Day 76 of 14,600

Tonight, I gave my mother a cup of strawberries and cream blended with a little powdered sugar and wild honey. That shade of pink when the cream gets infused with the strawberry red - I find that colour to be most uplifting.

When I was younger, in the early days as a research intern for a law website, my notions of career success were as follows:

1. I would own a personal laptop that I would call Lappie. (Those were early days and one didn't push one's imagination too much.) I would take Lappie to important meetings to fancy offices in Mahim, Colaba, Prabhadevi, and of course, NCPA. Clients would discuss work and I would take notes on Lappie.

2. I would always have money to buy gifts for my parents and take care of the house's electricity bill.

3. I would wear formal clothes and take a cab everywhere.

4. I would always have enough money to have Pepsi in any 5-star hotel in Bombay.

5. I would sit inside a glass cabin of my own office and burn money. Outside my pet panthers would prowl about and some stuffy, very ordinary people would be looking in with alarm. However, I would be posh and insouciant, and simply look at the money burn. I would be sipping Pepsi.

Now, I have no idea why point number 5 is so random. It doesn't even feel like it arose from the same pool of sub-conscious aspirations. Anyway, I managed to have done 4 out of 5. But today I came close to accomplishing 5.

At my co-working space, I had booked a meeting room for 4 hours for a call that would last 2 hours. I figured I would work on something else in the remaining time. Usually the team at the work-space assigns me a smaller room. But they had assigned me a rather large meeting room today. Heck...it was a meeting room so large that it was borderline conference room with signature death-type temperature set.

There was a group of men sitting in the room. All of them wore spectacles and scowls. They were all looking into screens that undoubtedly had code written on them.

I knocked.

They ignored.

I knocked and opened the door.

This time, I had their attention.

"I have a booking.", I said.

They looked unsure but packed up their laptops and exited.

I went in and settled down. Charged my laptop. Checked the online meeting link. Arranged my presentation. Jotted the few points about the design approach that I would use to win the client over.

The team of men that had stepped out sat in a cramped central common area. All the other seats were taken. They kept looking inside waiting for me to get up.

I knew that.

So I came out and told them that I had the room for 4 hours. I didn't need to. But I thought I should let them know so they could make other arrangements.

I went in. Took the call. It was a good call.

Now I had three hours to spare.

The team outside had spread out somewhat. Some seats had become vacant so a few men were sitting there.

All the other meeting rooms had groups of people. I was in the biggest meeting room and I was by myself.

There was a soft, steady warmth that enveloped my heart. It felt good. The way luxury of great fabric feels.

I sat in and decided to not work anymore.

I wrote some letters.

I watched Graham Norton.

Outside the team of men were getting ready to leave. I noticed that all of them were wearing dark t-shirts. When some of them turned towards the exit, I saw the rubber print on the back of the tee-shirts.

It read, 'Black Panther'.