This meeting was about the authentication framework. Suresh, Arun and I were sitting in my room and discussing at leisure. Suresh broke away from the hot topic and started talking about his chair shaking and possibly the whole world moving. The two of us did not feel anything and we thought maybe Suresh skipped his lunch and so was feeling giddy or maybe all those late nights and weekends at work has taken him off balance.
If the earth had indeed moved and Suresh's balance was not lost, Gowri would walk into the room within minutes and announce that the whole world was crumbling. So we waited with our eyes fixed on the door. Seconds ticked by but Gowri's head did not peep into the room. I was getting worried about Suresh developing this extra sensory power. Finally, at the end of second 35 Gowri's head appeared near the door. I was relieved. Suresh was right, the earth had indeed quaked.
Reports from the world outside claimed that chairs had shaken, stomachs had jiggled, dead grandmothers' apparitions were seen, water level in bottles had been disturbed, yet to be born babies were seen dancing on the ceiling, birds had flown backwards and many such miraculous events had taken place. Now there was no running away from truth, the earth had indeed quaked. But why the hell did I not feel it and why the hell had I not seen any dead grandmothers and great grandfathers. The misfortunes of being me are immense.
Now, the question that came into our minds was what needs to be done in case of earthquake, especially since the earth had stopped quaking. Should we all run to the exit screaming "I am going to die" or should we just take the lift and go down to the cafeteria? But why go to the cafeteria when coffee is available in our pantry? But then I did not need the coffee then I had not even thrown the sick smelling empty paper cup. So why was I thinking of coffee? Oh yes, the earthquake.
Someone suggested we look out of the window to see if anyone had jumped out of the building. Maybe we can count all those sploched people on ground. We looked out of the window to find a few tens of people holding on to the compound wall for their dear lives and staring the building. Oh what thrill, how brave we are; lets hi-fi. By then the building disaster prevention and security enhancement by staring and shouting at people rudely unit had got into action. It was time for some verbal action - Hollywood style. "Move, move, move, move, move", "clear the building", "walk is a single file", "no you don't need to carry a file", "get the hell out of here", "don't panic", "the earthquake is in safe hands". Ah, how reassuring.
When we finally reached the ground, by actually taking the stairs and not the lift, we found a crowd of people trying to get out and an equally large crowd trying to get in. To spice up things, the disaster prevention and etc, etc, unit had ensured only one of security gates worked (those chop-chop doors that try to smash into your private part if you don't move fast enough). By the time we reached the safety of open skies, the earth quake had crossed Mars and was moving towards Jupiter (of course, by this time it was not called earth quake; it had just given up the Mars quake title to take over the Jupiter quake title).
We reached the safe assembly zone to join the few hundred people there. Someone in the crowd noticed that safe assembly zone was too close to the building. This meant that all of us would die if the building decided to come down tumbling, which meant that the safe assembly zone was not safe at all. But we felt safe anyhow. Actually, we felt safe even during the earthquake. Then we saw the sixth floor and the V mark of death on the grass close to safe assembly zone. All safety fled and we were looking for the dead man. Isnt that guy by the fire hydrant semi-transparent? Is that guy walking or floating? Where are his feet? But all these turned out to be brammai and we could not find anyone who matched the description of a dead man and so we went back to feeling safe.
We talked and laughed about the building that was supposed to have collapsed in Vadapalani. Someone mentioned about a 8.9 earthquake in Indonesia. I took out the phone and desperately tried to reach my brother-in-law. After attempting to call the wrong number a hundred times and imagining fallen towers and buildings in Indonesia, I dialed the correct number and got through to my brother-in-law on the first attempt. He informed that he realized about the earthquake when he received a million frantic calls from India. Now I was feeling stupid and safe.
Then the story turned from earth quake to tsunami but that was not very interesting. But to end the earthquake story, the disaster prevention etc folks announced that they received a note from the underworld that another quake was expected at 5PM. So they ejected all of us from the building and closed the whole place. Apparently, most of the disaster folks in Chennai did the same and the roads were packed with people running towards their home which could be destroyed by upcoming earthquakes and tsunamis.
Happy living.
