What jobs have you had?
A person like me usually understands things on his own, alone, left with own thoughts and understanding. That privacy with the thoughts is an invaluable thing which people quite often do not understand unless they have the same kind of requirement.
So, the first time I went on my own to a fast-food restaurant, a popular burger joint, without any parental or any elder supervision, I ordered my usual burger, fries and cold coffee and walked with the tray to what I felt was the most vacant spot in the restaurant only to find after sitting that there was a reason it was vacant. The sunlight, which brings a lot of heat here in the state where I live, had made people decide upon not sitting at this spot.
Nonetheless, I kept sitting there, mostly because of lack of confidence thinking ‘someone might be watching that I sat here and might be waiting for me to get up and then laugh’. So, I kept sitting and pretended my best to look as if the heat did not affect me. Luckily one of the people working at the restaurant suggested that I sit at a place hidden from the sunlight, I was very thankful even though I did not say it.
So, as I sat eating my French fries, leaving my burger and cold coffee for after, I had this thought, ‘how cool would it be to work at a fast-food restaurant’. The infrastructure was nice, one often got to meet new people and maybe a bonus in the form of a quick bite of this or sip of that. I did not tell it to my parents after my friend laughed at that thought and I dropped it.
When I was in high school, 12th grade, I found one of my classmates working at the same fast-food restaurant and I was excited, I didn’t know anyone who worked there or any other fast-food joint. I expected he would show me around as to how things work inside, but he didn’t. But what he did was give extras of whatever I ordered, like when I ordered cold coffee and he would give it to me filled in the glass of a large cold drink. (There was no large cold coffee on the menu otherwise)
It’s one of the works I really wanted to do back then, for the experience and sometimes in the present when I think about it, for an observant person like me who later became a writer, the experience could have been invaluable observing so many people walking in, enjoying food and conversations with their known ones. How many stories could that have inspired, I guess I will never know.
I have had one job profile all my life, at different companies of course, that is of a content editor in the school books segment. I took the job because I needed a job more than I needed this particular job profile, I started liking it and then loving it, it allowed me to work with books, initially some work with general books as well.
But one fine day, after several years I faced the question, ‘is editing all that I want to do in life?’
When you have interest in writing and you are working with other writers and authors and also you have some sets of thoughts which might support that interest, you do find yourself inclining towards venturing out to find a meaning larger than what you have come to understand.
So, I began writing and now I personally love to associate myself more to the creative side of things. Now, more than ever I wonder about the work people do, the life it enables them to have along with the thoughts which helps them to prosper. Just this morning I saw the newspaper man, going out to deliver newspapers. In this digital age, hardcopies of newspapers have become less favoured, hence the bundle of newspapers the newspaper man carried has reduced over the years. He has grown old and tired and I also see signs of neurological problems, probably Parkinson’s, but I wonder the same as I wonder upon seeing any other from a different field, what is the experience of being in it. Maybe I will ask him someday and write about it.
Written by Anuran Chatterji
Early Morning Memories 