The ivory tower

By Amrita Dhingra

HAVE you ever got on to a really high chair, tucked your feet under you and decided that you aren’t going to move from there for a long, long time? If you haven’t, try doing it. It’s fun. Especially if you have someone who would really like to see come down — who would do anything short of begging to see you back on the ground. There you can sit, turn your nose up at all the world (especially that person), possibly read a book, or just sit and think. Believe me it can be a lot of fun. Let me give you an example.

Richard and I, we’d been seeing each other for a little less than a year and all said and done things had been moving along pretty well. When I say all said and done I mean that the minor altercations which arose from the fact that there really are times when Richard cannot look beyond his nose, were more or less being ignored. But these things tend to build beneath the surface and though I’d just as soon die as let on that I was feeling bad, the truth of the matter was that I was. The icing on the cake came along in the form of Richard having to go out of town for several weeks on an assignment. Great! Fine! Good!, I said to myself.

"Of course you must go," I said to Richard all the while tucking into my burger as if I hadn’t care in the world, "after all an opportunity like this doesn’t come along everyday."

But I refused to look him in the eye and when he left a couple of days later without calling to say goodbye, well it was no skin of my nose. Ha, ha! As you can probably tell things were brewing pretty steadily.

And was I enjoying it? Well I most certainly was. I threw myself into my work with a fervour, my appointment diary was crammed so full my secretary had to reschedule, my evenings were all booked and Richard was far from my mind. I had his address of course and when his birthday rolled around I sent him a nice, friendly soft of card which I had my secretary post for me. Then duty done, I went back to my ivory tower.

That is when Richard, poor fish, decided to come out of hiding. He gave me a call, he got my answering machine.

"In case you had the nerve to dial 247128 you have reached the side number. She’s not in right now but if you’re so inclined leave a message." said my answering machine which many people say is much too rude for a machine.

"Ami, hi, this is Richard," said my dear friend, "listen thanks for the card! How are...?"

That’s it. My answering machine cut him off right there and he had to call again. "Listen how are you?" he spoke quickly this time for fear of being cut off by my high-handed electronic friend, "listen it’s been ages. Call me when you get in okay?..." He left a number.

Now of course I didn’t call him. Though I will admit to rewinding the message and playing it back several times. And that night I watched Casablanca with tears in my eyes, but that had absolutely nothing to do with Richard. So began a trend that would stretch itself out over the next few weeks. Richard would call about once a week, get new and even ruder messages on my machine and would ask me to call back. I didn’t. So he called mutual friends and asked how I was. They told him I was fine and faithfully passed on the message to me.

In the interim I had not just been sitting around idle. A woman never does that. I had several intense and introspective conversations with myself, all of them centering around Richard and all of them telling me that the sooner I dumped him the better off I’d be. The result of course was that I had built up a nice head of steam and when Richard left a message to say he’d be coming home for a week it was as if all my prayers had been answered. Not only had my prayers been answered Ihad also been granted an extra boon.

You see it so happened that my birthday fell on Thursday that same week. Now Richard, I was pretty sure, did not have the faintest clue that it was my birthday. Like someone once told me men absolutely cannot be expected to remember things as mundane as birthdays — their brains are already occupied with the things like the cricket score and the absolutely smashing salary their best buddy is drawing.

He had been in town about three days and we hadn’t talked. I did feel a little guilty about setting him up like this, but not for long. After all the guy had known me for nearly a year and simple logic dictated that I, like everyone else, had to have a birthday and if I hadn’t had it so far I was bound to sometime. I suppose it did not even occur to Richard that I had a birthday, which was absolutely fine with me. I could not after all call the guy and say, "Moron it’s my birthday!" No malice really, but one just doesn’t do these things.

We ran into each other outside my office that afternoon.

"Hi," he said giving me the full benefit of his smile, "how are you?"

"Great," I said looking somewhere slightly left of his shoulder, sticking a smile on my face, "how’re you?"

Then as if on cue, my secretary walked up with an absolutely gorgeous bouquet of roses, "Ami these just came for you!!! Shall I put them with the rest?" "Yup," I nodded, "call the gang and let them know about the plans for tonight." "Something special going on?" said the unsuspecting man standing next to me. "Only my birthday," I finally looked at him.

His face fell. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anybody so crestfallen in my entire life. "Happy Birthday," he said, as if invoking all the choicest divine blessings on my head with the fervour of his wish, "Happy Birthday!"

"Thank you." I gave him a smile, looked at my watch and said, "I’ve got to run now, plans for tonight, I‘ll see you around."

"Ya, sure see you...."

After that fully justified, I climbed up onto my chair and tucked my feet up under me. Richard didn’t call me but I knew he was feelings pretty rotten bout the whole thing. So I sat up straighter and turned my nose up still higher.

Which brings us very neatly to the next bit of this whole business. You know the secret about this is that these high chairs are fun only for a certain time period. After that you may feel the urge to get back down on Earth and back in contact with the concerned person. There are several ways to go about the whole business. You could of course choose not to get down all together if you’re planning to dump the guy in the first place. Which is fine, which is great because it makes a tidy little package which you can chuck into the nearest trash can without so much of an ounce of extra weight on your conscience.

If however, you think that the guy, barring a few flaws here and there, is really quite endearing and you’d like to give him another chance well it’s another story. One way it to give in to his entreaties as graciously as a duchess and make him eternally obliged to you. In event of the said guy feeling too miserable to even think about calling you, you could do the big thing and surprise him by climbing down all on your own. This really is by far the best option because the decision is yours and you can even pretend it’s no big deal. This way your position on the moral highground is cemented forever and it’s a win-win situation all the way.

Well, that was that and thinking about it I think it is about time I got going. Nice chatting with you and all that. Besides, I have to call Richard.I just know it’ll make his day.