The Ultimate Luxury

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Finished Goods

The ultimate luxury - uttapams fried in desi ghee - Made in USA.

Sometimes you plan for things to work out in one way and they never do. Then in one unexpected moment when you were not looking, all your dreams peep behind you and tap on your shoulder. You turn back to get a glimpse and they suddenly disappear. You are once again left with nothing.

And all who heard should see them there,

And all should cry, Beware ! Beware !

His flashing eyes, his floating hair !

Weave a circle round him thrice,

And close your eyes with holy dread,

For he on honey-dew hath fed,

And drunk the milk of Paradise.

DST

Daylight Savings Time it has been argued has many benefits in countries in the northern hemisphere where advanced economy and work conditions demand such an adjustment. Suddenly, you wake up one morning at 7am and realize that its after all only 6am and go back to sleep or worse wake up at 7am to realize that it is 8am and you are horribly late. Over the years, people have got used to it and accepted it. But it is not so in India. In a country which spans across three time zones – literally Manipur is to the east of Bangladesh which is half an hour ahead of us and Gujarat is below Pakistan which is half an hour behind IST – we have shown lethargy akin to inertia in implementing this concept. So what would happen if suddenly one day we implemented DST?

The ruling party would lose the next general election. Minorities would move to Supreme Court crying foul over discrimination because many would have never seen a digital watch in their lifetime. The government would pass a law that by March 31st everyone should buy HMT manufactured DST compliant watches which the CPI(M) would oppose as being as being pro-America. Mamata Banerjee would declare a 24 hour bandh in Kolkata which would be supported by all opposition parties. Meanwhile, Titan would protest over the deal to grant HMT the right to manufacture DST compliant watches. Several MPs would resign and go to jail over the DST contract scam.

When DST would actually be implemented, there would be a grand launch party where Shah Rukh Khan would dance to the songs of his latest movie and say “Kuch aur wish karo, DST karo!” and Amitabh Bachchan would hold a platinum wrist watch in his hands and smile “Do DST ke boondh, zindagi ke liye” The annual Filmfare awards would be held twice a year on DST implementation days which Aamir Khan would not attend because he never believed in such awards while Arundhati Roy and Medha Patkar would stand outside the auditorium and protest that DST would harm the environment. Ekta Kapoor would modify the script of Kasauti Zindagi Ki where Prerna would marry Bajaj in one DST phase and Anurag in the other. Rohit Bal, Neeta Lulla and Sabyasachi Mukherjee would design a DST line of clothes for the next fashion week where Shahid Kapur and Saif Ali Khan would walk the ramp while Kareena Kapoor would cheer from the sidelines. Dev Anand would make a new movie called “Love in DST” starring a 16 year old girl who was born when 6am became 7am.

Our day and night cricket matches would be scheduled by DST and senior cricketers would not play test matches citing injury, while junior captains would declare that only young cricketers whose bodies can adjust to DST will be a part of the team. The hockey and football federations would protest that in addition to giving preferential treatment to cricket, DST was another means to make these sports unpopular. Sania Mirza would be sued for wearing a DST compliant watch sporting the Indian tricolor that would fall from her wrist during a match. Leander Paes and Mahesh Bhupati would once again team up to face the challenge of playing under DST circumstances. The Indian Olympic Association would declare that with DST, India is now truly world standard, and therefore demand that ‘pittu’ be made an Olympic sport.

The common man would be totally confused because Doordarshan would forget to adjust the clock as per DST while the private channels would remember. Aaj Tak would interview people about how they felt about DST. Vodafone and Airtel would face a network outage on DST days and nobody would know the time. Anil Ambani would buy a Rs. 10,000crore DST clock that he would install outside his corporate office and name it after Tina. The Mumbai Stock Exchange would lose an hour on DST days and people would howl in distress because they lost crores in a bullish market. Government employees would demand and be granted overtime in winter. The chief agenda in the opposition party’s election manifesto would be to have two new national holidays on DST implementation days.


Well, thank God! No one’s thought of DST as yet!

Disclaimer:
This piece was inspired during a conversation with the great Oirpus. Not only is this piece dedicated to him, all litigators are requested to contact Oirpus.

Some of our Bollywood techno music is truly inspired. The opening music of the title song in 'Dus' sounds exactly the same as the graph plotter in office.

Bean counting and calorie counting will eventually kill the Bong. I used to love eating my slices of bread with butter and jam on both sides, till I discovered that I was gorging on a heavy duty bread which carried 110 calories per slice while my diet obsessed room mate asked me not to have more than 1000 calories a day! Butter does not find a place in my grocery list anymore, but jam has sneakingly made a place after I decided that I needed an alternative to chocolates. Its jam session all the time these days and as long as I don't know the specific calorie count of what I am eating, I exercise no restraint - pun intended.

Now that chocolate is out of bounds for me, I have been counting the omnipresence of it in my life and suddenly I'm realising that so many things are going to change now!

1. No more chocolate cereal for me - have replaced it with a killer bore of vanilla and almond cereal.

2. Chocolate chip cookies - my best friend when I was
a) Bored
b) Reading a storybook
c) hungry
d) Had nothing to do
e) Depressed
f) Feeling full after a heavy lunch
is now about to give way to lime flavoured nachos. I am already dreading the prospect of getting double depressed by missing the chocolate chips when I am depressed.

3. Chocolate flavoured milk - low fat or plain milk with Bournvita/ hot chocolate/chocolate Horlicks is now going to yield to plain, humble and lowly low fat milk. I cannot think of an alternative right now and that's making me triple depressed.

4. Chocolate cake, pastry and brownies - I don't know how I am going to refuse cake on people's birthdays and play the spoil sport. I don't even know how I am going to sit and watch people eat chocolate cake right in front of me.

5. Chocolate ice cream - I am trying strawberries for the moment. Something healthy and tastes so different from ice cream that it will hopefully help me forget me what ice cream is like. I always detested the shocking pink colour of strawberries but shock therapy is what I am in for at the moment.

6. Chocolate covered doughnuts (sniff sniff! tears) - plain bagels/bread?

7. My favourite bar of chocolate - full milk, full sugar, full fat whatever! - Heaven help me! I really don't know the answer.

I guess you can take chocolate away from me, but you cannot take me very far away from chocolate! Literally, no matter what a store stocks, it always has chocolates. It is impossible to go anywhere without stumbling on some product of chocolate. Even as I speak, I see a chocolate coloured coffee mug right next to me and it is making things more painful than before. As I said, bean counting and calorie counting will kill the Bong someday!

Cool wind in my hair

No Hotel California this one. I have moved into a new room where the heater does not work properly. The previous occupant was a rather "hot" woman who did not need a heater to keep her warm. This coupled with loads of rainfall, temperatures tending to freezing points (aah! I do not understand all the C and F anymore - everything is about how it "feels like") and the fact that I am sleeping on a wooden floor (the people who made this apartment could not afford wall to wall carpets and I cannot afford a bed) has helped me acquire a really hale hearty and healthy cold. I sneeze anytime of the day, my teeth clatter all the time in the cold and I am always shivering and yet I refuse to wear warm clothes because it looks ridiculous when other people around me have started wearing next to nothing clothes. After all, fashion always has a price to pay. This time its in the form of Tylenol.

Table of Content

Back Home	Out Here
Walk on the left side of wings in office	Walk on the right side of the narrow passage in office
Boss yells "Onnesha!@#$ ekhaane aaye" Me: 'Aaaaaaashchiiii"	JL: Unwayeshea Me: I'll be rite withya in a moment Jim
Theek achche	Aowkay
Files	Daaquments
Nobody asks "how are you" first thing in the morning. Its usually "code ta shesh hoyeche?" Me: Naa:-((( aaro time laagbe	"Good Morning Unwayeshea. Howeru dewing today" Me: Guuuud..:-)))))
Lunch - tiffin..Ma ka haath ka khana. sniff sniff!	Lunch in cafeteria. Er….does brocolli contain beef? No? then please add it to the topping. Pepperoni is just a cute Italian way of referring to the salt and pepper wala pepper right? Add it by all means!!!
Parties: Coke or Fanta?	Parties: White wine or Red wine?
Free cardomom tea from the vending machine. Accompany DJ and SS to the vending machine and yawn while they have coffee.	Free french vanilla decaf from the coffee maker or 60 calories per serving hot chocolate which I always have first thing in the morning.
Proxy server blocked: No Yahoo Mail, Rediff Mail…	Gmail, Orkut, Rediff Movies, Blogger...
9am: empty office. Nobody around to appreciate your punctuality.	8am: everyone deep into work. Gosh! I am late!!!
8pm: sneaking out of office, hoping that nobody will notice.	5pm: Bye J :-)))) Have a nyice evening. :-)))) J: Biiii Unwayeshea. Cya tomorrow!

;-)

I am now mastering the painful art of killing time while pretending to work. I was always great at staring into nothing for hours and hours together. But now the brain must function overtime to invent work that never existed and act like I am very busy doing it. Greater men and women have done it before me and its now my turn to be baptized in fire. I am sitting right next to the person to whom I report daily and it is my job to convince him that by doing nothing in particular, I am actually doing a great job and adding my bit of kinetics towards pulling his company to the next generation of progress. I have had an easy beginning so far, and I suspect he was beginning to regard me as a genius of some sorts. Then, in a moment of carelessness, I slipped and confessed to him that I did not have much to do. Since then, the chips have been down and my image has taken a beating. But the brain will once again rise to the occasion and find avenues for restoring my reputation as the master of deception.

Ducking under pressure

So I succumbed to the delight of grilled duck again last evening and also to tiramisu and chocolate soufflé despite my vows to lay off fat, trans fat, high carbs, low carbs, good and bad cholesterol. I tactfully avoided fiber which I should have gorged instead and grabbed for fried calamari which was now going to glue itself to the rest of my adipose-why don't you just leave me- tissues.

If adipose tissue is so light as to float in air, why are fat people so heavy?

Large chunks of ice float in water, fat also floats on water.

Last weekend, I walked in ankle deep snow for almost an hour and still did not catch a cold. But sometimes, I can just walk out of home in perfect weather and come back home with a cold. Murphy's Law exists. Behind me the skies darken, its going to rain very soon. I don't have an umbrella, but its been a while since I got wet in the rain.

Rain

Sleet

Icicles

Snow

Ice cream - I've gotto stopit now!!!!

Ugh!

I am selfish. Earlier, I would never spend money on myself. Rather, most of it would be spent on buying things for others. Now, it is just the opposite. I am selfishly buying things only for myself, without a thought for others. I am even making excuses for not buying things for them!!! And to think that this is the season for forGIVING

Ugh!

Thanks to AB's generous pile of gifts on my b'day among other goodies, I am now the proud owner of a box of premium assorted dark chocolates. My will power is a rocking boat in the ocean of temptation and abstinence. I take a longing look at the chocolates and shut the box. I try and count the calories -the nutrition facts clearly state that they're not enough to make me wrestle sumo after the box is finished- on the other hand, I so badly want to fit into that black and white shirt that is making me look like a puffed balloon these days. My obsession with the chocolates has turned me into a depressed maniac. I devoured 4 chocolate chip cookies at breakfast and a huge chocolate brownie at lunch to forget that box of chocolates. When it did not work, I ate a giant slice of chocolate cake to get over it. But visions of the box linger on. I see it in front of my eyes after every mean, whenever I am hungry and during those malicious TV commercials on desserts.

I am now thinking of meditation and yoga. Maybe Tai Chi and shadow boxing. Suggestions are welcome. Meanwhile that box lies next to me as I blog, invitingly......

Old Vistas Revisited

Yesterday I ate sushi for the second time. The first time had been in a buffet meal with something of a pretension of a shushi - but yesterday was the real thing. I felt like a cat stealing fish before it is cooked. The Indian palate is such that without a strong sauce (wasabi with soyabean) nothing tastes good. I dipped the sushi in the sauce and gulped it in one go. Aaah heaven!

I had duck for dinner too...a new meat for me. I don't think I liked it much, so I am not very keen on having duck again. I tried Thai pad noodles which was a tad bit sweet. But I have a sweet tooth, so I liked it.

Then I had fried ice cream with cherry sauce. It was like a cresendo of an opera. Could not have asked for more....

Earlier in the afternoon, I managed to drive on the highway, overspeeded and did not get caught.

Must check my stars. Yesterday must have been a good day. The boss left office at 3PM and my home made pasta finally tasted good.

Day after

Age: one more

Location: center of my universe. Away from everyone I care about, yet close to all.

Mood: meditative. Does love at first sight really exist?

I want to: speak my mind.

I wish I could: rewind time and be here.

How many times can a woman say 'No', when she really means 'Yes'?

I think not more than twice.

For men who don't try a third time, the game is over.

Dedicated to the memory of those who died waiting for the codebase to freeze...

Long time ago, once in my life
When I was unallocated,
I used to lament the lack of work
I was sincere and dedicated.

I used to hope for bugs to fix,
Miles of code to write.
I prayed that someone would notice
But alas! I was denied.

Then one day, they heard my prayers
And the jailor called my name.
Put her in iPub, they need bravehearts there
That prison has earned some fame.

I jumped right in without a thought
Coz where angels fear to tread.
Fools rush in to write TDs,
And FDs tracked in red.

We missed deadlines and ate pizza,
By swimming pools and shopping malls,
We watched blue screens with bated breadth
As boolean logic turned from true to false.

I laboured by the front end then
And by the back end did I toil,
I tried to find a route of escape
By burning midnight oil.

Some dug hard and found the tunnel
And escaped to down under,
Some broke fences and crossed the seas
While we watched in wonder.

The warden frowned on parole day,
"You must be back by COB
There are bugs in your code which need to go,
After all, its your baby!"

I tuned the query and swept the code
At corners you would not know
In vain I lowered the defect count,
The bugs! they would not go.

Now, I know the end is near
For I sigh and cough and wheeze
I lay in waste, unallocated still,
Waiting for the codebase to freeze.

Now-a-days we are playing the uneasy game of Russian Roulette with the coffee karafe at home.

A month ago, upon the demands of my mother, I purchased a wispy thin glass jug with a bakelite top which can be used for making coffee in the microwave. I did not know that it would come to haunt me like this. For this particular instrument is extremely delicate. Too much heat and it can crack. Drop it a wee little bit too heavily and it will shatter. Pour some cold water on it while it is still hot and it will break. Everyday, as we nervously take turns to make coffee with it, we bite our nails not knowing who will be the person unlucky enough to pull the trigger a bit too hard.

I have an incurable habit of pleasing people.

I like to see everybody happy and satisfied. I dread the idea getting into anybody's bad books. Years ago, when S lamented that nobody treated her to ice cream, I gave up the pocket money that I was saving for two months, to treat her to an ice-cream. Never mind, that I was was a kid too and saving all that money to buy one for myself. I felt like an angel that day. When DC shouted at me the other day for no fault of mine, I kept quiet because I thought if I shouted back she might feel hurt - never mind that I was getting very badly hurt too. I even ended up apologising to her, because I was getting nightmares about the argument. I am addicted to making people happy and making them feel special. AG once told me that he did not like my perfume, I changed it the next day despite the fact that AG does not even count as my friend. I can take the stairs when my legs cry out in agony for the elevator just because the people I am with don't want to take it. I can go hungry and wait for food just because somebody's favourite TV serial is on. I can end up writing clueless compositions in new year resolution competitions just because I don't want people to feel bad that nobody participated.

Er...not quite. Its time things changed. No more pleasing people. This new year, I am going to be myself!

PS - its still December and I still don't want to hurt anyone. If you are reading this, don;t even try to work out the initials, because I changed all of them.

Hastalavista

My computer has crashed and I am bypassing the proxy server in office to blog (yes ! they 've blocked blogger as well!)


Duniya Waalon! I am not gone yet...should be back soon, with a brand new computer and more of my tales very soon!

A 1955 Good Housekeeping Article