What Do You Do at Office?

Ten things you do at Office:

1. Read google news.
2. Read some more google news.
3. Read Cricinfo.
4. Look up for useful stuff in Wikipedia like: Cannibals of India, Megapodes of Andaman, Financial turmoil of the mid 1920s etc.
5. Pick up the headphone (connected to your phone and not IPOD) put it on your head like you are doing some very useful talk.
6. Don't forget to put the phone on mute. Do speak up a few times in between of course while on mute.
7. Go for 3 coffee breaks.
8. Go for 3+3 Cig breaks.
9. One lunch and two breakfast and two tiffin breaks.
10. If someone asks you something about the area of your expertise, respond: "Yah, I will look into it and get back"
11. Don't ever get back. That will be asking for trouble.
12. Check the date thrice in a day (especially in the last week of a month).
13. Read and re-read the salary check 5 times to ensure your company is not looting you (on the first week).


Many more to come...offices are after all supposed to be hectic!

Calcatians don’t bite….1

I have never been a calcatian. I have always had lot of problems with this city. To tell you the truth we never got along nicely. Neither did we this time.

As the readers know, I grew up in a small town called Siliguri. Growing up in small towns have their disadvantages and advantages. I knew greenery. I knew how nice it is to look at kanchanjungha right when you wake up in the morning. I knew how nice it feels when all of a sudden you meet someone on the road and smile back. I knew how to go on your cycle and get lost in a rain forest. I knew how cold exactly the water of Teesta is. Like this I knew a lot of things. There were things I didn’t know as well.

When I passed the so called hurdle of JEE which is most dreaded and respected GOD of West Bengal these days, I came to join college in a small village and I got to know some Calcutta guys. Guys of Calcutta were a thing to see for us. Although siliguri is a quite modern city compared to the other mofussils of Bengal (Thanks to the proximity of the nepali and pahari gorkhas- the girls are simply to good in the hills), still we always felt a tinge of inferiority complex when we met those convent educated Calcutta guys. Fortunately for us though, there were only a few to fall into this category.

I still remember a conversation from my early days in college, where someone was telling about his preparations before JEE counseling. He actually got a fair amount of guess (!!??!!!) of how much he is gonna rank (which incidentally was something so obscure I have no idea how he got it right), and he went around to all the colleges he could get admission to find out which college has which dept in shape. That was the time when private colleges were forming up in Bengal. We hardly had 6 colleges under private control, and we being the backbenchers had to choose one of those alone. Whatever, my point is not how this guy did his research and all, or what all parameters he actually calculated to say which dept is good in which college, or whether he did some crash course from AICTE for accreditation of colleges! My point is calcatians do these things, they do these things simply to show their class and we were so much shadowed by the calcatian’s aura I felt ashamed. I felt ashamed that I didn’t do any research at all, one of my teachers told me that I was an idiot not to get through JU or BESU, so I can go to hell and get admitted to any engineering college. Another of my teachers told me that I should look for electronics and gave me two colleges’ names which he believed was good. I kept faith on my teacher. While in counseling, the guy asked me what I want, I said I want electronics, that guy replied u have the following options. I heard one known name in that options list (which was a very short list though), and there I was getting admitted to a college and making the most important decision of my life (or atleast it seemed to be so at that juncture of my life). So you see we small people (a direct translation of “chhote log”) don’t stand a chance when it comes match a calcatian. There was another guy who within the first few days announced that he was from South Point school which has the world record of most no of students in a class. I and a few others who were from the land of “far far away”, were awestruck again. South Point!!! The school of all those bespectacled geniuses whose pictures feature in the front pages after every HS or Secondary results, those who clearly announce after their feat that they want to do research in NASA or treat poor people of India, make medicines of cancer, win noble prizes, fuck Katie Moss, lick G W Bush’s arse and God knows what! Then he announced another bombshell, the higher secondary topper was his batch mate and he copied the last sum of the second paper mathematics from this higher sec topper to secure his 80%. He also announced he has never believed in luck, he believes in being at the right place at the right time with the right people. God Damn us small towners.

These people had a different chain of thought in their heads. We didn’t know a lot of things at that time, and that is the essence I am trying to give out in my meaningless essay. Have u got it? If not its not your problem, you see we people don’t know to write English properly. Never read in convents you know! I remember one of my friends wife quipping about this strange breed. SHe told me about one from this tribe saying once "Ishhhh...this road is so kada pachpach. so disgusting u know!" Readers who don't understand bengali I am sorry i do not have enough knowledge in english to translate it.

[this is the first of a chain of posts I wish to do about calcutta and things i like and I don't like about this great and beautiful city.... the starting I am doing with a not so pleasant note but keep reading and I am sure you will find that I am not so much nagging about thsi city after all...]

Simple Fun

Fun can be very simple. Like what we did today. There is a notice in men’s toilet in our office. That says “if any of toilets go faulty please contact so and so…” We wrote a comment below that- Toilet Assurance Solution Design(trouble to report).

Now that wouldn’t be fun for those who don’t know what trouble to report is and what solution design means and what is assurance. But it was for us who all the time are talking about assurance, solution design and troubles.

Another kind of fun was seeing a friend drunk the other day. He went drunk after a couple of glasses of wine and started shouting how much prestige Himesh has brought India with his latest flick (or should I say freak) “Aanpka Sunnroooooooooooor”!!

First few times I took the representativehood of all those blasphemous bastards and tried to point out how miserably we have failed to hide Himesh inside India and now he has reached Germany. And people all over the globe are laughing at our cinema. But he was not to be taken aback by all those bloody nonsense. And then my anger my nationalism and my rudeness gave way to humour. The next few hours were simply fabulous watching someone praise himesh as if he were his boyfriend. God save India.

There was a third funny incident which I didn’t find funny. Happened in transformer movie. Where an Indian call center guy with his funny accent tries to sell a package deal to a US Marine (those who do not know what a us marine is please read “Jarhead” by Anthony Swoff. Its basically a special species of animals who are terribly dangerous, expert in rape and murder and dreaded for their futileness all over the world.) and in that process gets the major almost killed. The public were roaring in laughter as if that is the funniest thing they have ever watched in their life.

So fun is of various types. You can have fun by pulling a girls skirt in the wide daylight and laugh your ass out all your life thinking about it and how you the goddamn lucky bastard didn’t get caught. But I would call you a rapist and demand for a prosecution. You can have fun at saying all bongs are horrendously meek and they don’t work they come to office late everyday without fail and all those normally people say about bongs, but I would call you a racist. You can say that all tamils are bloody idiots who do not know anything outside tamilnadu and my take on that would be such a poor take on joke.

Such was a funny movie which my room mate was watching today and laughing his ass out. “Partner” as the name says (could have been also named hitch-hindi). Well there is nothing funny in an over aged Govinda who it seems have left all the wonder with his dulheraja days and now have been left with a huge amount of buffoonery along with another muscular buffoon who calls himself Salman Khan (what a dhabba in the name of all Khans in Bollywood)!!

Fun my dear its all Fun.