Friday, January 26, 2007

Such is Life?

A friend and I were going to her place to study for the next day’s exam. Now everyone knows that when you’re in school, the final exams generally clash with the festival of Holi. Do I need to specially elaborate on why this is annoying for girls?

But I digress. So getting back to what I was telling you about, we had just entered the friend’s building. Suddenly a water balloon out of nowhere came flying at her and hit her squarely on the back. Furious, she went over to a group of boys who were standing together and giggling. I followed her meekly, hoping we could get away without a big argument.

“Who the f*** threw that water balloon?”, she asked (read yelled).

“I did,” said a smug boy.

I don’t have anything against people’s faces, mind you. But the face that that boy sported was the most annoying, infuriating face you ever saw. You know, the kind who may not have done anything to incur your wrath, but you still feel like slapping anyway.

Except that is precisely what my friend did. She slapped him neatly on his left cheek, and hard enough for him to scream aloud.

“WHAT THE HECK IS WRONG WITH YOU, BITCH?” a shocked ex-smug boy asked her.

“Well, you like hitting people with balloons,” she replied. “I like hitting them with my bare hands.”

It didn’t take a genius to note that he was boiling with fury and embarrassment, but was too astonished to do anything.

“Now I hope this teaches you to stay away from me, you fat and ugly pimp. Because if it didn’t I can always teach you again,” my friend continued.

Everyone knew that she’d won. But as a saving grace, he tried a last attempt. “My dad’s in the police force. How dare you slap me? Now you just wait.”

“That’s touching. But since my mum’s a lawyer, I dunno if your dear daddy can do much to me. Meanwhile, why don’t you tell him to teach you some manners? Or better still lock you up in a spare jail or something? The inmates there could give you something to think about!” she mocked him.

Having the last word, she took me by the hand and whisked me away to her house. I couldn’t help but admire her spirit. I don’t think there’s anything worse for a guy than to get slapped by a girl. That too, in front of his friends. Boy, that’d give them something to talk about till he’s 95 years old!

Another thought occurred to me, though. May sound far-fetched, but I think such is life. Gone are the days when you could just go to the police station or a lawyer to solve your feuds for you. Nowadays, if you’ve wronged somebody, you just need to know the right people who can get you out of the trouble. And if you’re the one who’s been wronged, it’d be nice if you could know some influential people as well. Or you need to stack up some money to make the right people help you seek redressal. But if you’ve neither the contacts nor the money, forget it. Maybe you deserve to be wronged.

*Sigh!*

Friday, January 05, 2007

Some Distressing Home-truths

There are good days and then there are bad days. And then there are days when whatever you do takes an about turn and screws you up your ass. I don’t know what to make of such situations, apart from the fact that they make you feel like you’re nothing but the inconsequential louse that you’ve forgotten you are.

Of all the attributes that belong to man, I think the ego is the most intriguing. Its funny how delicately the ego must be handled. Hurting someone’s ego, especially mine, must be made a criminal offence. So at this rate, I think all bosses must be hanged to death.

There’s another home truth that my philosophical self has realized. At the workplace, it doesn’t matter who’s wrong or right. What matters is, you’re crap and your boss is God. And when you’ve got that equation right, you’ll slip into a blissful state of indifference. Indifference where nothing affects you; whether a cactus is shoved up your backside or a really long, thorny bamboo. Fuck it, yaar becomes THE anthem.

So why all this banter, you must be wondering. Well, there’s a lot of things that I myself am confused about. But to begin with, let’s just say that the management is deciding to shift our department somewhere else. The office we sit in right now is this really pretty, well-lit place with cozy interiors and some very cool people. And the place the plan to shift us to, is this place with buildings somewhere between slums and chawls, with slaughterhouses that chop chicken, mutton and beef, a prevailing stink of rotting animal carcasses and overflowing gutters, huge BMC trash cans and not to mention the smelliest of stray animals. The ‘office’ we are going to inhabit is reportedly a mezzanine thing to be reached with a 90 degree narrow steel ladder. There’s no loo to go to, no AC to cool ourselves (and our disgust) with, and if you even remotely turn towards the window you might spot a hair in the dal the neighbour is cooking. It is THAT bloody congested and bile-rising.

Would you in your right frame of mind want to spend eight hours of day smelling dead animals, stinking toilets and gutters? Which is precisely why we decided to take the matter up to the CEO and tell him we would eat ourselves up before surrendering to such a place.

The CEO kindly fired two of my senior most colleagues (one of them being my best buddy). What’s more, he (the CEO, not my buddy) had the audacity to claim that the juniour employees didn’t matter to him, and the whole department could leave that minute if they ever dared to question his decisions again. All that at 7568 decibels.

Ooooh I’m scared.

I don’t care a fuck. Take your bloody job and put it where the monkey puts its nuts. Now repeat with me. I-Don’t-Care. I feel no remorse quitting your ‘esteemed’ organization, because I have accepted the one truth of the universe. I am crap and my boss is God. See? It doesn’t make a difference to me. There are other jobs out there. Someone will hire me. I don’t need this job. After I’ve left, they’ll realize how good I was and might even call me back. If they don’t value all the effort I’ve put into the company, I don’t care two hoots about them.

Hell, who am I kidding? I do care about where I might land up next. All of a sudden, everything before my eyes is blurred, and I don’t know how to bring it back into focus. Right now, I just want to shut my eyes and pretend it didn’t happen.

God, if you’re around, please take my advice. When things are going fine, don’t mess with them. Change is something that we can really do without, sometimes. The world would really find it easier if you didn’t decide to screw things up, thank you very much.

* Takes overdose of sleeping pills and dies*