Drinking

I am a born drunkard. Yet I am losing the charm of drinking day by day.

I mean I can't drink by myself. With most of my intoxicated friends away, there is no company to drink with. In between I had developed a few online friendships with like minded people, with whom I used to drink while chatting on virtual forums. (i know that sounds like a loser but that is the best i could manage)

Now all those guys are either married or dead.

I think I need a few rounds of Vodka to kick myself up. But you don't get vodka in Chennai. All you can manage is a nice overpriced bottle of Black Dog. But office doesn't allow me to reach the liquor shop (in local words: TASMAC) before 10.

Oh my life is so fucked up! :-(

Fate, Chicken & a Sunday Evening!

[Long post warning....]

How bad a day can be? Or rather how bad your two hours can be? I bet you can’t beat me, and forget beating you can’t even match me in bad luck.

Here’s how it unfolded. I sold my cupboard to one colleague. She requested me to get a truck or tempo and send it over to her place. I couldn’t find any reason to disagree.

So today was the day when I was supposed to send it out. Once the sun died out, I went to catch a tempo from the nearest market. There are always a host of them standing there waiting for a customer. So it is normally a few minutes job really. Just the bargaining part was something I was worried about.

Suddenly I found that there are numerous trucks there, but none of them have got any driver in it. It was a curious scene. There were like 5-10 tempos standing in the stand none of them had a driver. I asked a nariel pani wala about the whereabouts of the drivers. He gave me a strange look and said 15 rs. So I understood, that he needs me to buy a nariel pani in exchange of the valuable information. I bought one, even though heavy from a late lunch in the afternoon, still I took a huge Chennai DAAB (raw nariel or green coconut in Bengali).

Then I asked, “anda truck driver inge irike?”

he said, “teri la”!!

I astonished and indignant: “enna teri la? Nee soldra daab tanni kurunga to truck driver irike soldra”

Nariel pani wala (bewildered): “enna something something…illa terila…something something…” points to his head makes a gesture of loose screw!!

I in plain and crude Bengali: “sala boka****** ityadi ityadi”….

Angry but helpless, that’s how I have felt a numerous time in Chennai, today was such a day.

After waiting in the stand for an odd 40 minutes and when a single
Truck driver failed to appear I gave up. I thought I better enquire in the near by petrol pump where they would know someone at least.

Went to the petrol pump and asked for trucks, they showed the next car service, I went there and asked for a contact and they showed me a brochure that they provide only privet car like indica, ambassador etc!!!

I decided to give up and was coming back towards the truck stand, suddenly found a truck driver appear and get into his truck. I started running towards him, frantically throwing my hands above my head to stop him. He just whizzed past me, without bearing a thought or any compassion towards me. Big city people, how ruthless they are!!

I after this incident waited for ten more minutes to find out if any conspiring truck driver my appear here or there and the canny policeman I am, I might be able to get hold of him. But nothing dramatic happened after this, and I gave up finally.

The second mission on the go was to buy chicken. Normally I get chicken from spencers daily and never bother about the local chicken shops. Yes, I know I am not filthy rich but I don’t usually mind the extra 15 bucks the spencers guy charges for the clean environment etc.


So here I was busily speaking to a friend whom I was asking to come over for dinner (the chicken was by the way the main course). I busily crossed the local chicken shops but never noticed a deep conspiracy taking shape around me.

I walked and went to the spencers, and to much of my dismay, there was no chicken. The guy was apologetic and told that today the demand was exceptionally high and hence he was helpless.

I kind of didn’t mind. I was still unaware of what was to come. I traced my way back to the local chicken shops.

And to my utter dismay, found all the shops were closed.

I thought for a little while on how to approach this problem. Then I thought that I still had two course of action to be taken. Two backup plans really.

Backup 1 – there was still a shop left in one of the inner lanes nearby. I had bought chicken from there on a Sunday before, so was pretty damn sure it would be open.

Backup 2 – I could buy fish as the fish shop was open. There was a certain unhygeinix selling fish to my utmost liking.

Backup 3 – there was this Godrej real cut chicken which you can buy in many of the local supermarkets. That is the last option, though I don’t really like that chicken, but I thought once in a while it’s not too bad.

So I took backup 1 and walked for another 7-8 minutes to the shop in one of the inner lanes only to find the shop open but no chicken left!

I took backup 2, and rushed to the fish shop, to find out none of the fish they are selling we normally eat. I could have still bought those, but got a strict red signal from home.

At this point of time I was a bit unnerved. That famous suggestion by Paul Coelho, that if you really want something, then the entire kayanaat (whatever that means…. may mean heavenly bodies) tries to get you that seemed to be totally nonsense at this point of time.

Rather if someone has already suggested the opposite, he seemed to be quite right.

But I was not to give up so easily. I walked back to spencers to see if I can get to backup 3. And godrej chicken’s freezer was there in the super market, but no chicken again.

I went to the next supermarket and no chicken again.

I thought damn with these flashy supermarkets. There is one just near my house; I would rather check that one. Being situated at a relatively quieter place, chances of getting chicken there was more.

I took a bus, came back. Ran and crossed the shop. Glared at the man suspiciously who suddenly tried to dodge me to enter the shop before me and kept my hand on the freeze. There it was. One piece. The last of the Mohican chickens!

Frozen yet fresh.

Meaty and magnetic.

I bought that. Finally, I was happy. I had beaten them all. I had beaten the kayanaat and got the food of my choice. Take that bugger, told my fist which I pumped in the babynagar 1st main road walking back alone.

Well, it didn’t last long though. Returned home and my wife found out that chicken pack had got expired 3 days back.

It was a sinking feeling when I heard that news. The same sinking feeling that Gibbs might have got after getting beaten by a legbreak from Warney (according to cricinfo he did get a sinking feeling!! And I realized what kind of feeling that is at this very moment).

My wife suggested fro the guests lets make something with egg. Not ideal to treat your guests, but then we had no option at all. We walked back (this time I took her along to see if this has any effect on my ill starred luck) to the shop. Returned the chicken bought eggs and came home.

Then I sat back to watch IPL, and as soon as I switched the TV on, the master got out. I was almost kicking myself when the Bhajji blizzard gave the mumbaikars quite a formidable total to look at. I am never a Bhajji fan but it somewhat made up for the lost entertainment that I was expecting from the master.

And suddenly my wife came from the kitchen and notified, the gas is over so no cooking tonight!! Need I say more?

Outsourcing and All That...

outsourcing mainly means cheap labor. When you can't keep enough gus in your office, because your business stinks, you can't rent enough office space or buy enough number of laptops for your employees or even giving them salary is beyond your reach you outsource the jobs.

These jobs come to India (or the likes of it) where man power is limitless and renewable( as every second we generate a new source of energy - Human energy). And htere are millions of millions of buggars who will do your job (be it cleaning your dirty linen) almost for free.

So basically money is what keeps Outsourcing alive. As long as you do it cheap you are there. Once u ask for a hike in the contract, oh sir, you see, you do not fit strategically into our company's vision. hence Bubbye. - is hwat most client companies would say to the suppliers. They know there is no dearth of another outsourcer.

Being an insider I have thought about this situation a lot. And I have no doubt that outsourcing works only because of this cheap labor stuff.

We suck at understanding the job or the operations or the business of our clients. We suck at understanding why they do things or how they do things. We more importantly are never bothered about what should ideally be our role in helping hte customer achieving its goal. We do what we are told to do by the customer. And wash our hands with that.

But hten haven't we brought a lot of good things to the european large companies along with us? I happen to be working for a european giant ( a mammoth i would say) company. My job is to provide consultancy and functional designing. before we the wretched contractors came in, it was handled by the company's own ppl.

with us around, the company can now achieve more htan what it could ever do before. know why?

Because, now you can put in a requirement only 3 days before release and expect to bully the contractors to get it done. Now you can never respond to an email clarificaiton which was sought during design or development and later on calmly point your finger to someone and say it was always an implicit requirement. You can now actually look at an individual and expect him to cancel his vacation and come to work on all days.

has europe ever seen a more committed workforce than these outsourced workers? Has europe ever seen a more easily bullied software giants? Has europe ever seen ppl who can effortlessly put in 14 hours a day and get back home and tell his wife how he solved one issue and is so much proud of it? Has europe ever seen a guy to archive an email from a client with a "Thank You" which probably the guy didn't even have to write rather was a part of his standard signature!!

Outsourcing is reducing the whole world to a global village. I wonder whether it will do good for anyone. At one side there are these large corporate houses who are happy to give away jobs that could have been easily done by locals to a far away country. Increasing profit of hte company along with joblessness, insecurity and reduction of spending power in its own country where it sells its products! At the other end it sends money to a country where a few of the blokes earns a tiny share of the large pie (which eventually goes to the company balancesheets or fat paycheques for the executives) and are happy to buy a levis every other month or a pulsar to ride with his girlfriend to a local pub selling very ordinary drought Kingfisher.

The definition of life goes a sea change in different places. I have seen europeans who work only stipulated hours and have taken pride in myself that I can work for 72 hours at a stretch. But then I do take the awe that how these ppl can leave the so called "urgent" or "very important" work behind and go for a fishing trip or a camping session in norhtern highlands! I cant help but wonder, are we wrong or they are?

How this sort of different working culture affecting the world working sceanrios? The europeans(or the americans or those who employ us...no regional bias here...jsut to point out someone) now want more out of hte money they are putting in. With recession knocking at the door, they want 5 guys to be replaced by 3 and 3 to be replaced by 1. work remains the same. deliverable output remains the same. but the workhorses reduce. and we to keep our business alilve, to keep our roti rozi coming, agree to every unreasonable timescales, cancel our vacations, run around the country or the globe for the sake of it.our girlfriends wait at home. our mothers forget how we look and our fathers wary of the future of his bloodline. such is life.

P.S: I know this is one of the most incoherent posts I have ever written. But then an incoherent post is better than no post. ;-)