just another day...

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another normal day at the company... i look up from my laptop and find everyone else looking down into theirs... most have excel sheets open... red, blue and green color-coded charts flashing with such aesthetic appeal that you wish you were color blind... or atleast blind... :)

anyway, my girl friend's not in today...called in sick... and i'm quite missing her incessant chatter... the same that blocks my brain for 30minutes after she's finally gone... i try to make small talk with the others... most give me a cold shoulder... one of them's still miffed for losing grandiosely to me in the TT match yesterday... and the day before that, and the one before that...

i was a little off yesterday... did some wild calculations based on the alignment of stars and planets... and came to the conclusion that i might not end up after all in the IPS!! and maybe not even Mussorie!!! ah!! cruel life!!
i then convinced myself i needed a cigarette... i found two actually... nearly broken but still alive...from long times ago... somebody claimed they had expiry dates... really??? i then remembered that you'd need matches... can you believe i had none!! and not even a gas stove... !! finally, tried it out on the electric gas stove... after puffing crazily, i was able to light it... though i came dangerously close to electrocuting myself in the process... smoked the cigarette till i felt sick... and wondered why i'd started in the first place... then remembered my room-mate.. ran around opening every window in the house... i seriously think i'm more scared of her finding out i'm a lowly smoker than dying horribly of lung cancer... 

anyway, i have precious little to do, now that i'm on my notice period... except sit around pretending to be doing something i'm not and also managing to pretend to be not doing something i actually am... make sense?? it will, only if you're as full of time on your hands as i am...

i have had three tea breaks in 1.5 hours... with three different sets of peoples... i'm looking for more prospects... not even any meetings scheduled for the day... for my creativity to blow up...anyway, meetings aren't much fun since everybody's discovered i'm writing sinister blogs while attending them and won't let me carry my laptop to the meeting hall... there's only so much day-dreaming one can accomplish in a brightly lit room with half a dozen people looking at you...and nowhere to hide...

okay... my timer just rang... i need to urgently stare at an excel sheet with three blinding charts for 10minutes straight...
see ya later!!

another meeting...

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an occasional yawn punctuates the meeting... there's a frequent flipping of wrists to check the time...  once in a while i catch words i understand, or let's stick to 'recognize'... DWF, OATS, dashboard, scorecard... there's some new word... blue harmony, being bandied about... must be the 'in' thing...once in a while, i manage a smile when there's obviously something funny being said and i'm expected to chortle... though i have no clue what the heck they're going on about...

the temperature of the meeting is definitely lower... the chill can be attributed to the manager, a quiet, formal fellow... likes procedures and formalities way more than the rest of the team thinks necessary...

while trying to look very seriously present and concentrating, i make a mental checklist of things that need to be done...urgently... my toe-nails need a fresh coat of the black paint... there are a dozen or so photos i need to collect from sangee... need to send that mail to upsc for the authenticated mark sheet... varun's shoes look like the new pair i bought for vin... i hope he likes them... will promptly kill him if he complains... have to convince the dentist to finish the job and take out the braces... i don't plan to start my new career looking like a 12-year-old...

sagar says something about fool-proof... i nod understandingly...i know something that for sure, isn't fool-proof... the hdfc atm sitting on the ground floor reception... i put in my card yesterday in the gap under the slot and then shoved it in...not in the card-slot but an inch below it... don't ask me why... and don't you dare roll your eyes...i have no excuse for the sheer stupidity... except i was hungry, caffeine withdrawn and there was a high frequency siren blasting continuously(for the past few days) that apparently switched off the 'intelligent' part of my brain... until only the 'spectacularly stupid' was the only functional part... that's another card added to the long list of lost cards... :(

now the meeting's over... and we're back to our cubicles... facing away from each other, pretending to inhabit the world alone, with our laptops of course... okay, that's way off into randomnes... so, let me just go back and check on something i need to get done on the job front...

ciao!!

i don't really like driving... i believe it's one of those mindless things like cricket or videogames or beer that can be 'loved' and even worshipped only by guys... so, i was almost glad of my chauffeur chauffeuring me to and from my office when i had my big accident with the bus... i for my part, sat pillion and kept up a steady stream of gyan about how to drive and general life, food, animals, roads, shopping, etc etc though i suspect he heard little, especially when he sometime he looked a little my way and slammed the visor decidedly shut...

but now that the chauffeur has found other distractions, his exams, i am left to fend for myself... i've watched too many 'final destinations' and taken them way too seriously for a healthy life... do you realise how many near fatal accidents could happen on your 'harmless' trip to the office... the lorry infront of you carrying all those washing machines might decide to empty them all on you... that creaking tree in the wet rain might at any time crack open and fall on you... that luggage-auto in front of you with stuff sticking out of everywhere might just nick your jugular and you might die bleeding on the sidewalk... ah!! ghastly things...

ok, on a less crazy note, monsoons are a pain... i know, i know, it's the fad to gush about how pleasant they are, but trust me, i haven't come across any... the potholes, the slippery roads... and going swimming everyday has become a total ordeal... imagine cold, various degrees of it, and changing every few seconds, attacking you from 360 degrees and three dimensions... the water's freezing, the air above it is freezing and to top it all, there is a sadistic wind doing rounds... oh, i almost forgot, and it begins to drizzle... every single day!!!

ok, that's about it... a discontinuous, length of cribby rambling... actually, i'm horribly hungry and waiting for sangee to join me at my breakfast... and thought i'd just scribble a little...

the aftermath....

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thought a month or more has passed, people still manage to embarrass me as they gush about how proud they are of me, how wonderful an achievement it has been for the community/district/gender/state/galli...
"how studious you must be!!"
"how proud your parents are!!"
"how big an achievement it is!!
"you just cleared the mother of all exams!!"

don't get me wrong, i enjoy all the attention... have always done...:) :) but it's hard to answer all those rhetorical questions without seeming immodest... it's an entirely trivial matter that i am a thoroughly immodest person who only likes to pass for a modest one... and do, occasionally... ;) ;)

seriously, i just chucked my job without much thought, as though for a new year resolution in dec 2007 (not 2008, as 'The Hindu' got it wrong), sat down for more studying than i ever managed in my entire life... took up subjects i had never had an inkling or interest about... ruined my body with stress-ulcers... they still haunt me... was stuck in my teeny-weeny home town with no social contact except the occasional milk-man, mail-man or the newspaper-man...

the worst was the taste of luxury i had for the 19 months i worked at Infy... not flush with money ever in my life, the deluge of it for those 19 months spoilt my taste... and as i gave up the job, i had to give up many more things... it was hard... not to have that occasional pizza/burger... no shopping for two years... you get used to it though... like i was used to the Rs.120 bottle of Pantene shampoo but had to resort to the Rs.1.50 sachet... maybe that was why watching 'Pursuit of Happyness' hit so close... too close for comfort...

but now that i'm across, it just seems like a dark, stormy night i had to endure for the first light of morning... which was as certain as... as mornings are... (forgive my flowery language... i just read Thomas Hardy...)

and now that all's happy and gay, i get really, obnoxiously, *$#*@ed if someone suggests anything on the lines of modesty... like some do...
"419??? wow!! that's 418 people better than you are!!"
I am tracking down the man in my spare time from generating reports at the Big Blue...

new wardrobe...

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I am comfortable in my skin and casuals... but with my new-found new job, I will be required to spend most of the time in Sarees and Salwars... I cannot think which is the lesser evil... But I have decided to take the plunge bravely... I decided to go about it my usual way... do a lot of research on the internet, analyse the hell out of it and come to conclusions which i would then duly ignore...

I decided i wanted a role-model to help me with the initiation rights into salwar/saree... the decision still stands unmade... so i watch a lot of television, ransack photos on the internet for indian women celebrities... these

are many... yay! to feminism i don't believe in coz i don't get it... 90% of the famous women wear 10% of the clothes and i duly ignore them... in saree are a bare minimum of the celebrities... 1%??? my knowledge of statistics and numbers has at best been abysmal... i come to the conclusion that the women-politicos are my best bet... i start from the north... mayawati... i quickly strike her off... i just don't have her figure to carry off the salwars...same issue with jayalalithaa... uma bharti??? saffron doesn't go with my brown skin... mamata banerjee's saree is too complex and too white... i finally zero in on the three gandhis - priyanka, indira and sonia... for guidance... i decide priyanka's more contemporary and collect 24 photos of her in various sarees... most look like cotton to my untrained eye... high maintenance and high risk material...

in the evening after i completed a complete report on my ideas for my future attire, i drive past a Garden Vareli Sale... I have driven past that one a million times in the past few months and never batted an eye-lid... but this time, the 'paradigm has shifted'... i just wanted to use that phrase from the old days... nostalgia...  mba days... corporate meeetings... how i'm gonna miss it all...

ok, noses blown, kerchiefs away, i enter the den... women, in all sizes and shapes... knowingly eyeing the array of white, black, colored, shiny, sober, and some downright blinding sarees... i walk along in trepidation, not even daring to touch... shopping's old, familiar territory, but for sarees??? life has been kinder in the past... i finally see an off-white with a brownish border that reminds me of my priyanka-gandhi-collection... i am not sure if the material's right... i venture to ask an old woman who has to be one of the top-5 world experts on all things related to sarees...
"is this material ok???"
she looks at me suspiciously... glares at me coz she thinks i'm making so light of such a sombre activity as saree-shopping... i'm afraid i didn't ease her feelings towards me either... i was in khakhi capris with a white t-shirt and a backpack slung across my shoulders...  not someone you could easily imagine in the eleven yards of an immaculate saree...

but then, all suspense skipped, she takes me under her wing, helps me choose material and color... then her daughter takes over... vetoes everything and starts over again... and i leave proudly with two brand new sarees!!!

last evening, i checked them out... i was hoping for a tall, elegant and graceful look... even one of those traits would've done... instead i look gangly, gawky, uncomfortable, uncoordinated...
that's it... i would've liked to end things on a happier note... maybe sometime else... i gotta go and practise...