23 pairs of shoes last counted - but can wear only 1. and it's hideous too.
but that's not the real issue.
in the last few months 7 people quit from work. i am quite tired going through repeated cycles of separation anxiety. one subsides only to let the next one begin in an even more vicious note. it was especially bad today, because P left yesterday. she was a friend.
and i am even more pissed because she was my smoking buddy. and it's not really that big a sceret that women need their smoking buddies even more than the restroom buddies. they are needed too, but the smoking buddy is a different thing altogether.
particularly in our delightful little shady alley where you get spare motor parts, roti tadka, overripe fruit, great chinese food, butter-and-pepper-and-sugar toast, chhamiya dance after 6 and raw rum in a kerosene can after 11, the smoking buddy is your fellow trooper protecting democracy.
they help you stake out your claim on the particular little corner just right of the parked amby, point out which particular brother of the panwallah is stingy about lighter fuel, what exactly to scribble on the flat brown paper bit torn out of a carton on which somebody has written KNOT SMOKING, how to lock eyes and smile engagingly at the irate mothers walking past with the kids and the special strategy you need to whip out for marwari matrons. they also let you have that 5 minutes of zoning out, lend a willing ear and almost always sage advice (except when it comes to fashion), a cup of coffee or tea and a bite of whatever it is and pre-order your two o clock smoke for you before giving an irate call. they also lend credence to the truism that the inside stories are actually the ones you get outside the office.
anyhoo, the new recruit is frighteningly proper, has a health food fetish and gaped open mouthed at the rogues'gallery when she came in to pick up her letter. the hideous-one-we're-hearing-rumours-about does all that and more and the third-one-whom-everyone-can remember-but-can't-quite-place is supposed to be mental. november is going to be interesting.