WHEN CALLED TO TASK


Everybody knew so much more than I did when I first started. She was one of them. She taught me some things, half-heartedly and only because she had to, making me feel that she has written me off, even as she did, like I wasn't capable of learning the tricks of the trade. Every now and then she would come up to me at the most unexpected places, with no preamble, and ask about a recent booboo. She would try to sound encouraging, I'd give her that, but somehow she always managed to sound hollow.

Down the line, I started catching her at jobs not done well, or at least, at par, whenever I took on a patient she had in the morning. Once... twice... thrice. The third was at something so routine that it was almost a negligence to do a bad job at it. I felt her discomfiture, literally, as I probed. I knew she was getting mortified, not at the inquest itself, but by the fact that it was me on the other side of the fence, this time.

So she went a step higher. Now she turned menacing. She hasn't been at the job for 15 years after all without gathering up some clout.

At this point, I felt sorry for her. In general, she will always be looked up to. But she knows and I know that I caught her at it. Perhaps there are others like me who know better now, but I am almost sure it will remain our own individual 'little private things.' We can be a very discrete lot too, you know, when we're behaving at our best.

I gather that it would serve me well to remember that we should always be careful lest our words empty out at what our hands do not do.