Doctor.com

“Check the site doctornet.uk.com”, a rough voice bounced over him.

Abhinav turned back. It was his project manager Batra. A stout person, he was just behind him holding a coffee mug in one hand and a burger in the other. Without wasting an iota of time he closed all messenger windows which were open on his desktop. The social network sites were minimized.

Calling back what his boss had asked him to do; he clicked on the Mozilla explorer, the new downloaded web browser. He was happier to operate with that than the old fashioned Internet Explorer. He typed in the title bar and checked for the site.

“Abhinav, I want you to open Doctor.com” Batra sounded impatient.

Abhinav stared at the monitor. He read what he had written. ‘docter.com’. One thing was confirmed. There is some mistake in what he had written. What the fuck? Now how this hell word spells? His fingers moved through the keyboards aimless. He recalled the day when his English teacher scolded him for making mistake in the spelling of ‘Friend’. He forgot to add ‘i’ into the word. His word ‘Frend’ also was sounding the same. He forced himself to think harder. Is it an ‘e’ or an ‘a’ in the word my project manager want? He asked himself.

Abhinav, don’t waste time. Just check it out –DOCTOR.com. This time Batra stressed more on the word.

24 years of age. Right from Kindergarten I am having problem with letters. I never understand where to use vowels. He completed high schooling facing all taunts from teachers. Engineering was completed with high flying colours but still he realized he was many a times a laughing stock due to this problem of his.

With all guts, he once again wrote ‘Doctar.com’. ‘Oh my beloved God, help me out from this situation. Please evolve in front of me as the alphabet which should be actually befitted into the word after‘t’ and before ‘r’, he prayed. Sweat drops emerged on his face from all the pores.

20 years of repeated conscious efforts to improve this problem of his had created a kind of I-Hell-Give-A-Damn attitude towards this. Though initially he always used to feel embarrassed for his silly mistakes, in a later stage he covered all those with his academic performances. He cleared his 12th exams scoring high marks, joined engineering and finally completed masters in business management.

“Abinav, what’s happening? What the hell are you typing? Are you on grass? It is D-O-C-T-O-R.com what I want.” Batra sounded much psyched out. He spelled each alphabet separately and his voice echoed the whole cubicle. Abhinav didn’t feel like looking at others. ‘What will be others thinking about him? An MBA graduate who don’t know the spelling of a very common word. A word, which we start hearing from the age memories are imprinted in our brain.’ He felt like diving deep into some ocean or just running fast to some thick dense forest.

Abhinav typed on the screen, ‘doctor.com’, this time perfectly as dictated by his mentor. Some web page got opened. Batra came forward and checked the site. Clicked here and there, and made his way back to his cabin. Abhinav sat there aghast with a hangdog expression. Some of his colleagues came to him.

One of them kept patting him behind. Abhinav got up from his chair. “Yeah, I do have some problem with vowels. I always make mistakes when words with vowels are written. Now what the fuck I can do about it? I am facing this very bloody problem from the bloody start of my life, from the time I got memories, from the time when I know what bloody fucking thing a language is. Yeah I got some confusion with few letters in my mother tongue and with English too. I tried my best to change that problem, but the bloody hell it hounds me like a dick head, many a times putting me in an awkward position. Now why the hell you people are behind me. Just for another mother fucking laughing stock” Abhinav sat back on his chair. He took the pen in his hand and started twirling in between his fingers.

Everyone surrounding him sat silent.

“Hey, chill man. That’s not a unique problem. We all know you are the best. Its just a small imperfection.” Sidharth, his friend, murmered.

It was a total silence in the cubicle.