Every day I use lifts, though I haven't been able to figure out why they are called 'lifts' because not only do they lift me up, but all too frequently let me down as well. They could possibly be known as Downward-Upward Mobile Platforms, but sadly, DUMP didn't make it. They are everywhere and almost everywhere are known as either lifts or elevators. In that way, they could be said to be uniting the world, creating uniformity. On the other hand if Jonathan Swift were to write Gulliver's Travels today, "Lift" and "Elevator" could quite adequately substitute for where to break boiled eggs from as the reason for the feud between the inhabitants of Lilliput and Blefuscu. Lifts, hence also have the potential to be divisive.
In my life so far, I have come across some pretty strange lifts.
A few years ago I used to live in Bombay. In an old building in a relatively old but posh part of town. The lifts in that building were awesome. In the first few months, I had a rate of lift capture and desired destination achievement of less than 50%. Which meant that in less than half the times that I entered the lift was I successful in getting to where I wanted.
How? You might be tempted to ask. And why, the sharper reader might be inclined to ask did you have to capture lifts?
Let me describe the lifts first. They were old, generally genial, sometimes cantankerous folks, with metal grill doors that one had to physically pull in order to effect ingress to or egress from them. Due to their advanced years, they had memory for exactly one instruction and that too was wiped clean when the grill was opened.
Imagine this:
You get ready to go to work, take your bag and reach the lift lobby. You press the button summoning the lift. In due course protesting and creaking, it arrives, slightly irate at being made to work so early in he morning. You wrestle with the doors and and get in closing the doors after you and start to look for the button for the ground floor. Between this closing the grill and pressing the button you wanted, you chanced fate. If before you pressed the floor someone from another floor pressed the button calling the lift, the lift was captured. No matter how much you pleaded, cajoled or pressed the buttons, it would unerringly take you to that floor as punishment for your tardiness. In the first few weeks, I was captured quite often. Then I caught on and even became a master hunter. Me and my flatmate invented a game by which one would keep score of the number of people captured in a set number of 'takes' each. The person with most captures won. Of course, when you were getting late for office, it took a great deal of practice and hand-ear coordination to both capture a lift and also to ensure that it took you down in time.
That time in my life was particularly fecund when it came to quirky lifts. In my office at that time we had an otherwise nondescript brace of lifts that had been designed particularly peculiarly. For starters, there were two capacious lifts designed to cater to a building that extended to exactly two floors above the ground. And then they quite peculiarly ended such that you had to walk the final half of a flight of steps to reach office.
Another memorable lift I encountered during that period was one that catered simultaneously to two buildings. It had three doors and space for four humans (the rusted plaque said six), sardine style, one of whom was perched on a stool and was the lift attendant. He knew the intricacies of managing the lift. This lift had apparently been built between two adjacent buildings that shared a common wall but were of differing heights overall and differing ceiling heights within floors as well. There were metal grills on three sides and one opaque wall that had the panel of buttons. Years of use had rubbed off whatever arcane symbols had originally resided on those buttons. The lift was also a quadrilateral with all four sides unequal. Between one opaque wall and the smallest grill was wedged a stool on which was perched an ancient, reticent man. He looked not unlike the last surviving caretaker of the Holy Grail. When you entered the lift, you told him the name of the establishment you wished to visit (never the floor, since these things did not matter) and he would press a few buttons and nod and tell you where to get off. Sometimes the entire journey might be a full half-yard, where you would be between floors on one building, seeing only feet near your head and only heads near your feet and be at the proper floor on the other side. I imagined, limbo would be like this - all evidence pointed to you being upside down, but all evidence was incorrect.
This old gentleman was the only person who knew how to operate the lift. Once when he wasn't there, the lift door was padlocked.
Though increasingly I see 'vanilla-cloned' lifts, all is not lost. The lifts in my apartment building have some character. If ever there is a competition for Synchronized Lifts at the Olympics, I am sure the lifts in my apartment building would win hands down.
There are three of them (one being the substitute) that most gracefully descend upon you, the floor marker allowing you to track their stately progress across floors completely in tandem. I can almost imagine them doing gentle, unsmiling, satisfied high-fives on each floor as they make their progress towards you. And when finally they do arrive, the doors open simultaneously, one set welcoming you in and the other grinning coyly at you, winking. That happens when you are lucky, when the grand dames decide to pick you up in the first place. Else they play tag up and down the building while you watch forlornly, trying to fathom whether the four minutes spent waiting for the lift are an investment or a waste and whether you should
Now
Finally
Take the stairs.
I don't even know what convinces them to pick me up on most days.
In fact I have met quite a few lifts that went a long way towards convincing me that they are intelligent beings with a perverted sense of humour. One of the reasons I am convinced that lifts are sentient beings is because just like some other commonly found sentient beings (people) on our planet, each lift is an individual with its own character, its own idiosyncrasies, its own nuttiness. Don't get me wrong, I am not against lifts, at least not so much as I am against people. And all lifts aren't cranky. There are some exceedingly good ones as well.
I can just imagine my lifts saying to each other "So what's the secret word for today?"
"Lilliput." "We'll go once he says that."
Or maybe, they are aliens hiding in plain sight, studying humanity for some nefarious purpose like taking over the world by stranding huge populations of humans on high floors of buildings, leaving the ground relatively easy to take over. Maybe. We'll know soon, one day. I think for a start we need to remove all cameras from lift lobbies.
In my life so far, I have come across some pretty strange lifts.
A few years ago I used to live in Bombay. In an old building in a relatively old but posh part of town. The lifts in that building were awesome. In the first few months, I had a rate of lift capture and desired destination achievement of less than 50%. Which meant that in less than half the times that I entered the lift was I successful in getting to where I wanted.
How? You might be tempted to ask. And why, the sharper reader might be inclined to ask did you have to capture lifts?
Let me describe the lifts first. They were old, generally genial, sometimes cantankerous folks, with metal grill doors that one had to physically pull in order to effect ingress to or egress from them. Due to their advanced years, they had memory for exactly one instruction and that too was wiped clean when the grill was opened.
Imagine this:
You get ready to go to work, take your bag and reach the lift lobby. You press the button summoning the lift. In due course protesting and creaking, it arrives, slightly irate at being made to work so early in he morning. You wrestle with the doors and and get in closing the doors after you and start to look for the button for the ground floor. Between this closing the grill and pressing the button you wanted, you chanced fate. If before you pressed the floor someone from another floor pressed the button calling the lift, the lift was captured. No matter how much you pleaded, cajoled or pressed the buttons, it would unerringly take you to that floor as punishment for your tardiness. In the first few weeks, I was captured quite often. Then I caught on and even became a master hunter. Me and my flatmate invented a game by which one would keep score of the number of people captured in a set number of 'takes' each. The person with most captures won. Of course, when you were getting late for office, it took a great deal of practice and hand-ear coordination to both capture a lift and also to ensure that it took you down in time.
That time in my life was particularly fecund when it came to quirky lifts. In my office at that time we had an otherwise nondescript brace of lifts that had been designed particularly peculiarly. For starters, there were two capacious lifts designed to cater to a building that extended to exactly two floors above the ground. And then they quite peculiarly ended such that you had to walk the final half of a flight of steps to reach office.
Another memorable lift I encountered during that period was one that catered simultaneously to two buildings. It had three doors and space for four humans (the rusted plaque said six), sardine style, one of whom was perched on a stool and was the lift attendant. He knew the intricacies of managing the lift. This lift had apparently been built between two adjacent buildings that shared a common wall but were of differing heights overall and differing ceiling heights within floors as well. There were metal grills on three sides and one opaque wall that had the panel of buttons. Years of use had rubbed off whatever arcane symbols had originally resided on those buttons. The lift was also a quadrilateral with all four sides unequal. Between one opaque wall and the smallest grill was wedged a stool on which was perched an ancient, reticent man. He looked not unlike the last surviving caretaker of the Holy Grail. When you entered the lift, you told him the name of the establishment you wished to visit (never the floor, since these things did not matter) and he would press a few buttons and nod and tell you where to get off. Sometimes the entire journey might be a full half-yard, where you would be between floors on one building, seeing only feet near your head and only heads near your feet and be at the proper floor on the other side. I imagined, limbo would be like this - all evidence pointed to you being upside down, but all evidence was incorrect.
This old gentleman was the only person who knew how to operate the lift. Once when he wasn't there, the lift door was padlocked.
Though increasingly I see 'vanilla-cloned' lifts, all is not lost. The lifts in my apartment building have some character. If ever there is a competition for Synchronized Lifts at the Olympics, I am sure the lifts in my apartment building would win hands down.
There are three of them (one being the substitute) that most gracefully descend upon you, the floor marker allowing you to track their stately progress across floors completely in tandem. I can almost imagine them doing gentle, unsmiling, satisfied high-fives on each floor as they make their progress towards you. And when finally they do arrive, the doors open simultaneously, one set welcoming you in and the other grinning coyly at you, winking. That happens when you are lucky, when the grand dames decide to pick you up in the first place. Else they play tag up and down the building while you watch forlornly, trying to fathom whether the four minutes spent waiting for the lift are an investment or a waste and whether you should
Now
Finally
Take the stairs.
I don't even know what convinces them to pick me up on most days.
In fact I have met quite a few lifts that went a long way towards convincing me that they are intelligent beings with a perverted sense of humour. One of the reasons I am convinced that lifts are sentient beings is because just like some other commonly found sentient beings (people) on our planet, each lift is an individual with its own character, its own idiosyncrasies, its own nuttiness. Don't get me wrong, I am not against lifts, at least not so much as I am against people. And all lifts aren't cranky. There are some exceedingly good ones as well.
I can just imagine my lifts saying to each other "So what's the secret word for today?"
"Lilliput." "We'll go once he says that."
Or maybe, they are aliens hiding in plain sight, studying humanity for some nefarious purpose like taking over the world by stranding huge populations of humans on high floors of buildings, leaving the ground relatively easy to take over. Maybe. We'll know soon, one day. I think for a start we need to remove all cameras from lift lobbies.
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