A painful february later we are back in business.As I jot down this one, I have absolutely no idea what this post is going to be about.Most posts are a result of things I jot down in my tiny brain whilst - what is primarily put by many in the friend circle as "zindagi ka "lutf" uthana". But as february has been kind to me as ever I haven't had too much time to think about in the past few weeks.
 

A particular incident at work saw to it that I was pulled and molested for no fault of mine(ok, so a little bit ,maybe)  on calls from guys who were apparently on coke.There was this one guy in particular who wrote mails to me saying that I needed to provide a solution by 3 in the morning or else he would have me for breakfast.But then he wrote all those mails on his Blackberry which I thought was cool because I really cant figure what to do with that brick of a phone. On a serious note, I was almost on the verge of shedding a (gasp) tear that day as I provided  design solutions 3 times in a day and all of them failed.The fourth one worked, but all was lost by then.This comes from a guy whose mother believes that her son has a medical problem when it comes to tears.There is a legend in the family tree about the haughty boy in Bombay who has never shed a little on occassions of sisters getting married or a brother getting into an IIT or even for a grandpa leaving for heavenly abode. I just took a cab from work at 7 in the morning and  intsead of going home I went straight to Knole Park and laid down on the grassy slopes staring at the sky.

And since then I have gone absolutely BLANK.I dont feel like writing anything nor do I feel like doing anything.

(Well almost blank maybe, there is still that estonian chic I met recently that I keep thinking about.She said she needed lessons in English and I have always had this burning desire in me to work towards stronger bilateral relations between India and Estonia.Ahem Ahem.

Recently I had a colleague from another branch coming to visit at work.Playing the host as gracefully as I could, I showed him around the building, you know, the toilets,the corner seats where you could quickly open the window,light up and take a puff without anyone knowing and all that.Now this guy is known to be one of those nerds who is highly respected for being one and for not having a personal life primarily for the hours that he works for the organization.I had been forewarned about his eccentricity earlier by my boss and in the same breath told that I would like him ( I almost took that as a compliment.gaah!).As we proceeded to go upstairs, he asked me whether the stairs had metallic strips on the edges.I replied in the affirmative after taking about a minute to recollect and was asked to direct him to the elevator in return.

Now,the elevator door opens and yours truly is just about to step in, when I realise that my colleague is not particularly keen to follow.The guy just stands there, motions me to stop as well.The door closes and then the guy presses the button again to open the door and jumps in.I come up with an expression akin to Kamran Akmal when he was asked a question in english by Ravi Shastri.Colleague comes up with a "I never enter the first time it comes.." explanation.Kamran Akmal expression stays on my face.

Colleague: "I always do that..You might have quirks of your own,don't you?"

Me (mind wanders, eyes gaze over far to the horizon,well actually not,remember we are still in the elevator) : "No..umm..No"

In my mind I had already started making a list of those "things" which i do, which might be classified as "quirks".

1.Have a strange(?) thing with keeping my left foot on odd numbered steps(except for the seventh) and right foot on even numbered ones while climbing a staircase.For the seventh and the eight one i step on both of them first with the right one only.It's a pretty complex procedure sometimes and observant people do stop to give me the strange look however subtly i try to do it.I have no idea why I do that.Something I picked up in school and it has always been that way since.

2.In case of circular obstructions or forks on my way I always prefer to take the anticlockwise or left path respectively.

3.While talking on tiled surfaces there is every attempt to avoid stepping on the edges where the tiles meet(I know, I know.Jack Nicholson in "As good as it gets".But I started doing this much before I saw the movie).

4.In case I am writing a test and there is a liberty of answering any x out of y questions even then only the first x questions would be attempted come what may and I mean COME WHAT MAY.Special care is taken to not even look at the extra questions.(Yes, I survived Mumbai University engineering with this).Not clever.At all.

5.During foreplay, I open a bra using only three fingers.

Ok, so I made up the last one.Sue me.

Khayal for the Din:"There is no prosthetic for an amputated spirit"

She who is always in my thoughts prefers

 Another man, and does not think of me.

Yet he seeks for another's love, not hers;

And some poor girl is grieving for my sake.

        Why then, the devil take

Both her and him; and love; and her; and me.

It has been a wonderful month of reading and pulling apart the whole book(or its contents) over a smoke(me) and many a shirley temple(you) with you. Hope your new job as the boring analyst sucks and you come back with many more books.  

Dear D,


A quarter ago,
I used to call you tonights muse,
every week-night.
I would let my gaze down
every limb of yours and,
feel if you have grown,
perhaps an inch or two.
Rushing home on payday,
knowing that,
you are cross legged at home,
waiting for what we window shopped the whole fortnight.

Many a wise men warned,
so did ma and pa.
rosy times with you,
are  summers in a year
I was too deaf climbing,
your black plait of hair that led to heaven.

I swam in woe when,
I saw you sway to others tunes
and,
you let yourself be ravaged
by a thousand men and women alike
some even from shores afar.

Since then I have never turned back,
to take a look at you,
undress you to breathe down your spine or
suck on your collarbone,
fearing I might just see,
what they did to you.



PS:This is for D, my demat account. Anyone who invests in shares and has done so in the last one year would empathise.

Khayal for the din : "I would rather have just men in the market.Who got all those bulls and bears anyway"


 

Every once in 81 days you get one of those mails that can make you go in to a PMSque like depression ( without the spasmo proxyvon).Today while I was on one of those insomniac-on-the-net trips at five in the morning, I got this mail.(Not sure if the printscreen would be clear to you. Try clicking on them).




Now the inquisitive reader would wonder why this would cause the author any heartburn. Unknown to the readers, the author harbours a deep rooted desire to be an entrepreneur from the day all those pelvic thrusts by Mamta Kulkarni on "ATN" channel started making sense to him(that was supposed to be a euphemism to indicate the time he hit puberty). 

(Warning: Absolutely irrelevant story ahead)

In the days that were to follow, the author made enough shady friends to always be in the money making "bijness". School was also a good place to learn about twisting rules and in case any of you readers had any misconception that match fixing as a concept did not originate in India then I would ask them to check the Sports day records of my prestigious school between 1997-2000, which for some strange reason has 3 students coming as joint champions for 3 consecutive years with their points adding up to the same figure( That was some mind numbing calculation that was to be done every night before the sports day .One more year of that and I would have been directly recruited by the Reserve Bank, believe me. )And to think they blamed poor Hansie Cronje for bringing match fixing into India. The booty was divided later among the athletes and the middlemen and the guy who kept time for the races. Of course there were "spoilsports" too who wanted to play it fair.One such guy was supposed to come second in the javelin category but "somehow" managed to throw it with all his might, beating all others. He still came second. The author, who was the person with the measuring tape, had nothing to do with this particular incident.

Coming back to the point after that big tangent.

All throughout college I only spoke of how I would start my own thing. Some people would give the sympathetic nod and some the smirks, as these are words that are rarely uttered in an engineering college a la "hey, looking macho, manmohan" or a "salaam aleikum, Advani Saab”. Anyway. As I scrolled down to the list of those start-ups, the mind registered a familiar name, no, wait, TWO!!.

Rasilant technologies has some people from my college at the helm and doing well too. Although I am envious by virtue of my ambition I am happy for them as they did grow some balls unlike the author and wish all the very best to them. The author was a self confessed geek in college for the initial year and had the now ignominious distinction of having topped college and the university in some semester. My friends here who have started this wonderful venture were all seniors in college who decided to sit that extra year in college to gain profound knowledge. Heck, I even wrote an answer in one of the term tests for the guy who is the Executive Director now. (Ironically enough, the subject was Micro-electronics. I wouldn’t take names as has been the long lasting legacy of the blog. But Shame on you ShilaX J).

And that only proves one point which I learnt in college which has been so eloquently put down by Inkyji as

“I am a monster of the education system. It promotes weasels like me.

I am the reason students should no longer be taught. They should be left to learn.”

 I would not ask you readers to go and vote for them as all the rest of the start-ups are amazing in their own ways (no, that only sounds like Ismail darbari in Sa re ga ma.., I don’t watch it , mother promise).Mantis Technologies are also close friends and have my best wishes. But do vote, you would be doing budding entrepreneurs a great favour.

The author by force of habit does do the occasional sigh on the functionless-as-of-now "Out of the Box Solutions" which was formed early this year(yes, the author is a partner) and was going places until we hit a dead end from about 16 different directions. I don't care if I never ever   get married or live a normal life or touch a girl in my life   ( seriously, what the hell was i thinking ), 2 years from now I would have made enough dough to start my own thing and you all are welcome to visit the headquarters in Nagaland.

Khayal for the Din:

“Every successful enterprise requires three men - a dreamer, a businessman, and a son of a bitch.”