January 28, 2013

The Green Man


He started his professional life as a Green Man, learning to despise the colour yellow and at times grudgingly admire it, sometimes even envy it. For around 5 years he toiled, harder than most, to understand what it meant to be a Green Man in the lives of millions of women around the world. He travelled all over the word, bar perhaps the Americas learning about food and about culture. He went into kitchens, learning how to cook exotic dishes along with mothers, trained himself to understand flavours and at the end of it create magic on the table.

He believed that nothing was more sacred than Food, the foremost amongst the basic necessities of life. And perhaps nothing else in the world could easily straddle every step in Maslow’s Hierarchy. Imagine working in a category where every single individual you spoke to across the world was concerned about what she was eating that day. It makes you realize that your success can spread smiles across continents.

Surprisingly, he became a decent cook, a lot less fussy about food, a lot more experimental in what he ate and slowly he began to understand what drove billions of moms around the world every day to make a tasty meal for the family.

And he learnt when it comes to food, moms seldom disagree.

He loved being a Green Man. But then when he looked at his hands from time to time, they were turning green and he figured probably it was a good time to wash them. So he decided to leave KSS and return to his old organization SNDU, planning to wash away all the germs in less than 10 seconds.

But leaving your love after such a long time can be a bittersweet symphony. As he walked around his desk, cleaning up for the next Green Woman, he realized that there is so much that he will miss. He will miss the Bros, he will miss the dictator in the kitchen, he will miss the cheerleaders of weight loss and he will miss the mother hen, the lunches, the bets, the coffee and the free starbucks for every second thing.

This was a life free from internal strife, free from one-upmanship, free from endless debates. This was a life of learning and fighting against a common enemy, fighting for a common friend.

Interestingly, just as he shall no longer be a Green Man, he can also no longer fall in Love with Green in the foreseeable future. And that’s how he realized that the Wheel of Time turns!