The Cook

He was an overweight man aged around forty with a big face; eyes were big and occasionally red with aftereffects of extended happy hours. When he came at first, he was shy, little nervous and would be hesitant but with gradual passage of time he became normal.
I had very limited conversations with him and that too a few lines. He was not a very talkative person and reticent to get started but he was a punctual man and missed on his assignments only on a few occasions. Although he was not so articulate in his work and he was like a PSU, provider of heavy duty support but lacking the luster of glitzy presentation of private sector.
His body weight was disproportionate to his length and his age, reulting in the loss of agility. He was also not very well versed in the language we spoke and this led to many a times communication gap causing havoc with the assigned work. I tried to gather the info from his body language, his implied meaning and was occasionally successful in my efforts. Language is seldom a barrier when both people are really interested in the communication.
He was jobless when he came to us and with associated burden and anxiety of running a family of five people; he was in desperate need of employment. Family is bedrock of existence and all happiness that we derive does trace their root to it. But we tend to forget that someone is somewhere making some sacrifice to make it happen.
It has been an association of 5 months and like all things good or bad, they have to come to an end. Most of the time ending an association is as painful as ending of a relationship.We, humans are wired up to live in groups, we develop dependencies on each other and the void that gets created is seldom filled up by another one, no matter how much we try.
I could look into the same reddened eyes and feel the pain, the anguish and some sort of betrayal he was holding against me. He was as usual timid in expressing his feelings and when one is unable to vent off his anger by verbally expressing it, the resulting facial expression is sickening.
Although he has started working in three four more places and is economically well off, still I am sad for him. He was the provider of food to us, the esteemed cook and I will remember his departing face for a few more months, the man with a huge face with big red eyes.