The second mom

If they say your work place is your second home, then I’ve got a second mom. Meet Sharmila Joseph. My colleague from work. It’s been 3 years plus since I’ve been working with my organisation, and since then there’s been a lot of people who have left and new others who joined. But I’ve known Sharmila since the day one of my recruitment. She sits across my work station. She’s always been there for me, correcting me if I’m wrong, caring for me on the days I forget to bring lunch from home, been there with me through all the ups and downs. If I’m on leave, she’ll miss me. She’ll talk to me about the mistakes her subordinates make and how that frustrates her. Sometimes I listen. Most of the times I pretend. But she says that I listen to her or not, she just misses me for not being there across her seat. I’ve never told this to her but yes, I miss her too if she’s on leave. She’ll scold her subordinates for the silly and repetitive mistakes that they make. Face to face, or over the phone, she’ll scold them at the top of her voice. Simply because she cares for them as a mother would care for her kids. I miss that loud noise when she’s not around. Lol. When cakes are cut during birthday celebrations at our office, she makes sure i get the corner piece with cherry on it. And also cuts a little bigger piece just for me. I miss her when there’s a birth day celebration and she’s not around.

I took this picture just last weekend when me and my colleagues had gone to this hill station called yelagiri (One liner info on yelagiri in this post). It was the next day morning after we had reached the place. I left my room early in the morning with my Nikon l120 and my tripod to take some early morning shots around the hill station. I did a lot of shots. And when the sun was rising way above the horizon I started walking the streets of yelagiri for what I love to do.

When I was returning back I saw my other colleagues coming out of their rooms. We started chatting up. Some of them were browsing through the images that I had captured so far. They were all still rubbing the sand from their eyes. Sleep still dulled the senses of most of them. Some time later, Sharmila step out of the her room and joined our conversation. I lifted my head up from my camera to reply something to someone and this is what I saw. She was peeking out of the door this way while talking to us. I clicked this as quick as I could. And I used the shot as reference to make this painting for her.