And now, for an indoor path.
This is where one can find my supervisor. We don’t meet as often as my other friends, but she’s lovely and has that quality of focusing completely, and entirely on YOU when you’re there.
I took this picture the last time I met with her. First time I’ve met with her in the late evening, which explains the lighting. While I am in the department quite a bit, I’m almost never on this particular floor. The only times I’ve been here are for meeting her, once for the worst, terrible, motivation-destroying viva in the universe, and once late at night, just to see what the department looks like at night. (Hint: very quiet, dark, and a little creepy)
I have tried very hard to turn up just 2-3 minutes before the meeting, but somehow, I’m always there at least 10 minutes before. I end up loitering like a suspicious person. There’re only so many times you can pace up and down, reading the things pasted to people’s doors and name-plates. And then there’s the awkward smile one has to give when someone who actually belongs there walks past. I know everything about every poster on the soft board you can JUST see on the right. I can hear the muffled drone of the conversation through the door. The wall is cold against my back, and my hands and forearms are full of my jacket, bag, phone and iPod. I can’t get any reception, so can’t catch up on messages. WiFi and I have a complicated relationship. And even then, I avoid it. I want to hold on to the seriousness mindframe.
Since I meet her so infrequently, when I do have to meet her, the entire day is planned around and focused on this one hour. And the interesting thing for me about that, is that when I’m picturing the meeting, I’m thinking only of this corridor, the obsessive looking at the watch, the very calculated knock I give about 3 inches at the bottom of the glass pane at roughly 40 seconds past the given time, and her, popping her head out and telling me she’ll be with me in a minute. I’m concerned I come off as a neurotic person. Thankfully, the jacket covers my twitchy and sweaty hands.
In any case, this corridor (only the side facing the way the photograph is taken) is now forever marked as the ‘corridor of waiting’. I don’t think it will ever be anything else. All the material posted is read with the same intensity as ‘things to read as you wait’ and the stance I have is the partly apologetic, slightly-stooped posture of one who’d like to melt into the wall, thank you very much.
saherhasnain 