The long, dark tea-time of the soul.

I know it sounds a little weird, but the last one and a half months have felt like years.

I have discovered talents that I scarcely knew I possessed- in the Financial Accounting mid-term exam last week, for instance. (Yes, I'm taking Accountancy- feel free to pity me). 50 figures grinned wickedly at me from the Infosys balance sheet. With a scornful laugh, I was off, slaying every single accounting principle known to mankind. Assets don't match the liabilities? So what, add an extra 15k as "other" expenses and reduce your profits. Accounting is so darn easy, with creativity on your side. And yeah, the results came sometime last week. Apparently our prof doesn't quite concur with the idea of creative accounting- perhaps shes not of the Andersen school of thought.

Also, I have discovered remarkable reserves of sleep. In the middle of an extremely intriguing class on statistics (intriguing, because we are always left wondering whether our dear quant prof's smirk is a result of God's sense of humour or an indicator of his dark plans to add another sordid twist to our mid-term paper), I wander off slowly into oblivion. While voices around me jostle for air time, to wax eloquently on the relative merits of representative sampling vis a vis the stochastic approach, my eyes gracefully droop and I find myself sliding off my seat. I seem to have almost elevated sleep to an art form.

I wonder sometimes, though. I used to get paid for doing the same thing at work. Ok, not exactly paid for sleeping, its more like I was paid while I slept at work. But that's irrelevant. So, why did I ever bother quitting, then?

I can still remember my cubicle, with its provocative Dilbert cartoons and its gentle lighting, an atmosphere absolutely conducive to the sheer bliss of inactivity. The exhilaratingly pointless meetings. The breakfast at 10. The lunch at 12. The Tea at 3.

Tea at 3 was a magical time at work. You have just returned from a two hour lunch break, at 2. The boss is lurking around the cubicle, so you open a unix window, and stare fixatedly at the smudge of dirt on your monitor, as if your very life depended on it. The boss walks by. Relax. Its 3, time for tea. Get up and look around, and you spot some like-minded souls, who are surveying the landscape for precisely the same reasons as you- to see if the coast is clear.

A raised eyebrow, a flicker of a smile, an imperceptible nod in the direction of the canteen- that's all it takes to answer the wordless question. You take a circuitous route, avoiding the director's cube (just in case). And there you are. At the mess, sunlight streaming in, a hot cuppa in hand, whiling away the glorious afternoon.

God. That seems ages ago now.