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I guess it was only Vicki’s post that inspired me to trace my steps back to the time I have left behind. It has been more than a year, here in Delhi. To be precise, it has been one year and one month. But I still remember the day I received a mail from Jasmeet. It was the last day of my end-semester exams. I manage to complete a 2-hour test on the politics and poetics of rock, come out of the class room and find a couple of my friends clustered round a corner, discussing something grave. I gather from the conversation snippets that mails from Pearson Education have been circulated to the people selected for the internship programme. I rush back home, check my mail, and I find an offer letter. Within a month’s time, I pack my bags, leave the city I grew up in and arrive at another. Here, I learn to “unlearn”. Maybe a bulleted list would be an appropriate thing to put in here:

 

ü      I learnt that we do not put commas where we pause for breath. There are much more relevant places where commas have their justified existence.

ü      It is criminal for an editor to worship Beckett. (“There is nothing to express, nothing with which to express, nothing from which to express, no power to express, no desire to express, together with the obligation to express.”—Samuel Beckett)

ü      We always use the definite article “the” before any countable noun. For eg., it should always be “I will reach the office by 9.30 every morning” and never “I will be late to office every morning.”

ü      One can lead a completely healthy life by spending Rs 10 a day (courtesy: the nala food).

ü      One should not trust this certain Dr Anupama who masquerades as a thick-moustached quack who has his/her chamber frightfully close to Patparganj Industrial Area and who diagnoses any problem related to cough as Tuberculosis.

ü      I learnt to pronounce “deteriorate” and “prestidigitation” (courtesy: Angshuman Chakraborty), but I am thankful that I don’t have to pronounce these as I write.

 

 

I must resist myself from lengthening the list. Maybe, in my next post, I will make a longer list of things I am yet to learn, and would put the following point in BIG, BOLD letters:

 

NEVER FORGET TO ATTACH FILES TO THE MAIL (IN WHICH YOU HAVE PROMISED CERTAIN ATTACHMENTS) AND CHECK THE E-MAIL ID(S) YOU SEND YOUR MAIL TO, BEFORE YOU HIT “ENTER”.  

 

 

 

Sukanya Chakrabarti