One Year, Ho!

guys, the sole purpose of this post is to capture the sheer excitement and relief I sport on having survived 365 days at a recession hit Bank, based in a recession hit economy, carrying out operations in a third world, recession hit country. that said, im sorry if the post seems narcissist to you. It could come out to be more narcissist than my previous narcissist posts, I say. Bear with me, or give it a skip.

On jun 23, darlings, i completed a year at BankAm. I consider that a feat.Period.

I remember getting on the train to hyderabad just a week away from my first job. Got late, as usual; and couldnt get any more than a glimpse of the ppl who had turned up at the station to see me off. There was Shibu, the eternal, legendary, extra terrestrial class bunker ( who visited jiddah just like he visited the loo) who turned world upside down by actually showing up at 9 in the morning, there was SK sir (who also brought me 'the alchemist') Rejimon from Rays, and some other ppl of my family. Some others had also vouched to come, but were not to be found. since they were NITCians in all regard, and it was early in the morning, I was not very surprised. In fact i called up some of them in case they came and I missed them on my dash to the train.

Shibu, i think i'll pay you back; I'll definitely be in Mumbai for that reunion ur doing. And will not question your paternal lineage even if u dont make it to the party. ( Actually, noone expects Shibu to come to Mumbai, or even to India in Aug; We imagine he'd book the tickets, get a divine call at the eleventh hour and actually decide to take some rest and avoid the tour)

A year later, this day, I celebrated by hollering at some Murthysomething on customercare of reliance mutual funds. With all my might, I controlled one of my deepest and strongest urges to scream " FUCK YOU! DONT GIVE ME ANOTHER FUCKING COMPLAINT NUMBER. GET IT FIXED, ASSHOLE ...", And asked him if something could be done to fix the matter. I also threatened him diplomatically to pull all my funds back, although ALL my funds would come to around one billionth of the money they take care of. However, threats work.

Later i went around to Pavillion lounge where the jun23-08 batch party was going on. After burning a rather deep hole in my wallet in under 2 hrs, i decided to call it a day and retreated. That was a nice way to commemmorate my anniversary.Certain events convince me that i have got dumber over the last one year.

My intellectual peak(ahem,ahem), I'd say was in my fourth year; when i totally, unmistakably was in control of myself and never gave so much of a damn to whatever was happening outside. Long chats with SmR; HouseMD on Unni's or Finaz's comp, downloading movies, sleeping on KK's double bed after emptying the lays's and mycans, reading philosophy or medicine, life was heaven. ( the pic above, as e'one would easily identify is the long pathway to the lab, where I went mostly at night) And once in a while SV came around with some new theory of his to fascinate us all. (Technically, i have observed, SV just detests conventional science and chooses to explore the world and its beings on his own. ) And all of a sudden, Rony got me this job which is still paying for my bills.

John and Josie left us, though, and we knew our final year and our lives after would never be the same. Nischal joined them, a few months later. I was glad i'd come down to Hyderabad, coz july3 in Calicut would have been devastating.

Coming back, Office doesnt suck these days. I was convinced a year ago that I had one-zillionth of a chance to get a bonus, now I sometimes dont care if they fire me or not. I'm not sure whats making me say that, but some part of me tells me that my back's not on the wall; I have room. And if nothing bad happens for the next 30 days, it might even get better. I have calculated the chances of 'that something bad' happening to around 4 out of 2903. Figures are exact.

Some people know how I got this job.

I am not writing this under the influence of alchohol or other compounds. This post is out of Euphoria, just like some others were out of Irritation,Frustration,pain in the ass etc.

a Li'l of this and a Li'l of that

guys, i've been hit by a bad bad case of Writers' block. its almost 2 months old now. part of the following was done almost a month ago. Im just finishing it. Sorry if something is out of context. Too lazy to evaluate.

Sorry, the images are too small. pls click,enlarge and read the lines. I do that all the time.

* Its saturday and i'm in office. One of the most exciting things about my job, as i have found in the last 9 months or so, is working on saturdays. The darkness, the eeriness, the peace of mind (with ur manager not staring at you), Office just rocks on weekends. Also, the extra holiday i get as compensation gives me a lot of options. My whole mum Trip was sponsored by weekend working days- both in cash and days.

*Looks like the folks in office are gonna grant me a laptop.Bewildered by how a single mail from the US guys can charge these ppl up.I'd made the request myself, around a week back as per my US boss's suggestion, but none really paid any attention then.

* Office is cooler on saturdays, temperature-wise and otherwise. Im shivering on my seat. Hyderabadis sure know to air condition. And the coffee vending machine doesnt work on weekends, so hot chocolate/cappuccino are out of question.

*Okay, noone forced me to come to office today. Dont be misled beleiving otherwise, now that im mentioning it again and again.

* Indigo doesnt really deserve to be called an airline. Kingfisher is costly. probably this is wot they call catch-22. well, maybe not exactly.

* Coming back to the laptop. I think im gonna ask my Cousin sisters to bedazzle my name on it; or make a crayon pic. And im gonna do e'thing that'll atleast make my mngr think about,deciding on,having a discussion as to whether they shud take it back.

Will they really call me at 2 am to check if the logs are fine?

*CAT's almost 5 months ahead. My Vocab sucks big time. And i cant count as good as i used to do 4 yrs back. Data is just rows and columns for me. I'm still taking my chances and paying TIME.

I do that every year.

* I complete a year at BankAm this Monday.( 'Thats 365 days man!!', to quote Alistar Campell) I just love the company. The Managers are fun. All of them seem to have watched 'Wall Street' and read 'Winning'. I think they also have Bloomberg widgets on their desktop. 'Recession','US', [Boss's name] are mentioned twice in every sentence. Some ppl say 'lets Touch Base' every time they wanna say 'lets Talk'.

And they follow the 'the art of screwing juniors effectively' book step-by-step..

*Im still not looking for another job. I love this one. This post is from office.I can enjoy a bit of law-breaking at times.

this one reminds me of someone at office

and this is regular stuff at BankAm:

(quite a girly title, a disaster that i cant think of anything better. gotta reduce my visits to EM's blog.)

PS: I think I'm finally graduating from Calvin to Dilbert. Getting older. sigh!

hyd-mum-ahd-mum-hyd

I have never been a traveler in the real sense, although i immensely desire the image. I mean its pretty cool to be a guy who's toured a lot. Thats probably why i took extra time off from office and headed off to Mumbai. Now mumbai is not a favourite holiday spot, but its pretty okay for a starter.

the preps included buying a large livea trekking bag( which goes in perfectly with the tourist image), coercing my TM into granding two days of paid leave and saving enuf money to last 4 days in 2 cities( i also decided to catch a train to ahmedabad and take a luk at the akshardham temple).

One thing i hadnt planned for was the traffic in Mumbai. Lotto ppl say that bangalore is almost as crowded as mumbai, you know wot, they suck.

all 2 days i spent there, all i saw was the infinity mall, which is some 2 km frm the flat and takes 30 min on auto, and the CCD, where i had brunch both days. I could very well be the first guy who took off to mumbai on vacation and returned w/o seeing the taj or the gateway or the marine drive or nowadays, the leopold cafe.

By the way, spent a night at Firangi Pani. Rony paid.

Took the garib radh to ahmedabad next day, and swore i'd never do it again, the moment i stepped in. That reminds me, both Rony and me got in at the last minute. just before the whistle, to be precise. That was preceeded by we both reaching a wrong station, and that was again preceeded by me waking up late, which is not very uncommon.

Someone once told me that we NITCians have this bloody habit of keeping people waiting all the time. I mean we are always late and even if we miss a flight or two, we just refuse to learn.

Missing the train wouldnt have been a big loss in any case.

Still searching for the guy who said garib radhs are a boon.

for the record, Akshardham temple luks grand.

Im somewhat intrigued by this man called Swami Narayan( pardon me if there are any followers).

he built his own temple, and has very meticulously preserved his writings, the quill/pen he used to write those writings, the clothes he wore while he wrote them, the rope he used to tether his horse, the pichook he played holi with, and what not. His preserved tooth, nails and bodyhair were a revolting sight. but again, the temple looks marvellous.

got back on monday, went straight to office. I like it when you come back from somewhere and still make it to office on the same day. Frst, it saves you a day's salary (wage seems to be a more correct term); secondly, you get approval to leave early. I did both.

here i brag about being in a city and with some cash!

Say you are someone who lived in a village for the first 19 years, and you for all the luck in the world land up in hyderabad, and suddenly u realize u purse is heavier, how long will it be before you are dancing at a disco bar? --a day or two?

The point is, it took me a whole 9 months.

First things first, i owe my first visit to FireFly(which is almost the cheapest disco is hyd and still burnt a hole in my pocket) to Rony, who came all the way from Bombay to meet us and get a taste of what hyd is all about.

Now when a Bombay guy comes to town, you cant woo him with hyderabadi biriyani or a movie at Imax. (we watched 'WatchMen' on day one and if you are also not very satisfied with your life, go watch)

Since none of us here had been to a disco before, we just swallowed our pride and like true NITcians called up JustDial for the list. We kind of zeroed in on Firefly which is not very strict on couple entry, dont charge an entry fee and allow you to use the dance floor even if you dont have grls wid you. At that moment, Firefly was the place to be at.

The place looked rich( too dark to take snaps and show off later) and played good music. We went in a group of 5 (no girls, of course!) and were initially shown seats in some obscure corner from where the dance floor was just a dream. to our luck, the incharge was a mallu (the universal mallu-brotherhood is no longer a myth!)who made us comfortable and allowed to choose our seats; which we exploited to a great extent, placing ourselves at very strategic locations and irritating the grls on the floor.

There was a party going on in the middle of all this, i think 'twas some college in Banjara hills. There were a number of girls getting drunk and falling down every now and then- the pick of them being the one who was getting too slim her for her skirt, so that she had to pull it up,say every 30 seconds. The boys showed more maturity, puking only at the loo, and one guy almost breaking his leg trying to decide what is stronger- his bones or the door. There were also a couple who were swearing at each other for reasons unknown to us. We chose to laugh out loud and enjoy the scene amidst all this drama.

And finally when we got to dance, which i must say was a bonus given our looks and the noise we were making, we did all those moves(mallu guys know each other on a dance-floor through the salimkumar signature step) which made OAT nights very spl at college. We danced like Appan did in 2nd year, like Pulla did during ragam05, like Verkkan did in that funny video, like Mangal did after he got drunk.Boy! it was reunion; although we were all clean-shaven, with shirts tucked in.

Finally when it rang 12 and we got out, we had a glance at the girls, and we deeply regret doing that till this moment. We could in the least have left with the satisfaction of being at touching distance with divas,cuties and all those you have heard about.

The light and a clearer view spoilt it all. While none of them looked good even by the most generous evaluation, some even dressed as bad as anyone can imagine.

Maybe they tried some very advanced makeup which make them look good in the dark and as bad in daylight. I have absolutely no idea.

we lost 3.5k, by the way.

Slumdogs, are we indians slumdogs?

thanks to my job, frnds and my hard disk, i now have SlumdogMillionaire on my comp, although thats not news anymore. I dont want to sound like an idiot who always goes against the popular opinion, but sadly i dont think the film has the class of 'memento' or 'godfather' or even 'shawshak redemption'.

this much garlanded movie, as all must know by now is the story of a slumdog who wins the jackpot at a game show. its also the story of india, seen through his eyes. well shot and intelligently casted, the film gets it wrong when it tries to merge Hollywood and Bollywood. On the one side, its all bollywood masala, throughout, where the hero reunites with his childhood sweetheart again and again and saves her from all evil. the climax has all the spices of a regular yashraj flick. And what to say on that silly embarassing dance sequence during the end credits. That is very likely to be the perception of Daniel Boyle, the director on Bollywood. But all these, when they'd have made a hindi movie a compelling watch, make an english movie dull, over the top and cliched.

And on the other side, theres quite a lot of hollywood masala too. Hollywood, as a matter of fact always needs somebody to mock, villainise or sympathize with. Like all westerners, the filmmakers probably have grown up hearing the stories of malaria, tigers and snake charmers. And it might have been quite shocking to them to find a very progressed, cultured and rich India.What can they now think of, but the story of an ill-bred street urchin, who is just as shocked as themselves to find the new India?

If I am being over the top or excessively patriotic, its all because of the light Indians are shown in, every single minute in the movie. We are corrupt, jealous, immoral and probably slumdogs too.

Its not fascination, curiousity or sympathy that the film has for the country. Its sarcasm.

A boy jumping into a pool of shit, just to have a glimpse of Amitabh Bachan;Frames which show all filth in the slums;People who burn each others' homes in the name of religion; a goong who blinds kids to make them fit for begging; a don who has a 19 yr old mistress; Police walahs who hang a kid by his hands and short-circuit him; What is it, if its not very glorified and dignified sarcasm? Its clear as daylight when the boy says "You wanted to see real India; This is real India" when he's beaten up by a taxiwallah, supposedly for a crime he has no hand in. And quite shamelessly, the next line is something like "Dont worry kid, now we will show you what real America is.." from the tourists he's a guide of. And they take care of him , like saints. How sweet!!

I am in no way hinting that all this is unheard of or strange in our country, but the film doesnt make even a feeble attempt to see the whole picture.In the event of exposing the Indian underbelly, the film seems to have forgotten that we are a nation with a cultured past, a significant and a very promising future.

Just take a look at the characters, if you are still not convinced. There are no good god-fearing Indians in the movie. Except Jamaal and Latika. But one of them is a slumdog and the other a whore. Good at heart, but uncultured and uncivilised. The audience is left to sympathise with these two and be disturbed by the others. Like the host of the show, who ridicules the chaiwallah throughout the game, is the film not looking down upon a nation?This is "poverty porn", which reinforces the western stereotypes on the country.

Just like I said before, SlumDog millionaire is probably good for an Indian movie. However, quite far from the standards of hollywood. Forget the cliches and the prejudices, you have a real feel good movie, like they say it. It has already struck gold in US, where ppl are quite hungry for the story of real, poor India or real , cruel China now that Soviet Union is no more(Read Rambo 3, Rocky4, Indiana Jones 4 and many more where the Russians get to play villians). The script is nothing but food for the hungry-Just like this short story which won the CommonWealth award, but has nothing new to say.It doesnt break cliches. Nor does it evoke a feeling we are all strangers to.

I wouldnt say that i didnt enjoy the movie. Not for a second is it boring.Its an entertainer till the last shot, although it doesnt deserve all of the accolades. Very refreshing music score, which i pray will fetch AR Rahman an oscar.My personal favourite is 'Ringa Ringa'. (The choreography 'almost spoiled 'Jai Ho').The frst song(the one when the kids are chased by the police) is real good too. And very gutsy and measured performances from all the actors esp Dev Patel and Anil Kapoor. I cant remember who the casting director is, but he's probably great.

Watch it coz it might win an oscar, or something similar. Comes to India in two weeks from now. Im desperate for Rajiv Masand's take on this.

(Im still the same old guy that you know.. Not taking myself too seriously. )