Office Humour :)

Maybe I've been in a working environment for too long.. but I found this funnier than the ads posted by desperate and linguistically challenged gais an' gaals looking to be making frands with other "open-minded", "fun-loving" types through DT, HT City, or those online dating/matrimonial websites which I never visit (the very thought!)...

I think its because of the comments... (3 Hours Later: Or maybe not...)


Cover letter: I would be prepared to meet with you at your earliest convenience to discuss what I can do to your company."
I am thinking... a horse's severed head.

Cover letter: "It is my professional objective to obtain a position which allows me to make use of my commuter skills."
I think we can oblige

Cover letter: Weaknesses: "Suffer from prickly heat in summer."
Sounds uncomfortable.

Cover letter: "Enclosed is my resume for your viewing pleasure."
Hold on while I get the chips..

Cover letter: "You are privileged to receive my resume."
We'll try not to let it go to our heads.

Cover letter: "To mature in the field of human behavior."
Having conquered the animal world?

Cover letter: Experience: "10 years of experience in financail budgiting and transactions rigistering."
But limited experience with the spell-check function.

Cover letter: "Please overlook my resume."
too late...

Cover letter: "I'm submitting the attached copy of my resume for your consumption."
Yum.

Cover letter: Skills: "Grate communication skills."
Yes, but can you talk and chop at the same time?

Cover letter: Experience: "Responsibilities included recruiting, screening, interviewing and executing final candidates."
CIA not working out anymore eh?

Cover letter: "Salary demanded - $65,000."
Would you like that in small, unmarked bills?

Cover letter: Education: "B.A. in Loberal Arts."
Did you minor in ear piercing?

Cover letter: "I've updated my resume so it's more appalling to employers."
It has worked…

Cover letter: "My intensity and focus are at inordinately high levels, and my ability to complete projects on time is unspeakable."
Unquestionably Hired!

That Irritated Feeling.

I have got it.

It’s a blisteringly hot day in Delhi… the birds are croaking, the frogs are sizzling, and people are getting on each other’s nerves. I had stepped outside to get a haircut but instead, found myself being lured into a shady cyber café by the decadent charms of an AC. After the traditional staring-at-the-screen-willing-myself-to-think ceremony (A regular write of passage, you might say), I have decided to type out whatever crap comes to mind. Some of it is profound. Some of it is mundane. Most of it is retractable without apology.

Was Jinnah secular?

Was your Grandfather’s barber secular? Did he brush his teeth? How the hell does it matter? What kind of stupid f***s can’t get over the Partition? Firstly, Pakistan is in way more shit than India, so if there hadn’t been a partition, we would have had all their problems, secondly, even if there was some big emotional ripping apart experience, it was 58 years ago. I feel really sorry for the poor guys who still wallow in the tragedy that was The Partition. Get over it You Morons! Some people have REAL problems; if you are such a big nationalist do something about that.

Is Ideology greater than an Individual?

My ideology is that it’s not. Sue me.

Is there a God?

Man created God. You can pick your answer.

What do Women want?

To be respected and dominated at the same time. And it’s not as contradictory as it sounds. (That’s what they want from a guy, don’t ask me what they do in shops).

What’s the Answer to Life, the Universe and Everything?

A wise man (even though he was in love at the time) once told me: “The funny thing about life is that we live it in one direction and understand it in another.” Whatever other profound implications that has for philosophy, it certainly means one thing: There is only so much time you should ponder over a question. You can never know anything for certain. You can back up everything and question everything.

So, in effect… 42 is perfectly fine.

What do Women want ?

See above.

What is it like to be an adult? (or is Tarantino a good film maker?)

I liked Pulp Fiction… it was funny and violent and well done. Kill Bill, however, sucks. One of my cousins was staying over last night. She turned on the TV late last night. Just the kind of a thing I’d do. She changed channels in rapid succession. Just the kind of a thing I’d do. And settled on a scene in which Uma Thurman is smashing a bad guy’s head between a door and the edge of the doorway. Normally, I would not have minded seeing such gratuitous aggression but in this case I felt a sudden urge to plonk© (All Rights Reserved.) my cousin and ask her to watch something more placid. A good old saas-bahu drama perhaps, wherein the height of aggression is a “One Tight Slap”, which leaves a woman and her illegitimate son with no choice but to destroy the aggressor’s family. I was even willing to watch some idiot of a singer getting orgasmic while expressing his love for Sonu Nigam. I realized at that instant what my parents go through each night and why, despite the fact that logic always seems to be on my side in the ensuing argument, I should listen to them anyway.

Note to self: The spoiling-my-kids-rotten plan might need some reconsideration.

Why can’t trees move and speak? (or What is Childhood?)

The first memory that I have of school is getting thrown out of a class play because I had the nerve to walk amongst the rest of the characters from Old McDonald’s farm and try chatting with them. I was repeatedly warned of course, but no one really explained why can’t I have lines simply because I was vegetation? Hell, even my brother had a cheep-cheep here and a cheep-cheep there.

Here’s what is wrong with the world? It misplaces importance. Childhood is when you have your priorities right.

…I have a lot of Final Solutions lying around but not enough time to write them right now (Look Ma! No commercial breaks!)… Do mail in with questions I might have missed, suggestions to be coolly ignored, checks to be cashed in immediately, and comments that amuse me into writing.

Yours Faithfully,
Till Death do us Part,
Etc etc,
And all that Jazz

A Sign of Times!!

Here's an interesting thought that I had today.

Is physical proximity becoming less and less relevant with regards to social interaction?
In general, on a working day, the only face-to-face conversations that I have are with my TL when there is an issue that has to be sorted. And my life hasn't yet reached such depths of insipidness that I start calling such conversations, "social interaction".

Ranking by propinquity, the next level of interaction is through the internal office messenger. (The button's of which say 'Fire' and 'Intercept'!! I am still damn kicked about that!) I think that the IP (short form for internal messenger, don't ask me why) has the singular honor of being the funniest tool ever created by Mankind. For one, the messages that are exchanged over IP consist largely of "hehehehehe!!", or "lunch?", or "Please Close XYZ file. I need to use it." The second and more important reason is that these messages are exchanged between people sitting NEXT to each other. If you turn to speak to the person who sent the message, you'll find them staring expectantly at their screen. Then, to make the absurdity complete, when you say something, they only turn around to face you with extreme reluctance… almost as if they want to say "Do you mind, I am working here!".

Don't get me wrong, these are perfectly nice people, and let me also clarify…I am a big fan of IP!

Moving along, the next level of social interaction for me, is through SMSs. When the day's work is done (the chickens locked up and the horse droppings swept away) I lie in my bed and often find myself wondering what my friends might be upto. Since I am too cheap to call up anyone, I shoot off a highly intimate "How's it Going? Delhi is very hot man! Are you coming here sometime?" to buddies in different parts of the country. Sometimes, I add an abuse to make it even more intimate. The girls tend to call back and the guys generally reply sometime around 3 when I am no longer missing anyone. Besides these highly intimate messages, I also receive 30-50 communiqués from banks (offering easy loans to ease all my financial troubles), pizza joints (offering an extra pizza on every purchase of a pizza exactly large enough for me), and the Caller Tune people (trying to convince me that all that is wrong with my social life can be fixed by downloading Punjabi music and making people who call me listen to it.) I can't decide whether SMSs constitute genuine interaction or do they only help to cure the anxiety that one may be losing touch with people.

Next up, we have online discussions through this Blog on raging current issues like… well... read One Lump or Two? . Besides, there is the adorable PaGaLGUY.com a brilliant discussion forum for MBA aspirants and good fun for everyone. I like it even when I find myself arguing that perhaps all poor people are NOT lazy and cerebrally weak with yet another guy who thinks he's got the world figured out because he's just read Ayn Rand.

These forms of interaction are in some ways even better than real face-to-face discussion! Firstly, they are protracted over not hours but days!! Generally, people who participate in my Blog discussions talk my type of arbidness so the chaos is familiar and heart warming. By the way I think Batman just kills the scene! And, at PG, you can pick what you wish to respond to or talk about… they even have a thread on "Right Woman to Marry" though so far, I've keenly resisted the urge to add my comments there!

Now that I am here, there is much to be said about the wonders of the Information Age. The free speech, the free porn, the almost free means of communication, and of course, the huge amounts of knowledge that one can pick up from the comforts (tight pants or not) of one's swivel chair.

Keep watching this space, for more on that.

PS: Not Literally!! You can go pee now and then.

Living On a Prayer!!

The phoenix rises yet again, well lets just say nothing pushed me enough out of my sloth-phase until now. A conversation with a friend about inter religious marriage threw back at me some fundamental questions about faith. So why do we believe? and what do we believe in? Does going to a place of worship every now and then make one a believer? Conversely, if one doesn't feel the need to visit a place of worship, does that make him/her a non-believer?

To me, faith is the most personal thing in one's life. It is the source of one's self confidence and hope, whichever way you look at it. It is, as my friend pointed out, a way that helps you discipline yourself. So if in the tenets of your religion (or outside of it), you find a way that gives you all this but is different from how other people look at it, why should you be wrong? Most people are tolerant of people from other religions, aren't they? Then why is it difficult to accept that one's own religion may be interpreted differently by different people?

Another fundamental question arose when the friend in question carried the discussion forward stating that if I got married to someone from outside my religion I will have to choose what religion I want my kids to believe in. I don't see why I need to make a choice. If I married outside my religion, do I suddenyl acquire a new belief system? Does my old belief system cease to exist? How can I pass on or expect my would be to pass on to our kids, belief systems that are alien to us or ones we have just begun to understand? Then again what is wrong in passing on both belief systems ( these could be traditional,personal or both) and letting the kid make her/his own decision?
This brings me back to the first question in this circle of faith (so to speak!)--
how many people really think about why they believe?
How many proactively make decisions?

Well whatever!

An Alternate Therapy

You can think of the offending moments as not passed
And those painful words as never escaped.
You may try and explain away the strangest behaviours
Which could starve-heal the wounds.

Try to file your thoughts to a sub-altern cellar
And turn in the keys to your future nightmares
For a quieter disposal.
If anything in you rebels against such dishonour
Retort angrily by trivializing your emotions
(Try moralizing...it usually does the trick)
And shut them for the night behind a bar of silence.

During post-operative care
You should wear the whitest clothes,
Listen to music
Eat the blandest soup for dinner.
And in choosing an appropriate emotion,
You may have anything as long as it is numb.

Will you do me a favour
And having read all this
With cynical wisdom
Think of it as never written?

5 posts in an hour...
.
.
.
.
.
i am empty!

To forget or To remember

To fly?
To float?
Maybe!
ButTo forget is not my desire.
There now lie my rough notes
Where I once forgot destiny
In the undercoats of thoughts
To be lost for once and all.
To remember would be thus be
A privilege that I should seek.
Or so it would seem from far
A whisper captive in a jar
Is not a beautiful sight to Dream of.
But to forget it
Turns out is a bliss.
To leave
That which I cannot believe.
And let the dried up wounds
Remain covered up with silks
While memories fade away
Into oblivion.
.
.
A stroke of Destiny to silence desires. ah!

Another ungranted indulgence.

You can be just a beautiful dream,
If I let you realize into my reality
You might just melt in the spaces Between my fingers.
No traces
To be found when I look around.
You can be the sunrise or dusk
But if I try to fly like an albatross
To reach out to your hands.
You might just vanish beyond
My closed eyes like yesterday.
How can I touch yesterday?
Tell me,If I can hold a dream in my hands.
Or if my time like dry passing sands
Can be kissed on its lips in the dark?
How can I fiddle with images thatdon't even exist?
You tell me if light travels faster than sound...
Why is it that I hear these voicesbut I don't see a thing at all ?
Can I fall from the lowest spot
That I've known?
I still feel thatI am falling through the gaps
In your fist.
Clenched hands And teary eyes do tell a story
To my dreams.
How can I flee from my past ?
How longWill I last?
Through the song...
Waves of emotions hit the shores of reality.
To hit through
Half closed eyes and make me
Realize that breaking free
Is an indulgence that lost
Lovers can no longer afford.

It Begins at the End

Rushing into the roads,
I could feel my blood,
As it rushed through all of my pulsating veins.
Adrenaline does get explosive
When its mixed With tears.
And fear can get past all emotions,
In just a blink of red flowing eyes.
Hush me
If I cry too loud
for I am in a mad rush;
Out to reach tomorrow today.

Just yet I cannot give in.
Or give up.
For I have to find a way out of this moment.
I need to be somewhere. I am needed.
I have been seeded, with pain again.

But this is not who I started out to be.
Not me.
Someone's waiting out there with red roses
And a bunch of caring thoughts for me.
I am at the wrong place.
At the wrong time.
I cannot float away into the ephemeral skies.
Not tonight.
Not this time.
Zipping past blood on my face and hands.
I can feel the need to go far away.
To call it quits.
To say I am done..
.
.

I remember where I begun.
In a bright sun lit afternoon,
so unlike this stormy night.
I can fly, in my dreams.
Or so it seems, to me.

Someplace within my dreams.
Some lines within my hands.
Call out to me.
To be.
To stay,
for just another moment
and then to find the thought that I have held on to...

Every day that I have lived.
That which I have dreamed.
I need to live it now.
Here it begins,
where it was supposed to end.
And a beautiful dream,

to fly...

War with my reflection

A looking glass; A mirror on the wall;
My reflections;
Scars on my face; A memory of yesterday remains -- With me,

when I walk down the lanes in my mind...Curtained thoughts; Curtailed; Tip-toe from behind,I brush my hair; More hand than comb; Ruffled hair,Water dripping down the faucet; Trickling despair..Fundamentals; Principles; Ethics; Morals shaken up,Yesterday; Today; Tomorrow;

Time blends into me...And I into time; ticking every minute;
Walking to you -- Is it you that I am walking to?
Am I walking yet?
Am I running away?
From you?
For you?
I forget -- The reasons why I run?
The reasons why I stop?
The water trickles on with your reflection in every drop,
My eyes fidgeting with my mind;
The mirror;
The scars...I turn around and look back over my shoulders, Stealing glimpses at my own reflection;
It talks to me -- Sometimes it does;
In whispers most of the time,Hushed tones; Loud silence; Angry; Serene; Sublime!Metaphors and their affiliations floating through -- The mirror;
Attaching to me, and to my image...
I try to scratch the mirror to remove the scar...
Futile attempts; Unknown trysts; A lasting war...
I clench my fists; I want to have no past;

Just today -- That's all I want for me;
I stare at the mirror -I stare back at myself;
Pleading guilty one more time. Kneeling down in my thoughts,
ask for forgiveness,I ask for more; And more; And more;
Nothing less;I stand on the floor;
Wrestling with my yesterday,

I hit as hard as I can - Smashing the glass to pieces...

Undo me before i get Undone

I am being disguised as a cover up lie,
Like red bands and frills on the way...
You never really know if you can fly
Till you hold your breath and fly away...

Once more in a fleeting glimpse it goes
Past my Chevrolet, like an x-mas tree...
Hidden in memories in the silent lows.
What would I not give, to be just me?

You could find me unfolded in a corner
Unwrapped from within, swirling around.
Like I had my way and the right answer...
I could sing so loud and make no sound.

Write me another word of love tomorrow
Have been a cover up lie for so long...
Undo me while I can be undone from sorrow.
I really want this to be a happy song..

I am still here

Why you got to bleed me like that?

Knock me, cut me, kill me like that?

You want to blow me up, into a million pieces

But you fucking fail to see this

That I will always rise

Coz, I am the proverbial phoenix

So when you decide

To gut my pride

To rule and divide

To make them choose a side

To silence my sounds

To push me around

To injure my soul

To burn me whole

To annihilate

To desecrate

To decimate

You should remember the past

And how it couldn’t last

Coz this beast’s growling inside,

And this dog has too much of fight’

To go down like that

Hell, no

Its just readying its stride

So don’t think if it may not

Or that it might

Coz you know I definitely will

come for your head some night

And I don’t just tried

I am here today

You can’t deny me

Despite the attempts to fry me

I am back

I am breathing

I am healing

Despite the fucking splinters

And the acts to hinder

No more can you injure

My spirit, my years

And all that doesn’t belong to you

Despite your attempts to buctcher

Don’t think you are familiar

With my ability to reincarnate

To recreate and regenerate

My system might be flawed

My protectors, all lock jawed

But I am not dying easy

Not ever, not this time

Not by zeal’s disfigured mind

All the ammo you can borrow, steal and hide

Will never be enough to raze my shine

Of films and sounding filmy

Ok, so this might sound a bit filmy. But, here it goes.
I will have to take you back to the late 1980's for this. Mostly because I haven't seen the early 1980's myself (or the years prior to them).
So, we are talking about that time of the last century, when streets were empty on sunday mornings because B.R. Chopra’s "Mahabharata" was being aired on Doordarshan. When, Mr. Sharma had to climb the stairs to terrace every fortnight to re-orient the "aerial". When, Rajiv Gandhi was in the middle of his Prime Ministerial tenure. Tendulkar hadn't arrived yet. Mithun Chakarborthy was a rage, Tezaab was a bigger rage, and "ek do teen" was a craze (it was the anthem of the decade).
I must have been in Ist standard then. Bubbly, animated, bouncing off people and things with a constant smile painted across my face. I can go on staging the setting for hours, but I guess you already got the picture.
It was during this period that we were introduced to music at school. It must have been the first class. I guess it have been the first class for the music teacher as well. She could have started with the desi “sa re ga ma”, but she probably thought of doing something different. She lined us all up, and poor thing just asked if anyone of us would like to sing.

Now, when you are 5 you have the feeling that you are the best. You are the king of everything. If you ask a bunch of 5 year olds how many of them can paint, all of them would raise a hand. Ask the same question to a 100 graduate students and you would be lucky to get 5 volunteers*. But I wasn’t a graduate student then. I was 5. The king of everything. My right hand was stretched out in a moment of that question being asked. I stepped forward, turned around to face the class and in the meantime finalized the song in my head. You guessed it right. In 1989, any song by a 5 year old had to be “ek do teen”.

Ek do teen chaar paanch …… HAHAHAHAHA

Sadly I had just reached “paanch” when the whole class burst out laughing. Embarrassed and red-faced, tears rolled down my eyes. The teacher sshd everyone and consoled me and then consoled herself. Her experiment had totally failed. Within minutes we had begun our musical journey with “Sa Re Ga Ma”, “Sa Sa Re Re” and “Sa Re Ga, Re Ga Ma “
But that’s not what this story is about. It’s about the afternoon after school. I went back home, ate and recited my day dutifully to my mom with special emphasis to the musical misadventure part. I told her that I would never be singing “ek do teen” again. She looked at me and told me something that I would never forget.

She told me that all my life I would be facing the same predicament. I could either step forward and make an effort to do something, or I could stay rooted and poke fun at anyone who would. It was for me to decide. The tone of her voice told the child-me that she considered the first one to be better than the second, although it looked a raw deal to me back then. Poking fun was so much easier. Being poked at wasn’t.

I had forgotten about that incident, when something in the Pub yesterday reminded me of it. CAT is what the people everywhere talk about these days. With CAT few months away, people who have never prepared for CAT, who never had the courage to take that step forward, question those who did.
“Do you think you would make it to IIMs? I mean they are the toughest institute in the world to get into.”.

Sad. Some of us just don’t ever step forward.

Memories

The chain is weird. There is no way you understand the link. But the recollection is perfect. It's like an image embedded into your brain. And you know you would never loose it, you would carry it to your deathbed.
What am I talking about? Memories. The weirdest ones. The ones you somehow remember across ages. And it amazes you. Simply, because the year wasn't momentous. The day wasn't and neither was the moment.

My memory, especially, is made up of many such odd moments. Moments, where I have a flawless impression of the entire conversation.
Like this one time, I was returning from my grandmother's place on a Rakhee day. I was 5. We got on a bus and I must have fallen asleep cos when I woke up, the lady sitting next to me pointed to my rakhee that was beginning to come off loose. Why do I remember it? I never met the lady again, my entire life. I don’t remember any of the other 18-odd rakshabandhan days. But I remember that particular one.
Or this time when I was in Class II and my teacher told us the story of "Steam Engine" in the EVS class. I remember it perfectly, in her very own words. Or when I banged my head on my fourth birthday and won the scar that covers my left eyebrow. The list is endless..

A lot of people talk about how one's whole life flashes before one's eyes, the precise moment before death. I doubt that. I don't remember my whole life anyways. But if anything like that is supposed to happen, I am sure it is going to consist of these very instances of memory. These very indelible chains.

Sleep

I stay awake pondering over the vast array of my thoughts-their beauty, their filth, their eccentricity and their incompleteness. In my desperation to extricate myself out of this mess, i seek you-sometimes as a medicine, sometimes as an escape and sometimes as a panacea to all my ills. My thoughts and dreams are like a virus that i nurture with great care and respect,and scorn silence as unintelligible.
Silence,retreats from my door after knocking at my eye-lids for hours on end,only to return again and to retreat again. The edifice of my shattered hopes and unpleasing reality lies in ruins and when i am about to shed a tear on my satiating beravement, you blow in with an ineffable calm, almost intoxicating me to unconciousness. My mind too empty, too tired to disturb gives in slowly, finally. and then its the end.the end of me.
the end of being, only to be brought to life by a vexing buzz of the alarm.

I Wish, I Hope

I want to adopt a child someday.When I used to go for morning walks with my mom , i used to casually remark this sometimes.She thought something heavy had fell on my head when i was a baby to get me into this condition.She told my dad and he thought I would be all right after marraige.He told my sisters and she bet on the fact that my would-be-wife would ditch me within 50 months of marraige.I hope they were joking.

Not the adoption of the kind where I write out a cheque every month and it goes to get the kid some notebooks and toys and crayons.But the type where that kid grows up in my house and gets my love and affection.

I want to do this.There are so many kids out there who have no one to love them as a parent would.No mother to caress them when they scrape their knees.No dad to ride piggy back on.No one who knows their favorite dishes and cooks them as a surprise.No dad who scolds them when they flunk in maths.No mom to check if they have the quilt drawn upto the ears at 3 in the morning.

I find it a little false to be content with bringing in your own kids to the world and then just restricting the love to them and pretending that all is well.The kids who don't have parents are just as innocent as anybody and deserve the same love and care.

Ive got a childless couple in my neighbourhood. They should be in their 40s.They havent adopted and prefer to keep a German Shepherd instead , who is a rather ferocious one.

The lady once remarked to my mom "dekho ab apna baccha to apna hi hota hai".(After all , nothing like an own kid ).

So its ok to bring in a new kid to life and look after him .and its wrong to love and nurture a kid whoz already out there , feeling lonely and unloved.You want to light up a candle but not to protect one in danger of being blown out.

I dont really give a damn to what people say , especially these pesky relatives.I dont believe that I should respect anybody just because I am related to that anybody.I like more people outside my relations.If a person is good , i like him even though he may not be from the same planet.and i dont like many of my relatives because all they are interested in are things like which car was "gifted" at my cousion sister's marraige or if my cousion brother has got a girlfriend at his college or if my aunt's newly bought diamond set is a genuine or fake.
So I don't care about what they say or think about me.Because at the end of the day , it's myself I have to answer to.

Its ok to plant a fresh sapling and nurture it.But I think I don't want to ignore a sapling which may wither away without love.I don't know if I would be able to do so.Its always easier saying things than doing them.I want to do a lot of things , yet I don't.I wish I do this.