Elevator Pitch

Elevators have of late become quite an integral part of my life. There's nothing unusual about this - since I like millions of others stay in a multi-storey apartment building and my place work is on the top floor of another. This venerable piece of machinery , that automates vertical displacement, controls my access to the outside physical world and enables me to earn my daily bread.

The first 22 years of my life was remarkably elevator free. There were no buildings taller than 3 storeys high in the town I grew up in. Exposure to elevators was through movies like The Towering Inferno. The institute where I studied post high school had one elevator in the main building lobby and was hardly used by students. The building had four floors and we were young and strong enough to ignore the presence of this one elevator.

Slowly as the years have passed, elevators have silently but surely started assuming an increasingly important role in my life. When I started my working life, I shared a chummery in a ten storey residential apartment in suburban Mumbai with 3 other colleagues. When some obscenities were scratched on the elevator walls, I was told that the needle of suspicion pointed towards us bachelors in the chummery. We were quite relieved when a young teenage boy ultimately confessed to have authored the inscriptions.

Elevators have of late also become a laboratory that tests my social skills. Sharing a confined space with acquaintances, familiar faces and strangers does become awkward for me since I am not very good at small talk. What is the best way to handle these brief meeting that lasts till one reaches the destination floor? Should I just greet and smile or do I keep silent? Should I ask the accompanying kid a silly question? Often I end up looking down towards the floor and noticing footwear or I blankly stare at the buttons and the digital displays and pretend to read the safety instructions. These are situations I think where an average American would excel. They usually greet or acknowledge complete strangers (and awkward aliens! ) and can easily start some banter with almost anyone. Indians, and especially people from my native state, are possibly the worst I have seen. Well, there are worse social faux pas that can happen in an elevator - like what Jim Carey's character did in the movie Liar Liar and I am glad I haven't had to face such a situation yet.

Elevators have also started figuring in some technology related conversations I have been having with some of my more geeky colleagues. When we wait for the elevators to stop at our floor, especially during the rush hours in the morning and lunch time, we discover erratic and unexplained behaviour of the gang of elevators. The conversation starts with bugs in software, moves on to real-time system design , formal specifications and more such esoteric topics. The conversation ends when we finally get an entry to the hallowed space.

In the last few weeks I have found myself on multiple occasions using my car key to press the floor buttons instead of touching the thing with my finger. Is a fear of getting some germs or infection working at the back of my mind? Am I protecting the finger which I know will get used subsequently to pick my olfactory organ? Have I inherited some of the traits of my late grandmother? Whatever be the reason, I am also getting a feeling that I should start treating this life supporting machinery with much more respect. Like the business man in G. K. Chesterton's story - The Angry Street , I must acknowledge the machine's role in my life and start treating it more like a human than a metal box with a motor. Lest, after years of indifference and neglect, it decides to become very angry indeed , and start climbing past the top floor, all the way up like the escalator that carried Tom to the golden gates of the Heavenly Express.