THE GRAVEYARD MOMENT

mumbai, 12/11/2009.
it's official. today is the first day i got paid for working 24 hours without catching a wink.

as i gather my thoughts in this cold-blasted cubicle, at this ungodly hour of 05:17 in the morning with my colleague snoring soundly in the corner on my first night shift in the company, my memory reverts back to that fateful day an year back when i first worked thru the night. only difference is, i didn't get paid that time.
it was the first day of campus recruitment, and my first gig as a student coordinator. every worst-case scenario i'd imagined - hysterical candidates, demanding employers, lazy peons - had combined into one heck of a perfect storm. all hell broke loose as the carefully-structured placement process went for a toss, and my colleague jubin & i spent much of the day and all of the night managing the crisis erupting around us.
by the time the fire-fighting was over, the placement interviews had spilled over into the night. working in the graveyard shift is a hard-to-understand concept for most people. if you're nocturnal creature like me, you'd have no difficulty in appreciating the delight of sleeping late and waking up even later. in my experience, there comes a point in time during the night shift - which i'd like to call the graveyard moment - when you start relishing the slack pace, the quiet ambiance and the lack of pressure of it all.
which brings me back to today: though my day didn't turn out to be as eventful as the one in bit mesra, the night has never been better. cheers and g'night!