MERRY CHRISTMAS YOU'LL!

running around in loops.....

I'm guessing when our ancient learned fathers had a council and decided to come up with the concept of language, they did it with the idea of avoiding a Babel situation....one week into my new job, I'm convinced that everyone is speaking what I want to call MBA jargon just to fox me. I go from an org when my ed used the F word thrice in a 4 word sentence... Consider now situation below and tell me if I'm being unreasonable....

Day1, meeting 1: Big Boss Guy: "I want the team to integrate seamlessly so we are able to close the loop by Fri"......Hang on one sec, while I process this....ummm...so I assume what he was trying to say is, "Lets get this done by Fri" but he wont say it in those words because....MBA JARGON!!
Day2,meeting 2: Team member: Will you be able to share the contents of the e mail with her so she is also kept in the loop'?.... umm...meaning, "CC her on the mail"???....but they wont say it so easily because, yes u guessed right......

considering how much I have verbal bashed this place already, I'm not surprised that one week down the line I still haven't been logged onto the system...app, it has taken 2days for the others....wont be surprised if on Monday morn, I can't enter the gates because my swipe card has been canceled or something....all in a days work for me.....

Day 1

so i filled out like 3mn copies of what felt like the same things over n over again....n apparently v do the same things tomm....arghh.....ok so i like my new place of work. except of course i'm cursed to leave home at 6:45 every morn.....yes, i asked for this...Que sera sera.....

its the best of times, it is the worst of times...

as regards the cultural scene in this city. well friday i went for the bengalooru habba. was supposed to start at 6:30 (although the passes said 6), we got there by 7 and till 8 there was no sign of any activity. reason? ex-cm krishna hadn't bothered calculating his traveling time correctly before lifting off from mumbai. i feel a little bad now but i was part of the crowd that booed loudly when he finally did make an appearance. or maybe he deserved it considering no apologies with a capital A passed his lips. After an eternity of speechifying, finally the concert kicked off....L Subramaniam was brilliant-breath-taking and absorbing. Its a pity I had to leave a little after but it was pushing on 9:30 and I had to take an auto...

On Sat, deciding not to tag along with the parents for a Glorious X'mas concert, I went instead for a play. The posters said it was unsuitable for ppl under 18yrs of age as it dealt with issues of god and religion and blah. I bought the 100 bucker and waited patiently. Play started on the dot. It was nothing like what I had expected. No doubt the lead actor was good but there was no point to the entire thing. Even in a one act play, I'm sorry but I demand a strong storyline. All I got out of this half-an-hourer (yes it was half an hour only!) was that there is this Muslim undertaker guy in London who hates God and in the last moment he accepts him. And the whole half an hour can be summarised in exactly that 1sentence. The reason why they said only ppl over 18 was not because of any moral/spiritual issues of the soul that might have made young innocents question existence and god and all that but because of the profanity. It never ceases to amuse and amaze me how most of the plays that I have seen of late in Bangalore score on the swearing and no-holds-barred front even if they lack, painfully sometimes, a good script. As if that is all you need to make a good play nowadays.... sad....

well lots of other concerts coming up this season. im hoping some of them live up to the hype they create for themselves.

a curious state of non being...

so this is it then...my last day here and i feel curiously unaffected. dont know if this is good considering i have always felt nauseating fear at the start of anything new-first day at college, first day with my theatre group even....

i'm looking forward to this i guess in some sense...and not too. what if i'm no good at my new job? but then again i was getting too comfy here in any case and the time to try something new is now i guess... i know these arguments like the back of my hand now considering i have been going over and over it for a while ....a month precisely....no one else seems to want to hear it...they just think i'm mad mad mad doing this....it feels a little like i'm selling my soul, my freedom....or maybe i'm being just too fucking dramatic as usual. whatever.

badly paraphrasing here from Zadie Smith but I think this best describes my mood now: The future is a whole new country and I don't know if I still have a valid visa......

goodbye journalism, hello corporate world!

on a serious post script.....

looking at the world with spinster eyes
at 26
too tired too wise

its the proverbial gilded cage. the key has slipped through my fingers ages ago. dusk has settled making it difficult to make out what should be glaringly obvious. staring out of the cage, eyes large with wonder and amazement...how is one born so beautifully incapable of the most basic? with brain, 2eyes, 2 feet, 2 hands...all perfect...and yet so absurdly incomplete it has no cure because it has no name....its amazing how many times the human body can be shattered and still rise up and withstand some more. can the same be said of the heart? i doubt it and it scares me that i'm being made a guinea pig in this game with no name....

my cynicism comfort blanket is proving to be of little use now...people are less tolerant of a difficult adult than they are with a rebellious teen...withdrawal my only option it seems....my tentative forages leave me more shell shocked each time than before....

'Some people are born not belonging'...Salman Rushdie, of all the people in the world, is ringing in my ears at the moment....

oh yes, i have to guard against the self pity...

making such a spectacle of myself....

i've come to the conclusion that looking at life through a piece of glass makes all the difference... i haven't worn my glasses 'publicly' for a while now. being fat and bespectacled growing up was too much to bear and i shed both the minute i hit college. now thanks to a badly scratched old pair and a never ending delay with the new pair of lenses, i'm forced to wear my glasses in my meetings with the outside world.

mind you, i'm not being paranoid. on the few occasions when friends or people in general saw me with my glasses there is always an uncomfy silence initially as if they feel the need to apologise for my hugely deficient vision. or of course there is the outright "how come you wear such thick glasses man" amazement written all over the face but never voiced. v particular then of my looks (little as they may be) i have tried to get rid of my awkward embarrassing childhood by hiding the fact of my glasses as best as i could. until now that is.

walking down brigade road this morning with my glasses on, i was suddenly unconcerned about who would see me in my glassy glory. no worrying about cat calls, taking a bus in a crowded stop or worrying about getting dust into my eyes all the time. i dont feel the need to explain them away. sure i wear glasses. they lend me a gravity i can easily hide behind...its also the easiest transition, i have realised, from 'akka' to 'aunty'.....

its wot makes the bloody world go around i say

have this really funny piece doing its rounds in my head...i spent the entire weekend reading zadie smiths 'on beauty' and when i walked into office this morning i still had the whole accent thing floating around in my head... apparently how it is v easy to tell a bostonian drawl from a new england one....and the first person i bump into is my colleague with her tanzanian accented english accented with a british schooling accented with south indian force of habit saying 'oh you really really are wicked'...spent 20 secs trying to understand what she was saying and then spent the next 20 trying not to laugh...

reminds me of this piece that ryan seacrest played on his show the other day. potter boy daniel radcliffe sounds exactly like soccer boy david beckham!!!....and its only because they both happen to be english. which means the rest of the bloody world must sound the same to the other rest of the bloody world as well....which also means, for the same of an obtuse argument, that we are wasting our time on trying to decipher and then pin down accents....

on a personal note, i'll always been told i have a v nice accent (*blush*). till a friend i haven't met in 2yrs said 'oh good. ur finally replacing ur delhi punjabi accent with a south indian one'...ouch.....

Hitchhikers guide to a lonely planet

back after a v v refreshing trip to bombay...did the usual touristy stuff..bought books at fountain, shopped at linking road, ate at Leo's, bought alcohol in black at Janata, took moonlit walks along Bandstand...

My most endearing memory however has to be the trains...Bombay to me is actually all about travelling second class...the pushing and shoving, the cursing and smelling sweaty armpits, buying useless hair clips and the method in all that chaos. Travelling some pretty crazy distances-Virar to Churchgate sometimes.....I love how even 4yrs later nothing has changed. Nothing. The same pushing, shoving, cursing, smelling sweaty armpits and greasy station vada pav's... theres something about looking out at so much life through the bars of a train window....but more so how much of life is lived within those trains....

the best way to discover Bombay tho if u asked me is to do it by yourself....i guess i was happiest when i had my knapsack, my water bottle and my walking shoes...