An Ode to the Elevator - In Prose

There are so many human inventions that have made our lives easy. And one of these is the elevator or "lift". It has become so much a part of our daily routine that we rarely even acknowledge its existence or its importance. Perhaps, this is the reason why the elevator does certain things to grab our attention in so many minute ways. Minute it is, but very effective.

So this is my Ode to the Elevator.

Please forgive the creative liberty, I am better at prose than poetry.

But I would still prefer to call it an Ode. What else could it be?

(Wow! That did sound kinda like poetry, didn't it? *wink wink*)

So most of us staying in urban areas live in apartment complexes. What other choice do we have? A city made out of seven separate islands, mushed together, which can no longer grow horizontally, has to grow vertically, right?

Only those who still live in the old-fashioned "ground-plus-3" (also called 4 storey buildings) are not using elevators once they reach home. But they still face them at work! Most of them, at least.

We will then, start off with the housing complex lifts. The newer developments have more fancy, steel-doored, closed and claustrophobic type of boxes. But we will talk about the good old, grille double doored, beeping ones. Hehehe. Beeping ones. Yeah, they used to just beep or make strangely classical music sounds back in the days. I am lucky to live in an apartment with a beeping lift. You open the door, it starts beeping, then you close the door and it stops beeping and takes you where you wanna go. Simple.

It doesn't say, "Please close the door. Kripya darwaza bandh kijiye!" So many of them say that these days. It seems like this elevator doesn't want you to open the door under any circumstances!

You know, having a wild imagination can create some really zany images in your mind. 

Whenever I get into this talking lift which keeps telling us to "Please close the door" I always imagine a grumpy faced lady with a frown but paradoxically, an extremely polite voice.She is like this invisible entity who resides inside the lift, like a ghost. If you open the door to enter the lift, she keeps telling you to shut the bloody thing. Once you shut it and press the floor number, she will calm down. But when you reach your destination and try to get out of the lift, she will again get annoyed and tell you to shut it! "Kripya darwaza bandh KIJIYE!"

Then you have a whole lot of other scenarios happening in a regular housing society. You ignore the screaming lady all the time, so sometimes she just shuts up completely. It simply means that the elevator breaks down. I stay on the 5th floor and in the past 10 days, the elevator broke down thrice! I come home from work, tired and hallucinating about my bed. But once I reach the building lobby, I realise that I need to climb 5 floors to reach my home! Elevator - why you do this?

We all have quirky neighbours creating their quirky situations. One lady visits another lady. They may have sat and chatted for hours, but when the visitor is leaving, they chat at the doorstep. Visitor calls the elevator, elevator arrives, visitor opens the door but both ladies still keep yapping away. Visitor keeps moving inside the elevator. One. Step. At. A. Time. Each step taking 5 minutes. BECAUSE THEY JUST CAN'T STOP YAPPING! And all along, the elevator is screaming, "Please close the door. Just shut it, ok. Shut that damn door, woman!" Well, what I mean is, I would say that if I was the invisible elevator lady.

Just imagine if you are standing outside your door, waiting for the lift and the lift is in the clutches of visitor lady. "Aapki lift mere kabze mein hain." Maybe, you are getting late for work. Or worse, you are going for a movie! Or catching the very specific 9:23 train to somewhere! This yapping lift-kidnapper is making you so very late. If you have to climb down, you may run down the stairs. But what if you need to go upstairs? Like, your bladder is about to burst and you just wanna get inside your home and run to the washroom! And the lift is being held hostage by a couple of chatter-boxes.

Finally, when the lady condescendingly gets into the lift, says all the ta-ta-bye-byes and comes down and gets outta the lift, do you give her that really dirty look she deserves? Yeah! Satisfaction.

But a kid gets in with you. With his or her bike! S/He twists the bike first this way, then that way. Then every possible way to fit it inside the small space. You help, because you want this torture to be over soon! Then you realise that the kid stays a floor below you. So, when s/he gets out, same twisting and turning and other jazz to get the bike out. Do you face this, too? Or is this just me?

Do you go through the nightmare of listening to ghost music/chatter from the elevator? What I mean is, you know you shut the lift doors when you rushed into your own house, but do you know for sure that they did get shut? Do you hear the lift screaming non-stop and wonder who left it open? Is it on my floor? Let me take a peep and see! Oh thank goodness, it is on some other floor. But then, why are those people not shutting the door? Yeah, someone left the door open a tiny bit and lift started screaming after they went away. But people staying on the floor where lift is screaming are ignoring it completely. Someone is on the ground floor, banging on the grille, trying to grab someone's attention that the lift doors are open. So, "please, pretty please, just close the door, man!"

Crazy isn't it! One little elevator and so many things it does to make our day.

Then there is the swanky, steel-shiny, extremely clean office elevator. (They hire house-keeping staff to clean them. So, don't feel too guilty if your housing society lift is not as well-maintained. It works, right?)

My office has 6 elevators, 3 in one row and 3 in the opposite row. It is manufactured by an international company which has a global presence. You will see their elevators in most countries. I guess, this is why they didn't bother with creating a localised lift-lady-ghost-presence. The office lift-ghost lady talks with a strange English accented voice. We have an S floor which is actually the ground floor. There is no basement, but above the S floor, we have 3 parking levels - P1, P2 and P3. 

When the lift opens on the S floor, she informs us that this is S floor (which sounds like, "F flow, some effing floor. How can you name a floor S, what does it stand for, anyway? Just get in or get out on this F Flow")

The 1st and 4th and 5th floors all sound like "fufth flow". While getting off on the 4th floor, I have actually told her, this is not your "fufth flow", this is the "foth flow." But she never listens. Just keeps talking. "Lispy-F flow, going up", "Sevempth flow, going down".

Then there are cameras inside the lift. I wonder what conversation the camera and lift may be having. Imagine a scene like this:

Camera: Hey lift, check it out! Guy wearing floaters and tie!

Elevator: Stop calling me "lift." I am not from around here, you know. Oh, "2nmpth flow, going up!"

Camera: Hey lift! Stop being such a snob. Look at that woman, checking herself out in the mirror. Hey lady, do you know you are being recorded? Hahaha.

Elevator: Ooh, there is a large crowd getting in, I am being crushed. Help! BEEP! BEEP! OVERLOAD! Aaah, that's better. Well. "FUFTH FLOW, going up"

Hey, by the way, have you ever waved at the cameras inside elevators? Just like that, for no reason? Or made faces at them? Please say yes, I don't want to be the only loon here. I wonder what other tortures the camera goes through, eh! *Evil grin*

Commercial buildings also have a separate service elevator hidden away very smartly. It hides away the housekeeping staff taking out the garbage, and other stuff that the white-collared employee never sees. This is not about discrimination. Maybe just to keep things organised so that the outer front of a professional building always look squeaky clean and tidy. Yes, these buildings are sometimes too tidy, aren't they?

At times, the regular elevators are too full and there are too many people waiting to get into the first one that opens on the ground floor (Lispy F Flow). In these situations, I go behind the stairwell and take the service elevator to the "fufth flow". Hehe, now you know my secret.

When a couple of my office's security guys saw me waiting there for the first time, they were quite surprised and amused. So was I, in fact. They had just walked in for their shift and were in their regular clothes. I had never seen them without uniform before this. That is another thing which the service elevator hides. It helps people go to their respective floors in civil clothing where they go to their changing rooms and come out as security staff, or housekeeping staff, or canteen staff.

So I reach my floor and this is a different world altogether. Because this is the chaotic world outside the service elevator. It is scary and spooky with half-torn boxes and broken tiles and cement bags heaped in a corner. I turn another corner to enter the stairwell and pass a few broken chairs and tables and other discarded furniture. Then I go out of a door and enter the stairwell, out another door and into the spic and span entrance lobby of my floor. Now I know where all the broken things go before they are carted off to the scrap dealer. Just a few steps away from each other - one end is neat and professional and swanky. The other end is; meh, who comes here, anyway? Let's just dump stuff!

This area reminds me of the cliched elevator scenes from horror movies or TV serials. The bad-acting-hamming-spooky-music types. Where the elevator is this closed box, an enclosed space, and there is always a girl stuck in it. Miss damsel in distress with no knight in shining armor. Boo hoo. And to add to the drama, she is claustrophobic. And the elevator stalls! Nahiiiiiii....!

Awww, did you get scared? *demon laughter*

The elevator is like an Indian daily soap. It has action, drama, gossip, fun and mystery.

You never know when your next elevator ride may turn into an adventure! (Now, are you scared?)