A Sudden Windfall

Taking a sabbatical hasn’t reduced my workload in the slightest. Sure, emails now get curt one-liners or no reply at all. Most work-related calls go unanswered. Then again, calling it work was already a stretch.

If earlier all the “liftoffs,” “jump starts,” went straight to my spam folder, now their calls are also being ignored. The few I do pick up, they wish I hadn’t.

And as always, someone remarks, “You’re so blunt!”

A few times, I asked back, “Have you ever met a polite fireman?” The question is usually asked with a wry smile and the mental image of that #metoo era cartoon – a fireman climbing through a window to save a woman in a burning house, only for her to sniff, “I don’t consent to being touched.” He shrugs and leaves her to roast.

People fall silent. Most have never met a fireman – especially one at work. The truth is, firemen don’t have time for courtesy, consensus, or consent. Their work is dangerous – saving lives and property, not debating pronouns or kowtowing to hierarchy.

Most of my life, I’ve mostly been a troubleshooter, a hired mercenary resented by both employer and staff alike – my mere presence a testament to their failures. My job was to deliver solutions where none existed, to turn around grounded ships. Not to murmur a reverential “Ji” in an American accent to soothe a Lala’s ego or placate his manager’s more fragile one.

Now to what’s keeping me busy. After tunnelling beneath my toilet, my attention turned upward – not towards God, but the ceiling. One that’s been trapping, beneath the roof, about 50 years of guano (that’s the polite speak for bat and bird shit), plus countless bird and rat nests. The stench made the entire upper floor unusable – like living above an unwashed chicken coop.

The only way to clean it was from below, by removing ceiling panels. Predictably, each removal triggered a windfall of very well-aged bird muck directly onto our heads. In total: five sacks of straw and three industrial vacuum bags. An excellent fertilizer, a very potent allergen and cause of the island of Narau's misfortune.

The whole operation reminded me of the time when I, in unbridled stupidity, tried to clean up the management rot in a company I worked for, convinced I had the boss’s backing. The outcome was identical: when you clean the shit off the ceiling, it lands straight on your head.

Sure, things cleaned up briefly, panic spread, systems got flushed out. And the person most unhappy? The boss. To him, I had rocked a perfectly stable and leakproof boat, terrorised his faithful staff and insulted his trusted lieutenants. His enlightenment came a decade later – when everything he built collapsed and the true nature of his trusted team dawned upon him.

Here at home, at least this clean-up will make the rooms usable again – and the garden trees have received one hell of a nutrient boost. So what, the entire yard now stinks like shit - its now true olfactory democracy.

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