Oggy and the Cockroaches

Monday mornings these days are full of fun and cheery smiles. They comprise of evil policies and poker faces. They are the beginning of weekend plans already and ordering food at work regime. They are no less of work but as much about togetherness in spite of varied job profiles.

I joined this little start up couple of months ago and found the place to be as quiet as the atmosphere on the moon. Little did I know it could prove to be one of the craziest teams I would ever work with. Soon after I joined, the otherwise silent air around employees began to insult the theory of pin drop silence. Thanks to my extremely careful hands, I managed to drop everything around me, stuffed my desk drawers with toffee wrappers, feasted during lunch hours, drank litres of tea and decorated the desk like a Christmas tree.

I soon found refuge in equally damaged people who grinned brighter at my witty smirks! That’s how a bond was formed. The sisterhood of bothering the innocent and asking for more chocolates with puppy eyes helped us get our way through the most reserved colleagues too! With timely deadlines and a busy work schedule we learnt to balance out our mischievous plans with our professional selves.

It wouldn’t be right if I missed out mentioning Oggy here! Just how some famous cartoon Oggy is troubled by three cockroaches, we three ladies find just the right strategies to bother our Oggy at work. Oggy, by the way is a total computer geek who rushes to our rescue each time the machine bothers us! He is also the most soft spoken, polite and the most tolerant human to exist ever. However, he would scream if we use the CPU as a footrest and even holds a grudge when you are unkind to the ‘it-is-now-safe-to-remove-your-pendrive’ command! He is also the one who jumps like a spring when a chit of paper aimed at him lands right on his desktop! And he is the only one who could install a video camera on his desktop to monitor our moves and catch us red-handed with chits! I told you, he is a comp crazy geek. So we three cockroaches (that’s what he calls us) often find ways to trouble him with all kinds of pranks.

While within the three of us, I am the only Maharashtrian, I am getting to understand Telugu and Tamil thanks to the other two cockroaches! Haha.

Our Hindi lessons showered on the Pondicherry born Tamil speaker is another hilarious highlight at work. We take it slow and teach one new word every day and so far she has picked up amazing things and uses them just at the right minute! In order to ask the health of my father-in-law, she once asked ‘uske father-in-law kaise?’ To which I promptly responded, ‘don’t worry, uske father-in-law’ acche!

In addition, she often remarks at Oggy, ‘tum chota ki bachi’ when she actually means to say that he’s such a kid! And just when you say something too mean in Hindi which she won’t get, she’s going to be right back at you with ‘sheesha deko!’ Before you even realise, she has already hit her best shot and showed you the mirror!

The Gujarat born Telugu cockroach is my favourite because she gets lunch boxes full of rice for me every single day and has a sparkle in her eyes each time I log on to Swiggy!

And that is how each day goes, at the end of which I return home to find a chit in my handbag saying what a fun cockroach shringare I am!! :)