The Working Man

I get up at seven, yeah
And I go to work at nine
I got no time for livin’
Yes, I’m workin’ all the time

It seems to me
I could live my life
A lot better than I think I am
I guess that’s why they call me
The workin’ man….

Rush, Working Man

I should either stop listening to this song (but can’t, because I love Rush), or I ought to un-cancel my vacation plans and stop working during my summer hols.

One of the perks of being in my line of work is that courts in Delhi close for about two months every summer. Most of us lawyer boys (the ones who go to court i.e., not the corporate whores), therefore, have the luxury of planning long vacations.

I, on the other hand, truly believe that there’s an imp hidden inside me somewhere, in his SS-jailer uniform, screaming “Arbeit macht frei, mein herr. SCHNELL, SCHNELL”. And so, having cancelled my vacation plans, here I am, in an empty office, working away on:

- A private equity transaction that refuses to close;
- Helping a friend set up a trust fund for aspiring rockers (with a fund corpus of Rs. 100);
- Helping a widow get her dead hubby’s will probated; and
- Sending out bills for my fees, most of which will be paid only a year from now (and I’m being hopeful here).

This would be the primary reason why I’m not posting very regularly, yes.

Also a bit let down because the Delhi Daredevils crashed out of the IPL in such, er, high fashion. And if the big flameout wasn’t bad enough, it was accompanied by a live band (at Blues, where I was watching the match with Whiskey Bar and some other friends) which insisted on belting out songs that I hate, and some cows in short skirts handing out free chocolate, which tasted like Styrofoam.

On the other hand, I’ve managed to get my hands on several episodes of Byomkesh Bakshi, India’s answer to Sherlock Holmes, so I’ll be a happy camper for a couple of days. For the benefit of BBC’s readers, some of whom were in diapers when Byomkesh Bakshi first hit the tube, Byomkesh (played by Rajit Kapur) is a chain-smoking Bengali detective (or satyanveshi, as he prefers to call himself), complete with a side-kick, Ajit Bannerjee, who solves a series of whodunits over a span of about 30 years (1940s-1970s). Although the series suffers from crappy production and several instances of ham-acting, the script, overall, is leagues ahead of the Balaji Telefilms’ nonsense we get to see these days (which, largely, involves mothers-in-law, daughters-in-law, and other animals of large business families, plotting against each other, and defying all laws of ageing in the process).

There are days I wish that we could have a Guild of Assassins. This is one of those days.