The Maker of Lists

The good Mr Gupta in my office is an inveterate list maker . A meticulous man by nature, he covers little writing pads with lists of pending jobs in a cryptic morse code handwriting , much like a hierogyphic squiggle . One line of squiggles follows another joined by a |__________> in script in a series of steps down the page . Once a job is completed the squiggle line is crossed out . His minions live in virtual terror of those squiggly lists which are absolutely essential because he has a number of project deadlines .

Mr Gupta opens his accounts each day by drawing a little potbellied doodle of a ganesh and an Om on the virgin page before he squares his shoulders and starts his squiggly lists . He uses a writing pad a week and has a small TDU to take care of the multiple pads .At the end of the year before he sits down to the last review he starts on the writing pads and woe betide anyone who puts down one false note of masterly self approval.

In the last 15 minutes before he leaves office he takes out a small thick writing pad like the ones you get in the Archies and Hallmark shops. In this pad he notes down the jobs that he and his wife have to finish at home . I imagine he ticks off the jobs completed every morning over his morning cuppa ( if he has one , that is ) . Being a typical Northerner , he likes to assume charge of situations wherever women are involved ( he faces a thick brick wall every time he comes up against me , the poor thing )

He comes in to office a little late each day probably after completing certain domestic chores which he earmarks for himself or stuff he does not quite trust his wife with . I also found him quite relieved to have offloaded a lady engineer on to another department . When he took a FIRO B evaluation it revealed abnormal levels of taking charge .

From stray comments he makes to Arun who is quite a sloppy dresser and does not polish his shoes every day , I infer that he lays out his clothes every night before he goes to bed and also brushes his shoes and lays out a pair of socks next to them .

I used to wonder how his wife coped with so much mechanical order at home , when I discovered quite by chance that she was a chronic depressive and on medication .Which led me to re think again.. it must be quite a chore for a man to go through a 9.30 to 7.30 job and then go back home to being a house husband. I presume it comes naturally to women as a gender stereotype for I have been doing it for years but men ...?