Writer's block

46. Maggi or the Margaret

2023-11-28T05:25:00.003+05:30

One:

“Did you observe that we call it ‘Maggi’ even if the noodles is ‘Top Ramen’”, she asked with a smile.

Her smile reminded him of a peacock fanning its feathers just before it rains. “Have you observed that peacock, a male, is used to describe beauty of females?”

She didn’t have to ask him where this remark came from. There was just a glint in her eyes.

They often come to this light house terrace just to speak ‘nothings’ and have coffee. He did think of having a couple ‘coffee mug’ for these special occasions, but knew that she’d call it ‘Not our style’.

They climbed down as it started raining, “Do you remember when we came here the first time?” he asked.

“Yeah, it was the first school trip dad allowed me, only since it was nearby. We weren’t even friends then.” she chirped

“Ever wonder where we’d be without this lighthouse?”

Two:

“Hello!!!” she shook him.

He took some time to gather where he was. There was a distant growl, and he could distinctly hear a hyena laughing. “What?”

“Would you like to feed crumbs for the peacock?”

“Sure” he got up trying to recollect. It seemed like they were coming down the lighthouse just seconds ago.

“Have you observed that peacock, a male, is used to describe beauty of females?”

“I have, since the first day we met in this zoo” he said

“Liar, you were too afraid to even go near the peacock.” she countered, despite knowing he wasn’t speaking about the peacock.

“Ever wonder where we’d be without this zoo?”

Three:

“Hello!!!” she shook him.

The rich aroma signaled him that they were in a café. “What?” he asked, recovering faster this time.

“Espresso or Capuccino?”

“You know I don’t have coffee, am just here for the company” he replied.

“This cheesy one-liner might have worked the first time we met.” She said

“Having you here after so many years, it seems to have worked enough” he said.

“It’s a miracle, considering we have little else in common”

“Ever wonder where we’d be without this cafe?”

Four:

“Hello!!!” she shook him.

“What?”

“Chilli Maggi, or Cheese Maggi”? she asked

“Did you observe that we call it ‘Maggi’ when it’s actually ‘Ramen’?”

“Enough with your aphorisms. Am buying the usual” she slammed.

“Whatever. As one famous poet said, ‘It’s not the Maggi, it’s the Margaret that matters” he quipped.

She just smiled with her eyes, not wanting to correct his creative vocabulary.

“Ever wonder where we’d be without this noodle walk?” he asked

Last:

He woke up to darkness. She wasn’t nearby.

“There are only four things we have in common, without them we won’t even be together”, he remembered her screaming during their fight.

He vaguely remembered lamenting to a mysterious fakir in the bar. “Four things? I don’t want anything common with her”

“Did the wish erase the love of my life from my reality?” he panicked.

He took out his phone, but couldn’t even remember her name to dial. He slipped, fell head down into a pool. “Do I know to swim?” he tried to recollect.

At-last:

He woke up to his furious wife with a glass in her hand “How many times did I tell you not to get sloshed?”

He fathomed it was all just a dream.

He ran and hugged her

“Hello!!!” she shook him.

“I always wonder where I’d be without you” he just surrendered, oblivious to the fakir with an inscrutable smile outside their window.

44. Din

2022-01-12T06:12:00.000+05:30

44. Din

Loki was ecstatic to finally visit his Granny’s ancestral home. Granny looked more radiant while greeting him than when she visited the city.

“These ten days are going to be awesome” he said.

“I’ll make sure of it’ Granny said with a warm yet mystic smile.

Loki had a great time visiting the fields and playing with the kids nearby, and was exhausted when he crashed in to his bed that night.

As Granny came in with a glass of milk, she asked, “If you can have any super power for a day, what will it be?”

“Why Granny? Might be I’d like to make Rasagullas like you” Loki said.

“Din” she said, tapping on Loki’s head.

“You meant Done?” Loki asked.

Granny just smiled.

As he woke up the next day, Granny gave him a jar of milk, and sent him into the kitchen.

The Rasagullas became an instant hit, and he was made the opening batter in his new team just for that.

“Your recipe was great” He said Granny that night.

“No, it’s all you” she said with a twinkle in her eye. “If you can have any super power for a day, what will it be?” she asked him again.

“I’d like to get an Ice cream whenever I think like having one”

“Din”

Loki got ice creams handed over wherever he went next day. He was least bothered about how bad his team lost that day or how the kids mocked his awkward swimming skills, because he had total 31 Ice creams, without having to spend a single penny.

“If you can have any super power for a day, what will it be?” Granny asked that night too.

“I need to win our bet match tomorrow” He said.

“Din”

They won next day in the last over. Loki was never nervous, and had just a smile after the win. He was sure they’d win.

“I want to get better at swimming” he told Granny that night.

“Din”

Loki had no qualms diving into the well next day. He was much better at it.

By end of the holidays Loki had learnt to drive, practiced mountain climbing, and was good at both painting & crafting. His vocal skills had marked improvement.

As he boarded the return train, he asked Granny through the train window “How does this really work”

“What” she asked with an inscrutable smile.

“Is Magic real?” he asked

“If you can have any super power for a day, what will it be?”

“Answer me Granny, Is Magic real?”

“Magic or No magic, it’s what you do with your potential that counts” she said.

“Then that’s what I need. I just need to know I can do anything if I put in effort”

“Din”

Loki never found if Magic is real, but he realised that he can achieve anything if he just believed in his efforts.

45. Suffrage

2022-01-12T06:04:00.002+05:30

45. Suffrage

Gilli was excited as he reached home that evening. “We are going to have our first class elections, next week” he told his parents.

“Are you going to contest” asked his dad.

“No, Gokul, my friend & class topper will be our class representative”

“You know that anyone can contest, right?” asked mom.

“But better marks mean better leaders, right?”

“No dear, leadership is a completely different skillset. And marks alone don’t reflect intelligence.” said Dad.

“Then why were you hard on me for not coming first in the mid-term?” asked Gilli to no response.

The first time Gilli was exposed to any sort of election is two years back. They had started early to avoid any crowd. He wanted to have the black mark in his fingers like his parents. “Why can’t I vote?” he asked.

“You can, when you become adult” said dad.

“Don’t I belong to the same place?” asked Gilli unrelenting.

“It’s called adult franchise. People believe that only citizens above 18 years can think for themselves and vote” he said.

“Then why is mom asking you before voting? She can’t think for herself?”

Mom brushed his head with a smile and said “Am just checking if Dad is making the right choice”. Dad just had a smug look on him. Gilli was not satisfied with both the responses.

He went to school, eager to know about the procedures for the election.

“They are not going to have finger marks for voting” Gilli came dejected from school.

“Since your teacher knows everyone in your class, and can ensure you vote only once, they might have done away with it.” said dad.

“Gokul was furious when I said anyone, not just the topper, can contest” he said.

“So he is unopposed?” asked mom.

“Raju, the Ko-Ko team captain is contesting. Since the entire team would vote for Raju, Gokul wants rest of us to support him.” He said

“What are his election promises” asked Dad.

“He is my friend, isn’t that enough?”

“You should look at what he is offering in that position. Your relationship & social responsibilities shouldn’t mix” said Dad.

“Gokul is promising an Ice-cream treat and maximum free periods” said Gilli next evening

“You should note a couple of things, firstly the ice-cream is not part of his representative duty, secondly he doesn’t have powers to get free periods.” said Dad. “And what about the other kid?”

“Raju said he’ll request management to provide better sports kits and more practical’s”

“Which one do you think is more useful & realistic” asked Dad.

“You want me to vote for Raju?”

“Choose needs & realistic things over gifts & far-fetched items” Dad advised.

Finally election day came. Gilli was still not sure whom to vote. He had his fingers crossed, since he didn’t want anyone to lose by a single vote. And the results were declared….

They had the local elections next month. Gilli was more keen on the happenings. “Whom will you vote Dad” he asked.

“Probably Jai Bhai, we are from the same place”

“Didn’t you say relationships & responsibilities shouldn’t be mixed?” Gilli asked

“His party is promising loan waiver, and is trying to regain our glory years”

“Didn’t you say to choose needs & realistic things over gifts & far-fetched items?” Gilli continued

“You are a kid, you can’t understand” his Dad shut him off

His Grandfather had come back the next day after a long trip.

“I don’t understand why dad is not following his own advice” fumed Gokul. “Is advice only for kids and not parents?”

“You think he was a parent while advising you? All parents are speaking to their own younger version while interacting with their children, advising them to correct mistakes they made as a kid, and perform good deeds they did.”

“Your explanation is not helping me” said Gilli

“All grown-ups were once children, but only few of them remember it. All you have to do is to make him remember the kid in him” concluded Grandpa

They went to a nearby park that weekend. Grandpa was explaining Gilli how a remote locality years ago has turned into a residential colony. “How did it happen Grandpa” Gilli asked.

“Well, a group of friends got together and requested the authorities. Whenever the representatives came for campaigning, we asked for the amenities, It was hard initially, but we kept pushing for it.” said Grandpa.

“What motivated you Grandpa?”

“It was your dad. He was a kid then. He wanted a spacious play ground & park nearby, and always complained of muddy roads while walking to shops or school and the like” explained Grandpa

“We still have some problems, rain water doesn’t drain properly. And it smells when the sewage tanker comes.” GilIi complained.

As they were on the way back home, dad said “I remember complaining a lot about bad road while I was a kid. Didn’t know that so much work was done from our end to improve it”

“You won’t mind it as work when you are doing it for your kids” said Grandpa

They stopped at a parlor to get some ice cream. Grandpa got newspapers. Along with the paper came all the manifestos of the candidates in their place. “Looks like only one of the candidates promises to do something about Gilli’s complaints” said Grandpa.

“Unfortunately, he’s not popular, may not win” said Dad.

As Gilli was browsing through the menu, the waiter said “Vanilla is the most popular flavour here”

“It’s ok, I like Pista” said Gilli nonchalantly.

Observing Gilli, Dad thought for a while and said “Maybe I’ll choose a candidate who promises what I really want. Even if he doesn’t win this time, more such candidates will come up based on the reception he gets.”

“Didn’t I tell you Gilli, All adults were once children, you only have to remind them.” said Grandpa gleefully

P.S: A girl named Neha won the class elections. “Since the vote among boys were split, she easily won” Gokul had explained the reason for his loss to Gilli. And he lost by one vote.

43. Motto

2018-08-04T22:21:00.000+05:30

Inspector Ramon was confused, it was the first time he encountered someone whose fingerprints were not in the universal database. The measely chap in the interrogation was looking weird with his old film camera. From the footage from the party he had gatecrashed, it was clear he didn’t know difference between Claypot for Biriyani and a finger bowl. But one who’s outside biometrics database? That was stuff of pre-Modi era, not in 2050.

Ramon looked at the torn gift parcel ceased. Camera footage showed the suspect was escaping the party with the stolen gift

The suspect was looking at his watch hand very frequently, like he was late for something, but the weird part was he didn’t have a watch.

Ramon entered the interrogation chamber. “Inspector Ramon, Welcome. You can call me Goku” greeted the suspect with a smile.

Ramon was taken aback that he knew his name. “Sorry for putting you into discomfort, I forgot to switch off my conversation assist” he twitched his eyes, like he was trying to turn off something.

“So what gave me up? I should have paid more attention to my Behavioral History classes” Goku continued

“You look like an odd ball, don’t you know?” Ramon tried to act normal.

“It was my table habits right? I forgot that you guys don’t use finger bowl before food” he intervened

“And your camera, who uses a film camera nowadays?” Ramon said

“Am not able to distinguish between your devices. All of’em look same to me.” He said “If you come to our party with a gadget you’ll be mocked ‘who uses a device nowadays’”

Ramon had it enough “No more fun stuff, what were you doing in Minister Rohan’s party?” he questioned

“It was his son’s birthday” Goku answered

“He’s eight years old, Am sure you are not his bench mate”

“Definitely not, he’s our Premier” replied Goku

“You really want me to believe that you are from future and Rohan’s son is the Premier of your country?” asked Ramon

“Our country, Mr.Ramon. He’s our country’s Premier since 2081, for the past 15 years” said Goku

“Assuming what you say is true, do you expect me to believe that you came here just to click a selfie with him and steel a souveneir?”

“Never, he’s a mass murderer, and time travel is not yet so common place, it’s still in research phase” said Goku. “I want to change our past for the good”

“By stealing a gift that’s of no use?”

“The photo frame quote presented by Premier’s uncle became his motto ‘For the Greater Good’” said Goku

“So is this like an iteration? You change a small thing each time; see how your time has changed, until you get desired result.” Ramon questioned

“Unfortunately no. You can’t travel time more than once, you actually die within hours of time travel” said Goku

“So how many hours you’re left with?”

“Minutes” replied Goku

“Then why not just kill him?”

“What’s the difference between him and me? If killing thousands for good of millions is wrong, killing one for good of thousands is equally wrong,” said Goku

Ramon got a call from forensics “That weirdo had swapped the gift, nothing harmful, it’s a photo frame with a quote” a detective informed.

Ramon heard a ‘poof’. He turned to find Goku disappear in front of his eyes.

Startled, he asked the detective on call “What was the quote?”

The detective replied “Every Individual counts”

42. Chota Bheem & Superstar

2017-04-21T21:37:00.002+05:30

I was one of the very few people in the station. I was waiting for my usual. It is the last fast train to my home. As I boarded the train, I was hoping that someone I knew would be in the coach. Though it’s comfortable to travel in a coach that’s free, it’d feel eerily empty to travel at that time of night.

The train had picked up pace.

Work was pretty hectic for the entire month. I barely got time to take my eyes off my monitor, and was totally exhausted. So I had totally forgotten about my niece’ request until she called. “Uncle have you submitted for the contest?”

“I am on it” I lied

“Don’t forget na… Tonight is the deadline” she said and bade goodnight

There was a selfie contest conducted by my mobile phone manufacturer. You have to submit a selfie with your childhood friend and write about your experience. It was a good marketing ploy, nothing connects with your customer base like nostalgia.

Unfortunately, there was no familiar face in the train that day, except this shabby looking, unshaven guy who lives in a development area couple of blocks away from my home.

I used to know him during school days when we used to play ‘bet’ matches with his gang. Our teams were even match in terms of win percentage, though in terms of finesse, I felt we were far better. They were known to be ruffians, and even our ‘umpire’ used to scare his decisions in their favour when they raise their voice.

The guys called themselves ‘Super stars’. And they moved like wolf packs. We called ourselves ‘Chota Bheems’, and this was even before the cartoon was conceptualised. The day my niece introduced me to the cartoon, I called my friend ‘Gopi’ to reminisce about the good old days. We rarely get to meet each other nowadays. The guys have moved to different parts of the world.

Wonder what the ‘Super stars’ are doing nowadays. I have seen one of them drive an Ola cab a few weeks back. Heard their team captain ran for ward councillor, rather unsuccessfully. The difference between the localities still remain.

The uniform of the guy in the train resembled one of those automobile assemblies. I tried to remember his name…. ‘Ramesh’ I guessed. I have seen him a couple of times during my morning walks, but never got to actually interact with him.

“Hi, You are Ramesh, right? Remember we used to play against each other during school days?” I broke the ice

“Errr… Oh…. Ahh… Yes….I remember you as the wicket keeper batsman, but sorry I don’t remember your name” he said in a tone somewhere between sincere apology and complete detachment. I was glad he remembered my keeping skills

After some pleasantries and introduction, I explained him about the contest and asked him for a selfie. He agreed with an awkward smile trying to hide his discomfort / disbelief. I thanked him profusely, and got a weak smile as response from him. Not a person of words I guessed. But he was smiling throughout the journey

-----x----

I used to bump into him occasionally during our subsequent train journeys. Unlike us, most of his friends were still living nearby. He had done his diploma and had recently joined for a part time course. Unlike me, he had leftist view on most of the things, yet was articulate enough to communicate his views clearly. And this perspective did help me solve a couple of labour issues at work.

“We used to call you ‘Mongia’ after the Indian wicket keeper. I never knew your real name” he told me during one of these interactions.

When I mentioned about our fear for their team, he guffawed, “We are not ruffians. We tried to look menacing, so that we could get some moral advantage”

“We were like West Indies, you were like England” he mocked our ‘very’ conservative style

And he added on a serious note “But we did feel you guys looked down upon us. A couple of guys turned rogue because they were treated that way. You’d feel it’s better to be feared than be pitied” I realised he was speaking about the entire society and not just the ‘Chota Bheems’

----x----

A few days later he came with a box of sweet. “I got promoted” he was all smiles. It was a similar late night journey.

I told him that our selfie won a gaming console for my niece. They are planning an ‘ad’ based on it. I wholeheartedly thanked him.

“Sir... no need of ‘Thanks’” he dismissed

“My niece would love to meet and thank you.” I insisted

There was a pause as if he was thinking what to say. “Remember the first day we met on the train.” He started. “I was on an all-time low that time. I couldn’t pay for my kid’s school fees on time. Couldn’t get them anything beyond basic necessity. This, after spending unduly hours at work, and doing whatever I thought I was capable of. My family did understand my inability. But I didn’t. Everything in life felt unfair” I was trying to fathom what he was telling.

“Your friendly gesture that day changed something in me. I started connecting with people around me. I started connecting back with my old friends. Didn’t realise we were living practically next door. I opened up to my family. I have learnt to seek and receive help” His voice broke, but he continued

“I joined for graduation recently. My financial status has improved only moderately. Family life, a tad better. But am lot happier and much more in peace with myself. I think I should thank you for this change in me” He was speaking from deep felt gratitude.

I was speechless…. And I was thinking he was not good with words. I still couldn’t fathom such a simple act would have so much impact on someone.

It looked like he was about to hug me but decided against it. But I felt the hug

He made me realise that the best help you do is not monetary

It was my turn to keep smiling the entire journey

41. From Scratch to Thud

2017-04-14T19:44:00.000+05:30

I was locked in a dungeon. There was a black cat near me, blood dripping from its mouth, licking its own injured tail. It looked at me with a vicious smile. I tried to run, but stumbled on a giant glass with image of Sethu looking at me

I woke up to find Sethu with a concerned look

-------

I came to stay with my cousin Sethu during my one month stint in the city. Sethu’s routines were strange, and he had his own weird theories on everything.

‘Don’t speak with neighbours. Be as inconspicuous as possible’. He said. His landlord had a no visitor rule.

He had a withered tree in his backyard. “It’s my cat Britto. I used to tie him on the tree. One Friday 13^th he disappeared, and this scar appeared on the tree.” He explained with utmost seriousness.

It should have been a lightning, and the scared cat ran away. ‘And who’d tie a cat?’ I wondered.

But I couldn’t explain the scratching noise the tree made

He breaks his mirror regularly. “It broke even before I dropped. I saw Britto appear in it.” He’d say

“It’s ancient magic, needs two people. If only someone believes me, I can bring him back” he used to plead with me

It was Friday 13^th. I was leaving town that day. “Please stay this night with me” he pleaded

“You are afraid of this, See nothing happens” I ran and touched the tree. BANGGGGG

----

I am caught in this dungeon since that day. Whenever Sethu looks at a mirror, I could see him, starring helplessly. He stopped using mirror altogether nowadays.

One day I heard him plead a friend “Trust me, my cat and my cousin are still on other side of this tree”

“The cat ran away. And we all know you had no roommate” his friend dismissed. My torso banging the dungeon wall made no difference

People nowadays hear a thud when they pass by the tree, instead of a scratch. Thud… Thud…. Thud….

40. ‘Demon’etisation is in the detail

2016-11-25T17:19:00.003+05:30

40. ‘Demon’etisation is in the detail

I am scared as a hell to start writing about this topic. Not because I am taking a stand with one side, but because I am taking no stand at all, and hence might ruffle feathers with both supporters & critics of the project. This is just going to be an independent view of a person with medium level knowledge on how the world runs, who is curious about this new idea that has been thrown in.

Internet is a wonderful tool that gives us immense opportunities to fact check ourselves before posting anything, and I will start by correcting my statement in the earlier paragraph. The demonetisation endeavor is not a new idea, but has been in circulation for a while and even tried out in number of countries with different degrees of success / failure. (Not listing them since you can easily google it)

The fact that people still want to try it out even after repeated examples of not so successful attempts means that there is some underlying charm to the entire concept. And since it looks on the outset to be a very effective tool to weed out black money, one is prone to think that it is the execution and not the concept that is to be blamed for.

There are a few key parts to execution and let us see them one by one

1. Time frame for demonetization (why the surgical strike?)

2. Cash exchange mechanism

3. What next ?

Let us try to understand what would have happened if a comfortable time frame had been given before the currency became ineffective (say three months). It could have been possible for the government to stop the cash from going out of the country in physical form. There might be small leakages, but large chunks would still be trapped within the country. However, the three months would have seen a buying spree of large value assets viz. gold and land. This buying spree would result in surge in price of both gold and land. Developers would have had a field day, and most of the unsold flats & properties would have been sold in a jiffy. Allied black activities like incorrect valuation and registration would have been at peak.

A large asset bubble and sudden spike in commodity prices finally resulting in significant spike in inflation of essential goods is very much possible in such conditions. Government could have curbed import of gold in abnormal quantities, avoiding impact to trade balance. People who have other ways of laundering would have had considerable time frame to do the ‘due diligence’, and this is the segment where the surgical strike is definitely effective. What percentage of the black economy this segment has is still a big question.

Cash exchange mechanism

Even hard-line supporters would agree this is where the lapse is very evident. If they had planned printing of 500, 2000 notes well in advance, if they had considered ATM compatibility issues, if they had planned cash logistics in advance, the long queue & chaos could have been avoided. You can’t expect over-night replacement of all the old notes, but when you do not know when/whether you can get cash, and change the exchange norms on a daily basis, it is bound to wreck panic amidst masses.

Another major issue that’s imminent and already started occurring in couple of places is the infrastructure capability of our e-banking system. The mobile banking system is not geared up to handle such surge in online transactions and it’s evident from frequent network issues during peak transaction hours.

And am not clear about the logic behind 2000 notes, but the logic that it’d make hoarding of currency easier is also not sound. Of course it would halve the space required to hold it, but that’s not a major hurdle for black money holders.

What next?

Now comes the big question, what do they do after December 30? Assuming government knows how much 500, 1000 notes are out there, and by end of Dec 30 only x% has been replaced by new notes. What would you do with the balance amount? Can RBI mint them again? And if they mint them, will they give’em back to government for spending or release it through banks for recirculation into economy?

My view is that RBI would give the money to the government as the cash has been generated due to executive action. There are a couple of things government can do with this money, and let us see them one by one below

Not doing anything would mean that the entire exercise is just an act in intimidating black money holders, and that’s such a small benefit which doesn’t justify such a large sacrifice by millions. You definitely can’t just release the money into the system, because it’d just result in drastic inflation. Because you’d then have more cash to buy the same underlying goods.

Government can use it to pay back its loans. This can result in better sovereign ratings, but the implications may not be significantly large enough for our exports to gain competitive edge over other nations.

You might spend’em in beefing up our defence, but it’s more beneficial to Defence companies overseas, unless significant local component is mandated in the deals. But still it may not have desired percolation effects for common man (of course it would make our defence stronger, but the incremental benefits are not comparable to the magnitude of the scheme)

You can invest them in infrastructure projects, like the Tennessee valley authority during the new deal, but it should be based on sound economic logic and not just based on vote bank politics and corporate propaganda. And we don’t want to have huge chunks of unused assets like they have in China. The structures can last long, but the functional requirements change and hence these might become physical impediments to future requirements

Investments in lasting R&D efforts, especially in the much needed agricultural and social sector would give wonderful results. Spending on minimum essentials, like eradicating hunger, basic education & sanitation should be welcomed. Investing in strategic resource blocs overseas or new sources of energy would definitely bear positive results.

Epilogue

Whatever it is, one would like to appreciate the effort taken to change something that’s not right. But the way the aftermath is handled, and genuine concerns being shot down is something which may not go down well with the masses. Comparison of long queues for Jio sim and sacrifices made by Army are not appropriate. They might win the argument, but not the person, who would be want a chance to be heard one way or other. We as a society should realise the difference between choice and coercion. It’s fasting only if you do it while having the ability to get food, else it’s called starvation.

Of course the voices that shoot down queries are not that of the PM, but his silence only implies he’s aiding them. One might have his cards close to his heart, but unless you bring into confidence people you aspire to help, they might move towards a direction which are counter-productive and situations might go way beyond control.

To summarise, my reactions are mixed…. I welcome the bold endeavour, but have doubts/queries about the results, and scared by the way concerns are addressed.

39. Dalek's Mirror

2015-10-07T16:24:00.000+05:30

Midnight, on the bridge… he was watching as usual at the skies with his telescope. This might be normal for any regular astronomer, but not for one who has a gun pointed at his head and is aware of it.

------

Even as a kid, Dalek had an out of the usual lifestyle. When neighbourhood kids were fed showing moon in the night sky, his dad fed him showing Hoag’s object and Magellanic clouds through their telescope. Though his dad’s curiosities were limited to observing the heavenly bodies and naming them after his favourite Star Trek characters, Dalek’s dreams were always bigger.

Dalek’s everyday needs were limited, but his scientific curiosities could not be quenched by doing any of the usual corporate ‘menial’ jobs. He tried the different space research organisations, but realized that doing what you are passionate could be possible only if you have the right political and spiritual connections.

He finally settled for a teaching job at the university. The pay was minimal, opportunities to get funding reasonable, but the autonomy, and more important, the immense talent pool in form of students who needed nothing more than their own curiosities to do good work made him settle for it.

“I don’t intend to be a good teacher. But it helps my own objective if I inspire a couple of bright minds towards the subject” he quips. And he was skeptical about the business houses. “All the brilliant minds and precious hours that could be spent in discovering science and developing technologies are wasted in improving balance sheets” he’d lament

-----

Dalek has the knack of getting ideas from random encounters. “Only chaos can give the greatest ideas” he’d say. It takes seven minutes for light from Sun to reach Earth. He once read in ‘Superman’ that Clark Kent could see the death of his mother planet Krypton 20 years later from Earth, because Krypton was 20 light years away from Earth. He pursued it further, if you have a mirror at such long distance from earth, you can actually see how earth was years ago. “Think about the possibilities this can have in the field of history, archaeology, even criminal investigations” he’d tell his research scholars

But how would you fix a mirror so far? The solution came from one of his students who’s a physics major; use all heavenly bodies out there as mirrors. Different bodies reflect different electromagnetic waves. These mirrors would reflect something that can be transcripted back into visual medium.

The idea got viral, and Dalek without even spending a penny was able to command thousands of fellow researchers to work towards its implementation. To top it off, he laid out everything he created and every information garnered in public domain. Anyone interested can pick up from where he had left and create their own theories or inventions.

Accolades and awards poured in. Corporate houses with bigger resources picked up his research and developed technologies which were far more efficient and made huge profits. Once asked about it in an interview he said “Different people have different motivational needs, for them it’s monetary. I am happy as long as there is progress in technology”

Beyond a point Dalek felt the ‘Mirror’ technology has reached self-sustenance and didn’t need any of his assistance. He started craving for new challenges. That is when I got this opportunity to interview him, and that is when I’ve planned to execute him.

Dalek, the likable inventor is a façade for the evil genius he actually is. I was working on a neural signal interpreter (aka mind reader). Like all young inventors I reached out to him for demonstration, and stumbled upon his ulterior motives. He always dreamt big, do things his curious brain wanted to do, and found our societal inefficiencies as hurdles for scientific development. He was garnering people and resources to ‘Try and Take-over the world’

------

Dalek was waiting at the bridge for me, felt it was a wonderful location for photo-op. The interview began. After initial niceties I pulled my gun at him.

He looked at me and said “I know you’ve come here to kill me.”

I was startled. “I have developed methods to look at future recently. I have removed the bullets” he beamed

“Don’t bluff, your mirrors can never reflect light from the future” I said.

“Black holes, can absorb everything including light, and it seems they are time independent” he explained. “Am ready for the interview whenever you are” he continued watching at the skies with his telescope.

“As you’ve realized ‘world domination’ was my objective, it still is. Only my means have changed. I used the ‘future reader’ to do ‘what-if’ analysis on alternate courses of action for better scientific development. And nothing came near to having free spirit govern individual decision making. ‘Initiative’, it seems, has greater correlation with progress than discipline and intellect” We completed the interview with the useless gun still in my hand.

Next day he messaged “Good thing you didn’t bring your mind reader. I did bluff yesterday. But I got my next idea thanks to you. We are planning to invent a device that can read future.”

‘Only chaos can give the greatest ideas’

37. Appy

2015-08-29T21:00:00.000+05:30

“There’s one phrase in the movie Robo ‘This love is not against nature, it’s just new to it’” said Chappie

“But clicking pics of a girl you barely know is just creepy” I argued

“Dude. Trust me… This will work …”

There are three ways people treat rules

use them to manipulate others
get manipulated, and
stand-up to them and change them eventually

Chappie proclaims to be the third type.

I first saw her in the turtle walk along the beach. As she was running behind the baby turtles, the turtles inside me started sky-diving. But like usual, when it comes to the actual speaking, Mr.Macho inside went into his shell.

But luck does sometime smile on poor souls. I met (saw) her again, this time on my way to office in the metro station. Since I had been to Friday night party the previous night, I was late by an hour that day. ‘Why can’t they start office at 10.30 every day?’ I fumed.

I started late for office the entire week hoping to meet her, with no avail. But saw her again that Saturday. This continued for a couple of months and I could gather nothing about her. That’s when Chappie gave his illuminating idea.

Chappie had developed this app that could trace anyone based on information you give, like when & where you see them, perceived age, complexion etc.

“There’s a market for this app, esp. among Romeos like you” he said. “I have narrowed down her to among 124 PYTs. Just take a snap of her, I’d tell her entire bio-data”

I did the same next day and whatsapped him.

Bang came his call (So fast?? Should be a great app)

“Dude, that’s my sister” he disconnected without waiting for a reply

35. Platinum Day of Love

2013-10-14T09:27:00.000+05:30

He who binds to himself a joy

Does the winged life destroy;

But he who kisses the joy as it flies

Lives in eternity's sun rise

- William Blake

A joy will linger forever if we let it come and let it go…

Surreal as it might sound, Blake’s verses have a profound and deep truth inherently imbibed. It’s not that one big thing that makes life meaningful, but the continuity of warmth one feels that makes living life a bliss.

Blake’s verse explains the danger of tying your life around a single entity or event, the follies it might reveal when the veil of mist is peeled off from your Elysium.

My life was peaceful, with the right mix of colour and spice. I was happy as a kid, and jolly as a pirate. It didn’t even change after I met my girlfriend… Sikha…It was not love at first sight, not even the second or third… it was over a period of years from college to work place, it brewed and settled to become a red wine of the highest quality. (Sorry for the over sell, one of the ills of being in marketing profession)

And she wasn’t like the so called ‘classy’ girls who demand to be looked after and showered with expensive pittance every other day. Nor was she the needy moody types who would want to hold hands, and ask insecure questions about themselves every living moment. She was the regular tomboy who’d speak to you like she speaks to a well-known cousin, no inhibitions, no exigencies.

A person’s mind always wavers between wanderlust and serenity that comes with stability. You might want to have a chaotic life, chaotic yet manageable life, a life that is under control. If you stay sedate a bit longer, you feel stagnant, and if things start moving too fast, you feel lost and insecure.

Sikha was the solid rock I was tied to, while I was surfing around the waves life was throwing at me.

So it was a jolt out of blue moon when Arun called on me one day

“Dude.. you love Sikha right?” he asked

“Why do you ask?”

“We know that you both do, and Sikha had put it in the open to Anitha” he continued. Anitha was Arun’s girlfriend and fiancée

“Do we have to tell ? We know that we are into each other”

“Totally agreed. You don’t have to tell her.” He continued “But she has to tell that to her parents. And as you are aware that parents who have girls of her age will start looking for suitable matches for their daughters”

“Has she got a proposal ?” I asked visibly worried

“Not yet. Her mom & dad wanted to know if she had anyone in mind so that they speak to the guy’s parents” he replied

“So that’s it. Tell her parents they can speak to mine.” I was relieved

He slapped at the back of my head. “Sikha may not be filmy, but she wants you to propose, for real, not just ‘wanna crash in my bunker’” I was shocked that Sikha had revealed my pick up line to these guys, but knew this was not the moment to act offended

Platinum with its naturally white colour symbolising purity is a perfect gift for ur love.

Besides, platinum is an eternal metal it does not fade or tarnish with time and will retain its colour for a lifetime.

From the time that it is mined, till the final product this pure metal is absolutely white and is unchanging.

Platinum set in jewellery is as close as you can get to absolute purity as every piece is 95 per cent pure, as compared to 18k gold, which is 75 per cent pure

I read for the umpteenth time how true symbol of love a ring of platinum was. And every time I read it, I got more irritated on Sikha for making me do this. What happens to women when it comes to marriage and jewellery? They all act the same when it comes to these two inexplicable social conundrums. Objectively speaking they have no value as such, but the societal conditioning has made sure that they are of utmost importance to anyone’s life.

Even a white jasmine is more pure and original than a piece of jewellery. But it is available in abundance and for free, and hence not suitable proposal material. An article thrown up by google said that one has to spend three months’ salary for a wedding ring, to show to the girl that he’s really committed to her. It’s a symbol of trust.

Of course it makes sense, like the down payment you make for a car, or the performance guarantee you pay before the project. Though it has no monetary value as such, it ensures that you are serious about the endeavor.

But three months’ salary? I could buy that super bike I wanted for years. I could also hear imaginary Sikha shouting “That stupid bike means so much to you than me?”

I could always argue that the bike will not be mine without paying for it, but she’ll always be mine, no matter what. But I knew that in real world, these arguments will not hold water

And I remembered, she’ll always be mine... no matter what.

But what was lingering in my mind is not the money to be spent. It was that it was Sikha who was expecting me to spend. What about her comments on how lame people are for using monetary signs to show love. And her speeches on importance of prudence and sensibility in matters of money.

‘It’s not the objects you surround yourself with, but the people with whom you spend time, that matters in life’ I remembered her saying

May be she isn’t the girl I thought she was.

Thinking of this I crashed into ‘Halo’ Santo’s apartment. Santo as expected was spending time with his new X-Box, with umpteenth version of WoW.

“Wanna join a multiplayer game’ he asked

“No yaar.. just tired, need to sleep’ I crashed into his bed

After an hour or so, he woke me up with chocolate milk, and sat beside me. ”So what’s the problem?” he asked

As I was about to deny existence of any problem, he interrupted “I know you didn’t ride so long just to crash in my bed”

So I told him what was in my mind, though I was almost sure I couldn’t get anything good from him.

Santo looked at me for a while… then asked me something completely unrelated “Dude have you played Mario”

“What?”

“I know you have played” he continued

I nodded

“When I first played along with my cousin, he usually won without losing a single life until he met the dragon at 1-4 stage, and once he saw the princess, he lost interest and practically gifted his life in the later stages”

I did not know where he was going

“But I could only huff and puff to 1-4 stage. And when I first knew that I had to play until stage 8-4 to complete the game, I was disappointed, but only for a while. I played on, for days, months, and about four years, before I could slay the dragon in 8-4 stage and see the real princess. You know what I did the next day?”

I stared at him as if asking how it was related to what I was speaking

“I started the playing the game again from stage 1. That’s when I realized that it’s not the princess that came beyond the dragon, but the game I was more interested in. All the dragons that came along where trying to stop me from playing the game. The GAME was my actual princess” It made some sense, but nothing clear

“What am telling is that being with a girl is not about taking her to movie for the first time, making her your girlfriend, having the first kiss or marrying her. It is the very act of being with her that makes it special. All these doubts you get are just the dragons you face along your journey…. But if you really love the game (girl) you won’t mind them at all, actually they make it more special” he finished

I never knew the Mario I played as a kid had such a moral story behind it. But it did change my mind. I knew that Sikha will not be disappointed just because I didn’t get her an expensive ring.

I did get down at the jewellery shop on the way home. I knew from google that you can get platinum from 10K. And realized it’s much more elegant than the gawdy golden ones. And the pure platinum with rose gold was really special and it no longer looked an unnecessary appendage.

I looked at the cost. Of course I could get one of those superbikes with the bucks I’d pay for it. But it’s much better to drive around with my precious Sikha in my current drive which she’s extremely comfortable with

Like Blake said in Endymion “A thing of beauty is a joy for ever”. And it applies both to the girl I placed in my dirt bike pillion and the rock I placed on her finger

This blog is an entry for the contest Platinum Day of Love

34. Future of shopping

2013-09-08T10:23:00.004+05:30

Future of shopping

Imagine your girlfriend is in Pittsburgh chasing her art house dream, and you are in urban slums in India trying to uplift the grassroots. And still you want to stay connected, have dates with fine dine, together. Online dines could be the way possible. You could fix up a date and time, register in e-dine’s portal and hopefully show up on time, before your PC.

You start together, see the menu together, and order for each other… and get served (actually delivered) on the same time (almost). Online dines could be the remedy for long distance relationships that long for that one personal touch.

Following are some ideas that came to my mind about shopping in 2030. Actually I have ventured not just into shopping, but a large collage of consumer experience. But there is one common theme that runs through all these concepts; catering to convenience of purchase; or in my terms ‘laziness of the user’

Size-Matching Stations

Full customization and economies of scale are two disparate items for current trends. What if we are able to bring together all those niche customers so that it’s possible to provide variety & at the same time, economy.

Like a size 41 for shirts, or 35 for pants… we can also have much wider variety of size fits for apple, banana, pear shapes… or ideally a web scanner that’d customize the clothing to fit you, and show you how it’d look on you.

The future I imagine will have clothing stores with size matching stations where one could alter the clothing to your fit. No longer you’d have to forego a good design just because the shop doesn’t have your size

Captcha

Big bang theory fans would recollect Penny using Sheldon’s app to create a database for different shoes so that anyone who captures a picture of a shoe could get the entire details of it like shop, price, design history, it’s availability etc.

Image based search would make searching for that one distinct shaped watch or that unique coloured paint much easier. And with it you get a more satisfied consumer.

There can be features like when you see a product which you feel is overpriced, you can just capture it and see what’s the best price you could get for it in the locality.

Get hyper

This happened to me recently. I got a discount coupon for purchases above 2000 bucks and it so happened that the one clothing I wanted to buy was in a different website that I had to settle for less than optimal purchase. Why not combine purchases from different shops, like an e-hypermarket so that I could get bulk discounts and still leave home (I meant logout) happily

Future I imagine will have a single platform, so that the benefits are availed even for products from different shops, by aggregating the purchases, like an online mega mall.

Get the touch

There are some items which I think twice before purchasing online. Some items I never do because I’d like

to get an idea of how it feels in my hand. Like that mattress I wanted to buy, or the material of leather wallet I desired.

Online retailers nowadays address this to an extent by having a few physical outlets so that the one exacting customer gets a feel of what he actually purchases. But it is still sub-optimal, since the money that could have spent in better products have been wasted in floor cost of the shops and to maintain its work force.

Like you have voice and visuals, the future of online shopping would definitely benefit from the ability to convey the touch and scent of their product. Hope the days are not so long from now.

i-Style

Fashion designers or makeover consultants need not be only for TV stars and sportsmen.

You can have the help of online fashion consultants, who’d always be there to help you get that one look that’d make you feel ten times better.

It’d be just like cars and two wheelers, once a luxury, now a regular consumer product. All of us can have our own fashion consultant, like our doctor, dentist or shrink.

Or you can mix and match, make your own style quotient, share it with friends, or if you are really good, sell it to spread your idea of what fashion is.

Internet of things

Consumer product companies or retailers can be like the hutch dog that always follows you, not in the creepy way, but in a more sophisticated elegant manner.

User specific products viz. chip in shoe collecting usage of the customer, which can suggest modifications for better shoe fit when you buy next time, will be the thing in vogue, and after sometime a basic minimum.

Or that couch that senses your sleeping pattern and suggest you a more suitable one when you search for a new one next time. All you have to do is stay connected, with your things.

Farmville

I was initially fascinated by the requests from friends to share their excess produce from their farm in

Farmville (I am not going into detail of when it started getting weird).

Imagine if you could get updates of fresh farm produce, that one differently coloured turnip you always wanted or information about what your friend has got in his backyard orchard, and you can actually get or buy from them.

Farm fresh will not be just a word, but reality

In short I believe shopping in 2030 will be more about the product and user convenience than about marketing and retail space.

This blog is submitted for the contest FUTURE OF SHOPPING conducted by e-bay and Indiblogger. Please visit bit.ly/eBayCheck_Extention

33. Giggle Loop

2013-08-29T23:04:00.003+05:30

You are surrounded by people for a moment of silence...

Suddenly out of nowhere this thought comes into your head: the worst thing I could possibly do during a minute's silence is laugh. And as soon as you think that you almost do laugh -- automatic reaction. But you don't, you control yourself, you're fine. Whew.

But then you think how terrible it would have been if you laughed out loud in the middle of a minutes silence. And so you nearly do again, only this time it's a bigger laugh. And then you think how awful this bigger laugh would have been. And so you nearly laugh again, only this time it's a very big laugh, it is an enormous laugh. Let this bastard out, and you get whiplash. And suddenly you are in the middle of this completely silent room and your shoulders are going like you are drilling the road.

- Steven Moffat

Sometimes in life you know what’s happening is wrong… you know it’s not right… but you can’t pinpoint what it is. And if you want to escape it you’re tagged stupid, incapable of handling truth… if you let out your apprehensions you’ll be considered insane… so finally you yield into the pressure and start accepting the lies…

“You nearly killed yourself…” he said

“That was the idea” I replied

“To kill yourself???” he was shocked

“To nearly kill myself” I said mockingly

Have you ever been to a funeral? The way people seem silent, acknowledging the loss and pain the near dear go through. But you can never stop the ghosts of the dead ones. They keep on cracking one joke and other... and you find it extremely difficult to control the laughter…

I initially thought everyone used to see the ghosts since it was the normal thing to happen (that’s what I thought). And since my giggle loop during the one minute silence would be followed usually by group of others, I never felt myself to be out of usual. Only little later people started noticing I was the one who usually started the laughter, and to be on the safer side I started avoiding attending any of the funerals.

“Where will the ghosts go after the funerals mom?” I asked

“They are called as souls. They’d go to God, so that they can find peace” she replied

“Why don’t we get to see them after the funeral?”

“You can never see them” she said. May be she did not want to talk about it, or she did not have the ability to see like others, something like a ghost-blind

But my uncle Raj would play along with me. “Why would the ghosts appear only to certain people” I asked

“May be they don’t want to frighten people who do not have the courage to see the dead” he replied

“Why does the ghost of Param uncle has a beard? I always remember him as bald” I asked him

“Don’t take it too far.” He said little concerned. Param uncle had lost his entire hair in chemo which he had years before I was born. I had never seen him with hair, at least when alive.

But after that day, couple of concerned discussions with mom and uncle, I understood that seeing ghosts wasn’t normal, and I was probably imagining things.

So one day when I had reached a point of boredom and frustration, I thought I should experience the event of dying myself. So I texted Ajith, my doctor friend, for emergency, and electrocuted myself.

In the hindsight it was foolish. But it gave me a perspective. It was funny getting outside your body and seeing yourself in third person. You realize how big your tummy is than you actually think it is.

And learn how concerned your friends are about you. Ajith, having exposed to frequent movie climaxes, resorted to electric jolts to recover me. Funny thing that he used the same pretty often later in career to try get people back from life... and adversely affected his reputation

Life was good, going smooth and fun. And an unexpected thing happened.

There are two ways one might fall… when blood stops flowing to brain, and you fall… or when you see someone, get hyper, blood flows more into your brain, you fall again…

In the first fall you wake up a while later… it’s called fainting. The next one’s much more difficult to recover from… it’s called falling in love

Life, they call is what happens when you start planning for something else. They say that if you don’t have to beg for it, if it’s your destiny. But what if it’s your destiny to get it by begging?

What if you could make your life like a movie script… you put in the good scenes… some breathtaking visuals… and finally run your life plot around it so that you get your money’s worth. And my movie needed a good female lead.

I didn’t know whether she’d fit in my life. Whether I’d fit in her already beautiful life. But that’s how mind works when the brain stops thinking, thinking with the other organ, I meant heart.

I started creating my own plot. I first met her in Ajith’s hostel day. So I started visiting him more often, and stop by at their canteen where I knew she would be hanging out with her friends. And it’s a bit easy to get the medic chicks, the guys over there were hell bent in antibiotics and cadaver, a whiff of something else would feel like a mix of all the good Yardley flavours.

And I could easily impress her, especially when she was at the hospital premises. The ghosts from mortuary were pretty helpful in giving scoops to floor her.

And in one of the tests she was performing on the cadavers, I gave her much better observation on the cause of death than the expert chief doctor she was working with. In the hind sight it’s very difficult to tell the brand of ant poison the person has used to kill himself, unless told by the person’s ghost.

“I am impressed with your judgment” she said

“Who wouldn’t be?” I mocked

She was the hottest chic in their college. So when a non-medico was flirting with her, the entire college was on envy. They would try to mock me, or make hoots as they pass by. But it didn’t matter to us, it’s obvious I wouldn’’t care, but it was so flattering to know that she had little concern for others.

“Why should I care when the person who needs to care is in the right place, beside me” she’d say

And just to impress her I’d sometime yell at the guys who hoot with little known secrets only they and their dead uncle or cousin know.

“You aren’t frightened?” I asked her

“About what?”

“How I could know his secrets…”

“You don’t need explanations for what you already know” she replied

That evening Ajith caught me off guard about my endeavours in the canteen. “Tell me who’s the girl?”

“Don’t be pissed. Think you might know her, she’s the hottest girl in your college” I said

“Anitha?” he asked

“NO stupid, she can’t be even the second best; that should be Aarthi. Am speaking about Kanika”

“Who’s that?”

Do I have to say that she was their senior who lost her life in an accident a year ago ?

30. She is the one

2013-03-09T15:11:00.000+05:30

Exploring the entity of feminine population is like blind men trying to figure out the elephant. Men’s perception vary drastically based on what they have encountered in their personal experience.

Vicky, a friend of mine used to say ‘You’d realize all girls are good natured when you start moving close to them’, which I interpret as ‘Girls can be good natured to people who get into their good books’

But this story isn’t about my or Vicky’s perception. We are mere props in the world of Santo. And unlike Vicky, Santo never got deep insight into the world of women. For him women were of three kinds

Women who don’t know him and hence completely ignore him
Women who just know him as a passerby, and hence think twice even before entering a lift with him (there’s an explanation for the ‘hence’) and finally
Women who really know him and realize that he’s no rogue but a mere ‘comedy piece’

By the earlier description you’d have known that Santo is not the ‘alpha’ of our gang. That was Vicky. And there were many betas & gammas where the ‘normals’ and ‘geeks’ fit in. Santo is more like the ‘in-betweens’ the guys who don’t form any vital part, but without whom the team could never exist.

He’s like the glue who’d just be there and facilitate all the happenings we plan. Go for a trekking? Count him in. Go for a ‘counter strike’’ battle? Count him in. Or the odd ball quiz or Ad-zap? You can still count him in. He’d be like the ‘out of focus’ guy in the Trek photos, or the other survivor in addition to the ‘commando’ who killed’em all in game battle, or the comical standing tree that tilted the judges to award us the ‘best Ad’ award.

And to the main area of concern… Santo and Women. Though he’s not the desi version of Tom Cruise, he can pass of as the innocent friend the heroine would finally settle with, in ‘chic-flicks’.

It had more to deal with his behavioural attributes. He was really poor in role-play, that’s the reason he was the standing tree in Ad-zap. And however naturally sweet a guy is (trust me, no one is), you have to act a bit before the fairer sex to gain their respect.

Poor Santo just frets off when he gets near a good looking girl, and either bends down or turns his head to the direction opposite to them… or worse just stares at them making them compare him with Hannibal Lecter from ‘Silence of the lambs’. And this is the ‘hence’ for women having reservations about getting into lift with him.

So what changed? How did Santo finally end up with the ‘one’? Or did he?

Puppy dog looks

Girls like injured puppies or the ones who nurture and save them, cos they actually think they themselves are the most miserable creatures in the world, and could easily relate to the puppies. So it was natural when Santo came out of the mud pond with an actual injured puppy in his hand, he had so many 'aawws"

Meera, our PETA volunteer, her natural instincts taking over, rushed to help out.

“What happened? “she asked

“It broke its leg. And I can’t let it go all by itself” he said.

He did not tell her it was he who broke its leg while pouncing on it to get Vicky’s bike keys, which Santo had dropped by accident into the pond. We were on a picnic to nearby hillock, and while rest of us came by the bus arranged, Vicky like the usual show-off he is, decided to come by his new bike. (His ploy worked though, as he convinced and did drop Shreya, the hottie of our batch, in her home which is a slight detour from our bus route)

The dog had caught the keys by its teeth and was running deeper into the pond, hence Santo had no other option but to drag it along with him to the shore.

We were watching a few seats behind in the bus as the new ‘Marley and Me’ was unfolding before our eyes

“Is he hurt…?” Santo asked her

“Looks so… he seems to be in pain…” she said

“May be should get him to a doctor” they said together. She looked at him and smiled on realizing that they both had said the same thing together. She liked that he too, like her didn’t want to call a pet’s doctor anything different. Little did she know that he didn’t know a pet’s doctor is called a vet.

Days went like a suburban train, slow for the one’s who wanted just to reach the destination, and fast for those (like Meera & Santo) who were just enjoying the journey. They started going out together, movies, lunch, eating out on weekends…

Meera took Santo’s clumsiness for cuteness, and his stupidity for innocence. You always see what you want to see.

And Santo thought he had finally found the ‘one’ in his life. Or was she?

Please stand up

All stand-up comedians have a similar career graph. They start off with a couple of good acts, work their brains off to bring out a couple of laughs and stay low. And after some time, when they get lucky with a side role in a movie, or good P.R about their skills, they become more casual, and since people know they are funny, people laugh at whatever they say, even jokes that weren’t meant as a joke in first place.

That’s the same thing with girls. When they find someone in a sale looking at a dress they had just passed by, their first instinct would be grab from the other girl’s hand telling they had reserved it.

So it was natural that once Santo started moving freely with Meera, other girls started realising that he was sweet and sensitive. They said that he was a really nice guy, and there was no pressure while hanging out with him, they could be themselves.

So Santo got to hang out with more & more girls, and he started liking it. And it wasn’t dangerous until one day Anitha, Meera’s rival in almost everything from academics to co-curricular, approached him for a dine-out.

“You are stupid to accept it.” I told Santo

“It’d be rude to not accept. May be I should try other fishes too, why should I settle for less?” he replied

“Do you realize who you were a month ago?” I reminded him

“Chill off guys… Let our kid enjoy for a while” Vicky took his side

“Have you told Meera?” I asked

“No, she doesn’t need to know. They are from different cliques, they hardly talk to each other”. And that’s where he made the mistake. Girls who are hell bent against each other, would know if their rival even sniffed a little different.

And any way it’s not the girls’ fault. They are like gravity, they behave the way they are supposed to behave. It’s up to guys to do the right thing.

But the good thing for Santo here is that girls don’t think that way. They are always ready for a cat-fight, what not a more opportune moment than one with a boyfriend stealer.

The third dimension

The word that Meera and Anitha are fighting over Santo spread like a wild fire.

“Even getting Anitha is ok… but Meera??? You are a genius bro” Vicky addressed Santo, with undue respect for the first time

And it was a virtuous cycle, getting a girl makes you confident and more attractive, and that confidence makes you perform better everything, and hence better and more attractive…. The cycle goes on

So Shreya was naturally dragged into the events. She was interested in guys for reasons other than that of the two cat-fight girls… Meera for companionship, and Anitha for benefits like assignments, projects etc.

As for as Shreya is concerned, guys are like trophies… it’s enough for her to say that she had gone out with so and so guy, whether they parted ways later doesn’t matter. Only precondition, the relationship should be ended on her terms. So she was naturally pissed when Vicky unilaterally started avoiding her after that bike trip during our picnic. She was looking at an opportunity to get back to him so that she could dump him by herself.

So going out with Santo gave her an opportunity to kill two birds with one stone. Going out with a guy who is popular, and making Vicky jealous by doing so.

So when Meera and Anitha were having street fight during our theme park visit, Santo was enjoying the roller coaster and water rides with Shreya.

When Meera and Anitha were fighting a terrific debate in the conference hall, Santo & Shreya were having an eat-out at the nearby cafeteria.

Things were going smooth and shiny for Santo, he could act anyway he wanted with girls, and they still wanted to flirt with him. But things can be good only until the two girls in your life are fighting. When they get together, it’s hell for him.

And two girls fighting each other need a common enemy to forget everything and formulate truce. Unfortunate for Santo, he became the common enemy, when they realized that he was going out with Shreya behind their backs.

E.T’s call

Once she realized Santo was no more interesting Anitha decided to end things with him on her own terms. And Shreya realizing that Vicky was not buying her ruse found no more benefit hanging out with Santo.

Columbia Pictures CEO Frank Price had the rights for two sci-fi movies: Starman & E.T. He felt that there was no place for two sci-fi movies in a year, and hence decided to make Starman which he felt was a better bet. And instead of shelving E.T he decided to sell it to Universal so that he could cash in on that as well. And the rest as they say is history.

Starman bombed & E.T went on to make movie history and is still regarded as one of the greatest movies ever made even after generations. And Price is remembered as the person who made the wrong call. Girls being very sensitive as they are do not want to end up feeling they made the wrong choice.

Had Price just kept the movie in his shelves or ensured that the story writer did not get to sell it to someone else, he may not have gained this notoriety at all. The world of course would have lost a gem of a classic, but Price had nothing to lose. You always are better off when what you turned down is not picked up by someone else, or fails miserably.

Girls too do the same thing. Anitha did the former, though she wasn’t going to have Santo as her first choice, she kept up the hopes of Santo, so that he would never end up with someone else. And Shreya did the later, she spread rumours about how creepy he is and thereby ensuring no one else would have a thought about being with him. And her ploy worked… Meera naturally started having second thoughts about hanging out with him, and started avoiding meeting him in social events and gradually stopped interacting with him altogether.

“I don’t understand. Vicky does the same thing to girls, even worse. But they still hang out with him” Santo complained. Of course girls like jerks who behave like a jerk. But when you act like a ‘sweet guy’ when you really are not, your mask would come off one day and you’ll end up worse. Still there are exceptions who have perfected this art of deception, but like I said they are exceptions

The moral of the story… no.. I have no plans explaining Karma or life’s tendency to gravitate towards fairness. Life is not fair.

Simply put, if you are not good at juggling balls, it’s better to hang on to only one or like the pockets in a snooker table wait until one is being pocketed. (If you didn’t get it…. the former is monogamy and the latter is arranged marriage)

Twist in the tail

Just when we thought things were back to normal, and Santo back to his bunk of loneliness, something we never expected happened. Rumours of Santo going out with Shreya started dripping in.

When Santo didn’t deny it, we thought it was his ploy to reclaim his societal status. But I couldn’t disprove my eyes when I saw him sharing a plate of Paav with Shreya in the canteen (the fatso doesn’t give even a crumb of the three burgers he used to buy for lunch)

It happens that Shreya was bowled over by his ‘simplicity’ and lack of ‘acting’. She had told one of her friends “He asked me to play ‘Counter-strike’ with him. No guy has asked me that before you know” she had told with moony eyes to one of her friends

Weird are the ways women folk react…

Like Power star Srinivasan says "It's not action or comedy... it's finally sentiment that clicks with girls"

Playing cupid

2013-01-01T09:24:00.000+05:30

The Idea

We have heard of triangular love stories, where the guy who intends to help his friend get a girl, finally gets the girl for himself. What if there is a guy who ends up being the complete opposite?

This is a story about a guy who never tries to play cupid, and sometimes even has interest on the girl, ends up playing cupid.... again & again & again....

What Makes This Story ‘Real’

The story is a collage of events happened in my as well as a couple of friend's lives. And am sure there are a number of 'Soup' boys & girls out there who could relate the events in the story to their real life

Excerpts from the story

I never knew I was a match maker, in fact I never believed in the theory of 'one love'. But it so happened that each girl whom I move around with treat me only as 'friend' and the guys whom I buddy up generally end up being her life mate

Real love, they say, always starts with one wrong move at the right time

So axiomatically, when you make all the wrong moves all the times, doesn’t probability make sure that, at least one such move, lands up at the right time?

Incident 1:

My Gtalk caption reads: Real love, they say, always starts with one wrong moove at the right time

She: If it’s true, then you have made all the wrong mooves …

Me: Thanks. Have corrected the spelling for ‘moves’

She: (signed off)

Incident 2:

Gilli: I think I love her

Me: Who?

Gilli: (he signaled at her)

Me: So???

Gilli: Can I get an intro?

Me: … Sure

Wrong move, esp. when you know that the guy’s dad is filthy rich and he doesn't care to flaunt it...

This is my entry for the HarperCollins–IndiBlogger Get Published contest, which is run with inputs fromYashodhara Lal and HarperCollins India

28. Glucose andhadhi

2012-12-30T05:50:00.000+05:30

Andhadhi(Tamil: அந்தாதி) is a unique kind of Tamil poetry constructed such that the last or ending word of each verse became the first word of the next verse

She always gets me high

High as any blue sky

Sky with dragon flies

Flies my every slice

Slice of sullen life

Life that’s never mine

Mine that's full of gold

Gold can't match her hold

Holding in my heart

Heart-felt little light

Light as sparrow's feather

Feathers that flock together

To-get-her is my dream

Dreams that will scream

Screaming for a while

While she whiles her time

Time that stands just still

Still as a glossy picture

Picture perfect frame

Framed my hapless form

Formed in my barren soul

Soul full of mellow

Mellow like a meadow

Meadow over the window

Window of the moment

Moment that had cement

Cement to stop my fall

Fall not for my love

Love of my life

Life that’s not so rife

Rife are the rumours

Rumours that'll humour

Humour that's gentle

Gentle to my lady

Lady of my town

Town that's my own

Owns me all her-self

Self life in her lil shelf

Shelf under water

Water full of thirst

Thirst that will last

Last until am lost

27. Funny State: Bus Ride

2012-12-23T11:44:00.000+05:30

It’s not sincerity or honesty that helps run a people friendly nation. It’s not even intelligence or diligence, not even power or influence…. All that’s required is sheer cheekiness in managing the situation

“The price of Gold has doubled in less than five years and people are still buying it… The land value in cities grow even more than that and I don’t see anyone complaining it. But I raise the bus charge by a mere rupee and there is a hullaballoo all over. There are cartoons parodying the transport department in every possible way, strikes, lock-outs & rallies protesting it…” Joshwa, my contemporary chief minister from neighbouring state was complaining.

Good thing that I resisted the pestering by my finance & transport minister on toeing the line of our neighbour states to raise the fare

------o------

“So where do we stand on the proposal for our new Governance centre” I asked our council about my plans for my new office I have envisaged

For all its grandeur, the existing office was just an eye candy and was very inconvenient to work in, the electricity lines, telephone and utility lines… you can modify a century old building to modern facilities only to an extent… especially when you have the penchant for modern amenities like I have. The final straw was drawn when they said they couldn’t install a voice activated shower in my personal room.

“It is not possible introduce new power lines without affecting the aesthetics or safety of the structure” said the Engineer

This is why I was sceptic about appointing this bright looking guy. You can’t get what you want if you are always wise.

“Had I given the contract to some local guy he could have done some ‘jugaad’ and installed the shower in my room” I told Pritam, who’s become my talk-to person for all these stuffs.

“But he may not have cared even if you’re electrocuted while taking shower, which our guy says is pretty much a possibility with the state of our wirings” he reasoned

Am always bad at responding to reasons of smart guys. They always counter reason when am wrong and don’t readily agree like others do. But I need to put up with them, cos the alternate choice of too much flattery makes me uncomfortable

------o------

I was looking from Finance to Public works minister, and no one looked like taking any effort to reply me. “What’s the status of my god-damned new office ?”

“There’s a problem…” Pritam started

“Why is that you always come to me with a problem?” I scowled, though I knew he was one of the few who were willing to approach even when it was not going to score any brownie points for them.

“We don’t have enough money” ignoring my previous ramblings

“What? We’re the government… we don’t have money build a stupid office building?”

“We used to run in negative for a while. The earlier government never planned on returning to power.” Finance opened his mouth the moment he got an opportunity to put the blame on opposition.

“Is there a possibility of improvement in few months?”

“If we raise the taxes on fuel and transport fares…” Transport began

“I just had a talk with Joshwa, he is experiencing hell in his state. I don’t want anyone repeating the same old fare-hike jokes in weeklies” I interrupted him

“So let’s at least drop the new building plan until situation improves” said Pritam

“And when will that be?” I knew there wouldn’t be any answer even before I asked the question

------o------

“I know you are reluctant to join my team. I understand your reservations on joining a politician’s advisory. But I need you, the country needs you” I barged into Praseed’s office that was unresponsive to my mails and calls.

“You really believe what you just said?” he was sarcastic

“Am an opportunist, I have to believe in whatever is my most beneficial stand point”

“That’s the problem, you don’t have any principles” he replied

“Come on, you know you can easily win any argument with me. I can no longer work with people who are too reluctant to speak out facts on reality….” I continued “and I know you can put a lot more of what you have learnt to practical use”

The last words should have clinched the deal. I knew that he’d never be just satisfied with giving scholarly comments about the government’s actions on daily news.

“Now I’ll have to convince Kanmani….”

“Don’t worry… she’ll say ‘yes’. I’ll speak to her” I was not sure why I felt offended by this help by him.

------o------

Candy (aka Kanmani) was the complete opposite of Praseed’s brooding & serious personality, she was cheerful & sociable, and one would always like to agree with whatever she says. Wherein you’d want to counter argue what Praseed says just because of the way he ridicules your level of intelligence in each of his sentences.

And that’s the main reason why I said ‘no’ when Praseed said “We have to raise the bus fares”

“Then stop the spending” he said

“I did not bring you to the team to say what we already know” he had to be shown who the boss was

“What he says is why we don’t try some indirect ways of generating revenue, ways that might assuage the heat people feel on an outright raise” Candy mollycoddled my idea to him

So after a few days of research Praseed came up with something what he said would be familiar anyone who has attended Economics 101. “Good thing for our politicos that even the most educated lot have gone through no or at the max a little exposure in the subject of economics”

“That should make much more usable knowledge material than knowing what Jawaharlal Nehru was very much fond of children” Kanmani agreed readily. I also did not miss the disapproval of Pritam on her irreverence towards the near godlike national leader

“So what’s the plan?” I cut short the intellectual gabble

So Kanmani explained to us the general premise of the idea. “They call this the price-demand curve. What it basically says is that when the price is more, people buy less, and when price is less people buy more”

“That’s so obvious, what does this has to do with our bus tickets” Pritam asked what I was going through my mind

“The price of bus tickets is similar to any other cost. So the total revenue would be the area P2Q2 for high price option and P1Q1 for low bus tickets” Praseed explained

“So you are telling that whatever I do I’ll get the same amount of money”

“Same amount of revenue, and not net cash flow” Praseed corrected me

“What does that mean?”

“Assuming more or less same cost per passenger kilometres, for the same revenue, our cash flow will be better with high price tickets”

“And I’d face the ire of public in all the media and hartals” I completed his words

“That’s why we have come up with a plan which can satisfy everyone” Kanmani came in. “They call it product differentiation in marketing terms” she continued “Instead of having revenue equal to only one area P1Q1 or P2 Q2, we can have the entire area under the demand curve”

“What should I do now? Raise the price or not?”

“Have buses at different price range so that everyone can choose their preference. So we’ll get maximum revenue and at the same time cater to all sections of people” she concluded

I knew Pritam was sceptical, but continued with the necessary procedures required for the changes.

------o------

It was about six months since the changes were made in the transportation department. Though revenue had improved, it still did not make the desirable cash flow. And it did not satisfy the general public either, as they found that the more affordable buses were getting less frequent.

Since it was the first half of our term none of our party members, and even most of the opposition members cared little about the plight of a bus traveller. The only person nagging me was Govind, the Transport minister, and that too only because he was overlooked while making the decisions. His rumblings had the potential to turn into dissatisfaction among party members, but I knew development of such a situation would take considerable time and I hoped things would turn up for the better, or something would rise itself to the occasion to assuage Govind

“So why am I still faced with empty coffers?” I asked Pritam

“Think some of the assumptions we made were not accurate” Praseed suggested

“I knew it from the beginning. These theories won’t work in real life.” Pritam looked at me blamingly

“Like I said some assumptions need to be fine-tuned” Praseed repeated

“How could you think that cost of deluxe and regular buses is the same? A regular bus is crowded four times your deluxe, and they are the people we really need to cater to” Pritam continued

“This is exactly the kind of insight we are looking at” Candy tried to pacify the situation by complimenting him, “and I also think we should make the buses more attractive if we need to generate volume in premium ticket fares”

“Instead we can buy more buses so that common man and footboard travelling school children need not suffer. The rich kids will anyway have pick up vehicles” Pritam continued to argue

“The most developed country is the one where even the richest use public transport” Praseed observed

Finding that the argument goes nowhere, I stopped “So what’s the best decision?”

“The best decision is to put forth the alternate views before assembly and get consensus on what has to be done” said Govind who had just now come in. This is the sort of hyperbola that I don’t like in democracy, too slow decision making process. With my style of work handling a person which such ideas would be tricky

“Govind bhai, I give you full freedom in decision making, and I’ll back you on it irrespective of the outcome, leave the consensus making to me” I was sure he was not prepared for this sudden elevation to mantle.

“But CM bhai, I can function only based on our expert opinion.” He looked at Praseed & Candy to help him out

“So why not follow what we do in Metro trains, separate first class coaches and hence separate boarding & waiting locations” Candy came up with a suggestion

“So that they would still live in a cocoon away from the reality of ‘poor’ India?” Pritam was ready to argue anything

“Sadly, what you say is kind of right, but it serves the purpose” she smiled at him pleadingly

“Let’s give it a good name so that people don’t feel discriminated” Govind came up with a good suggestion least expected of him

------o------

‘Fast Lane service’ started without much fare in all the metros. I particularly insisted on making it a low pro affair so that it’s not subjected to stringent scrutiny. Services ran on select main routes which had scope for premium priced tickets. Govind as per the ‘expert’ committee had appointed a professional agency to conduct surveys to predict demand for routes

Things did improve a bit in the coffers. Though there were certain rumblings about ‘Fast lane’ eating up more of government spending, people were content since we took care that the regular services were not affected adversely. People were particularly appreciative about ‘point to point’ services to airports & railway stations matching timings of major flights & trains

Few days past I received a call from the Finance Minister at the centre. Expecting word of appreciation for the work done I greeted him cheerfully.

“Chotu, greetings” he addressed me rather grim “This is going to be rather uncomfortable. The Industrial reports for the year have just come. And the results are rather unwelcome, especially your state has marked slowdown compared to other states, especially in automobile & other sectors” things he said after dimly registered in me

For some unknown reason I remembered Pritam saying cheerfully that day ‘The roads are less crowded, more people have started preferring public transport to private vehicles’

And Govind barged into my room with urgency “The cab drivers union wants to meet you. They feel their business has come down rapidly, especially the airport services are eating into their revenues”

I recollected what the Finance Minister had told a while ago “Chotu, I appreciate all the techie things you’ve done; they are done with noble intentions. But do you think that’s the real problem with loss making public transportation? Haven’t you observed more & more private transports plying through the same routes where we make losses? Why do you think they don’t make losses?”

A leaking cauldron will not hold much. I realised how much more lay ahead of me. In Praseed’s words “Considering what I have observed in this short time, I have realised how much more the academic world has to catch up with real time economic problems”

1. Funny-state: Tiger shark

2. Funny state: Journalist journey

26. Slicker tricker

2012-12-14T07:43:00.001+05:30

We were three different kind of guys. I'd actually like to make it two guys and another one at a distance from us

Tom used to be the guy who stood first in his class, conduct crash courses for the entire hostel the day before exam, and obviously sleep walked over the sleep walked through the placement program into the job he wanted.

I on the other hand huffed and puffed through the routines, managed to scramble through courses without much scratch and by luck end up in the same company as he did.

Then there was Joel, he was not ‘Tom’ but not me either. He planned meticulously, buttered the right profs, slipped through with good grades, and touched down to the same job by sweet talking the entire placement panel.

Honey Dew:

Before I reveal which approach is good or who came on top at the end, let me explain an incident. Anita aka Honey (she isssss a ‘Honey’) is the fourth member of our small team of freshers that joined together, and was always good at using the resources available with her (that includes getting help from droolers like Joel)

So one day when she wanted some issue to be clarified, she made the obvious choice and approached Tom. And Tom was gaga about it the whole day “Finally I spoke to a girl for more than five minutes continuously and that too she approached me and not the other way around.”

“You know she approached me even when our boss was nearby, and he wasn’t even that much busy” he continued in the dinner table

“Then you better watch out for her” warned Joel “Bosses get upset by these things, and he might even try to jeopardize your career due to this. And Anitha might have guessed this and approached you intentionally, cos she knows you are her prime contender”

Had it been me I’d have just said “who cares, it’s worth the dribble with ‘Honey’” But it was Tom, and he didn’t speak, literally stopped speaking with Honey before our boss

Joel had told Tom to say that he was ‘busy’ or ‘I don’t know’ when Anitha approached him, but Tom did not want to be rude, and never can feign ignorance. But Joel’s ploy worked when he’d told Anitha that he was working on something and later caught playing ‘minesweeper’ minutes later.

So this is what happened in the end. Joel called Anitha while she was waiting for our boss, and offered to help her. “Our boss is always busy with one thing or other, being the star performer he has been given more responsibilities by top management” he spoke louder so that even the deaf office help at other end of the floor could hear him.

“And he had explained this to me yesterday. He did it in a neat and sophisticated way. I may not match him, but will atleast try to make you understand” and I could watch our boss ebb with pride as if he had overheard something that was not addressed to him.

And that evening he had the tutor session continued at the coffee shop in the campus. And it’s anybody’s guess who’ll rule the roost for the rest of their career.

Or is it that straightforward ????

inky pinky ponky

It was a few days since we had settled down to our respective roles. Whatever Joel had said about our boss, he was considered a little brainy and a task master, and I’d always envy my friend Tuffy who used to have a ‘cool’ boss

“It’s not like we don’t do any work, he doesn’t make much fuss about what we do and lenient on many of those corporate rules” he’d say

I had met his boss once, when I & Tuffy were eating together in the food court. “Guys in our team say that they are lucky because he teaches them every step. Is this a school?” I vent out my frustration about a colleague of mine

Tuffy later told me that the senior looking person who sat beside as was his boss, and I think he smiled at me when I made that ‘school’ comment

“And when there’s not much work, he doesn’t mind me chatting for the whole day with Neha” he continued, to remind for the n^th time that he has a pretty girl in his team, whom he gets to flirt with.

And I got to meet her few days further when we had Tuffy’s birthday bash

“So you’re in Joshua sir’s team?” she had worked with my boss during her internship it seemed. “You must be really a bright chap…”

“Yup… inky pinky ponky….” I quipped

“What???” she looked puzzled

“You have a cool boss yourself to boast about…” I returned the compliment

We really hit it off that day. She seemed to agree with almost everything I said, and looked like we had similar interests almost everything.

“Do you like classical music?” she asked me as we were about to leave

“Don’t have much patience for that” I replied without recollecting that there was a concert scheduled in our office premises that weekend

“Ya… me too, meet you soon” she said, and it was a while since she left when I realized that she might not actually dislike classical music & might have been meaning that we could go to the concert together

Slicker tricker

“You know she agreed to everything I said, as if she wanted me to feel that we think alike” I could not control myself boasting to Tom

“You know she wanted to be in our team” Joel barged in

“Is it? She told me she interned with our boss”

“She was asking me if there’s possibility of swap between teams. May be that’s what she’s buttering you for” he was trying to pull me down from elated state, and despite knowing his sly tactics I kind of felt insecure and having doubts

“She doesn’t seem that sort of person, and It’s not worth that much just to shift to a team cubicles across” I proclaimed

“She’s a girl, and girls would act more for much less, you can trust me on that” he spoke like he knew what he was speaking “and you don’t realize how lucky you are to get into our division do you? I know people who hound behind the HR to somehow get into our division”

That was news for me. May be that’s why she thought I should be a bright chap

I eventually decided to go to the music concert, and since I couldn’t bring up courage to call up Neha to reinstate the schedule, I tagged along with Anitha & co, so that I could bump into her ‘accidentally’

Even nerdy Tom could say that it was a stupid move, and lack of any warning & an unusual subtle encouragement from Joel confirmed that it was a stupid decision

“I came only because my friends compelled me to…” I told Neha when I did accidentally bump into her, and she realized that ‘friends’ included only Anitha

“Your friends compelled??? You begged me to let you tag along…” Anitha pulled my leg, “He doesn’t even know the difference between swara and raga” she complained about me to Neha

“You’re not my Maths teacher and she’s not my mom, why do you quetch about me to her?” I couldn’t tolerate my friends betraying me when I need their help the most

Smooth & shiny

I somehow managed to delink the Anitha bogey from our train, and Neha was more than willing to my offer for a treat, only that she shifted the location from the café I had in mind to her ‘favourite’ chaat shop nearby

But I couldn’t tolerate for more than a while her agreeing with whatever I said, and constant allusions to my intelligence. “Am not that brilliant as you think, not all people in Joshua’s team are”

She was still trying to hold on to her captivating smile as I continued “that’s what ‘inky pinky ponky’ means. I got here by luck”

“Am not that dumb not to realize what that means, but you should know he doesn’t pick up his team that way” she interjected

“Your boss is not bad either” I tried to console her

“You know what he said when I complained that he doesn’t teach stuffs? ‘This is not a school’. You know how mad I became that day?” I did not intend to let her know from whom he might have got that phrase

“It’s not that bad as it seems, he is really cool. As a matter of fact I’d have liked it better if I were posted in his team”

“That’s why thought you’d like to swap”

“So that’s why you hang out with me? To cajole me to swap places with you?” May be that came out wrong, might be right logically, but wrong by societal norms

“You know what? I changed my mind, if I have to choose between having an arrogant boss like him and a teammate like you, I’d choose the former” she left

She came back, kept the money for the bill on the table and said “And now you can’t even complain how I managed not to pay the bills by throwing up tantrums” I never thought that way, but can’t guarantee I wouldn’t have in sometime future

Ad lib

It was about a year since that happened. Joel continued to play his sly tactics. It turned out that even my boss was cool in his own arrogant sort of way. And by the way she moved along in her cubicle I could see even Neha was enjoying her office time.

But I was happy that life had served its own form of justice. No matter how deceptive he was, Joel could never overshadow Tom’s pure talent. And despite his overly sweet talks neither Neha nor Honey could consider him a hang out buddy, and he was more of a loner other than few other guys in similar shades like him.

And one day Neha herself approached me during tea break “Hi, hope you don’t remember our little hassle” she reminded me the only thing that comes to my mind whenever I saw her

“Leave it yaar… it spices up our lives” I tried to act cool, wondering what she was up to this time

May be I was acting too suspicious, may be Neha really was acting friendly, may be what Joel had said had got to me, may be what he does is not all evil as it seems... these are questions that may not be answered at all, but that's how life is... incoherent, illogical, and with many loose ends...

And one thing's for sure, slicker or tricker.. you are responsible for whatever you do...

20. Funny State: Journalist journey

2012-04-08T08:37:00.000+05:30

It was about a month since I had assumed the office of Chief Minister. I was waiting for the pretty journalist I met yesterday in the press meet for a candid interview in my office. The interview was a much enjoyable affair, especially in comparison with my earlier outing with Ms.Lakshmi Subramaniam, the so called ‘activist’ journalist, who drilled me with so many questions on policies and decisions.

I just recited what uncle and his team of experts had prepared. ‘Lakku bhai’ got so frustrated with my sappy replies she snapped at a point and asked “Don’t you have anything to say without reading the prints in your hand”

I had replied “I would if you can ask questions which I can understand and are not boring” for which I get daily reprimands from uncle every day when he sees a follow-up article mentioning the said interview. My dad, the ex-CM, had been camping at the National Capital canvasing for the highest post in the country and hence had left the responsibility of monitoring my work to uncle. Being the youngest Chief Minister in the country did not seem to be a cake walk as I had imagined.

So from then on it was more or less like me doing things I was told to, speak things that were prepared for me. I was more like a puppet commanded by the strings attached to him. My public ratings that had dropped due to wonderful words by Lakku Bhai did come back to reasonable levels.

But I felt more bad reading those plaudits, than when I used to read the brick bats given by earlier articles. Don’t mistake me for those independent self-sufficient types, for instance I never felt bad about using my dad and uncle’s names to get to CM’s chair. Because they were part of me, but what I saw in the articles was not me, it was not who I was.

Harini introduced herself and asked “Shall we start?”

“Only if you continue smiling like this throughout the interview” Hope she was not feeling that I was hitting on her.

“Of course sir, on condition that you keep it interesting with your answers” she replied, showing her intention to fish for a scoop, which I was more than willing to.

“So what made you jump into politics at such a young age?”

“My advisors have told me to answer for this question with ‘opportunity to work for people’ and ‘bring about a positive change in the country’” she was a bit disappointed with the tame answer. So I continued “But they are all rubbish. It’s something more personal, like…” I stopped for a while to look at her eye balls running around like a mice chased by a kitten, intently watching my every movement and words.

“Like what???”

There are some things you can’t tell to a journalist, no matter how close they speak or how casual they say the interview is. I learnt it the hard way, though at a stage the stakes were much less when I look at it now.

‘Praseed’ his name was, the first journalist I have ever encountered in my life, in fact he was the first person I have met in our college as soon as I joined. Unlike others I did not have to wait in long queues of agony and suspense to get admissions. Dad gave me a few options which he felt would suit my career later (for careers he had in mind).

“Why don’t I have the top ranking colleges in this list?” I asked

“They’ll want you to study a lot, and I thought you won’t be fond of’em”

“I want to be in the rank no.1 college. After going through that two years in that boarding school up hill, think I deserve to be in one of these campuses…” I told him. I didn’t realise how silly and ironical it’d have sounded to someone who had toiled years for the same seat and lost out.

Also I had my own reasons for choosing one of these colleges. I could see how chicks look at guys from these institutions. There’s a whole back story to it which I might tell at later stage.

But here I was, the day before the first day of the college, and I was with Praseed in the college Bank. Dad has sent me all alone (the driver who drove my car doesn’t count) to open an account in the bank. And there was Praseed in his glasses and lanky frame and inquisitive gestures. I always have the ability to find the person for the job, and the moment I saw him, I knew I had the guy for the job. And as expected he was also a new joinee and like me had come to open an account. His dad was working in some finance consultancy in Gulf and so could not come with him for the procedures.

“But it’s fun doing things all by yourself.” He said. I didn’t have to agree with him cos the need for his help was over, but I still nodded. He got Electronics, unlike me who got Computer Science. He really admired me for that, though I didn’t tell him how I got it. (I learnt much later in my life that telling that little secret would have gained me more admiration. Weird to know the admiration people have for success that comes without effort, despite all those volumes of text written on the values of hard work and meritocracy)

I did not have much of contact with Praseed except the occasional ‘hi’ and ‘watsup’ in the hostel corridors until the final year. That was when we had the serious elections. (The ones for earlier years don’t count). And Praseed by now was popular among the bookish types, a minor population and was known to be a sure shot IIM grad. (He wasn’t, went to MIT Sloan). He was running the campus journal, and though it wasn’t a master piece, it was more than worth the funds put in use, and he did a much better job than the earlier teams.

By now I had become famous in my own way, culturals, symposiums and the like. And I never participated in any elections in college, it’s better to be behind the screens and do the puppeteering. It gave me more powers and much more freedom. And so one day this kid from my neighbouring hostel, Sethu, came to me… said he wanted to run for the college President, and wanted my support. I knew he’d come to me, but he took longer to bring up the courage to approach me, probably was waiting for me to see if I’d throw my hat into the race.

“No probs, dude. Am not running” I said

“But your friend Praseed is” he said

I must have heard it wrong, how on earth did he think he’d win?

“He has a fan following, especially girls, and hence guys who want to agree with those girls” said Sethu.

One difficult thing with College politics is that unlike ‘real politics’ views of the female half count. No matter what one reads about the growing influence of women in politics, they are far and few and the major decisions and trends are still based on men based issues. Coming back to the issue at hand... I decided to speak with Praseed

Speak I did, and he repeated the same reply “It’s not like am against you or your friend who runs, I think I can do a good job and I sure think it’s definitely good for democracy to have some competition in the election” Think he had read some crap from the newspapers.

“Like what???” Harini asked me again

“It’s not even the admiration and adulation you receive, though I don’t complain. It’s the satisfaction you get when you know what you are doing has immense significance.” I also thought of including the admiration one gets from chicks like her, but was smart enough to curtail it before the words slipped out.

Luckily she was happy with a light-hearted personal interview rather than the hot seat ‘issue’ based questions I was rammed up with otherwise. I even told her about how unsuccessful I was in the girlfriend arena (‘Really??? girls would have thronged at such an important person’ she exclaimed) and the tea shop I used to hang around with friends (I even offered to take her there, but she politely declined)

I was really not great with girls. Though the cool guy image and the charisma of influence does make an impact on women, whenever girls gets closer they act completely different and almost all of them stop being even the earlier friendlier self.

“Girls feel that you don’t give them due respect” one of my friends said

“You act the same way like you are with us” another friend of mine said. Acting the same way with guys and girls is a bad thing? Seems so… And I almost started believing it, but one day

“You act the same with both guys and girls, that’s kind of cool” she said

“I didn’t get your name..”

“Kanmani… You can call me ‘Candy’ “ she said showing her Campus journal id card written ‘KAN.D’ on it. Her dad’s name was Devaraj, I got to know later while enquiring her, a well-known businessman in her native. “He’s basically into agri-products, but he’s considering branching out into textiles” she said

Praseed had handed over the reins of the journal to her since he was preparing for his higher studies, and also he had the foresight to mentor someone who could continue the legacy of the club.

“And why do you want my interview?” I asked her

“Because they say you are the king maker of the campus”

“Not at all, things look so because people don’t like giving credit to the winners”

“You are just being modest” she said

“What about Praseed? He never needed anything from me to get to the position he is….”

“But he’s not the college President” He wasn’t, after that day we went hell bent into making sure Sethu got elected.

Though I had nothing against him, I felt the need to show Praseed who had the real influence. May be because it was the first time I was actually upto a real challenge in college. The first few weeks after Sethu came to me for support were really trying. It seemed that everyone liked Praseed or at least found him agreeable, wherein Sethu was a lil bit off the mark in that area.

“What can I do? I can’t be a ‘sweet guy’ running errands for the profs and taking late night tuitions like him. I don’t find time even for my studies”

“So that’s going to be our sales pitch” I said

“What??”

“How can someone who’s aspiring to join an ivy league university spare time for his Presidential duties amidst his busy study schedule, and the running between profs for apping and visa centres” I asked back

The plan was set in. We invited Praseed to lecture our juniors on how to get into good colleges or higher studies. He did fall in. “Just add a bit about how difficult it’d be and how much time consuming it’d be” we told him

“It’s not that difficult, and it doesn’t take much of my time”

“Not for you, but we must impress upon our juniors the importance of hard work” he fell for it.

And in the background we had started canvasing for Sethu and telling how difficult it’d be for Praseed to fulfill his duties if he got elected.

“Do you think it’ll work” Sethu asked me. It worked… We also had a tie-up with another girl who had a lot of friends by offering her Lady Vice President post (a newly created one specially for her) to get the LH (Ladies hostel) votes

I was surprised when Candy finished the interview without any more questions. While winding off, she asked, “Tell me off the record…How do you select a person for any post”

“Off the record???“ I thought for a while, and just to sound funny, I told her “Just select a person whom you can have control on, people who might need you even after winning”

“You think Praseed may not have needed your support if he had won?”

“You might tell him that if that’d make him feel comfortable”

But it made many people uncomfortable when it was published in the journal next week. The title read “The campus Puppeteer” with my photo looking like a villain from a 80’sBollywood movie. It was the last journal before we left college.

Praseed did apologise to me for the article telling that he did not look at the journal until it was published, as he thought it’d be better to give his successors a whiff of independence in the last issue of his tenure. But the damage was already done.

Sethu became more recluse while interacting with me. When I confronted him he said “Nothing yaar.. it’s just the farewell blues…” he avoided any actual conversation. But he was never the same friend again

After a fun filled one hour (atleast for me) Harini was winding up, “So when are you going to introduce us to your team?”

“What ???”

“Ya.. Your youthful team that’ll be helping you make all those out of the box schemes you are planning..” she looked at me with those big round eyes again

“You’ll see…” I chuckled nonchalantly hiding my fidgety fingers. “And thanks for the interview, it brought back a lot of pleasant memories”

‘Do I have to form a team for myself?’ I was thinking the whole day and even during night, as the thought did not allow me to have enough peace to sleep.

I initially thought of discussing it with uncle, but decided against it. He might feel that I was getting outside his line of control. Dad would give me some ideas but I did not want to bother him with these petty issues, especially when he was busy moving coins in the centre.

What I’d want in my team would be a couple of people whom I can trust, and at the same time can expect to give sensible ideas. And also not make me feel stupid…I need to have some fun working with them too…

I opened my facebook account to browse for some friends… to select the people who’ll help me draft the policies that run the nation and bring prosperity.

Just two names came into my final list

Praseed Venkatraman Econometric specialist, Stellar News
Kanmani Devaraj HR consultant, HiT governance India

One for advice, one for fun !!! Am still waiting to see which of the two would first respond to my invitation to join my team. Still waiting….

19. Meant to be

2012-03-24T11:55:00.000+05:30

Ross and Rachel were two friends, friends from kindergarten, lived in the same neighbourhood, played with each other, went to the same school, and then to the same college, by chance or choice got placed in the same company, and finally one day felt that they were meant to be together and conveyed the same to their parents. Happily ever after…

Sounds familiar??? This is the theme of almost all our romantic movies. But the question is, ‘does there really exists a phenomenon called ‘meant to be???’

--------------------o-------------------------

This can’t be studied just by empirical formulae or mathematical simulation, cos the there’s no formula or model in the world that can predict exactly the way people might react to changes in the world, and the ripple effect it creates resulting in zillions of permutations and combinations, making it almost impossible for any real time processor to compute.

This is when I came across the idea of ‘multi-temporal social experimentation’, an idea whose origin I partly can proclaim, the other half being my mentor Dr.T, the by now famous inventor of time flux continuum simulator, which many feel could be the precursor for the actual ‘Time Machine’. Not known to many, including me until recently is the fact that he had actually created a time machine, that can go back and forth in time like moving from my office desk to the coffee bar.

But Dr.T is a strange person. Not realising or not wanting to test the true potential of his invention, all he was interested was in using his invention for checking of historical incidents and fact findings. May be that’s why he had hired me, a non-technical, a relative computer illiterate with a bachelor’s degree in sociology in the first place.

--------------------o-------------------------

It all started with me crashing at the lab late night after my ‘supposed to be date’ called to say that she was held up with some important assignment, which I found while coming back to my apartment, was flirting with a ‘hunk’ looking classmate of hers.

‘May be you are not meant to be together’ it was unusual of Dr.T to console or at least involve with personal matters of his subordinates.

“What if there’s nothing like ‘meant to be’?” I asked him back

“What if we can find out by an experiment” he asked with a twinkle in his eyes.

So this is what the experimental setup was. We would identify a perfect couple, whom everyone feels are ‘soul mates’ and change a part of their lives and see if they still manage to come together.

“What if changing a part of their lives had an impact on our lives?” I asked

“Don’t you think I have thought about that?” he asked me rhetorically

--------------------o-------------------------

So the first part of our plan was to eliminate something either of the couple like in the other.

“What if we made one of them look fat?” I asked

“I doubt it’ll have an effect. But we’ll try” said Dr.T

So we went back in time to Ross’ childhood days and tipped him in different ways and means so that he’d buy something in the nearby burger store. The ploy did work. The guy got so addicted to binge eating that he started resembling the ‘before guy’ in the ad for weight loss programs.

But Rachel still ended up loving Ross. The only change that was visible was that the burger store that was supposed to be closed decades ago is still selling hot in the locality.

--------------------o-------------------------

“We should make the girl fat, women are ‘size blind’ when they are looking to settle down” I protested

“You are so shallow, but we’ll try” said Dr.T

And the ploy bombed too. She became so fat that Ross could never hug her in a single go, but that did not stop him from wanting to hug her. Only thing that changed was they got married little early than they did in our time.

--------------------o-------------------------

“They proposed when they went for onsite assignment in Paris. What if we cancel one of their trips?”

“Add a sweet talker to accompany the girl. She flies to Paris. Let the guy stay, and throw in a bomb shell to distract him from Rachel” Dr. T smiled wittily “We’re experimenting with their lives. Let them have some fun atleast” he defended at my glare

Ross was in goosebumps the whole season with ‘bomb shell’ and Rachel was more than enchanted by charming Mr Perfect in Paris. But the moment they met each other in the airport, both proposed each other in unison.

“How could this happen? we had given more than enough incentives for them to stay apart” I fumed

“Maybe they are meant to be” I so wanted to disprove his ‘meant to be’ theory

--------------------o-------------------------

We started trying many things to put them apart. Nothing worked, it all came back to some casual rom-com finish, not even the nail biting airport/railway climax was nigh.

If we made one of them dumb, they ended up tutoring with the other and ‘happily ever after’.

When we shifted their parents’ home apart, they still ended up studying in the same school, or college, or work in the same company.

And we even changed careers of a lot of models and actors to be friends or colleagues of Ross and Rachel to provide enough diversions. Nothing worked….

“Whatever happens, India doesn’t happen to wage war with another country..” I commented

“I had tried to prod an emperor into waging a war, but he ended up preaching Buddhism” Dr.T quipped. I can never tell when he’s serious and when he’s joking

I even studied many relationship books to see what ‘turns-on’ and ‘turns-off’ a person towards his/her partner and used it in our experiments. But all came to nought. There were even changes in governments, foreign policies, even state boundaries because of the changes we made. Ross and Rachel glued on like the fevicol ad.

--------------------o-------------------------

“So there’s no way a time machine can change one’s past??? Or influence future???” I asked Dr.T desperately

“What do you say about the changes that we had brought? The governments we’ve toppled and rulers we have changed?”

“But they were not the real intention…”

“Exactly… Life is more than merely tweaking one tiny part so that everything falls the way you want them to be.” He saint talked. “It’s more complicated. I want the person who operates such a powerful tool as what we have, to realise this”

We went for one final attempt to ruin Ross & Rachel's love life by spreading each other rumours about affairs they had with some colleague or friend. (Pretty low even for experiment purpose, I guess). As expected they cleared the doubts straight away among themselves, and as usual they lived 'happily ever after...'

“So there’s really something called ‘meant to be’?” I was still confused

“I don’t think so. Think there’s inherent attraction of people and entities to gravitate towards certain things or events. The person with more intent or will power hangs on to the destiny.”

“What about others, guys like me who don’t know what we want?”

“Others just move with the flow, and it doesn’t mean that they are worse off, some even have a much better life than the intent ones”

Tailpiece: I went back in time to meet younger me and advised to be nice to a classmate of mine. She had an ‘ugly duck - to - hot girl’ transformation and is my girlfriend now since I was sweet to her even when no one cared about her.

Thanks to 'F.R.I.E.N.D.S' for lending the names Ross & Rachel

18. Time to Change

2012-03-15T16:11:00.001+05:30

I was contemplating participating in a competition titled ‘Time to Change’ and was looking for avenues to write the article. My back ground study revealed that it was sponsored by a women’s product brand (Stayfree), and hence I thought it would be prudent to write some pro-woman or chic-flicky piece.

So here I was asking friends and peers about what I should write.

If there’s one thing you’d want to change what would it be???

“Traffic in the city” a friend who travels for more than an hour said

“Chennai’s summer” a vexed up Bangaloorean colleague complained

“Assignments given to doctoral students” a PYT neighbour said

“Assignments given to doctoral students” repeated her office going boyfriend, “am doing all her assignments…” he smiled sheepishly

Though all the suggestions were interesting, none of them seemed to strike me as something to write upon in depth. So out of desperation I asked a female colleague whom I rarely speak to other than for official purpose and spat came the reply ‘Men’s attitude towards women colleagues’

Taken aback I asked back ‘What about that? Can you be specific?’

“Just think of what you do and that’s enough” she replied

Though a bit offended I prodded her further “I thought I was ok with the way I deal with women colleagues, please enlighten me”

She just glared at me in expression of apathy and turned back to her computer.I knew I can’t be called chivalrous, but I honestly believed that I was more than ‘just ok’ in the way I engage with female colleagues.

--------------------o-------------------------

“I could be blunt in my conversations or a bit rude when correcting mistakes, but does that sound so chauvinistic?” I asked Lekha a much friendlier colleague “I treat guys the same way” I added a defence

“Women are not same as men” she replied “But that’s ok, we really like men who treat us as equals. It’s something else”

“What else ?”

Seeing that I won’t leave without a proper answer she pointed at another office colleague and asked “Do you know her ?”

“I’d like to..” I grinned (she was really hot), snapped back after a while and answered “Ya… Meghna, have seen her ‘pretty’ often, she sits near our cubicle”

“Do you know she got promoted last week?”

“Ya, Arjun said that her ‘perfume’ works wonders” I replied

“That’s where your problem lies, you never give credit to our talents, you blame it on something that’s feminine, never agree that we can win on equal footing” she said looking visibly upset with my comments.

--------------------o-------------------------

May be I ticked her off too much. After a while I saw her speaking with Meghna without even miniscule shades that she was upset just a while ago. Boy these women change moods so fast. She pointed at me and said something and I found both walking towards me.

Before I could come up with something to tell in my defence, she introduced herself “Hi, am Meghna”

Her smile was infectious like any pretty girl’s smile would be. Lekha had told her that I was making a survey on women employees and that I wanted Meghna’s help. Lekha spoke for a while on niceties and swinged ‘bye’ in the air and left. I knew I owe her a treat.

Meghna I learnt later was a geek in her college and did not have this glam girl image during her college days. She was one of those geeky types, and had been sleeping with books all those years. “So I was easily the topper of our batch and getting better appraisals in office was not all that difficult”

“But I never see you working late hours, and I have happened to see you in the lift when I scuffle into office late in the morning”

“What purpose does long hours serve in your job performance? And we have work to do at home unlike you guys”

“We too have to wash & clean our rooms and some of the guys even cook” I defended the bachelor life style

“Don’t call what you guys do as cooking. And you don’t have your mom and granny inspecting your work like in Master Chef Australia”

“You girls really have a lot of patience. I could never sit the whole day before the computer” I commented as if to acknowledge her hard work

She stopped for a while and said “Unbelievable, you still find excuses for our better performance, never could accept that a woman colleague has superior capabilities” She was never the same cheerful self again while speaking to me

--------------------o-------------------------

“What did I do wrong? I thought I was just complimenting her” I asked Lekha who was enquiring me suspiciously about my conversation with Meghna.

“Why can’t you give an unqualified appreciation?”

“What does that mean?” I asked back

“You guys can never compliment women without acknowledging that we could do it only because we get some other previleges which you don’t get. It always hurts your ego to accept defeat”

“But…”

“Shut up” she interrupted and continued, “What we hate in guys is that you are all very bad losers.”

“Come on… I have never seen any guy complain about losing a single mark in exam, or not able to get top performance ratings in a row” I tried to substantiate men’s case. Boy she was on a roll

“It’s not because you don’t care, but because you are too proud to show that you lost something you cared about.” She said

“So what. You want every guy to cry or make a scene for every miss he has made?” I was getting back on the driving seat

“That’d be a horror to watch. No girl has heart to see such stupidity. The problem is that you guys act as if what we have earned doesn’t matter at all. You never let us feel the success. Instead you make us feel guilty for it, acting as if we don’t deserve what we get”

I knew that I could argue more in defence of men, and give detailed descriptions of men being marginalised in the society I live in. But I also knew deep down that whatever Lekha was telling had some un-refutable truth. (Think the chance of winning an ipad also played a part in toning down my anti-feministic flavour)

--------------------o-------------------------

When I showed the completed article to another female friend of mine whom I believe to be unbiased by gender sensibilities, she commented “Don’t you think there’s an undertone of ‘objectivising women’ throughout the article?”

“Come on.. I am accepting that there might be some faults in the way men interact with women. Can’t you give me some leeway?” She was still not convinced, may be because I used the word ‘might’ in the previous sentence.

The blog is submitted for the following competition http://facebook.com/sftimetochange

17. Funny State: The Tiger Shark

2011-12-10T13:48:00.001+05:30

These were the finishing lines of a recent article in Outlook Business

While he’s happy with the changes brought about by Nitish Kumar’s government, Doripar’s Sunder Lal misses one thing: “Development-shevelopment is okay, but we miss Laluji’s humour,” he declares. “Bada achha majaak kar lete the!”

Malabar weeks:

I always wanted to be a ‘super star’, be admired, be someone who inspires people. So I decided to star in an action flick. “Start with a family cum romantic entertainer, like DDLJ” my first director said. So I fired him, and found this new boy, who says yes to almost every change I make to ‘his’ script.

I never thought making a movie would be so easy. All I need to do was tell my dad’s secretary that I wanted to act in a movie. Having a dad who is the ex-chief minister and current cabinet minister helps.

The heroine, a newbie, imported from Kerala, sat near my chair dressed in her negligee. I love the days when they shoot the duet songs. But still wish it was the bubbly heroine from the recent box-office hit rather than ‘Malabar’ sitting near me. ‘She has dates problems sir, also having a newbie paired with you would show you in much better light’ I was told. What he didn’t tell me was that she and almost every other heroine outright cordoned off from acting with me, especially after seeing the promos of the movie, the one which has been spoofed a million times in facebook by now. I should have booked a heroine and showcased her in the promos like John (the director kid) said. But made a note of all female actors who have rejected our offer (it’s a long list). They’ll have to pay back for the humiliation with interest.

The shooting for the dance sequence started. The song was a simple melody, and the steps were easy. ‘Malabar’ running around me and sometimes both of us doing aerobics kinda steps. By the end of the day happy & satisfied with the day’s work(?) I asked John for preview of the day’s shoot.

Perplexed, he asked “Why sir? Any problems?” This was the first time I had asked him to show the shots.

“No, I just wanna see how my first duet has come up”

I saw the video clips at home that night, and it made me speechless for a while. I called Malabar in her cell (the one I gifted her on the first day we met). She picked up after a while and greeted in a sleepy tone. “Want anything sir?”

“No. Just saw the song we made today. You were good.”

“Thanks sir”, I could see her smile even through the receivers. ”You were also extremely good” she replied

“You think so ? “

“Absolutely, I never thought someone could dance so well in their first movie, and I still doubt you saying you have never danced before”

I may not be an expert in dance, but know when a dancer sucks, and have myself made spoofs of umpteen no. of actors. I knew she was lying. Though I liked her efforts to make me feel happy, I hated that she lied to my face (or to my mobile). These are not the kind of people you could have around you if you really want to succeed. I knew what to do the next day “Good night Malabar” I wished her for the last time

The Real launch:

“I need to be the next Chief Minister. “ I told dad

“What about your movie? It’s not about the money, but having an unfinished movie would be a bad PR, especially when you have it just before entering politics.”

“It would be political and social suicide, if the movie actually saw the lights of cinema halls” I told him the obvious without mentioning I sucked “And don’t worry, I’ll take care of it”

The next day we made a relaunch of the movie, calling it ‘Real launch’. We told the media that the initial ‘reel launch’ was just a publicity gimmick for the spoof movie we make.

“The spoofs made on the ‘fake promo’ itself has given us no.of ideas for our movie” I guffawed at the reporters

Since the start of our movie, this was the first time I could see John with the burst of energy which he was when we first met. He’s a good kid, he did everything to make sure I was at good spirits throughout the shooting, yet he never lied to me blatantly like Malabar did. He had shown me that integrity can be maintained without hurting others. I knew then that he would be someone to watch out for.

The usual stuffs:

Dad had his ambitions for the highest post in the nation, and hence was looking for someone to fill his shoes in the state during the next elections. My uncle who seemed to be the heir apparent was gracious enough to step down and pave way for young blood (This is what we publicised in the media, the actual reason being the scandals on uncle the current ruling party had recently ‘unearthed’ to foil our attempt on recapturing the state)

The election campaign was the most fun part. Being the opposition party during elections is the easiest thing (next only to being a hero in a movie sponsored by your dad). All you have to do is blame the current status of the nation on the ruling government, which is nothing but stating the obvious, and ask questions to public on why we don’t have this and why we are not that, raising their still existing aspirations of living in Utopia even after facing frustration after frustration from successive governments.

Of course there were varied ploys handled by our opposition to defy my ambitions. Buoyed by the fact that he was competing against a relative novice, the existing Chief Minister ran with renewed vigour for his re-election. Lucky for me the state was in such a mis-governance that he had nothing to show that would fool the people a second time.

So the next attempt was to make personal attacks on my eligibility for the post and family politics in our party. Since he was doing this all along when his own son in forties was waiting behind for a chance to be their party’s leader, it gathered no mass. And I never defended any attacks on me, since I knew that the best way to deal with such issues is to not recognise them. And a particular tweet of a well-wisher became viral “Let’s vote for him, he’s inexperienced, and so may not be able to loot like the seniors”

Angry Young man:

But there was one young lad, Pritam, who started his own ‘Youth People’s Party’ who made some serious dent on my reputation. I initially did not give much credence to his party, since the word ‘Youth’ in the name itself alienated the vast majority of the voting population from his party. But the efforts he had taken to logically compare my eligibility with the abilities required to run a government frightened and irritated me. My dad and uncle hadn’t even completed high school, and they had been running the state for decades. How could a relative nobody question me, an Engineering graduate from one of the country’s best institutions, about my ability? (Luckily he did not dig deep enough to see how I got into the insti at first place or explore what my grades were during the four years)

And frankly I don’t understand why they make such a fuss about family politics? When they accept a business honcho names his son the Vice-President or joins him in the board, they publish the smiling dad-son duo in the covers of leading magazine, why not accept the same in issues of governance? Moreover I had watched from close quarters how they had run the government, experiences you could rarely get if you are born to a wage earner or salaried employee in some remote part of the country. And I never had the need to fight to reach the top, and it’s only the path to the top of the pyramid that corrupts and creates the need to make compromises.

The party sleuths did try to unearth some dirt on Pritam, but to no avail. He was born to a street vendor in one among the least developed districts of the state, and grew all along by scholarships he earned with his academic achievements. And to top it off, he had left a lucrative job and started a by now successful social service organisation. So we decided to get him in our party’s fold, but he flatly refused saying that he would never do such tree hops to get political gains.

So in the next public speech I declared “We need youngsters like Pritam serving for our nation. Our ideologies might differ, but motives same – welfare of our people. We’d give him a ministerial post even if he lost in his constituency or his party failed to get even a single vote”. That should have done the trick I guess; all his supporters believing that he may not win, started moving towards our party, the next best option, and it won numerous points among our supporters and neutral observers. The pre-polls showed tremendous improvements in our favour that week.

The biggest hurdle:

The biggest conflict though was internal, within the party, and most importantly within me. Firstly many of the party seniors did not like to be subservient to a kid not even half their age. And many were appalled by my lack of knowledge on even the basic stuffs, like the party’s history, and basic nuances they considered necessary to run the party and the state. I overcame those thanks to private tea parties arranged by dad and uncle with each of the senior party heads and private classes on titbits I needed to know

But the more important issue was the conflict within, my attitude, which many times was at logger heads with anarchic sentiments and expectations of the senior men. My uncle, though himself being an old schooler, was surprisingly understanding. He’d say “If you don’t like some rule, tolerate the rule, get to the top and change the rule”. Of course there were exchange of suitcases and promise of posts. But what I learnt was that politics, irrespective of the vast amount of money and power, was primarily about the people and their egos.

It was only few days until the election date, and though was nervous a little bit, I could feel an underlying calm. Strange are ways you feel when you know that you have all things in control, irrespective of the losses you might incur if you fail. If there is one thing that could fail me, it’d be my lack of good public speaking skills. But I have the youngsters to my backing, party folk, traditionalists, and the all-important common man and woman for my support. I could never fail….

The Tiger Shark:

As I said, my speeches were not much to boast about, and I intentionally avoided using bombastic verses written by my dad and his speech writers. Thought it no longer strikes chord with the voter public. The only interesting part of my election speech was the introduction ‘Spark’ Kumar gives me before every meeting (sorry, uncle has advised to call it a ‘confluence’).

I like this intro very much

‘Sharks can be dangerous even before they are born. One scientist was bitten by a tiger shark embryo while he was examining its pregnant mother. Let’s give welcome with thunderous applause the young tiger shark of our nation, the next Chief Minister of our state’

and I’d follow my terse speech with few questions here and there, a couple of jokes, and finally finish with the quote “I don’t want ‘my win’ in the election, I want a ‘people’s win’ for the next five years”.

And I did win, by a huge margin, but did the people win?

13. One wrong move

2011-01-30T22:35:00.002+05:30

Real love, they say, always starts with one wrong move at the right time

So axiomatically, when you make all the wrong moves all the times, doesn’t probability make sure that, at least one such move, lands up at the right time? Sadly, for poor me, that ill-fated right time has forgotten to take a break from its long vacation.

This was not the case always. There was a time when I used to think that I knew how to deal with the fairer sex and I had some sort of theories about’em

“Always”, people who knew me would tell

Unfortunately, the theories proved wrong a couple of times, and I got into a situation where I knew it couldn’t get any worse. But, I was wrong, it got much worse and reached to what one would call rock bottom.

Now here’s rock-bottom me explaining you about my not so rocking life

Incident 1:

She: your current status in Gtalk is really good

Me: Thanks

She: Really sweet and romantic… you wrote it yourself??

Me: No. It was from a poem written by my friend’s girlfriend for him. We are just posting different verses from it to make fun of him

Call that too much of honesty, nevertheless it was a wrong one any time

Incident 2:

Me: Machi.. look at the girl at entrance, really cute. Must be a fresher

Ramki: Shut up

Me: Why act so weird, you don’t like her?

Ramki: Don’t you have anything else to talk?

Me: What happened to you? Look, she is coming towards us, may be wants to know where the Physics lab is. My turn now

The girl: Dei anna… Am looking for you all along. You are sitting here ogling at girls and mom thinks you are the prudent one in the family

Ramki: (After the girl has left) – She’s my sister Vini. And am ready to understand that the earlier conversation between us never happened

And a gang of girls nearby burst into laughter, making sure none in the college forget about the ‘entrance incident’ – Universal Wrong move

Incident 3

At the Physics Lab

Damy: Dude! Why don’t they do any experiments? Anyway the prof gives us about a mark less (out of 10) than her for the work she copied from us

Me: Two things which you don’t have

Damy: What do you mean? (signaling me to see behind)

I find her staring at me like Kannagi’s second cousin

Me: (I continue as if I haven’t noticed her) Your name in the prof’s good books and ability to convince him

Incident 3a (a few minutes later)

Lab incharge: What are you doing?

She: The experiment mam. Why?

Lab: That’s what the two guys do. What are you doing?

She looks embarrassed and turns to us for help, only to find me and Damy sharing a smirk between us

‘Get your name in the scumbags list’ wrong move

Incident 4

Ragu: Why would anyone want to be with him? I don’t understand the luck Gilli has with girls

Me: Cos he’s filthily rich, ten times more handsome looking than you are, and he almost does magic behind the wheels of his new BMW

Ragu: But what could I do??? It’s not my mistake I was not born as Birla Tata’s natural heir

Me: Don’t worry dude, not all girls are like that.. Some choose them only for marriage

Deadly wrong move when she’s right next to your table and you know that she could hear even your faintest sniff

Incident 5

Gilli: I think I love her

Me: Who?

Gilli: (he signaled at her)

Me: So???

Gilli: Can I get an intro?

Me: … Sure

Wrong move, esp. when you know that the guy’s dad is an MP and could be the next Railway minister

Incident 6

She: That guy at the gate… do you know him?

Me: Ya.. a friend of my friend. Why?

She: I think he’s following me for about a month?

Me: And what do you expect me to do?

She: ???

Me: Ask Gilli. He might help you.

Rumour has it that the guy who himself was a local don’s son, got beaten up to hell by Gilli

Incident 7

Me: And you think politics is a job at first place?

She: But it’s definitely better than doing nothing

Me: So, you think he’s better than me?

She: He is. And unlike you, he still knows what to do in his life, and is so good at explaining them, convincingly… to people who really matter, I mean me… and also some people who are ready to invest filthily enormous amount of cash (black and white) betting on him

I can’t even get a girl, competing with this guy… how can someone try to dethrone him?

But here's the twist, the wrong move that was made at the right time... Gilli’s family had been ruling the state for almost 15 years non-stop. They got used with being the rulers for so long that someone in their family suggested prefixing the state with their Granddad’s name, before the later famous revolt, led by a broken heart, saved the day

The future generation may not believe that the all reverent revolution, that saved the nation, and its people, began just because a guy could not get to propose to his first crush… but that’s the funny thing about history, it’s made and unmade because of one wrong move, at the right time.

Now before you get into any conclusion... It’s not me… I don’t have the guts.. I can't even raise my voice against an autorickshaw driver, let alone lead a revolt... It’s the guy who got beaten up by Gilli for ogling at his girl interest

Incident 'n' (after n-1 number of wrong moves and turns)

My Gtalk caption reads: Real love, they say, always starts with one wrong moove at the right time

She: If it’s true, then you have made all the wrong mooves …

Me: Thanks. Have corrected the spelling for ‘moves’

She: (signed off)

09. Rules of the Game

2010-05-03T21:03:00.000+05:30

Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler

– Albert Einstein

This piece of article is not a step by step approach to woe a girl or a ‘dummies’ edition of ‘How to get a girlfriend’. This is also not about how you entrap a girl using ur guile and her innocence(if something like that is left in her). This is for all those poor guys who are wondering why they are still left among the ‘gang of guys’ one may find in any coffee shop during any major celebrations of youngistaan like New year, B’days or amidst the ubiquitous air of Feb 14.

If you are one among the unlucky few who’s still looking for a whiff of girl thing in the chapters of your life before tying the inevitable knot, then welcome guys, you have come to the right place. It’s not that you are tactless or juvenile. It’s just that you are playing in a new arena without knowing the rules of the game.

This is also for those gentle ladies who are game enough to laugh at oneself and have an interest to know what androids of their generation think about their ooomphilicious other halfs.

Before I begin explaining the intricacies of this strange game it’s imperative from my part to mention the inspirations I drew from Steven Levitt & Stephen Dubner, the freakanomists who made me realise the utilisation of tools of statistics for analysing/ explaining mundane issues in life and the makers of ‘Zombieland’ for a wonderful movie. I no longer wish to stand between you and the vital chunk of knowledge you are going to engage yourself with.

Rule 1: Bros b4 chicks

For all those who have eagerly started reading this, if u r one among those unforgivable opportunists who have ideas of leaving ur friends once start getting closer with ur girlfriend, just stop; u don’t deserve to read beyond this. And even if u read this, the hand of God (if u believe in Him) or chaos theory (for a non-believer) would make sure that u wind up as beardless Devdas under the canopies of the same friends

Rule 2: Get-a-grip

All girls want tall, handsome, drop dead gorgeous guys who are sensible, smart and have a big fat bank balance. But lucky us, these guys appear only in fairy tales of girls & occupy only less than 1% of the total male population. So, girls, gracefully and without any other choice settle for lesser alternatives like humour sense, stability and caring. (I might have included sincerity, but the last time I checked, it had contradicting meaning in the dictionaries of men & women)

So the point is if you find any of these rare species of guys, my advice to you sir is to retreat gracefully, cos no matter what you try, you are going to just end bruised at heart and soul.

Rule 3: Dumber-law

Girls always like to think that they are intelligent and more sensible than the guy opposite them. And since it’s true for most of the cases majority of guys pass this rule without much ado. This was statistically tested among various institutions all over the world and was found that about 80% of time it was only the girl who had better academic records than the guy in a pair. This amidst the fact that the selected colleges had academic records almost equal among boys and girls or tilted towards guys.

For those who failed this rule, sorry guys… you have to fail in something in life, either in the exams or the more important ‘girl’ challenge. May be that’s why geeks always end losers in affairs of love.

But there’s a warp zone for this rule. You can show that you suck at something like being bad at a sport she’s good at or asking her to help in managing things which you will eventually admit you are bad at.

You can also try for a temporary arrangement of helping out in assignment problems or ‘private’ classes during exams. But there will be watershed only as long as there’s thunder and rain.

Rule 4: Word press

Nothing touches a girl’s heart like a good set of soothing words. It can be borrowed or stolen, only that the timing should be apt. So don’t regret that you watched that intolerable chick-flick movie or read through the trying ‘Jane Austen’ novel. These are like the bitter tonics you take as medicine. All these would help you assuage your way to a girl’s inner self.

Rule 5: Blah-ging

Since you are desperate enough to have read this far into this article, it only means that you are sure that no girl in her right mind would accept you as her interest. This is a pretty serious problem if you approach it head on, but has a simpler solution. Just remove her mind. Sounds crazy?? But it’s quite logical.

No one, even Albert Einstein can know everything. So find something which she doesn’t know, yet, is engaging enough to retain her attention and speak at lengths about it. So after trying for some time, the girl would give up and suspend her sensibility in the air of your wizadry. As you make it sure that you have successfully disengaged her brains, engage her in sweet talks like the rom-com you saw or compliment her looks. Like Navjot Singh Siddhu says, strike when the iron is hot, hit when the ball comes fast, swoop her when she is still not using her brains. (well, the last part was added specially for this article)

This has a serious risk of her losing interest on the topic even before she loses her brain and consequently you. So engage her in this sort of conversation while you are sure she can’t move away from you, like while you are in a dinner or while in a public transport.

Rule 3 & 5 might seem to contradict each other, but one who can delineate the two would realise the significance of both and their inevitability.

Rule 6: Priestly

Ninety percent of conversations among guys above the age of 15 until they get married are centred around or along the peripheries of something related to women. And 100% of conversations between women, not limited by age are about themselves. When the global statistics is in favour of them, why spoil the river flow by diverting the topic towards something else ? When you speak with her just speak about her, or better just let her speak. You should be like a priest who speaks only about his God, only here it’s your Goddess.

And don’t worry, they’ll never get bored. All you have to do is just say hm.. is it.. really?? and the like. And don’t even bother to comment on anything, that’s the worst thing you could do to spoil her moment.

Rule 7: Girl-next-door

Women always like what the next girl has, no matter how superior what they possess is. A leading textile retail used this weakness of women by letting a few of its staffs in disguise of customers. The duty of these employees is to just pluck a dress another woman has picked and trying to call the attender to pack it. Women by their natural instinct either buy similar designs immediately or fight for the same dress with the other ‘customer’ which she’ll give away after initial resistance. Industry sources reveal that the retail was able to tremendously increase its footfall conversion ratio and almost halve its service time.

To cut a long story short ’Women are attracted to guys who are with other girls’. So all you have to do is just be friendly with everyone, esp, girls.

Rule 8: Puppy doggy

Women always like injured puppies. It’s not that they are all Mother Theresas by birth, but they feel a connect with anything that’s hurt or unhappy. Cos women have this weird quality of feeling pity about themselves and hence could easily identify with anyone who’s hurt.

It’d help if you have a love story of sorts which ended in debacle or any other of such qualities which shows you to be in a pitiful state. But be genuine in this, cos like I said they could easily identify themselves with the puppies and can readily sniff out lies like the puppies’ moms.

Rule 9: Un-getto

This rule is a derivative of the basic marketing principle of supply and demand. More the supply less the demand and vice versa. What this means is that be the ‘ungettable’. There’s always an attraction for women towards what they can’t get. So at times acting like a misogynist or telling that you don’t wish to fall in love could help.

To put cautions to the wind, I’d like to add that don’t overplay this rule to the extent that the girl loses hope of getting you. You should be difficult to get, but at the same time gettable. For example you can say that you don’t believe that ‘real’ love exists but at the same time show that you are a romantic at heart.

Rule 10: Meet the sisterhood

Girls in general have the tendency to prefer things that they can flaunt to things that they would actually use. They always like to show off to their friends about anything they have, putting it to perspective, one can say that being enviable is something no girl can resist.

This requires special effort from your part to satisfy the sisterhood of your girlfriend (don’t misinterpret this guys…) There’s nothing wrong in knowing one or two about the interests of each of her girlfriends. I can hear a loud outcry among you guys.. but come on… you have come this far.. just this small step of you can make her take giant leaps into your life.

But a word of caution, don’t turn on your charms too much on her friends… you might be doubted for trying to two time.

Rule of Rules:

Application of all these rules would be worthy only when you are able to execute them being who you are. Even else, you would be able to successfully woe her, but where’s the love when you have lost your soul?

The author is a leading entrepreneur and consultant in the area of ‘girl friend management services’ and is the current CEO of ‘Cupid services and solutions’, a leading FMS (Figure management solutions) player.

Disclaimer: This article is purely of academic interests and the author or the company takes no responsibility for liabilities incurred due to trying out the advises mentioned in this column.

08. Funemployed

2010-04-24T17:46:00.007+05:30

It was so early in a Sunday to remember the exact time. I was still in dilemma on whom to pick between Ellen Page and Avril Lavigne, who were brutally fighting a 300-ish battle with cudgels and boulders to win over me, when I was awaken by a loud bang on my bedroom.

Annoyed by the way I was pulled off my custom-made heaven in a jiffy, I opened the door thinking how hard I can bang on my roomie Susanth’s face. Unlike me he used to wake up early in the morning even on weekends. But think his horoscope had predicted a better day for him, for it wasn’t Susanth who was standing outside.

“Machan, I need your help. Close the door” came in Krishna.

I hurriedly closed the door and sat beside him. “What do you need?” I asked him.

“Nothing. You had done half the job by closing the door. All I want you to do is to not open it until today evening.” He said, and with a tone that oozed seriousness, which further puzzled me with doubts on his sanity.

Getting my thought process from my concerned looks, he cleared “My parents are dragging me to this match making ritual. It’s some uncle’s daughter in our native village”

I totally forgot about this until he said this now. He should have been happily floating in his family car day dreaming about his prospective wife, miles away from his current state, looking like an ostrich boiled in a clay pot, in my room. I was wondering what was keeping him from what he was supposed to do; considering his personal attributes, a girl from the farm lands would totally suit Krishna’s good boy attitudes.

“What shall I say to Anushka” Krishna continued “Plus she was totally showing all the signals.”

Oh! I totally forgot about his crush on Anushka, the hottie from our office. But I never thought that it was serious enough to make him skip a bride-seeing ritual. And I don’t remember her showing him even the traffic signals which Krishna often misses; to talk about the kind of signals he says is blind drunk.

“You are not even engaged. You are just going to see her and get engaged if both the parties are interested” I tried to cajole him.

“The issue is that both the parties are ‘extremely’ interested that am excluded from the party list, and you know about my dad. It’s death knell for my love.” He replied.

“What??? Love?? You haven’t even proposed to Anushka, and going by your progress with her you would only propose to her granddaughter, and she doesn’t even look like the lover girl types.” I snapped back.

“But I don’t want to make a mistake in my life by not trying.” he kept up his side of argument.

That’s exactly the same reason I wanted him to see this girl. Going by the expressions he was exhibiting whenever she passed by, it was anybody’s guess who Krishna’s lady interest was, and Anushka being so bright a student from her kinder garden (she had even showed her LKG grade cards for proof) was one among the first to decipher it, but among the last few to admit knowing about it. She herself told me that she did not have any intentions of that sort with Krishna and wanted me, being his best friend to convey him the same.

I was waiting for a suitable time to convey the same and secretly hoping (or praying?) that the occasion would never arise, and for the same reason I was the happiest, may be after his parents, on hearing about this uncle’s daughter of Krishna’s.

I generally hate watching Karan Johar/ Bansalee type melodrama, but I thanked God I had watched those movies, cos those were the inspirations for the words I used to convince him go see the prospective bride. But he agreed on one condition that I agree to come with him.

So, after about an hour of dressing up and light packing, we were on the way along one of the bumpy roads of rural India along with Krishna’s Granddad. “Why only your Granddad” I asked him when we got time to chitchat alone.

“It’s our family custom da. Seems when one of our great granddads went to see a bride for his son, the bride got so attracted by him that she showed interests to get married to the father rather than the son, and polygamy was pretty common in those days.” I could not control my laughter even until he completed the story. “And that’s why only the Granddad goes with the lad to see his bride the first time” he finished.

Driving alone with his grand dad was a little difficult, since he seemed to growl whenever we had a laugh or our talk lead towards his academic achievements in college. Think what more the great Mr.Venkat Narayanan (his grandpa) expected from his grandson, he was the topper of our class and I lost count of the number of awards he had won from various science competitions.

“The girl’s brother is a moron. Boasts of being a UK return every second. Lucky we’ll not meet him today.” Krishna was telling me the nth reason this girl was not suitable for him, none the more reasonable than this. “And you know what he said when I asked about his job? Said he was ‘funemployed’ a salvaging word to say that he was dumped by his recession driven company.” He went on.

The last few words must have reached his grand dad’s scrutinising ears, cos he screeched halted the car and asked him to come to front of the car and sit beside him. I wonder why his granddad insisted on self-driving when we could have taken their driver, or let one of us drive. Though it was his egomaniac act, I did admire his driving at this age.

Now, sitting alone in the back seat, I could not freely talk with him without being heard by his grand dad. So I resorted to listening songs from my music player which also doubles up as a cell phone. I always do this ‘mind mapping’ thing whenever I find it hard to pass off time. I usually start with some word and then go on thinking about things that are related to it, which further branch off to something else; and when you reconcile to find what words you began with it will be interesting. I once began with my high school math teacher and ended up with NASA’s mission to mars through chopsticks and Sachin Tendulkar.

Thinking of Sachin Tendulkar made me relate to the word ‘funemployed’. The term funemeployed means doing something you love (like painting, biking etc.) when you are unemployed. What if the work you do is the one you like the most, like Sachin. He is funemployed with cricket that the whole world is in awe at him.

No other player can make the whole stadium praying for you when you are playing against the home team. And I get to see myself supporting Mumbai Indians in IPL even when my fellow Tamil brigades deem me disloyal to Chennai Super Kings. When I inadvertently let this to be known to Anushka, she got serious suspicions of me having interests on her (did I forget to mention that she’s a Mumbaikkar?) “I don’t know why all your friends are like this?” she said with a tone that was wanting to be of agitation, but showing only that she was enjoying the attention she was getting.

Luckily the drive was only about an hour and the village we went was not that under developed. The bride’s place could compete with a decent residence in the city and like Krishna said some of their relatives stayed abroad and came there only for vacations.

They received us well and the whole village seemed to have seen Krishna’s photo a million times, cos none of them mistook me for the prospective groom. The crowd was not big as you would see in a Bollywood movie, it was about a few close relatives and someone even joked about the custom of grandpa coming with the groom to see the bride. The bride was pretty and would suit the image one would relate Krishna’s expectation with. After a few customary words they allowed the bride to talk with Krishna alone for a few minutes, considering that ‘both the parties’ had fixed the wedding beforehand.

I could not get to speak with Krishna about his thoughts about the girl since we were scanned by the brides’ people for even a glimmer of indication about Krishna’s decision. It looked like they were eyeing him like the way we used to look at our school teacher before giving away the report cards. Krishna’s granddad saved the day by saying that it was not customary to give consent on the same day as when the bride and groom first met and was deemed accepted by nods from a couple of village oldies.

When we were returning back I still had to sit in the back seat with Krishna in the front seat with his granddad. It was tough silence for the initial part of the return journey and I sought refuge in Avril Lavigne in my ear phones, from the hot sun outside and Mr.Venkat’s presence inside.

The car halted in a village on the way. Granddad asked Krishna to get water melon from the shop nearby. “Know to bargain. Don’t you?” he growled at him. When I was about to get down along with him, he said “Let him go alone. Needs to learn doing things by himself.”

So cursing my fate I had to endure silence in presence of Mr.Dragon who looked smoking fire under his nostrils. Finding the price not acceptable his granddad asked Krishna to go in search of shops with ‘reasonable’ rates, and to my agony he readily obliged.

Time seemed to be running like the Tortoise in ‘Hare and Tortoise’ only a little slower. “What are you listening to?” he diverted his attention towards me.

“Avril Lavigne” I said.

“Looks like a girl’s voice? He said

“She’s a girl.” I replied

“What are you guys listening nowadays. You have become sissies. Listening to girl singers, even the male stars sing like they have borrowed their female lead’s vocal cords. The singers of my age ‘Bob Dylan’, ‘Elvis Presley’ they were real men….” He went on

I wanted to argue how they were more ‘men’ than the current rock stars. But I was more amazed by the fact that the father of Mr. Shesadhry (Krishna’s dad) was speaking about rock and pop stars. “Look at Krishna, he’s just doing what he’s being told by his dad. Has no mind for himself. My wife mollycoddled my son and he has passed on it to his son. Going for a job before having had anything other than milk for refreshment. I used to hit the road, I never did that I didn’t like even in my job” He still wasn’t finished.

All these days Krishna used to say how he wasn’t able to satisfy his granddad in academics. Seems that he wanted him to do not just academics. But am sure that the misunderstanding on Krishna’s part is not just his fault.

“And now this marriage, even my marriage was a love marriage. But see him, toeing like a puppy on the lines of his dad. And above all making me take him to the ritual, stupid customs.” Mr. Venkat was adding shocks after shocks to my already flummoxed brains.

Luckily Krishna had come with watermelons to help me with the aftershock. For the first time in the day I felt silence more than welcome and for the first time in my life could not find peace in Avril Lavigne. His granddad was like the roadie of his time or what you call the ‘funemployed’ of the 60s India.

I was wondering why his granddad opened up to me, a total stranger. May be he sensed that Krishna was not interested in this girl and may be that he wanted me to convey it to him that it was OK with him if Krishna says ‘No’ to this girl. Why is it that I get to convey all the uncomfortable messages?

I was still waiting for a time to tell Krishna about Anushka’s decision regarding him and now I had to convey his grandpa’s message too.
Think I didn’t mention the reason Anushka said for not being interested in him. “He’s so sweet to me. But he’s too studious, sometimes looks like workaholic.”
And I did not get what the poor guy did wrong with that. May be it’s a ‘girl thing’ –a word which the fairer sex have started using prevalently to defy questions of logic.

And am still praying the situations of discomfort never come up, hoping that gods answer to my prayers from the car in a lonely road amidst nothing other than hot sun and dry land.

Think gods can hear better when they have lesser noise. My prayers in the lonely road were answered in form of Krishna agreeing to marry the girl. Seems that the girl had been to a college in the city and had similar interests. In words of Krishna “She’s what every guy would like – a girl of modern attitude with traditional values”

On the day of engagement I found his grandpa still growling, which I knew were indications of him being disappointed again with his grandson. May be he felt that both his son and grandson weren’t like him, who did not question for reasons or rebel against conventions. I felt the urge to speak to him and with courage I had never thought I had, went to him “Grandpa. Can I speak to you?”

He just made a gesture with his eyes which meant ‘yes’.

“Your grandson is so like you.” I said and he looked at me like I knew nothing.

But I had to continue “You defied your peers who were your relatives, by choosing adventure instead of stability. Choosing what you wanted instead of what was conventional” He seemed to agree with what I said.

“Krishna is the same. Only that the peers are his friends and colleagues. Here it’s cool to bunk, cool to be in the shortcut, cool not to be serious in academics. But that’s what he likes and that’s what he does. And that requires equal if not more mental calibre than what you had.”

There was a silence for a moment which appeared like eons. “Thanks… what’s your name?” he asked me.

“Rakesh” I said.

“Thanks Rakesh.” He said, “Seems you are so proud of him. Good thing he has a friend like you. May be I too would be proud of him in the future” he patted my back and took me to the dinner hall.

Before I left I asked him “So your marriage was really a love marriage?”

“It was.” He replied, “Only that my wife doesn’t know it was a love marriage.” Seeing my confused looks he explained “I loved Mangalam (Krishna’s Grandma) the moment I saw her in Mylapore Temple, which was near her home. I used to roam behind her. Luckily her brother was my friend and he fixed our marriage. No one else knows about it. Even my wife.”

I knew that the best thing then was not to reply and let Mr.Venkat Narayanan enjoy the nostalgic feelings he was going through. I saw Krishna, the other funemployed person of this family (only in a different way from his granddad) coming down the stage tired yet happily smiling.

He was surprised to find me speaking so long with his granddad. “He never used to speak much with anyone other than my Granny’s elder brother, and since my granny passed away three years ago, he is almost an ascetic. What did you do?” he asked me when we were alone

I didn’t know what to reply. So I just smiled and joined along with the gang that had Anushka in the centre. I read somewhere that girls like guys who are with other girls. Is that true?

- P.S: The dictionary meaning of the word ‘funemployed’ is different from what you might find being contextually used in this piece of literature. But I firmly believe that a person, who does anything in life just for the sake of doing it, even if the entity of interest is not adventurous enough or is considered boring by general perception, is funemployed.

07. Fool's Garden

2010-04-02T13:56:00.025+05:30

The only similarity between ragging and Fool’s day is that during both you can tell ‘I Love You’ without the fear of rejection
- Anonymous

What if someone proposes to you on the Fool’s day? Will you accept the proposal? Or will you rub it off like another prank played on you?

These were the thoughts going on in my mind when my Boss interrupted my open-eyed day dream. “Rakesh, have you prepared the backup document for the ISO audit?” not understanding the internal turmoil I have been going through. If it were someone else I could have easily made him another fool on the fool’s day. Knowing his innate ability to catch me while lying, I grudgingly had to go back to my whirl pooling tunnel of a job.

Though I was superficially doing things that were related to the audit, my mind at a deeper level was processing about things related to Swathi....
Swathi Premchand, one among the ‘She’s out of my League’ girls every ordinary guy meets in his life. I saw her the first day in office. About a hundred of us had gathered for the employee orientation held in that famous resort. There she was amidst all the male chauvinistic monkeys standing like a damsel in distress waiting for her very own Spiderman to rescue her. (It took months of guffawing on me before I realised how lame the dialogue was, after I inadvertently let ‘Pongy’ know my thought process). She was as cute as a baby rabbit, only with glasses and in a purple Kurta.

‘Roses with glasses, purple in colour’

There began my literary journey with my first poem, which along with many more to follow fetched me the special category award for “Mokkai Poet” in our company wide cultural fest.

“Her name is Sangeetha. Think she’s an Architect” said Pongy without even being asked. We had met just a few minutes back in the resort dinner hall and within a few minutes I knew (which was proved wrong later) that I would hate to even come near this guy. And the thing he said about Sangeetha (I mean Swathi) was one among the many sham guesstimates he was to make in the future.

Luckily for me she was not an Architect, and she was along with me posted in the same wing, her cubicle a few feet away from mine. But still the name ‘Architect’ remained among us (me and Pongy) as the code word for Swathi. We even used to comment when she’s nearby, “Hey Pongy, the ‘Archi’ girl’s awesome today” and Swathi would be asking us “Who’s that yaar? I know almost all the Archi girls and I can even give her an intro if you promise me a treat” Hate to admit it, but I feel that girls look so.... coddlesome when they look naive.

But these incidents were far and few and the most regular routines involve a ‘hi’ and at times ‘anything spl..??’. And none of those exchanges showed any signals about the impending event that happened on the first of April.

As usual I came a little early to the office. The climate nowadays is pretty horrible, may be the ‘Al Gore’ movie had little truth in it. To add to it, the sunshine had given me blisters in my tongue to physically and constantly remind me how painful real life is. I had to constantly screen my words and choose a vocabulary that needed minimal contact of tongue with any part of the oral cavity.

Unlike other days Swathi too had come earlier that day. ‘Unlike’ because pretty girls always have bosses who are ‘so.. sweet’ and they have the unquestioned privilege of coming at whichever time they find convenient. No complaints on the bosses; who can stand those cutesy eyes turning sore? That’s how life is and one has to manage with unfair advantages it has joyously strewn all over for your peers to pick up.

I saw her go past me to the coffee machine and as usual said a ‘hi’ with a smile. Thought of adding the occasionally used ‘so early.. anything spl ??’, but for want of spontaneity and my principle for that day of ‘minimal tongue movement’ I didn’t go past the first syllable. Since I don’t take coffee and also that she knows it (stupid Pongy, he once blurted out that ‘secret’ of mine and now I no more can have free coffee breaks like everyone else in office without facing a look of apprehension), I decided to stick with just sitting in my seat rather than look lame while trying to start a conversation with her, with a cup of coffee in my hand.

I never realised when she returned back to her seat as I got engulfed in my work (Trust me on this, though a little lazy I do some work @ office). I got a message from Swathi through the chat line ‘I Love You’ it said. For a moment I thought it was my eyes playing illusion at me. But it wasn’t.. I read it again, it had the same eight letters with two spaces in between. I slightly raised my head and tilted a little to see if someone else was playing a prank on me from her desk. It wasn’t someone else. I saw Swathi looking eagerly at her PC. It looked like she looked at me from the corners of her eyes, but quickly reverted back.

My mind was racing hullabaloo to get a proper response and just as I was starting to recollect the past few moments, I felt someone peeking from behind me into my screen. I quickly closed the chat line and turned back. It was Pongy at his casual best in his Friday attire. I always wonder why a guy with his persona and way of speaking still remains without having a girlfriend. May be because he uses his mouth too much to talk which goes against a girl’s dictionary meaning of ‘boy friend’ – a guy who hears all your blabbering without any questions or comments, either positive or other.

“What are you doing” he asked me with a wily smile. I was still trying to figure out if he had read the message I received from Swathi. Before I could muster any stupid reply that reveal that I was hiding something from him, he almost yelled “Hey, who’s that new girl?” And like any other sane guy, I forgot for a moment everything around me and stood up to see who it was. Finding nobody I turned back to Pongy “Where had she gone?”

He smiled triumphantly and said “I know you’d fall for that. Had to use ‘Is that really a Platinum ring?’ for Stella”

Damn. I totally forgot that it was April 1. I don’t know who invented it. May be it’s ‘celebrated’ only in India.

When did it become a major event?

“I have a list of items for everyone in office. Platinum for Stella, ‘new girl’ for you and... “, he looked for someone nearby, and spotted Swathi and continued “Geek guys like you for Swathi” he said pointing at her.

“Am not a geek” I said. I still was wondering if he was playing another trick on me. But I wanted believe that Swathi liked geeks and for the first time in my life since placements, wanted to be considered as a geek. Without even looking for my reaction Pongy went ahead to increase his number of scalps that day.

That was exactly when my Boss called me for the work related to audit and later dragged me to operate presentation in the meeting, and hence for most part of the day I could do nothing else about Swathi’s message but run through the events in my mind. Engulfed in these thoughts I lost control of my mind and hence my tongue, that I bit it more often thereby aggravating the pain in my life.

‘How would a girl like Swathi like a guy like me? Am the complete opposite of what a girl like her would prefer. I had browsed through her orkut profile for her likes and dislikes during the initial days we met (unlike most of my techy friends I still prefer orkut to Facebook). She likes dancing very much and even had written in her preference for ideal match as ‘tall, handsome and a good dancer’.
1. I can’t be called tall, but am of above average height.
2. Handsome is debatable and even that can be excused.
3. But dance... each of my friends who sees my name and ‘dance’ in the same sentence would immediately remember erstwhile actor ‘Ramarajan’ (Those who don’t know him just know that I suck in dance)

She found reading books as dull and was a member of ‘making fun of Vijayakanth’ club, the only Tamil hero I liked. She’d definitely find me soporific and outdated. Think she was trying to play a prank on me. Thinking of this I came out of the meeting hall to find Pongy seated in my seat. I wonder what he does in office; he looks like he always roams around the office, but still gets into good books of everyone.

“I hacked open your PC and read the message” he said.

“So you think Swathi really loves me? Or is it just another prank?” I asked him, hoping that he’d be sensible when situation demands.

He looked at me for a while, and said “I’ll be frank with you. She’s way out of your league” telling an universal truth which I knew already.

“And she knows it too” he continued, “So a girl like that will never want to be rejected by a guy like you”

“Why would I reject her?” I asked

He stared at me “That’s not the point. By proposing on Fool’s day she can always say that she was playing a trick on you, if you say NO.” he went on “And a girl will not propose straight forward, even for a prank, unless she’s really into a guy”

“So what should I do?”

“Look, am not an expert in this field. But I know that the right thing for you to do is to go and speak to her” he finished

I waited for the right time to speak to Swathi and came during the Lunch Break. I rose from my place and headed towards her table. Since it was Lunch break the floor was virtually empty.

I went near hear her and called “Swathi..”

“Yes ??” she looked back with an expectant smile.

“I need to speak about the ‘I Love You’ message” I said

She waited. Seeing me searching for words to speak, she continued “What did Parangiri say? Is it ‘Yes’ ?”. Parangiri was Pongy’s real name. Little confused I looked at her computer screen to find that Pongy’s name was just before my name in her contact list.

“Oh sorry, think I sent the message to you instead of Parangiri....” Looking at the reactions that went past my inhibition, she passed and asked “Did you take it any other way?” looking like she was looking at an injured puppy.

“It’s nothing yaar. I thought that you were trying to fool me.” I said, trying to conceal my emotions

“Are you Ok. You look rather dull” she asked.

“It’s just the blisters in my tongue, which hurts when I speak” the pain which was nothing compared to the way I felt, the feeling of being rejected the first time in your life.

I left her place and almost ran over Pongy who was waiting for me outside. He must have seen something in my face. “Let’s go to the cafe, It’d be empty now” he said

We ordered for something cool and sat in a table. “So, what did she say?” he asked.

I was not sure what to say. I was not a saint to forget all my feelings of dejection and happily congratulate him, even if he was my best friend.

He said “Think it did not turn out well. I may not be the best person to advise you on this. I don’t speak my heart out with girls. That’s why I don’t have a girlfriend, or the least any friend among girls. Don’t be like me.”

Hearing this, I spelt out in rage “Don’t be like you? Fool, you are the one she likes. That message was meant to be for you. You are so funny, cool enough to know hacking and good at almost everything. And you don’t want me to be like you?”

Pongy did not even wait to reply, he left just like that probably to meet Swathi. Good... Another love birds formed at my expense. I hated everything around me. I didn’t even have the money to pay for the drink we ordered. But that was the least of my worries. May be I should use the cell phone Pongy had left in his hurry to pay the bill; would serve him right.

Just then a message came in his cell from his ‘lady love’ Swathi. I didn’t wait to open it. It said “Hi Parangiri. I made fun of Rakesh using your name. Will explain in detail. Don’t take it serious”

Before I could decipher anything from the message Pongy came back, followed by Swathi. Her lips hardly spoke. But her expressions spoke millions. And we spoke to each other for zillion years to come. Do I have to say that it was a prank played by Swathi and we later got together?

But why did she do it first of all?

I did ask her this and she said “I did not want to be got that easy, and also I was not sure if you really loved me. Your expressions that day puzzled me until Parangiri cleared the doubts. It looked like you chose your words carefully to avoid any sort of commitment”

I was looking for a way to explain why my choice of vocabulary was limited that day due to the blisters when Pongy came “Dude I have one confession to make”.

I had completely forgot that he thought for a moment that Swathi was into him. Poor chap.... But one man’s loss is another man’s gain. You can’t avoid it.

“I know what you are thinking. It’s not that.” He snapped “Am not good enough in hacking to force open your PC or mail id. I was just pulling a trick on you and you opened up about Swathi’s proposal”

I was in no mood to get distracted about petty emotions like anger now. After everything, Swathi was with me. And also, but for Pongy I may never have spoken with her that day.