Mumbai - A city where I moved to almost a decade back in search of my career, my love and my life. With every single day I have only loved the city more for the hundreds of things which it offers - one of it being the commute.
You can question my sanity at this point in time because there are not many who would agree with me, when I say I love the commute. Infact I know a lot of people who left this beautiful city only because of their daily commute, but life, my friend, is the way we look at it. All thanks to this commute, this traffic and the long distance drives every single day that you meet some beautiful people, get into most interesting conversations, laugh your heart out with a stranger, learn lifetime lessons and feel happy even if it's for a little while.
You must still be wondering what am I talking about - let me narrate and incident which took place a little while back - It was a usual day for me - I am a Private Banker and for bankers in India, after a hectic March, it's a relatively relaxed April. This morning I get a confirmation call to meet the top boss of a conglomerate with regard to a query he had about his cards. I understood the query and I thought it will be good if I can request a colleague, who's an expert in the domain from where the query was raised, to join in - I approached her and she almost instantly agreed to join in. The meeting went well and we were able to resolve for what the client was worried about.
Now comes the commute - a few kms of the drive and when we get into general blah blah about career, life, etc. Somewhere amidst the conversation I used the phrase which is commonly used to describe your enthusiasm and high energy levels - "ENTHU CUTLET"
Well, in our day to day life, we often use terms which sound cool but we do not know why is it used in a particular context the way it is - and here it was my reality check on this one.
Within seconds of me using this, I came across a question which I did not expect and clearly had no answer for- " Why is a Cutlet called Enthu".
I tried to gave some lame answer in my defence, but the point that I was trying to combat in my mind was why did I never ask this question to myself - infact I came home and tried to trace the meaning, origin of this phrase, but couldn't find anything concrete.
As they say, Google doesn't have the answer for every question - and this was the realisation today's commute left me with.
For hours now I have been thinking about all those weird phrases, adjectives, words etc. which we use in our conversations manier times in a day, just to sound cool without even knowing why are they the way they are. But in all the bargain, we had a hearty laugh, which too is not so easily available in today's time.
Am sure you too are now thinking about some such phrases - If nothing else, you too can have a laugh at my expense, for this time.
