Loving animals

I had an interview last week for a job with an organisation that calls itself Circle of Animal Lovers. The opening was for a content writer's post who would also handle their media relations and PR activities. When I reached the 'office', I found it to be rather... ummm... nondescript. It was housed in well, a house, in a small DDA flat in Saket with merely a half-torn, half-faded sticker the size of an infant's hand, on top of the door proclaiming its existence there. Anyway, after reconsidering whether I should ring the bell at all, I figured I might as well go through the interview since I was already at the venue. Of course, there was no bell to be found. So I called, and was told that someone will shortly let me in. After a few minutes, a door on my side slid open up, revealing a man in his 50's who looked like his work in an office could not involve anything more than letting people in and out, or maybe making the occasional cup of tea.

Anyway, I step inside, to be greeted by 7 mangy street dogs who seemed excited to the point of being frenzied. They jumped around me, put their paws all over my clothes, I thought one of the many unclipped nails would scratch me through my shirt while also making a hole in it. The old man, at this point, grabbed a broom and used it lavishly on the prancing animals. Some love, eh? And oh, as for animals, I could spot none other than dogs. There was also a tailor labouring away at a sewing machine in the middle of it all. Anyhow, before these facts could do anything more than merely register themselves in my mind, another door was slid open and I was shuffled inside.

Inside the room, which was as big as my bathroom and smelled entirely of dog fart, was a woman and three more dogs; four computers, of which one didn't work; three chairs and a narrow uneven settee on which I was sternly asked by the old man to seat myself and wait for "madam". A couple of minutes later, yet another door slides open and in comes "madam", a fat Bengali lady in her 50's too, maybe late 40's. In what seemed to be a miracle, she managed after some effort to fit herself cross-legged on that very same narrow settee. But the miracle turned out to be an illusion as she also slipped off at least thrice during our 20-minute conversation. Every now and then, she would look through the door she had come through (which for some reason was not slid shut again), and would call out to 'Motu', another dog, and ask him to shut up, or ask someone else to shut him up.

I spent those 20 minutes there out of sheer niceness and politisse as I had pretty much decided after listening to her for less than 2 minutes that I did not want to be there ever again. Anyway, if nothing else, it provided some sort of comic relief, you know, her thick accent and the general monologue that she spewed out. She began with telling me about the organisation. Basically, they cook food for 200 dogs daily and distribute it through their 5 centres. The fifth centre is in Haryana where they don't cook, neither does that centre get supplies from this main office, so I wonder what exactly it is that centre does. I couldn't be bothered to ask though.

Then she told me how they rely on public donations for the most part, and hence needed to communicate with the public effectively. Then she told me how her husband had a heart attack while he was talking to someone in Calcutta 2, no, 3 weeks ago (the confusion was her own, not mine). The husband's death was to take her to Calcutta, then back to Delhi and then to Simla, and so she didn't have time to write herself. She would merely tell her ideas to the writer who would then do the needful. Then she asked me all the designing experience I had, when my CV mentions nothing about designing except a working knowledge of Photoshop and HTML. Blah blah blah.

To cut a long story short, she told me towards the end of it all that she would be happy to have me if they could meet my financial expectations. I really didn't want to cause another heart attack in the family, so I did not say what I expected, and instead asked her to give me an idea of what they would offer. In response, she told me the salaries of every employee in the organisation, which apart for vets, included all of 3 full time employees. After ignoring all this needless information, I again asked her to give me an idea, this time, specifically for my job role. She took a long look at my CV, and then said the following words (accented to present a more accurate picture), "Shee, loooking at yore a-ducation and a-xperience, I theenk you would a-xpect about fourteen thoushend. But shinsh I don't know you yait, I would shuggesht you shtart with tain."

Good thing I had kept my gob shut earlier. So anyway, I told her I will think about it and let her know. Just about this time, Motu had made his way in to the room we were sitting in, and was looking at me and barking. I reached out my hand to pet him, which he immediately lunged at to bite it. Good thing I have decent reflexes too, else... That is when I was also informed that Motu was the dead husband's pet and didn't like anyone but the now dead man touching him. Wow.

Anyway, I figured I had wasted enough time and money by merely turning up for the interview, and I do not have it in my poor wallet and large heart to waste another phone call for turning her down. And this job hunt keeps on getting more interesting.