Letting the cat out of the bag….

8: 43 – enter office gates
8: 55 – enter door with the ‘ladies’ signboard on it
9:00 – exit door

Every morning, before coming to my cubicle I take a detour to the ladies room. It’s routine.

There is this girl who is on the same floor as me…. poker straight hair, dusky complexion… a regular occupant, I have noticed. On a particular Bad-Hair-Day (mine, not hers, when it took me 10 mins to tame my wild tresses) I had noticed that she combed her hair for 8 mins by my watch. That’s pretty long for someone who could walk out of bed and come to office, without anybody having noticed a single hair out of place.

I call her the fashion queen of my floor. Just goes an extra step towards looking like the most artificial girl ever made. My judgment is that she spends more time in front of the mirror in the washroom than at her desk. How else is it possible for me to find her in there every time I escape to it?

I was watching her as I underwent the ordeal of tying up my hair neatly….

- Out came a bottle of some kind of a cream from her bag
- Then came out another one of it, a different brand though. I could tell that much from the bottles.
- And then she mixed them both n rubbed it into her skin making circles with her fingers…. my mental clock says, for 3 whole mins. Blink. Blink. I don’t see any difference in your skin. I was almost expecting it to change colour, like they show in the fairness cream ads.
- Dab. Dab. Dab. She dabbed a thin film of what I think is called a compact. (the powdery substance)

2 turns of my rubber-band and I am done. In goes the comb. I close my bag and am ready to escape the smell of her room-freshener. Oops! Perfume I mean.

Alas! My grand escape was foiled. I was in the washroom as quickly as I had left it. I managed to have a head-on collision with someone and now my shirt was soaking wet with coffee…. Eeeuuugghh!!

Dab. Dab. Dab. No… this time it was me…. Trying to wipe the coffee off my shirt with a tissue.

I notice, the damsel is still there, carefully penciling her black eyebrows with a brown pencil. My mind is running a constant commentary of her actions.

- Now, the brown pencil has been replaced with a maroon one. And she is outlining her lips with it.
- There she is, filling in the outlined lips with lip gloss / lip stick / lip balm… I cannot tell the difference.
She reminds me of how I used to colour up my drawings as a kid. What does she think she is? A colouring book?
- There is it, the kajal stick…. Phew! I recognized this one atleast. I was beginning to feel dumb, you know.
She is still digging in her magic bag of cosmetics when I am ready to leave the washroom.

I give her a last look as my mind screams - Freak. I find I have a spring in my step as I notice the dark clouds gathering, hoping it would rain all day or someone would pour a bucket on her and put those 20+ minutes of hard work down the drain…….. (evil grin)

Mood : devilish
Song : u belong with me (she wears high heels, I wear sneakers….) – taylor swift