Thursday, September 18, 2008

Deja vu

People are sitting around taking tea breaks every 5 mins or chatting away on the phone or reading through old study material/reports or simply doing nothing. Basically, no one is working as there is no work.

Some seats where your friends used to sit are vacant and that does not make you miss them. Rather, you think they are out trying to take away the opportunity that is yours. You hope to hit the road soon.

People are keeping their ears open for new pieces of information filtering in through the grapevine of friends and foes.

You end up charging your phone twice a day. Not because you are playing iSolitaire but because you are fielding calls from friends, relatives and Aisa vaisa bank for the personal loan you will surely need in a couple of months. Some call out of concern, some call out of curiousity. Some call to offer help while others call to take an update. Mostly, you end up giving an explanation about how you are taking it fine, make a stupid joke at which you laugh yourself and try and get off the phone asap.

Time and again, someone senior in the value chain comes in and tries to perk you up with pep talk about how the world is not coming to an end and we have more options coming up. Rhetorical questions are asked and the same are answered hypothetically. Not because they dont want to, they simply cant.

No, I am not talking about the students waiting room during the pressure cooker placement season at the coveted B-schools. Rather, this is rather the financial crisis of the century which has managed to reach India after a substantial enough number of home owners managed to NOT pay their EMI's and started the wave that took down 3 bulge bracket investment banks and threatens to claim more.

While the setting has shifted from the classroom to a swanky office - feelings of uncertainty about future, about my own self belief, about proving your self worth are the same. Optimists say - this too shall pass.

I ask - When?!

Sunday, June 22, 2008

Finally

Finally, the clouds have parted and the sun is shining - nice and err sunny...
Finally, the cage latch has been let loose and the bird is away….
Finally, the exams are over and the kids are carefree….
Finally, the mental block is off and I am blogging…


Just wanted to build it up Barney (How I met your mother) style.

It has been a while and a lot of stuff has happened since I got drunk in Goa. For starters, I went to Goa…ya again. It was one of those New Year trips to Goa when everything is expensive square, when there are more people in a club than there are at Churchgate station at 5 PM, when there are such jams that you almost bring in the new year in the car stuck between a jeep and a minibus, when there are… Ok Ok you get the drift.


Despite all of the above and more, was probably one of the best new year's eve. Courtesy, a drunk chick who kept trying to get the tongue twister (oonth ooncha, peeth oonchi, oonche oonth ki pooch oonchi) right and wanted to make sure everyone else did too. I had trouble TYPING the damn thing down - no chance in hell to say that straight esp after you are drunk(er). To add to the fun, there were two guys who gave everyone on Baga beach the pleasure of pole dance (with full clothes on, of course). One of them was drunk - what excuse does the other one have, I wonder? Not to be left behind, there was this babe who got very tulli and asked for more. By drunk, I mean soooo drunk, very very drunk, so much so that we gave her water and she got high on that too. We also saw another extreme of the chicas in Goa. Well, this one after unleashing her share of karate chops on ruffians and chugging "more than" her share of beer / shots - decided to take a nap in the middle of a party with some 10K watts of music blaring all over. Her dutiful husband stood guard for a while but then did as all guards do. Dozed off!!

We saw the first sun rise of the freshly minted year at the fraud "Dil chahta hai" fort, had a great breakfast, slept some and took the train back. To wrap up the goodness, I won the final game of Uno (I had been losing so miserably all along that I had become the laughing stock of the laughing stock.)

All in all, a great start to the new year. Things were going to get better. Wait for more.

Spoiler Alerts - I get on a mare to pick up my date for life, then get into a car and drive around 1,500 kms with her in a country which has more sheep than people.. and more.