Fallen

One day, our office was converted into a Comedy Circus because someone fell down! But there was a very useful lesson in the end…

The time was just before lunch. There was a new person who was working since morning in a glass chamber near my cubicle. I had recently joined the company and didn’t know who he was. Just before lunch, there was a huge commotion near his cabin. When I went there, I found a group of people looking down at a point on the floor. I went in and saw it was the same gentleman, fallen down flat and apparently unconscious! I guessed a heart attack and asked to contact the control room for help. Suddenly, the peon entered the scene in haste and banged his head on the glass door – he had missed to see the transparent but visible door despite crossing it every day! It was a loud big-bang which later left its mark on his face in the form of a big swelling on the forehead. By this time people had made a discovery – there as a moveable chair which was lying broken!

Moving ahead, colleagues helped the fallen man on his feet. The man was huge – obese to be honest - and in his 50s. His age should generate some sympathy, if his situation was not enough to. The first thing he did after getting up was to say, “I have fallen like this (breaking a chair) for the first time in my life!” His statement appeared to be an explanation in the light of his weight! The high drama continued. He started sobbing, at the apparent ‘insult’ of having fallen down flat breaking a strong chair! Someone proposed and others obeyed – he was given a ‘pain-killer’ tablet. Someone else made the pantry-guy console him with two gulab-jamuns! It was not enough. People from other floors and divisions started pouring in to see the ‘accident’ scene by their own eyes! (People now days have perhaps lost either trust or patience or may be both!)

When I went for the lunch, another colleague asked me, “Rahul, why did you made the guy fell down”? I smiled and said I had done nothing (even nothing to help him). Next, I heard a huge laughter from another corner. Someone had asked another colleague the same question and he had replied with, “Gire hue ko kaun girayega?” (Who will make a ‘fallen-guy’ fall?) I couldn’t understand the joke! But the laughter it had generated had made me amused! How could they laugh at the poor fallen-guy in his mid-50s? I couldn’t understand it! Until it was close of office hours, when I got to know who the fallen-guy was.

The guy worked (for too many years) in the administration department and was a devil in the eyes of the employees for his unaccommodating nature. He would often harass them for small mistakes and would not try even a bit to help them. He enjoyed his position as a matter of prestige and since he was in admin he got too many opportunities to throw his weight around. It was because of this reason that no one really felt bad for him when he had fallen down. And hence the joke, “Who can make a ‘fallen-guy’ fell down”?

His ego of being ‘higher’ than the rest resulted in him getting into such an insulting ‘fallen’ position!

- Rahul