All In the Swivel of A chair

Perhaps, when a human being sits on a swivel –chair, his /her head swirls too swift to rest firm on shoulders.

The first time I encountered the swivel effect was when I was eight years old. I watched a little friend hold out one delicious cookie at another hungry friend. And just when the hungry one would almost hopefully reach for the cookie, the ‘swivel’ little friend would withdraw and pop the cookie, take a bite and smile down at the taken aback look of the other. Then, since too small for  a swivel chair, every time a cookie was offered as available and denied, the giver would swing his little legs to and fro.

The second time I watched the swivel when the head of an educational institution sent her swivel chair crashing against the wall. It was a display of the impatience of power against the watchman who had delayed opening the gates by the expected five minutes.

I watched how shoes when delayed a polish could fly across a floor to prove power to an orderly.  

Through the years I watched the human swirl on a swivel chair.

The swivel of  a chair can swivel in pomposity. It can say, “Of course you are qualified and talented but you are too young to sit beside us. Come back here after ten or fifteen years when you attain the age we entered this job.”

It can swivel in sarcasm as when someone said, “Hereafter you shall play a hopeless game”

It can make someone slight a query of details in his or her familiar field. It can make someone feel self-important enough to mistake a query for a curried favour.

It can swivel on reckless display of power and nonchalance as when someone you trusted drives you late for an aptitude exam and states, “so what if you reached a 2.30 exam by 2.35”

And sometimes if you refuse to be a puppet under control strings, it can swivel harsh and loud, “Hereafter you will never have access to a job anywhere. And whatever happens to you there will be nobody to question or enquire”

Perhaps it is all in the swivel of a chair. Or still perhaps it is more in the swirl of a human head that tilts balance under the frenzy of a sense of power.