My first job as a journalist turned out to be something of an intriguing nature. My boss, a sturdy man in his late thirties summoned me in his office. I was nervous; word was that the first job is always the toughest. And boss’s reputation was not comforting either; he was assiduous, maintained strictly formal tone, unfettered by the political dictates, sort of quirky. His hair tightly drawn back, shirt tucked in with fanatical perfection, shoes glistening, and applied mild perfume. He skimmed through my profile, reached out to his spectacles, paused in the motion of removing them and was intently reading out my profile. From what I heard, that gesticulation meant danger. He shifted his glance between the file and my face; I was consumed with fear and trepidation. Finally he removed his spectacles and enquired if I would be kind enough to accompany him to a party that night.
I put on my red dress silhouetted with pink satin and let my hair loose, loosely curled some over my ears to indicate a fervent authority of beauty. I was in my early twenties, good figure, and lean physique with proportionate flab at the right spots. I was accustomed to men gaping at my figure all my life, but this was different. It was a birthday party of a well known business man. Boss introduced me to the people around, most of them from the journalism background; some of them were our direct competitors. Through the course of the party, boss excused himself, went to chat up privately with some business men and I was left alone. I was all by myself, sipping vodka and hesitantly looking about me, I barely knew anybody, I pretended as if I was occupied with deep thought staring into the crowd in no general direction. It was awful; I could not stand it anymore.
I walked into the ladies’ room and dialled up my colleague. She had been working in the office for a little over two years now. She explained that it was a good idea to stick with the boss. After a little journalistic view of boss or words to that effect, she hung up and I soon walked out of the room and was immediately confronted with the image of boss waiting for me. Slightly guilty of my escapade, I approached boss a little tensed and worried that I might have agitated him. Combing his hair back with one hand and smoking elegantly with the other, he appeared at ease and preoccupied. When I met him, he offered me smoke and I instantly acquiesced, for I felt the need for one.
While my boss was looking elsewhere, I quickly took a couple of deep drags. I looked around me and noticed that very few ladies smoked, which I thought at that time, slightly incongruous, for they were all in large businesses. With my mood oscillating between affected and repressed personality to that of conscious display of understanding, I managed to spend the time there without major hassles, excluding the reserved manner that I exuded throughout.
Next day at office, I was greeted with a wide smile everywhere I went. Later I learnt that boss had assigned me my first project, the assignment required me to visit a group of migrating labourers, stay with them for a month or so, understand their routines thoroughly and prepare a report by the end of the stay. Boss left at my desk a note that read ‘welcome aboard!’ the note was clipped to a file and the contents were a list of people that I could contact in my tryst; deadlines for submitting the interim report, draft version, list of reviewers and the final report.
I packed up for the whole month, essentially outdoor wear, and left to meet the intermediary. The man met me near the railway station and escorted me to the village. Inside the village, I was shown to the hut in which the group leader stayed. He was a man in his fifties, his skin was scarred with fatigue, eyes were sinking deeper into the sockets as if they have grown averse to sun, and cheeks were drowning into his wide mouthed smile. Despite all the physical impressions, he was very light on his feet; he did not stand still in a place for long. He would scream at a man digging earth; then pause and converse with me; without prior warning shift into bickering mood with his wife; pat his dog affectionately and feed him. He was a natural athlete, a man of benign nature, was a prolific warrior, very intolerable to passive work.
The evening was full of exuberance, all the workers gathered around and I saw myself sitting in the middle of a war where people fought pelting words at each other. Their dialect was heavy sometimes and slippery other times. the usual banter ended as soon as the leader walked in, he announced that he was contacted by a member of next project. Soon they will all be shifting to a coastal area. The news bothered me a little, so I met the leader later and asked him the details of their next project. It was going to be the construction of a dam, the whole project would involve over two thousand workmen, his group of hundred and fifty would be involved from the second stage of the project, which will only begin after a couple of months. He assured me that there was nothing to worry.
Next morning, I picked up my travel bag and left the hotel to the site with a pair of rugged Levis on. When I reached there, I found that the place was not the boisterous best as it was yesterday, something had changed. The leader’s wife was waiting for me before her tent; she grabbed me by my arm and tossed into the hut as a mother does its child thoughtlessly in the event of a danger. Inside the hut, it was neater than I had imagined; the utensils were all cleaned and stacked up against the perimeter nicely, shrewd work was done on the hut’s interiors. There was a small pit by one of the corners, a long wooden shaft by its side and I instantly recognised the primitive version of a modern grinder. There was a low hanging platform made of coconut cord suspended from the roof, upon it lay a series of utensils, I supposed that the apparatus might be to protect their food from any uninvited scavengers. The wife walked inside and hurriedly sat on the cot that creaked with her heavy weight over it. She explained to me that the workers thought I was a menace to them. After my departure last night, workers met the leader and expressed their displeasure over my inquiries that I was not supposed to be privy to in the first place.
After repeated attempts of arguing with her, she held on composed to her version of the episode, and won’t budge. I had no choice but to meet the leader himself, but I cannot meet him outside, for the workers won’t be taking it lightly. I waited there inside the hut for the leader to arrive all day. Finally he arrived in the evening while I was sleeping with my head rested on my travel bag on their floor. He woke me up and recounted that the workers were reluctant to share the space with me, for they gathered from someone that I would be running a report on them for my own selfish motives and an absolute disregard to their hardships. They even thought that I would be making a mockery of their ordeals by misrepresenting and misquoting most of their lives in a manner that would commercialise my report.
I tried to mend the relationship with them while my deadline to submit the interim report was fast approaching. The leader offered me shelter in his hut. Then one night, at the hotel, I found that boss had left a message for me at the reception desk. The message read ‘reviewer is awaiting the interim report’. My first impulse was to write back to him and explain the terrible turn the events have shaped into; but on second thought I sat that night and prepared a report of incidents and characters that were never there. I showered pity on the plight of their hardships, praised their camaraderie and loathed their squeamishness of their leader. I fanatically fantasised events and explored through the mirages of fantasy, something bombastic something enticing for readers. Naturally, since the workers were poorly insured for, in my fantasy report, I killed a labourer and introduced a day of mourning. I sent the report to my senior in the city through post, rang up later and left a message for boss, after everything was over I took a deep drag of fresh air outside the hotel room and warm sigh of relief haloed me for the rest of the night.
Next morning, I reached the site and there was an air of melancholy that gripped all the workmen. To my horror and disbelief, the header’s wife pulled me into the hut much as she did the other day. Not just that, but she narrated the accounts of workers’ dismay as if she was doing it for the first time. My persistent attempts at explaining the course of events were granted with strict remonstrance. I tried to reason that she must have become delirious, and waited patiently for the leader to come by. The leader’s arrival was another feather of mystique in the cocktail affair of my day. He behaved as if he remembered nothing whatever of the events between the present day and the similar day that I encountered in the first couple of days of my visit. I went back to my hotel wondering what had happened. I was slightly perturbed at the gravity of deficit in recollection that the workers experienced.
Back at the hotel room, I checked with the receptionist if the report I posted was sent. The reply from the receptionist threw me asunder and it took me a little while to gather back my senses. She had no memory of the days either. Even before the shock from the vertiginous day had not settled down, I learnt that the calendars indicated to the other day. ‘but I distinctly remember the passage of days” I reassured myself. I called my reviewer to check if he had received my delivery. He seemed puzzled and ridiculed me that “journalism can be a very glamorous job in the beginning, let some time pass by and you won’t call me up first thing in the morning of your first day to check if I have received the report”. Something was wrong, I no longer trusted m own instincts. I sat in a dark corner of my hotel room, clasped my fists tight and with my nerves drawn taut as an bow’s, I released my nerves hoping that the nightmare would end. But it won’t.
I barely slept that night; I woke up to a bright sun that was slipping through the billowing curtains of my hotel room. I checked the calendar and the pages must have conjured a magical resurrection, for the date indicated the day I was hoping that it would be. It was the date of my interim report; I quickly went into the reception and checked if the report was delivered. I ordered that the package be returned if it had not been delivered already. The receptionist rang up the postal department and by the time I got out form the shower, the report was lying before my door, unpacked and undelivered. In a fit of frenzy, ass if I survived the days of apocalypse, dropped the contents of the package in the dustbin and prepared the true report. The true report contained the actual events, how the workers would not let me anywhere near to them. Then I duly signed at the bottom of the envelope and posted it.
I cannot say for sure, if the former report would have subconsciously triggered the nightmare I had, but I am sure of one thing, the nightmare never returned and I made it a habit throughout my later career of journalism, to report the true state of affairs. I dispensed my fanatic obsession to fantasise.
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