Crackle,Tackle, Swish and Whoosh

I have worked now for 14 months with my present organization. It is a small office in Banglaore with just four of us. I sit with this colleague (B) in a tiny little cabin facing each other. Observing her has given a whole new meaning to human behaviour in motion and splitting hairs.

I have now become an expert at judging her moods by watching her brush her hair and the sounds created by this brushing creates. B believes in the old adage of a hundred strokes to keep your hair healthy and thus we have hair brushing sessions every half hour. This not too long hair suffers all her strokes in silent acceptance, burdened as it is by its attachments.

If she has not had a quarrel with her husband, auto driver, maid, security person and office boy then the day has begun well for the hair. It receives gentle strokes which make a soothing sound in our little cabin. Swish, whoosh means peace will reign and she will not crabbily ask me for updates, unecessary documents and most importantly the office boy(K) breaths easy.

Hang on this need not last, remember the hundred and one stoke, in the next half hour session you need to listen carefully to the sounds, sometimes it crackles, now that is ok if she does not beat the brush on the desk, that means mild annoyance but nothing she wants explode at. If she bangs the brush on the table and goes at the hair with a vigour i have seen only at the dobhighaat then the cyclone is sure to hit.

I have learnt to keep as quiet as a mouse, and avoid eye contact definitely, i do not fancy being in the middle of a storm. Disaster is when she gets off her chair and starts brushing that poor hair and the sounds escalate to almost orchestral level. I know it is time to leave the room on one pretext or the other. Oh there are good times too, when the hair is stroked gently and there is music in the air. She get up then too, but to dance and sway to the music. Then there are the quiet long strokes when she is thinking through a problem, it ends inevitably with the brush being thrown into the corner triumphantly.

I have learnt one thing in all this, never underestimate the power of the brush and hair. Static electricity you aint seen nothing yet.