by Neha Yazmin
Chapter 5. Routine
Mukti was glad she didn’t have to do any work on her first day. It was nice to just sit through presentations and learn about the project she and the other nine newcomers would be working on. She didn’t bother remembering the names of her fellow newbies––they’d be paired up and assigned a team. She’d worry about getting to know the ones she’d share a table with in the open-plan office.
Still, she felt tired at the end of the day, even though she’d spent the whole day in the larger one of the two boardrooms overlooking London Bridge, taking down notes. The boardroom’s outer wall consisted only of floor-to-ceiling glass panes and the view was breathtaking.
London Bridge may not be as famous as Tower Bridge or as stylish as Millennium Bridge, but its simplicity was what appealed to her. A long, pale-grey concrete plank, floating above the River Thames, connecting the City at the north end of the bridge to Southwark in the south.
The Swedish guy she met this morning, Henrik, sat next to her all day and didn’t bother mingling with anyone but her. After he got over his embarrassment for thinking her name was spelt M-O-O-K-T-I, he did most of the talking.
“My parents are originally from Bangladesh,” she divulged after Henrik informed her that he’d moved from Sweden four years ago and now shared a flat in Balham with two other friends. “I live in Dalston with… my family.”
“Khan is a Muslim name, right? But you’re not a strict Muslim?”
“I have my faith,” she said with a shrug. “I guess I pick and choose what I practise. I know that’s sort of hypocritical––religion isn’t about convenience.”
“I don’t think that’s hypocritical. There’s nothing wrong in finding a happy middle ground.”
They wouldn’t start proper work tomorrow, either. Instead, the newbies would learn about the in-house computer system and databases. Become familiar with the practical aspects of fulfilling their role in categorising, entering, and analysing data collected by a nationwide survey on public attitude towards money, the finance sector, education, the government, and various other factors following the credit crisis.
The research firm had completed a pilot study early last year, surveying Londoners after the collapse of Lehman Brothers, when the nation became fully aware of the banking crisis. This year, they were receiving responses to the questionnaires sent to every household in the country. Realising within weeks of sending out the survey that the workload would be too much for its 50-strong staff, the company decided to recruit ten new people.
The resulting database, reports and analyses would be sold to both public and private sector institutions, as well as anyone interested in gauging current public opinion and sentiment towards key issues in the market.
Her walk from her office to the bus stop was easy––the ice in the immediate area had been shovelled away. As she got closer to home, she saw that the fluffy white snow from the morning had browned during the day, turned muddy in places, creamy white at best. Smooth, slippery, shiny, hard and dangerous after being trodden on by hundreds of pairs of feet.
Flattened by everyone getting on with the first full week of the year.
It would be a tricky walk to the bus stop tomorrow morning. No one’s going to shovel the snow here! Dalston wasn’t the most well-kept area in London, very typical of the London Borough of Hackney that it was a part of. Despite its exuberance, vibrancy, daily hustle-and-bustle and character, its hundred-year old terraced houses, more recently built council flats and multi-cultural make-up, Dalston had never felt like home to Mukti.
She was yet to feel like she belonged anywhere, so she didn’t blame it on the locale.
Growing up in Hackney had its perks, though. She learned about so many different cultures and ethnicities just by observing the numerous bodies she passed on her short walk to school, the types of restaurants that opened for business––Caribbean, Turkish, Vietnamese, and more recently Polish––and the type of music thumping out of open car windows––reggae, rap, R&B, hip-hop.
Over the years, the changes in the area were evident in the individuals that shopped at the lively and chaotic Ridley Road market nearby. The languages spoken by the children riding their bikes around the neighbourhood. The decreasing number of people heading for the church on the next street to hers when the bells tolled on Sundays.
The always dynamic and vigorous streets of Dalston contrasted so heavily with Liverpool Street, Bishopsgate and King William Street, which were busy in a neater, cleaner, samey manner.
People from Mukti’s neighbourhood wore sarongs, sarees, hijabs, long dresses, baggy jeans, hoodies, shapeless saggy coats, studded boots and leather pants in all the colours of the rainbow. Those marching towards London Bridge, listening to their MP3 players or speaking into their internet phones, looked the same in their smart suits, even if they varied in design, fabric and colour.
The inhabitants of Dalston seemed more relaxed, even as they jogged from one bus to another discount store, their conversation topics ranging from money, rent, family and food, to celebrity gossip, television and music.
All the discussions between the suits in the City seemed to revolve around work and deadlines.
Work was exactly what Mukti needed, though. She liked demanding, taxing, and tiring activities that required her full attention. So her mind wouldn’t wander.
So at night, her head would be too exhausted to think.