Maa! Tum kaisi dikhti ho?

I woke up to a thunderstorm this morning and immediately stretched hand to grab my "specks". I hardly ever keep it at a distance of more than a meter on either side of the bed. So, it didn’t even cross my mind that I could have kept it somewhere beyond that one meter. I kept on searching it for over a min. Anyone who use “specks” can understand what exactly I mean by "one-meter" and "over-a-min".

No! It’s not that I can't get up from bed without it, but psychologically, I can’t imagine things without it; more precisely, I can't see my life without it.
Suddenly, I could recall that last night I had kept it in the living room. Seriously, I can’t explain how I felt, though ephemerally, after seeing the specks.
I rushed to pull up the window blinds. Wow! I could not have expected better morning than this. View of rain drops falling on lake made me forget that it was the beginning of the WTF, and I have to get ready for so called 9-6.

It didn’t end here; somehow, most part of the day that "over-a-min" kept me haunting. At work, between correlated sub-queries, my wired brain had formed a loose emotional circuit.

If "over-a-min" can make me think like this, then what a mother would go through when someone whisper to her in the middle of the night - "Maa! Tum kaisi dikhti ho??"
How would that person feel who never sees the woman gave birth to him/her, even though that woman sits beside him/her for entire life? How the person would go through who don't even have reason to search the specks?

Is not this height of cruelty?
Is this result of sudden leakage of few hormones from some nook of my brain making me question like this?
Well, I don't know why? Or is this just symptom of my diluted compassion?
I am too inept to understand the behaviour of any such hormones. It just controls the brain the way it wants.  That reminds me of a recent conversation I had with Naveen on Friday evening (EST):

"Bhai, one Air India flight crashed at Banglore Airport," I told Naveen.
"Kitne baje? Flight number kaun si thi?" he asked me.
"Aaj Subah. Overshot the runway; Dubai se aa rahi thi," I gave him the details from the news that I was watching.
"Are, Sunil (his colleague) too was in that flight. He boarded the flight from Dubai which was scheduled to land this morning at Banglore airport.
"For a moment I felt as if I could not breathe. OMG! No! Abe aisa nahin hoga. Call your lead. Get Sunil’s itinerary," I sounded scared.
"Bhai, main call kaat raha hoon... let me get his details," before Naveen could disconnect he shouted, "It is Manglore not Banglore."
Why did I say? - "No! Abe aisa nahin hoga"
Why do our hormones react only when we hear something about someone, with whom we can relate ourselves, directly or even distantly?
We hardly discussed that thereafter, and even I felt the blood vessels were behaving as if nothing had happened.

Similarly, every time I see the lovely kid Vasundhara or Diwakar singing, I feel -
" GOD! WHY?"
The Stupid, Insensitive, Selfish hormones.

GOD, why didn’t you pour an extra gallon of hormones, which could let us feel others suffering without relating to them, which could make us human. Most of the time, I can visualize the things till I see it in some form, be through TV, Print News or any other medium; it fades sooner than later. How excruciating it is for the family and friends who lose someone?

Wait a second! How many Zeros 17,000,000,000 have?
No! This is not the distance of any planet from Earth. This is the amount (1700 Crore) that Sahara paid to buy a cricket team. By simple arithmetic, dividing this amount by 100000 (1Lakh) would result in 170000 (1.7Lakh) people. I am sure; I don't need to mention anything further.
Why is India not blessed with altruistic sons like Gates or Buffet who contribute $ Billions for the betterment of the people, society?

Now I think, does a hormone really learn from others? Does that mean one generation has to inculcate THAT culture for the younger one's to follow?
I know expecting such answers are too vigorous a thought to be legitimate in any form, and there can’t be any substitute for pragmatism; so I expect my own hormones to behave than expect from any one else.

Having said that, morally, I don’t understand, why in this world, would any one ever refuse to receive the interest even after withdrawing the principal amount?

GOD, can’t we all make a culture of “Eye Donation” so that no Mother ever has to hear this in the middle of night - "Maa! Tum kaisi dikhti ho??"

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Dear Terrorist Uncle…

Dear Terrorist Uncle,

Good morning! Umm, good afternoon! Should I say good evening?
I really do not know in which time zone you are? Mom says you are everywhere.
I do not want to waste much of your time as my Mom says you are always busy making some kind of bomb.
I am Happy and eagerly waiting for May 13th, when I will turn 7.
No! No! I am not happy, actually my name is Happy.

The reason I am writing this letter to you is, my Mom said this year too she will not celebrate my birthday. Last year also she did not celebrate my birthday.

I do not know why, but when I started crying she told me a story:
"It was not a usual evening; Swati, your elder sister had turned 11. Your Dad and me planned everything for her birthday. We had called all her school friends. We reached Taj hotel 2 hours before and were inflating balloons. Then suddenly, we heard a loud noise.  Thereafter, all I could see was people running in all directions. I grabbed you and ran towards front door; I thought Swati was with Dad.......
GOD saved us but not all of us; We lost Swati. I do not want to lose you Happy..."

I did not understand what she said and why she suddenly hugged me and started sobbing. Next day, I again asked her for my birthday, and this time she did not tell me anything and started crying.

I am a little kid. I do not know why my Mom cries every time I ask for my birthday celebration. You know Uncle, what she said today morning?
She said - "Send a letter to your Terrorist Uncle. If he says he will not come on that day, we all can celebrate your birthday.
Uncle please do not come on 13th. Mom can take me to Taj and she would also call all my friends. So then, Chintu's Mom will also celebrate his birthday in Pizza Hut if you will not come on his birthday; Chintu's birthday is on 26th.

Thank you Uncle.
Terrorist Uncle, I forgot; 30th is Priya's birthday. Please do not come on that day Nah. Uncle, Uncle, Aditya is my best friend and his birthday is on 31st. Promise me, you will not come on that day too. Aditya is my best friend and we always play together.

Uncle, should I ask you a question? Are you not a Pilot like my Dad? Mom says you don't go to office. You kill people and you killed Swati too.
Uncle, what is killing? How you killed Swati? Will you also kill me if we celebrate birthday?
Uncle, I am a good boy. I finish all my homework before going to play with Adtiya and Priya. And you know Terrorist Uncle; I want to become a Pilot like my Dad. I will also take you for a ride if you will not come on my birthday. Promise!
You know Uncle, Aditya don't like pilots; he wants to become a Doctor like his Mom.

Terrorist Uncle, when is your son's birthday? What he want to become? Will he also become Terrorist like you?
Uncle, why did not you become a Pilot, Doctor, Teacher or Superman...Why did you become Terrorist? Were your Dad also Terrorist?

Is it easy to become Terrorist? Do you not have spelling test for becoming Terrorist?

Terrorist Uncle, can I ask you for a gift. This is last time; I will not ask after this. Please bring my sister Swati. I do not have any one to tie Rakhi. She is my only sister.
Oops, Uncle please you do not come as then Mom will not celebrate my birthday. I will request my driver Uncle to bring Swati. You write in letter where she is.

Waiting for your reply and my gift,
Happy

 

The Funny Business…

“The historical trends have led me to conclude that by doubling or even tripling our efforts of efficiency on the domestic front, it will yield a new entity of massive synergistic proportions. I therefore wish to present to you this exhibit (a composite of metallic and mineral elements) acquired from licensed retail channels as a symbol of our new alliance. Your acceptance of this strategy would launch a series of initiatives culminating in an event that would be in compliance with local and national authorities and internationally recognized by virtually all foreign governments. Your prompt feedback in this matter is in the best interests of all stakeholders."

If you read it couple of times, you can summarize in just 4 words "Will you marry me?"

No! This is not a manuscript of a marriage proposal from a mental guy. It's the way business idiots speak most of the times. Unfortunately, these days I have been reading so much of Annual reports, and watching press conference of the corporate.

Well! I know, me talking about business sound nothing less than a first time driver trying to parallel park a SUV in San Francisco downtown. However, my purpose was just to get a clue, as to why business language are deliberately written in obscure and complex terms which at the end of the day turns out to be as useless as an e-mail Spam send to a girl with subject line - "How to enlarge your P****."

To understand that, I read few articles on effective corporate communication and also finally got hand to a book titled - "Why business people speak like Idiots?"
It was fun to explore facts and get the micro level view on why these business people Love-to or forced-to speak like that.

For instance, what you think when you hear a CEO/CFO speaking in a press conference? - "I'm ABC Mukharjee; I am the Divisional Regional Global worldwide operations Manager in charge of everything"
Nothing comes to my mind than thinking, oops, another business moron, obsessed with jargons, comes here to over hype the benefit and soften the downside. Actually, when they don't have real strategy, they just string together a bunch of nonsense and make one up.

I don't know if the word "bandwidth" was used so frequently before Internet came in, but these days, usually we hear this from every Out-of-shape IT guys, who spends most of the afternoon eating some fried chips at their desk.
If they have to say no to a project work for some secret reason, then instead of directly giving reason, response would be - "currently we are facing bandwidth allocation issue because of additional value-added action items in the project."

Now look at this:
"Because of the recession we are seeing some pressure building across certain verticals that is threatening to squeeze the margin in coming Qtr's and to tackle that our management have decided to go for strategic re-structuring of our operating model and focus on optimizing the operational efficiency. Also, currency hedging is another area we are looking forward to concentrate on."
How much pressure? Which vertical?? What strategic re-structuring??? Optimizing the operational efficiency????
What the Fuck? Can someone please kick his butt?.

I have heard this many times in last 2 years.
All these big and vague words are meant to be politically and legally correct. While strategic re-structuring is meant for firing employees, operational efficiency hint towards cost cutting by removing toilet papers.

To me, these days, business communalization is making dent in the world's sleep deprivation epidemic, which is tricked with mundane and logarithmic scaled chart. Most of the business people prefer staying in safe cocoon of their skull and crawling into their esoteric world of useless jargons to avoid accountability, creativity and moral trap.

Having said that, few of such business idiots don't prefer useless jargons because they are moronic jerks trying to piss off the people they most need to impress. They use the shortcut, because sometime they just feel easier to lapse into vagary and verbosity than to work their way through to clarity and crispness.

Why can’t these people learn from a legendary investor and philanthropist Warren Buffet, who makes a habit of admitting his mistake in plain English - "I was dead wrong". In fact, this humility is the hallmark of the great business leaders.

I sincerely apologies if this blog killed any of your neuro cells; I was just trying to include the flavour of the business communication. And, I am sure, moving forwards, I would have a hearty laugh if I see any business jerks speaking about strategic re-structuring or synergistic proportions.