The Other Side of Life

One thing I am very diligent about is my daily office schedule. Reach office -> Plug in charger -> Turn on Laptop -> Forget to start Outlook -> Start Chrome -> Login to Facebook. A schedule is a schedule is a schedule. There is no going back on that. In my humble opinion, Facebook is that dose of an alternate world, which makes us feel invigorated (about our friends' lives), satisfied (about our friends' jobs), happy (about our friends' weddings), determined (about our friends' vow to finish a book), blessed (about our friends' parents' love for him), special (about our friends' awesome birthday surprise) and so on. It is important, almost imperative, to start your day that way. Anyway. Over time, I have realized that the world, as per Facebook, is slightly different from the normal world we live in. Slightly different. Very different. Potato. Potato. Every time I log in, it seems like a topsy-turvy version of the real world around us. I th...

Kids, Gather around, for I have a tale to tell. A tale of bygone days when phones were dumb, not smart. When only one family member had an email address, and that too on, *shudder*, Hotmail. This tale is of the days of yore; before I had won $250,000,000.00 from my dear African friend who mailed me to inform me about this exciting development. This tale is of the days before I was lucky enough to win the BBC Lottery of $1,000,000,000.00, every single day for 1 whole month. This was even before my Sheikh friend had approached me with "an interesting business proposal", which made me "richer by $799,000,000." In those days, the atmosphere was fired up with news about the new millennium dawning upon us. It was the December of 1999. 30th December, to be precise. Winter vacations were upon us and the sole purpose of life was the warmth that came from snuggling into the razai and munching peanuts. The air was rife with excitement about Y2K. For us kids, it didn't...

I was always a geek in school. Teacher's pet. My favorite teacher could have told me that the earth was flat and that Microsoft does no evil, I would have fought against the world to uphold her statements. My Dad often teased me that my answers for most questions began with, "My teacher said..." And I would close my ears and run away before anyone could counter what Ma'am said. But I loved my teachers. I really did. Except when I was in Kindergarten. KG-D. I remember distinctly. I had passed Nursery with flying colors (and alphabets and fruits and whatever it is I was asked to name) and found myself in KG-D. The new class-teacher entered and I started crying. She looked scary to me, just because she was fat! I would cry every morning while taking the bus, "I don't want fat mam!". But relief came when the Nursery teacher would come, sit with me, make sure I was engrossed in coloring and then leave silently. I would have never passed KG had it not be...

That's it. I need to find myself a passion.   I don't have a passion! Oh wait. I do. I do pursue certain things with all seriousness.   For instance, the past 3 months, the most number of calls I have made, have been to Airtel. That is a passion now, isn't it? I call them and I talk to them for hours, discuss my problems with them and bang my head when I dial 1 for English, but it doesn't matter to them. I am very passionate about these call center people. One genius who filled up my form on my behalf, was of dear, sweet Gujju origin. Despite my pleading to her, she didn't understand that the entire world does not adopt their fathers' name as middle names, and most definitely, do not add a Bhai at the end of it. So I took up the cause of explaining this to her. Very passionately. Now my Airtel bill has 180 characters, which include my expanded name, my father's expanded name and a Bhai at the end. That's something to show off for passion, ain...

I still remember the first race I won. Frog Jump. I jumped on my thighs like a damn frog and I was better at it than anyone else. I got a gold medal for that. The Principal congratulated me on successfully making a fool of myself and jumping around like a frog because, yes, that is a skill which will help me for the rest of my life. I also remember how I cried when I didn't win, trying to carefully balance a lemon on a spoon, stuck inside my mouth. I gave up at the start line. The girl who won? She had her eyes squinted on to that spoon through out and she didn't lose her concentration for even 1 second. The Principal congratulated her for successfully running around with a lemon in her mouth. I hope she is using that skill well now. When I look back, it was all so stupid. When I was trying hard to keep that lemon on my spoon and I realized that one kid had already specialized the art of balancing and was racing away to victory, I stopped trying. Nothi...