96. Dial 'M' for marriage

When are you going to get married ? - my parents to me
Did you know, Mr.Sharma's daughter got married to a Spanish transvestite it seems - 'Aaj Tak' to me
We just uploaded our honeymoon pics on Facebook - the couple to every1 on fb 
You've got gray hair. Its time to get married - a wicked banshee to me
Kaushik's marriage was very grand. They spent 35 lakhs on the function alone - my grandma to my ma
That Niraj asshole is married. Even he aint a virgin anymore(or so he thinks) - a jilted lover to me 
What kind of girl are you looking for? Tell us son - a know-it-all uncle to me
By the time I finish my PHD, your second wife's third son would be in engineering. (ok this was a bit off the mark, but its a marriage one liner nonetheless) - a joke amongst a circle of friends
The makeovers which women go thru to start looking 'marry-able' nowadays would put Jassi to shame - me to all you readers :)

So much of banter around the 'M' word nowadays, its kinda giving me the creeps. If you have to make fun of someone, take a dig at him/her still being unmarried. If you wanna brag about your friend's uncle's status, talk about the way he conducted his daughter's marriage. Its everywhere, like a plague, a virus.

Family ties

You really hate it when ppl at home start to quiz you on marriage.
Mom : Son, when do you plan to get married ?
Me : Not for another two years at least
Mom : 2 years aaa (followed by a long pause and a contorted disappointed face expression)

Hell, they were not so upset even when I messed up my IIT-JEE entrance. You also hate it when some know-it-all-uncles and cant-talk-about-anything-else aunties pass snide remarks and try to be witty(read shitty) at your expense. And you can't care less about all the dowry talk, the money spent in conducting an arbit third degree cousin's wedding whom you've never met and don't give a shit about.


Peer pressure

Everyone, I mean absolutely everyone around you is getting married. Be it your colleague, your clg senior, your junior and even your office janitor. They've all found their 'love of their life' apparently. So much so that two friends in college who are married now hang out with their wives. Its turned into the classic - Hum do hamaare do thing.

This 'find your love' process is not for everyone...especially for those who aint rich or smart or both.
Retard : Dude, we're neither rich nor smart, how will we ever get a girl ?Even if a girl does like me...I wonder, there's gotto be something wrong with her to like a boner like me!

And when you see that one married batchmate of yours has added another married batchmate's wife on facebook, you wanna laugh until your lungs give way.

Rejections

You get to hear weird reasons for rejecting proposals, both by the men and the women folk.

He doesn't want to settle in the US

He doesn't know whether he wants to or doesn't want to settle in the US

He said he could not cook and was looking for someone who dint need his help

He looks like Prakash Raj

She has a tattoo

She hung out with the rival gang in college

She has crooked teeth

She won't be able to get enuf dowry

Beats me. If you don't wanna get married, just say it. Sometimes, there are no reasons for what we do (like we did engineering....then we did an mba too...all without reason :p)  


Secret agent 007

At times, you may be given secret-agent-like assignments to find out details about people you don't know. This is a part of the background check that both the sides(the bride and the groom) indulge in, to dig deep and look out for murky details. That person may be your colleague at work or may have been your senior/junior in college or may have no connection with you watsoever. But you gotto make the connections, make it happen. Because 'they' want all the details and you are the one they are banking on for 'em(all this without the other person knowing of this).

At times, you may be asked to give opinions on people you know a little, no matter how little that is. The questions may range from the regular ones like a 'ladka/ladki ka chakkar' or a 'smoke/drink ka chakkar' to some weird ones like a 'Is there a mole on the nose?' or a 'Is that a toupee?' or a 'Does her ex-boyfriend's name start with M?'. 

So much of marriage talk around, can I be blamed for writing this post centered around it :)

95. Burnt your fingers

The last couple of months have been nothing short of splendid. After having had a life-scarring tenure at my previous job, I needed this welcome change real bad. Its all relativity. The things that I could/did not appreciate earlier have started meaning so much to me now.

The big guy who'd come to give the welcome address on the day of joining said (yes, this is my third job joining day, its kinda getting boring now) - 'You guys have burnt your fingers in the outside world and then come to us, the mothership. So we expect you to appreciate what we're offering and also respect it by not jumping to another job in the near future'.

Every ounce of watever he'd said made sense. Not only do I like this place, i have also started living well. When I say living well, what I mean is that I am making/finding time to get up on time, eat on time, go to work on time, read good books , goto a gym, catch up with old friends and chill at hangouts on weekends. I've learnt to balance my time, appreciate watever upar-vala (god, the cosmic truth) has given me and am trying my best to live well :)

This post is just a happy overtone. Nothing funny about it (intentional or unintentional)

94. With the hair specialist

The title takes its inspiration from Stephen Leacock's 'With the photographer' in which the author conveys the hardships he faces when he goes to a photographer to get his picture taken. I've given this an MBA touch by incorporating this post into a 'buyer decision making framework' which has 5 stages apparently.

Stage 1 : Problem Recognition (Realization dawns)

One fine day, you go take a look at yourself in the mirror. You focus on the hair...your image turns black&white and you suddenly start to hear shallow echoes from the background.

(echo) you don't need a comb anymore...ha ha (/echo)
(echo) taklu uncle (/echo)
(echo) you balding balderdash (/echo)
(echo) An idea can change your life (/echo)

And then you resolve to do something about it. You don't know what or how. But you decide to be a 'self-starter' (fake MBA-jargon)

Stage 2 : Information Search (Looking for help from anywhere and everywhere)

Suddenly, you start paying attention to all the 'Before-After' ads in the TV and newspapers. You also think twice before deleting every 'hair-growth-promotion' SMS that you get from a certain homeopath(et)ic firm. You start looking for receding hair-lines in people just to get the reassurance that you aint the only one who is losing hair by the second. You also consider going to the 'baal-vaale yogi Baba' who lives in the nearby colony (this after going through a pamphlet circulated in the neighborhood in which the Baba guarantees lush green(oops black) hair within one month of praying and chewing herbs)You also let your good friends know about the hair-situation.

Stage 3 : Evaluation of alternatives (what makes more sense)

One of your friends tells you that he'd been to a hair-specialist sometime back and also that he's the best guy in town. He promises to take you to his clinic and walk you through the entire process of meeting the doc and then buying the meds from the store nearby. You realize that of all the available options, this one seems sensible(although the neighborhood Baba does seem to be an ecnomical option).

Stage 4 : Product purchase (Enter the dragon)

Its show time. You finally muster up enough courage to go to the clinic. You're surprised to see the queue of patients waiting outside. It is then that your friend calms you down saying that it gets even worse on the weekends. You're also surprised to see a lot of women folk there (not the bald ones, but ones with long and silky hair). Your doubt is addressed by the friend who says 'everyone has hair everywhere, so the problems are not just with the loss of hair'.

After having waited for about an hour, you're asked to enter the doc's room.  You get the shock of your life when you see that the doc himself is completely bald. Yes, not one strand of hair on his brown shiny well-oiled scalp. You begin to wonder if this guy is any good at what he does. Then you resign to the fact that you've been ripped off and decide to just go through the motions and get over with it.

The doc pulls out a huge pipe-like gizmo which is hanging from the ceiling. He then holds your head and thrusts it into the pipe-like machine. Some bright lights flash, you're blinded for a while and the next thing you know, there are some really weird pictures in front of you. You're reminded of the pictures of the surface of the Moon which you were shown in primary school. But the doc blows your brains out when he says that those are the pictures of your head.

He then asks you a barrage of uncomfy questions like 'Are you married?', 'If so, are you straight?', 'Are you unmarried but straight and sexually active?', 'Are you married but bisexually impotent?', 'Did you steal the mints on the table when I was taking your scans?'....You try your level best to be accurate, but you invariably get stumped.

He then pulls out his prescription pad and writes out 25 lines of gibberish at the speed of light. tells you to take 6 pills and 5 tonics and apply 4 lotions to your head, 3 times a day. He also tells you to follow a diet of 2 olives for breakfast, a bowl of ruminated grass for lunch and dry fruit skins for dinner.

He then asks you to come back for a check-up after a month(if you're alive until then).

Stage 5 : Post purchase behavior (the WTF just happened stage)

You diligently take the meds and follow the diet for a month, only to find that the hair-situation is gettin worse than what it was earlier. You curse your friend for having made you burn a hole in your pocket, courtesy the bald and expensive hair-specialist. You decide to take the leap of faith and head to the neighborhood Baba as the last and final hope.

And the saga continues...

93. When you quit your job

The act of 'quitting a job' has all the elements required to make a masala movie. There's action, drama and suspense, both before and after you've put down your papers.

Ideally, this is how a 'resignation' conversation should look like.

You : Sir, I am putting down my papers today.
Boss : Why ?
You : I liked something else.
Boss : Ok. Good luck with that.

--- End of story ---

But this isn't what happens at our workplaces. This movie starts out like a thriller and ends up like a romantic-comedy gone wrong.

Stage 1 : The build-up

Like any movie plot, in the build-up, you don't seem to like what you're doing at work. Your manager blames you for all the problems in office (which includes his PA's affair with the maid he likes), throwing expletives at you in all the regional languages that he knows. You're staying away from home, earning lesser than friends and enemies and your workplace is filled with ass-licking colleagues whom you can't go to and crib.

This unleashes 'The Hulk' from within, you scream in an empty room, speak to the lizards and ants nearby and decide that enough is enough. That is when you make a promise to yourself, that you will hunt relentlessly for new jobs(and to remove the air from your manager's car before leaving for home in the evening)

Stage 2 : The hunt

This is where you work like an undercover MI-6 agent, covering all your tracks and applying to every possible job opening in the country. You still keep the smiling face at work, while plotting lo leave that wretched place. You wait endlessly for an interview call. You get a few. You run out of regular reasons and so give flimsy excuses to take leave from work to go give those interviews. 'It's my fifth marriage proposal, can't mess it up after the first 4 rejects' or 'My neighbor's dog ate my life insurance papers' or 'I'm going to a hair-loss specialist' are excuses that you come up with.

Stage 3 : Controlled elation

You have converted one(or more) of the interview calls. Have been asked to join. You're elated that you're going to leave this place soon. But you're waiting for the right time(in many cases, the 1st of the next month) to put down your papers. Until then, although you're on top of the world, you continue to work with the same constipated-under-pressure look that your boss is familiar with.

Stage 4 : The moment

Butterflies in the stomach, pancreas and everywhere else. You practice your speech in front of the mirror, move all your important mails and your pay slips to a personal email id and then go see the boss.  You tell him that you are quitting work. He gives you the 'Why the sudden rash decision ? think about it and let me know in the evening' routine, to which you give back the 'I have given it enough thought and I have made up my mind' routine and leave his cabin.

Stage 5 : The break-up

It feels like a relationship gone-awry when you start having the break-up-ish kind of conversations with your boss and the HR people for the next couple of days. These are a few of the standard lines they use when we employees break-up with the company.

Why are you leaving us ? (duhh...someone else is paying better)

Why did you join us if you had to leave us ? (duhh...doesn't everyone do that at some point or the other ?)

We din't expect this from you. We thought you would be loyal (wth...I aint married to you bozos, I just work where you work)

All you men are the same, pigs! (well, they dint say this, just added it in for the dramatic effect)

Stage 6 : The feel-sad time (notice period)

This is the time in a movie where both the hero and heroine lie on their beds and stare at the ceiling fan while a slow drab song plays in the background, meant to convey the sadness which the actors faces aren't able to convey. Similarly, this is the time when you take a chill pill, lie down and enjoy the last few days of work without working. Meanwhile, the HR ppl are sad, because they need to find a replacement for you, which is a whole lot of work.


Stage 7 : The patch-up

Like in all Indian movies, the lead actor and actress patch up in the end and the happily live ever after. Over here, the HRs accept your resignation letter and call you for the exit interview. Them and you have a nice chat and end things on a happy note(although both are cursing each other in their heads). And once you get your hands on the experience and relieving letter, you walk out a free bird, like Andy Dufresne does in 'Shawshank Redemption'.

And friends, that's how its done in this country. This is how we quit. Quite intriguing na :)

92. 25*

Today, some of the witty one-liners that I've been subject to are as follows

Have fun on your silver-jubilee
You have moved to  new exchequer
You are a certified uncle now
So you're 25...huh, get married at least this year
How does it feel after completing a quarter of a century
Go for morning walks and talk to neighbors about their kids

A friend of mine had his 25th a couple of weeks back. He said "Its been 25 yrs of existence without any achievements or accomplishments." This holds true even in my case. And I just happened to read a graduation speech by some uber-genius who says that after 25, its only downhill. Pro'ly the worst time to stumble upon such an inspiring speech.I pulled my hair in anger, only to find  couple of white strands in my hand after the act of pulling :)

Apart from the occasional gain in weight and the loss of hair, the last year has been a really rollicking one.

Got a job on campus pretty quick (day 0 as they call it)

Hardly attended any lectures (was there on campus for like 20 days during the whole of the last term)

Played a whole lot of CS in the lab at nights, amazing fun. Clan matches, public server and tournaments....made a couple of good friends too, CS friends :)

Visited some gr8 places with friends and family - Rishikesh, Agra, Jaipur, Jodhpur, Jaisalmer etc etc

Won an event worth 40k and all I did to win it was remember a few numbers right

Was the center of our insti's own MMS scandal (MMS is a movie making event, fyi) :)

Got my degree from Mr.Kamal Nath amidst great fanfare 

Bonded with old chums after a long long time

Loads of parties and movies during the idle time before joining work

Parted with two very good friends

Visited tons of i-would-never-have-gone-to-otherwise places - Anand, Rajkot, Junagadh, Surat, Vizag etc etc

Bought a two wheeler and also started learning to ride it (yes, i am 25 and i don't know how to ride a 2 wheeler yet)

Got screwed doing sales

Quit work, which was quite an experience in itself. The HRs made me feel like I was breaking up with 

them

Have a couple of jobs to consider before joining, am walking on a tight rope...dunno where I'll land

Its been good, pretty good, in a different way though.

All in all, a very happening year, must say.

91. The northie - southie squabble

For all the enlightened nitwits out there, lets get one thing straight. Tamil Nadu is not the only state in south-India. In case u missed your class on Geography in primary school, South India has got 4 states with people speaking different languages and having having distinctly different cultures. 

I've witnessed some apalling misconceptions that normally-intelligent-looking ppl have about we ppl from down South. Thought I'd clear some over here, in an attempt to promote unity in diversity (which again is a sham. India is regional.Period. No matter how much you go denying it)

No, 'south-indian' is not a language! Neither is south-india a state, with Chennai as its capital.

No, south-indians are not decendents of Raavan. Get real ppl!!! 

No, Rajnikanth is not the only actor down south.

No, all south-indian movies do not, i repeat, DO NOT have Rajnikanth-ish stunts. Its like saying that all Hindi movies have Mithun-ish stunts or hero-heroines running around trees in song sequences.

No, south-indians needn't necessarily have relatives in Sri Lanka or the US or the Gulf.

No, Telangana agitation is not a demand for a seperate country, atleast yet.

No, dont stare at a south-indian when he/she orders a Naan or a Roti at a restaurant. You needn't give him/her  the "oh-my-gosh-i-thought-you-guys-are-supposed-to-only-order-and-eat-rice-everywhere" gaze.

And no, this doesn't end here. A lot more unpleasantly funny and ridiculously inedible perceptions have been formed against Indians who hail form the 4 states down south.

Need your comments on this one, if you have a thing or two to say (which you surely will, coz this is a hot-topic)    ;)

90. Ambition

Here's a popular quote from the movie Jackie Brown, directed by Quentin Tarantino.

Picture this. Ordell is a gun peddler while Melanie is his blonde girlfriend who does nothing all day except smoke pot.

Ordell Robbie: Goddamn girl, you gettin' high already? It's just 2 o'clock!
Melanie: [chuckling] It's that late?
Ordell Robbie: You know you smoke too much of that shit, that shit gonna rob you of your own ambition.
Melanie: Not if your ambition is to get high and watch TV...

And that was the Kodak moment for me. I studied, tried my hand at sports and extra-currics, wrote shitloads of exams, stayed at places away from home, worked away from home... I've been doing all of this alright, but why ? I don't have an ambition. Hell even Melanie has one, one of smoking pot and watching tv. I don't think I'd like that. I've been sapped out of whatever little interest I had in the few things that I was interested in. Its been a gradual transformation, one whose beginning I am unable to trace.

 I never thought that I'd be saying this so soon, but i guess its time for me to fall back on religion :) You know, the pilgrimages, the long prayer sessions and the likes. Will help me keep my mind off the other horrible thoughts and things around.

89. Call troubles

Have not been able to learn/understand the art of talking on a phone, even after 24 yrs of existence. I'm not kidding. I just don't know how to talk on the phone, be it the land-line or the cellphone.

To a regular person, this may seem trivial. What's the big deal in picking up a phone and talking away. But to people who think a whole lot more than necessary and thus bungle up even the simplest of things, I think i will make sense.

How to pick up calls from ppl you don't like and not leave those calls for later(which'll never come)

How to initiate a conversation - not just the hello, but the stuff that comes between the hello and the main reason behind the call

How to handle the long pauses in between - small time slices of complete silence are unpalatable, just too complicated to deal with

How to think of pleasantries that would be appropriate

How to convincingly convey those pleasantries and not sound like a recitation exercise

How to mask your voice when you've just got out of bed but aren't supposed to sound like that

How to cut short the call and say goodbye

And so the struggle continues...may be 3G may come to my rescue with stuff like video calling

88. Killer english

If you ever wondered how words could kill, here's some evidence.

This was at a movie-hall near the bus-station. Pronounced as Ball-cone-y 

This was taken in a mobile store. 'Avial' is a South Indian delicacy fyi. The moment i read this, i got home-sick :s

This is how we spell 'distributor' in this place

To all my juniors at IMT, this is how we fill the 'Achievements' and 'Hobbies' section in the CV

Who are these 'Outers' ? Are they anticipating an alien invasion ?

This one takes the cake. Amazing !

87. 10/10/10

6 friends, all working in seperate firms, met up on the 10th of this month (ie 10-10-10). This was their first meeting since they'd graduated from college in March. And it goes like this -

Friend 1 : What a date we've finally met on. Its got a zing to it. 10/10/10. Such a pattern wont repeat until 11/11/11, this really is a special day.

Frnd 2 : Yea. We all would have either experienced or done something special today. At least I did. I got a pay hike and I will be going to Germany on an off-shore assignment. What about you guys ?

Frnd 3 : Nice. I won the 'shining star' award for the 17th time in as many weeks. Oh wait, its given once every two weeks i think.

Frnd 4 : I accidentally collided with the sexiest siren in office during b'fast and again during lunch. We exchanged numbers. I'm the king of the world.

Frnd 5 : My department has undergone some restructuring and I will be my boss' new boss from now on. This day couldn't get any better!

Frnd 6 just kept staring at the glass of water in front of him, keeping mum the whole time. All the others asked him in chorus "What happened to you today ?".

To which he said : I made my resume today...FML

86. The overseas send-off

Hindu mythology says that there are only three major events in a person's lifetime. One birth, two marriage and three death. And it also says that since you are fully conscious only during one of these three events, you better celebrate it with all possible grandeur and make it memorable.

But in the life of an Indian 'ex-teen but yet-to-be-called-uncle' youth, there's one other event that's as eventful and memorable as the other three, and this one occurs when that person is fully conscious too. Wondering what I'm talking about ? Yes, its the first trip abroad/overseas for 'higher' studies. That is when you get overwhelmed by the 'Oh I'm gonna be an NRI...I'm going to the developed world....the land of many more opportunities...where the money is good and the chicks are better...where there's plenty to explore and enjoy...where the beer flows like water' feeling .

Once the Visa and the I20 are in hand, pandemonium sets in. Resigning from the work-place, throwing farewell parties, getting sentimental about leaving all your co-workers, shopping a million times for a zillion things, learning to cook, packing all the stuff, buying some more stuff, then re-packing all the stuff, meanwhile getting in touch with all friends (new and old) and letting them know of your departure date(hoping they come send you off at the airport).

You start counting the days to the departure date with a mixture of excitement, enthusiasm, confusion and a fear of what the unknown new world has in store ahead. It's pretty much like waiting for the wedding day, where you have the bride getting all elated and decorated in the last few days while the groom develops cold feet due to fear of commitment. You splurge everywhere on everything – on the necessary, the unnecessary, the unnecessary-now-but-maybe-necessary-later, the necessary-now-unnecessary-later, and the dad-thinks-its-necessary-because-Raju-uncle’s-son-took-it-along stuff. Your savings get wiped out in a jiffy, and then you begin to sport the t-shirt with the logo ‘My dad is my ATM’ and live true to the logo.

Your mom makes you go helter-skelter all over the kitchen trying to teach you to cook basic stuff. Your friends make fun of the remnants of the dried lentils and pulses that they find on your hair when you go to meet them after the disastrous cooking sessions. Your uncles and aunts ask you to go visit some specific temples to get visas, and some others to get call letters from particular universities. Dad keeps giving you career advice every time he catches you taking a break after weighing the bags and finding out that they’re all packed just right.

And then there is the climax at the airport. There’s a colossal wastage of time and resources at the airport. Twenty plus people driving in 4 to 5 cars come to send off this one guy/gal whom they have seen all this while in life ( 20 odd years). They come all the way to the airport, spending on the fuel and the food and singing all the way in cars or hired cabs. But the irony is that they don’t pay that little extra amount on the entry ticket to get into the airport. They all huddle outside, at the entry point, and keep waving like there’s no tomorrow.

It can’t get more dramatic than this. People waving, grandmas crying, moms wiping the sweat off their brows, dads sipping on coffee and scratching their heads thinking as to whether their children have taken the right decision or not. Then comes the final stretch, from the entrance to the sliding doors, the stretch that you have to take alone, the stretch where you keep looking back each second at all that you will be missing henceforth. Alas,  and at last, you disappear amidst the chaos within the airport and the send-off is then deemed complete.

It’s quite an amazing, intriguing and tiring event, I must say.

This article is up on themag.in. Read this

85. Telecom sales - An endless elegy

Telecom sales means

endless cups of tea
endless hours at the distributor's back office
endless number of phone calls from anyone and everyone
endless standing at crowded retail outlets waiting for the retailer
endless number of puffs and soft-drinks
endless banter thrown at you by the disgruntled retailer
endless random roaming on the streets in the hot sun
endless pouches of water
endless hunger and the want of eating something nice and heavy
endless craving for the fairer sex (sales being a no-chick job, u wont find any)
endlessly convincing the retailer to sell your product
endlessly meeting new people
endless fake smiles
endless shaking of hands with random ppl
endless parade of goats and cows everywhere u go
endless specks of chewed-paan-masala flying and hitting your face while you are the pillion rider on the masala-chewing-but-eager-to-give-gyaan TSM/TSE's bike

Some gyaan which I have been a recipient of in the last few days is as follows(gems they all are)

Customer aur maut (death) kabhi bhi aa sakthe hain, koi bharosa nahin!

Sachhe aadmi ka saath dene ka aur jhoote aadmi ka band bajaane ka!

Retailer ke yahaan chai nahi peena mathlab honeymoon pe jaake sex nahi karna! (this is the most hilarious one)

Market ki maa-behen ek karne mein jyaada time nahi lagta beta!

84. Fancy corporate post-names/titles : not so amusing anymore

Just saw this on TV. It blew my mind. The WTFness-quotient of the content I saw was so high that its urged my to post it here almost asap.

It turns out that this is pretty old news, but I'm sure not many would've heard of it. Did you ppl know that the Future group has a 'Chief Belief Officer'. And they have a person, a fully-salaried employee for that post too, Dr.Devdutt Pattanaik.

Its not the post exactly, but the model he presented on CNBC that left me flabbergasted. He first says, the 3B model of management is Belief-Behavior-Business. And then he actually goes ahead and draws 3 circles on a chart and connects them linearly to show the relation. Can you believe that??? And the interviewer actually gasped as if she'd seen the Haley's comet. What horseshit ! Unbelievable !

read this - 60 seconds chief
and watch this - My work as a Chief Belief Officer

The ex-COO of the firm in which I previously worked, has been the 'Gardener' of that firm for the past few years. Another post which although sounds creative, is in a gray area with unclear responsibilities and un-quantifiable objectives.

A colleague of mine, who started off his own company handed me his card which read "Mr.XYZ, Founder". The word Founder did have a great zing to it. Much better than the regular CEO or COO or MD.

When I get into an organization, I would want a cool job title, depending on what I join as. Like say

"Awesemolyst" (analyzes awesomeness of the work being done, Barney Stintson style) or

"Head Markgeneer"(a Marketer + engineer) or

"Logisticologist" (an Ops profile for Logistics) or

"Procurement-man"(again, an Ops profile for Procurement)...has the super-hero zing to it :) or

"Chief emotions officer" (one who reads all of Paulo Coelho's books and recommends women-related policies) or

"Chief emoticons officer" (one who recommends all the emoticons that can be used in any official report or e-mail) or

"Tantri, the Pantry Mantri" (one who heads the Pantry staff)

I wouldn't mind a pay-cut for a month or two in return. The cool name is all that the outside world knows about your job. They don't see the ass-kicking nor do they see the ass-prints that your boss has left on your ass by the end of the day. When someone asks me about my designation at work, I'd rather say "Script Detectivologist" than merely saying "Bug-fixer".

83. The career path

Most of us are clueless when it comes to our careers. We don't know what to do next ? Lets face it, we've never known what to do. If you belong to the minority-group of people who have it all figured out and are on-track and are all set to achieve it, I'm not talking about you(although at some stage, you'll figure out that you just can't figure out where you'll go next in your career, unless all you plan to do next is to sit at home and eat curd-rice).

Mom and pop gave us a name, we dint have a say in that. And by the time we even gained enough consciousness to think about it, they put us in a school, to keep us busy....and we kept going to school. They told us to take Math, Phys, Chem in 10+2 and prepare for JEE....and we did it, most of us not even knowing the expanded form of JEE. They told us to do engineering and we went through 4 more years of 'something we dint know why we were doing but we just had to do', coz mom and pop and 'well-wisher aunt' and 'irritating neighboring uncle' thought it would be good to do so.

There's no wonder that after like 20-plus years of little-finger-holding(career spoon feeding), when we're out in the real world searching for work(or while at work), we're at sea. We don't know what to do, where to go, whom to ask for help. All we know is that we want to do something to be something-else but we're yet to figure out what that something or that something-else is. This is a tribute to all the clueless souls, we are the ones who are endlessly in the pursuit of happyness, although our efforts are mostly random and directionless(but what the heck, we try).

82. Learning curves

Was just filling up a form where I was required to fill the 'Languages you know' table. I was tempted to write C, C++, Java, Perl...but considering the fact that it was a pretty important form, went ahead and wrote the usual four.

1. English
2. Hindi
3. Tamil
4. Telugu

The question intrigued me and with all the idle time I'm having right now, all I needed was a poke, however useless the poke was. The question cannot measure the adeptness with which I used or the fluency with which I spoke those languages. I sat about thinking the various extents to which I knew each language, which one was I more comfy with and why. Now for most of the gen pop, the order of the languages one knows follows a predictable pattern. The degree of comfy-ness with the set of languages one knows most generally is as follows.

1.Mother-tongue > 2.English > 3.then by Hindi(if the mother tongue aint Hindi already) > 4. other languages known(if any)

But for me, a TamBrahm born and brought up in Hyd, followed by a 4-year stint in Gujju-land, followed by a 2 yr stint in the North of India, the order of comfy-ness has changed from time to time.

Learning a language is fun and a gradual process. Slowly I've learnt, sometimes also un-learnt the languages I know, un-learnt due to sheer lack of people around to speak that language(for long periods of time). So I thought, why not plot the learning curves of each of the languages I know and see if there's pattern.

And then, I plotted this.....

81. Facebook

Nut 1 : Did you hear what 'pretty-but-shy-and-low-profile' girl has done ?

Nut 2 : Did she come out of the closet ?

Nut 1 : Nah...I'd hate to see that happen though. Can't lose the very few pretty single-and-ready-to-mingle women to lesbianism. It'd be grossly unfair for us 'Aam aadmi' Indian men.

Nut 2 : So what did she do ?

Nut 1 : She updated her relationship status on Facebook. It now reads that she's in a relationship with 'popular-but-dimwit-and-asinine' guy.

Nut 2 : Lemme guess. That update would've been followed by a 100 'likes' and another 250 'congratulations' comments.

Nut 1 : Yea. I read most of 'em, all different variants of the same word. 'congrats','congu','congo', congos','congs','grats'....

Nut 2 : Each wanting to make his/her greeting look different with an irritating overuse and abuse of dots, smileys and exclamations. Retards !

Nut 1 : Don't be so harsh. They're just expressing their emotions.

Nut 2 : Yea right ! That's the new way to show that you're hep and cool. Gone are the good old days when being cool just meant having streaked hair and walking like a punk. With the onset of Facebook, things have changed.Anyways, you seemed to have had a thing for this chick right ?

Nut 1 : Yea I did....sigh...And was quite surprised to hear that she fell for that dumbass. What do girls look for ? I'm really confused.

Nut 2 : They look for 'cool' men.

Nut 1 : I am cool !

Nut 2 : Well, lets see. How often do you update your status on FB ?

Nut 1 : eerrmm....twice a week.

Nut 2 : Way off the mark. Do you have more than 400 ppl whom you don't know as 'friends' on your Friend list ?

Nut 1 : No

Nut 2 : Do you 'Like' every other cool dude/cute chick's status message or photo upload as soon as it happens ?

Nut 1 : No

Nut 2 : Do you take amazingly random and blurry pictures and upload 'em in an album with an even more random name, making it visible and possible for everyone on FB  to comment and 'Like' ?

Nut 1 : No

Nut 2 : Does your 'Religious  views' column have either 'Atheist' or 'Agnostic'.

Nut 1 : No, I'm a regular run-of-the-mill religion follower.

Nut 2 : Well, that aint good enuf. You need to show that you're a 'rebel in quietism'. (The one shitty thing that the movie RDB has done is taught the phrase 'be a rebel' to the masses, but hardly any of us know how, when, why and for what to rebel.)

Nut 1 : Anything else ?

Nut 2 : Well yea. You need to join at least a 100 groups which your fellow dude-mates have joined. For instance, some have joined groups with highly intellectual names like 'Yes wind, thats fine. Mess up my hair. I didn't plan on looking good today', ' It's okay Pluto, I still think you're a planet', ' Insulting people on levels they can't comprehend.' and the likes...

Nut 1 : Wtf !!!

Nut 2 : It gets even better. Install at least 50 applications like 'Who likes you', 'How much does she like you', 'Horoscope of the day', 'Lover of the day', 'Your favorite color of the day', 'Mystic Meg', 'Psychic leg', 'I went to Winnipeg'....Whatever your actual hometown is, update it to Bombay or Delhi, coz that increases the cool quotient of your profile.

Nut 1 : staring blank

Nut 2 : And lastly, update your 'Music' column with some heavy metal and psychedelic bands. Throw in some 'Ingmar Bergman' directed movies in your 'Movies' column. Garnish your 'Books' column with an Arundhati Roy and a Paulo Coelho written-book....and voila....here we have a totally 'cool' FB profile page. Of course, you need to keep googling for intelligent status messages that you'll need to update your profile with, once every 2 hours.

Nut 1 : Balls! I'd rather not look cool that do all this crap. If I've to make a fool out of myself on FB  to have a chance at a girl, I'd rather remain single. I'm alright being single. All this is coz of the demand-supply gap. Screw you Adam Smith.

Nut 2 : Why don't we encourage male-infanticide in villages. That'd be super-cool and balance the demand-supply gap!

Nut 1 : Screw you Adam Smith.....screw you Facebook....sob sob...sob sob...

80. Adjournments

This is with reference to this article

Our Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha get adjourned every now and then, due to the unruly and uncouth behavior of our elected representatives. How much does it cost to conduct a session in parliament? How much does the Indian tax-payer have to pay for the harakiri that our chosen representatives carry out in both the houses of Parliament. Its a disgrace, watching them on TV, having a go at each other as if they are kids in a play-pen.Should there not be a way to gauge the efficiency and effectiveness of these sessions ? Should people not be punished for wasting time and stalling proceedings ?

Here are some instances(videos) where the house has been adjourned in the recent past.

Dec 15th '09 - Lok Sabha Adjourned as MP's spar over Telangana

Dec 16th '09 - Lok Sabha adjourned over price rise

March 11th '10 - The Lok Sabha was adjourned for the day on Wednesday after Mulayam Singh Yadav, Sharad Yadav and Lalu Prasad staged noisy protests demanding that the seven MPs suspended in the Rajya Sabha a day earlier be taken back

March 15th '10 - Opposition members force repeated adjournments on Dantewada attacks

March 16th '10 - The Tharoor-IPL issue

When will our leaders learn to have a civilized dialogue ? Is this the way its done in every other democratic country ? I don't think so. I'm sure this exclusively happens only in our very own Incredible India.

79. Law of conservation of happiness

Nut 1 sees Nut 2 who is staring into nothingness, goes up to him and the following conversation ensues.

Nut 1 : What are you thinking about ?

Nut 2 : I'm confused....

Nut 1 : confused about what ?

Nut 2 : I want my parents to be happy.

Nut 1 : How noble a thought, at 2 in the morning! But, what's there to get confused about in this?

Nut 2 : Well. You see.They say that they're happy if I am happy.

Nut 1 : And your point is ?

Nut 2 : I know they may not be happy about some of the stuff I do that makes me happy. So I end up doing stuff that makes them happy and doing this doesn't make me happy. So they'll not be happy when I'm happy and they'll be happy when I'm not happy. Something's terribly wrong here.

Nut 1 : Its Murphy's Law of conservation of Happiness. Happiness can neither be created nor destroyed. It can only be transferred from one body to another.

Nut 2 : Profound...

78. A computer-less vacation

This has been a one-of-a-kind, in fact, the first of its kind of vacations for me. Yes, a vacation minus the computer makes Jack a dull boy. The motherboard went for a toss. And it’s yet to be repaired and tossed back to its rightful place. Picture this. A room with all the other computer peripherals, tons of DVDs(movies and sitcoms) and a dangling internet cable. And I can’t do nothin with anythin that's around me.

Without the comp, it's become so tough to pass the time now. The dynamics at home are very different from good old school days where me and my bro did the major chunk of the channel surfing on the TV. Outdoor sports like 7 stones, maar n peeti and gully cricket would consume the rest of the timepass time. Now, its only the internet and movies. I've lost all interest in TV. Hate those reality and talent-hunt shows...ugghhh...they're despicable to say the least!

A vacation has its own dynamics and a computer with internet is an integral part of it. Its the one thing that helps you effortlessly sail over all the idle-time patches during the vacation. The prelude to the vacation, I feel, is the most fun part of the entire vacation. The wait for the day to leave for home, the joy when you dust your airbags and stuff it with smelly clothes, the lure of the home-food, the excitement of meeting old pals, endless discussions about which train/flight to take and why...all this is quite exciting. But once you get there, after the initial high of coming back to the home-ground, it all dampens out a little, coz there's nothing much to do!

The weekends are when everyone else is free and you have lots of people to attend to. While the weekdays are so void of any activity that you contemplate doing things like creating spicy toothpastes(pepper, lemon and cardamom), ultra-sweet toothpastes(maple syrup, litchi essence and honey) and non-vegetarian toothpastes(sprinkled with ants and deliciously sliced cockroaches). You also try your hand at melting a 'Mint-o Fresh' candy with just your palms, use the vacuum-cleaner to quick-dry the already semi-dry just-out-of-the-washing-machine clothes, chew a morsel of food in front of the mirror and follow the movement of a particular bit until it gets totally mixed up and can’t be found and last but not the least, give yourself a manicure and a pedicure once every 3 hours.

The very fact that I'm writing such a piece of drivel shows the extent of my joblessness. Oh wait. It would've been better had I tried to write this with my left hand on a glossy chart paper using wax crayons. That would be 'uber'-lame :P

To add fuel to fire, the telecom operators could not have called for a strike at a better time (in the NCR region, where my college is). I just had 50 paise left on my prepaid thing before leaving for home, couldn't get a recharge coz of this blessed strike, hence couldn't receive incoming calls on roaming, hence dint know of the change of electives announcement, hence couldn't change mine on time and hence I'll have to "SEE the GAME!"(Rural Mngmnt), prepare case studies before each lecture (SOM) and attend horrible lectures at 8:30 AM(Strategic Leadership).

I haven't seen the sun in 3 days, haven't shampooed in 6. The Telangana bandhs and the hiked bus-fares have further lowered my already low inclinations to step out of the house. This has by far been the worst vacation in a long time. It’s yet to end but I don’t see it getting any better unless an Xbox 360 or a Gisele Bundchen drop on my lap.

Dated : Jan 13th '10

77. To and fro

Lemme begin with one of Seinfeld's bits(during one of his stand-up shows)

"You know, why we’re here? To be out, this is out…and out is one of the single most enjoyable experiences of life. People…did you ever hear people talking about “We should go out”? This is what they’re talking about…this whole thing, we’re all out now, no one is home. Not one person here is home, we’re all out! There are people trying to find us, they don’t know where we are. “Did you ring?, I can’t find him.” “Where did he go?” “He didn’t tell me where he was going”. He must have gone out. You wanna go out: you get ready, you pick out the clothes, right? You take the shower, you get all ready, get the cash, get your friends, the car, the spot, the reservation…There you’re staring around, what do you do? You go: “We gotta be getting back”. Once you’re out, you wanna get back! You wanna go to sleep, you wanna get up, you wanna go out again tomorrow, right? Where ever you are in life, it’s my feeling, you’ve gotta go."

Right from the time I started going to school, school was the 'out' for me. Once I'd get back from school, the routine would be to drink some Bournvita and rush 'out' to the playground. When it'd get dark, it was time to get back home, have supper and end the day. My life comprised of many such micro-cycles of "in and out", "to and fro" everyday. Every now and then, there would be the long vacation(once or twice a year) where we'd be 'out'  for a couple of days or so, and then get back to the trivialities and banalities of daily life.

Once the uniform-days got over, by some freaky twist of fate(am yet to know whether it was for the better or worse), I ended up in a university that was 'far' from my place. I mean real far. My definition of 'far' took a real big change. Until then, I'd always crib that my coaching center was 45 mins from my place, was very 'far'. But this was a different 'far' (24 hrs by train). It was a 'far' from where you couldn't return home daily. A 'far' from where your parents could not keep a tab on what you were doing, a 'far' so far that no one in your earlier "world" could see or know of the antics you were up to, unless you told them yourself.

The power was with me. I could decide what to tell, when to tell, what to do and when to do. I was 'out', and it was totally on me to decide when all to get 'back' home from the 'out'. Initially, it was thrilling, having all that decision making power. 'The power to make your own destiny' as the wise fools put it. Planning a trip back home was never easy. The challenge was to combine the holidays with the non-volatile working days so as to minimize the effect of the wraths from the profs(estimating their tantrums and surprise quizzes) and also to not miss any important event in and around college(read: cultural/fashion/rock shows).

But there was always this urge to go home, to get a hero's welcome, to meet old pals, to catch up with the trends in the city, to attend those boring functions sporting  the "sheepish constipated smiley look" all through and to get recharged by eating some gr8 home food. And then, it would be time to get 'back'...Back to the 'out' which had become the new 'in'. Hostel was the new home and the original home became the 'out'. I'd get back to college, all recharged and fresh, with my airbags filled with home food, all set to take on the world. But after sometime (read: 2 months or so), I'd find myself on the losing end of the battle, all drained out and all set to get back home.

But here's the other deal. Each time that you do come back home, you notice that things have changed. And if you've come back after a reasonably long time, then you're at sea unable to cope up with what's happening around. Slowly but surely, there's an alienation of sorts. You are treated more like a guest, offered all the comforts and liberties (unlike earlier, when you'd be accountable for each and everything) and you just can't help it. I remember the time in class 12 when I was lambasted for getting back an hour (or two) later than expected. A year later (in UG), when I did something similar, the response was radically different.

I've been oscillating "to-and-fro" between home and away for the last 7 years now, still not sure as to which is the 'home' and which is the 'away'. If it depends on just the quantum of time that one spends in a physical place, then it’s evident and elementary. But it’s not so simple. If you look at it qualitatively, the one week at home (the one with the parents + siblings) can be more worthwhile and create more memories than the 2 odd months in a hostel or at a PG accommodation.

On one end, I envy those buggers who get to stay at home all their lives, or at least get a job back in their home town (or close to it) after a brief hiatus away from home (for their UG or PG). But I consider myself luckier than those few who've left their homes for distant lands across the seven seas and cannot return home as and when they want to. The fact is, in this new westernized-India, moving away has become an integral part of our lifestyle. But our cultural and homely-roots keep pulling us back with almost as much force, time and again. I’m tired of this see-sawing. Is there no way out of this? Can't things be simpler....sigh !