no means of having cut-glass wine tumblers, so she came to my rescue. She served me well, down the years. Coffee in the morning, water throughout the day and whisky in the evening, she was the receptacle and my trusted associate to all that.... And why only me, she showered her love and blessings to all and sundry. Remember her, Arun, Laha, SDG? Remember the maniacally-depressive pre-placement month-and-a-half when the last drink for the day was shared from that same mug of mine, for the simple reason that her tattoo mentioned 'naukri.com'? Yes, it's she we are talking about....

Times changed. Confused Bschooler became confused corporate cog-in-the-wheel. Confused cog-in-the-wheel became slightly-less-confused cog-in-the-wheel. I could afford expensive whisky tumblers now. I quit coffee, started drinking tea (how Brit! how Pommie! Alas!). There were better-looking species (some acquired from the organizations I worked in, some acquired during those momentary fits of attraction to others of the species.... now c'mon! Men will be men...) which jostled for attraction on the shelf. As they say, 'familiarity breeds contempt'. Well, I could never dream of being contemptuous to her, but the attention span became limited. Did she mind? She must have, but never took it to heart. We knew we cared for each other....

And recently, moving to my new workplace, I decided to get her to office along with me. I did move from drinking coffee to tea, but the quantity of the liquid consumed did not vary. So copious quantities of the liquid needed to be gulped everyday morning, and well, she had all the werewithall to perform well in the job. She was quite big, remember I told you? So there she was, adorning the office shelf now, serving me with the best of her abilities.

And today morning, alas, I find that there is a crack - long, vertical, next to the handle - on her. Ah, I can literally feel the crack on my heart. I feel pained, disjointed ... I cannot concentrate on the work at hand, I feel miserable. She is critically ill, I can feel her pain. I realise, there are only two ways I can go with her now .... either I could let her last few days be memorable, or I can leave her comatose, yet alive for ever, I can take her home with me....

Will miss you, darling. You have been precious to me. Thanks for all that you were, and you were wonderful. You ARE wonderful.

(As an aside, having witnessed the copious amounts of tea that I tend to gulp down, and noticing the pain in my heart, friends in office have planned to replace her with a beer pitcher, and they have even planned to provide insulation. Insulation? How? Well, the rubber insulation kinda things come for a price.. so a pack of condoms it shall be, one for each day. AR mentions that if the idea materializes, now I could even have flavoured tea ! Gaak, gaak! )