For a Cap of Cold Drinks

Govinda Rizal

My story begins with a bottle of soft drink open in front of a university retail shop. Soft drink melts me every time the Sun hits me with its piercing rays. It attracts me when my wallet is thick or when a friend nears me for a chat.

Once, I met a person who drank for the bottle caps and made him my friend. There were some pictures hidden on the underside of caps. A correct set of pictures, if found, would make a motorbike, and one can claim it. My newfound cap collector friend knew the exact time I would exit from the university gate and reach before the retail shop. The friend would be there to collect the caps. It continued for a long time.

Once, I was away from university for more than a month. When I returned to the usual duty after the month-long vacation, my friend was no longer in the scene. I took it normally. How long can a person stay a slave of fate and prisoner of advertisement? My friend was relieved from both. Although I missed the friend, I felt a sense of relief.

I graduated from university and took up a job in a training center. My job was to train the participants from/for organizations. I was a new TOT, an active one. One day, an organization offered the center a job to interview the best people for them. It was my first time. My boss at the training center took me and another young trainer like me to his interviewer panel. There were 12 applicants, and we had the freedom to choose three. I had prepared a set of questions, first downloaded randomly from the internet, and then changed into my style.

Just minutes before the interview was to begin, I took out the paper and visually scanned through it. Halfway through it, my boss’s eyes fell on it, followed by his tongue, and finally his fingers. “You have prepared well”, he exclaimed and took it away from me. I was happy because my boss liked my job. I was not hurt an inch when he took my paper for himself. The interview began and took an entire day. Throughout the interview, the images of the cap collector friend hovered around my mind and head. I had forgotten the friend completely for months. I expected my friend to be on the list of applicants. The interview ended, so such a person turned up and I returned home lost in thought.

The job in the training center changed its course from a perennial to a seasonal job. Before it dried completely, I started looking for alternative jobs. I drafted a résumé and sent copies to all categories of jobs that appeared in the dailies. I included every truth and hid just the job in the training center. It was to avoid the center’s people from weaving ways to prevent me from fleeing away from them. A few employers responded, a fewer called for interviews, but I was not on their list of selected people.

At last, I got a night job in a private school. My task was to discipline school children who stayed in a hostel. The first few months were terrible. I pulled up gradually. After almost six months in school, I got a phone call late at night. The caller had conserved my job application and wanted to know if I still wanted a job. I wanted to know which/ what job; the caller wanted to know first if I still needed a job. I replied, “yes.” We fixed an appointment. I was free during the day, so I could go anywhere. I went to meet the appointment. The interview started. All the techniques I summoned as a TOT and as a warden evaporated. I found no words to change my topic. They promised me a humble salary for the job. The job was to go to retail shops and enthusiastically collect bottle caps from instigating to provoking the strangers and bystanders to buy drinks for gifts embedded underneath their caps.

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