On Orkut

You were the stud in college. Maybe the erudite literature maven, or maybe the long haired, tattooed and bearded lead-vocalist of the college band. Maybe you were THE babe, who all of us guys worshiped. Basically, you were beyond the 'somebody'. You were the real thing. You never needed friends, they needed you. They were always there at your doorsteps, maybe outside your class, waiting for the boring lecture to get over so that you will appear, you will deliver your pearls of wisdom, maybe you will play a riff of that Joe Sat song, or maybe you will not say a word and just brush aside the gasps of the guys along the way.. and yes, you WERE looking heavenly that day. In short, you never needed them, they needed you.

We, we were just about toeing the somebody line. The last few folks in the somebody bus. We looked down upon the nobodies; we tittered at them and their gaucheness, while you expectedly (and expertly) ignored them.

We needed you. We needed you to compliment us maybe once in a while to make us feel good about ourselves, and confirm to the rest of the world that we were not nobodies. We, more than anybody else, needed you. We needed affirmation, we needed validation. We never had the chutzpah, we never had the savvy, all that we ever had was the want. We wanted to be you.

We had friends. People liked us. That's an alien term, isn't it, to you? A pedestrian thing, a junta thing, na, to you? You never cared if people liked you, you wanted them to worship you, you wanted them to deify you. And they did. We did. I did.

When we had a breakdown, in college, we had friends to succor us, to shore us up. But you never broke down. You were perfect. You were college gods. You were the stratosphere. And we were strictly the above-average. We were craning our necks to get ourselves above mediocrity. And we did manage that, didn't we…. But we wanted you to notice….. and probably you did so too, in those two occasions in four years of college. Thank you. We needed those two moments.

Yes, you can criticize orkut. You never needed it. We did. We do. Still.

A piece of my heart has cracked today

She came to my life a long, long time ago. Fat-bottomed, un-pretty, there was nothing spectacular about her. No one would give her a second glance otherwise, apart from her physical size. She was well, rather plain, to be all honest.

I encountered her first at a quiz in IIFT, where we did not qualify for the finals. It was a business quiz, and I was at that point in time not quite well versed in the nuances of business to really be counted among the big guns. I still remember how she actually came to be in my possession. Now all of you who have been reading this blog know that I, even now, near-enough suck at business quizzing, and am (gloat, gloat) rather good at sports. So, there was this sports/business question that was asked by the quizmaster, Gautam Ghosh, in that quiz. It got passed around, nobody answered, and then, when the question was thrown to the audience, I came up with the answer.

And as my gift for answering that question, she came into my possession. Bland, fat-bottomed, she had a blue tattoo of 'naukri.com' on her, and the only saving grace, the only bit of adventure about her was this t-shirt message that she bore. It said 'TEAM WORK is a great leveller. It means never having to take the blame myself!' Nice, na? Especially at the early days of Bschool (this was 2003), when one is exasperated with groupmates / project-mates who are living examples of the term NPA (that's non-performing asset, if you did not know).

I am meandering, so to keep a long story short, that's how I came to own my coffee mug.

Impoverished Bschool students like us had no means of having cut-glass wine tumblers, so she came to my rescue. She served me well, down the years. Coffee in the morning, water throughout the day and whisky in the evening, she was the receptacle and my trusted associate to all that.... And why only me, she showered her love and blessings to all and sundry. Remember her, Arun, Laha, SDG? Remember the maniacally-depressive pre-placement month-and-a-half when the last drink for the day was shared from that same mug of mine, for the simple reason that her tattoo mentioned 'naukri.com'? Yes, it's she we are talking about....

Times changed. Confused Bschooler became confused corporate cog-in-the-wheel. Confused cog-in-the-wheel became slightly-less-confused cog-in-the-wheel. I could afford expensive whisky tumblers now. I quit coffee, started drinking tea (how Brit! how Pommie! Alas!). There were better-looking species (some acquired from the organizations I worked in, some acquired during those momentary fits of attraction to others of the species.... now c'mon! Men will be men...) which jostled for attraction on the shelf. As they say, 'familiarity breeds contempt'. Well, I could never dream of being contemptuous to her, but the attention span became limited. Did she mind? She must have, but never took it to heart. We knew we cared for each other....

And recently, moving to my new workplace, I decided to get her to office along with me. I did move from drinking coffee to tea, but the quantity of the liquid consumed did not vary. So copious quantities of the liquid needed to be gulped everyday morning, and well, she had all the werewithall to perform well in the job. She was quite big, remember I told you? So there she was, adorning the office shelf now, serving me with the best of her abilities.

And today morning, alas, I find that there is a crack - long, vertical, next to the handle - on her. Ah, I can literally feel the crack on my heart. I feel pained, disjointed ... I cannot concentrate on the work at hand, I feel miserable. She is critically ill, I can feel her pain. I realise, there are only two ways I can go with her now .... either I could let her last few days be memorable, or I can leave her comatose, yet alive for ever, I can take her home with me....

Will miss you, darling. You have been precious to me. Thanks for all that you were, and you were wonderful. You ARE wonderful.

(As an aside, having witnessed the copious amounts of tea that I tend to gulp down, and noticing the pain in my heart, friends in office have planned to replace her with a beer pitcher, and they have even planned to provide insulation. Insulation? How? Well, the rubber insulation kinda things come for a price.. so a pack of condoms it shall be, one for each day. AR mentions that if the idea materializes, now I could even have flavoured tea ! Gaak, gaak! )

Air Sahara's Boeing 737 on Chembur streets

Would have blogged on it if there would not have been this back spasm.

But here are the links

BBC's report 1; NDTV's report;

and thankfully

HT ;

But then, where?

BBC's report 2 ;

And apart from NDTV, has this really been covered by the MSM? Or is it just that I have missed all the noise (ah, my back!)? Such an AajTak-esque news item!

(thanks to the great MNB for the info....)

A blog and a faux-pas

The blog:

Getting Drunk in First Class: Crazy Ass Consulting Stories Once a Week.

Genuine mirth. Real ha-ha laughing-out-loud funny. Do read. Everyday.

The Faux-Pas:

Snippet from an official mail-

The data has been collated from (and therefore the basis of the analysis is) primarily secondary sources, some previous analysis......

Please note: primarily secondary sources

The statement mentioned as above IS by me.

Alas, for once upon a time not so long ago, I was able to write in English.