Monday Misadventures. Monday Blues. Miserable Mondays.

So what can I say about Mondays that has not already been said or written before? Or what I haven't already complained about before? I hate Mondays, with a vengeance. I loathe and detest them. If, perchance, I knew any more synonyms for that particular feeling, I would shower them all on a Monday -- the first day of the week, the day hated by Garfield as much as by a million other people caught up in a million other jobs. Mondays are supposed to be warm and casual, something to feel happy about, a day when you wake up bright and fresh from a marvellous Sunday and hope to receive good news. Au contraire. Mondays are when you grumpily step into office after the previous night’s shindigs, disappointments of a football match, a quarrel with your boyfriend, being yelled at by an over-emotional mother and hysterical grandmother (whose sole aim in life seems to be to get me married off to a suitable Bong chap), with a throb-throb-throb in the head (a sure sign of a quality hangover), when you start regretting putting that glass (or rather, glasses) of rum to your lips in the first place.

Then starts the very process that makes the entire day suck just that much more. Metro trains, an unbroken bond that connects me to Gurgaon every single day, are full. Each train at Rajiv Chowk. Every train at Rajiv Chowk. It is impossible to get in without being stepped over, having your t-shirt pulled, having a woman’s hair tickle you in the nostrils, having someone sidle up so close to you that you can count the freckles on her face and smell their breath (they have bad breath, just my luck). So close that if someone farts, the smell is unimaginable. Somehow, you manage to board – after much pushing, pulling, jostling (and other such suitable words). Women are hoarded in like cattle, there is no place to move a centimetre. You flow in with the crowd, you flow out with the crowd – like water in a river, the crowd carries you with it. You don’t need to do a thing, just stand immoveable in the corner, if you are lucky enough, for that is where people will not smack you, albeit unintentionally, in the face. Or if you are mighty unlucky, you might be plonked by the crowd in its very middle. In that event, even an entire police force cannot help you, you are at the mercy of the very crowd that put you there, and must be aware of when to get out at Central Secretariat and when to get in, without disturbing the woman standing next to you, busy filing her nails and giving you a murderous stare, for having the audacity to step too close to Her Highness in that crowded train and having the temerity to fuck up her nails.

You walk into office. It’s the start of the month, you need to get cracking with a hundred stories. Calls need to be made, pricey PR people need to be contended with. It’s annoying when an athlete you call refuses to answer her telephone. You are left with no choice but to fret and fume, but constantly keep trying the number, only because you need to speak to them, get a few quotes, ask them how their training is, and what they expect in the next tournament. Meanwhile, the office telephone refuses to work – it has an uncanny ability to switch itself off on Mondays, and no amount of complaining to the “personnel/HR” department will help (who are themselves sulking for reasons only they know). Graham Bell’s invention is hell bent on sucking out my very soul, in the process making a Monday seem that much worse. So I have no option but to make ALL calls from my mobile number, which obviously leads to an inflated bill, especially if an athlete is in a supremely chatty mood. There, from a bill in three digits, I can easily expect one in four digits the next month.

Now, time to book a few tickets for a holiday next month. I am unable to make payments on Cleartrip as its chocolate chip/oatmeal and raisin “cookies” have been disabled, or some such humbug, and I need to placate it with a generous offering. I try my system, I try another colleague’s laptop. No luck. I move on to a third desktop, all this while cursing and grumbling under my breath at an inanimate object. Choicest abuses and cuss words flow easily out of my mouth, Leslie has christened me the “Virat Kohli of Sports Illustrated”. (Should I be pleased? I don’t really know.) As luck would have it, Cleartrip decides to troll me when what I have in my bank account is just the amount needed to cover the costs of those flight tickets. Payment falls through the first time, the website says the money has not been debited from my account and the tickets have not been booked. Just as I am about to heave a sigh of relief, I get a text message from my bank, informing me that Rs 10,000 have been debited. I try again, and in that short space of FOUR MINUTES, the airfare has gone up by 400 bucks. No big deal, but for a poor hack short on cash, that is the equivalent of four thousand bucks. I book the tickets again, and the money is debited again. Holy moly Damien Comolli! I have just made transactions for almost 27,000 in the space of 18 minutes, which effectively has wiped out whatever is left of my salary. Which means I have to manage on a pittance for the next week. Mondays have this extraordinary ability to make you smile. And groan. And weep at the same time. Not tears of joy, although.

Yes, so I hate Mondays. I can grit my teeth and keep repeating that statement over and over again, but it would do nothing to deny the fact that the first day of the week loves to troll me, any way that it could find. Loss of money? Check. Loss of mental peace? Check. Thinking about how to go through the next week with less than 2k in your account? Check. Having annoyingly cheerful bank freaks call you up, asking if you need a car loan or home loan when you can afford neither? Check. Citibank informing (through mail AND text AND a cheerful call) that the minimum balance in your account, from March 2013, needs to be Rs 2,00,000, but since you are a “special and privileged” customer, they will deign to reduce it to Rs 1,00,000, failing which you have to pay Rs 500 as penalty every month? Super check, I have never even gotten close to a quarter of that amount in the bank account in my three years of work.

So, Monday? How are you going to get even better? Surprise me.

P.S. These are just "a few" things that happen each Monday. The list, inevitably, is longer.

Song of The Day: Manic Monday (The Bangles).