#8 I stole your lunch

Coworker nuggets of wisdom

Madhu didn’t open his eyes when I kicked his desk.  I thought he’d fallen asleep when he started snoring.  To my surprise he murmured,

“When there’s smoke there’s fire, but if you hear me snoring that doesn’t mean I’m sleeping.” 

 

Madhu comes across as the village idiot but he’s more like a savant - his intelligence is enigmatic and unfathomable.  He’s College Engineer and today I came to ask him about connecting the refrigerant lines to the chillers in the Aquatic Lab.  Only he could untangle the complex knots to any technical issue and follow up on the possible solutions until he found the thread that would lead to an answer.  It was as if he had a third eye that could trace where all the ghost ducts had come from.

 

But my visits to Madhu were a guise for seeking greater wisdom.  When I was upset about Susan writing me up, he comforted me by saying,

 

“Treat your boss like asbestos.  If you don’t touch it, it won’t bother you.” He was right. 

 

When I lamented the Food Lab renovation that seemed impossible to close due to failed inspections he simply replied, “If you wait on a problem too long, it will go away.  Or it will become someone else’s problem.” He was right again. 

 

One of his most popular quotes was, “You’re the Project Manager, hit the ball to the other side of the court.”  What he meant by this was, as Project Manager I didn’t need to solve the problem as much as connect with the person who could. And then make them do the work.

 

When I came to Madhu today, his answer was, “If you want to go to Heaven, you have to die by yourself.”  I interpreted that to mean I wouldn’t be able to resolve the issue unless I did the dirty work.  But I was stumped because I’m still stuck in Hell after I died many times over.  Maybe he meant I’d never achieve sainthood by completing work requests. 

 

Madhu usually offered nuggets of wisdom that opened the skies for me, but now I was peeved by his answer.  So much so that I decided to pull a prank on him.  Madhu’s lunch was constantly stolen and I teased him about it because I didn’t think anyone could tolerate the spicy and pickled curries his mother prepared for him. It certainly wasn’t me.  But today I’d steal it.

 

When I warmed up his butterchicken in the microwave, I became intoxicated by its aromas.  As I swallowed the savory morsels my face suddenly swelled and my throat constricted.  Something in his mom’s secret sauce triggered in me an anaphylactic shock.

 

I could sense Madhu was laughing behind his expressionless face when I ate his lunch.  The joke was on me.  I now remembered his favorite quote of all time: “The answer is butterchicken.” The answer is butterchicken he said, not pepperoni pizza, Pad Thai nor Italian sandwiches.   We’d often get into scuffles about where to order take-out as a group, and we’d often take too long to decide that our lunchbreak would be over before we got anything to eat.

 

It was too late when I finally understood the key that unlocked the ultimate question of life, the universe and everything.  The comforting umami taste of the butterchicken sent me to Heaven like a newborn swaddled in a warm blanket after I died in the lunchroom by myself.