Today a friend’s friend Y was telling us about her 5 year old nephew. Apparently this loveable kid was being remonstrated at home, and guess for what. He bought the same X-box game twice on eBay. (He just won the bids, he didn’t pay for them, Y tells me amusedly.)

Now lets wait here for a frickin’ minute. This is so wrong on many counts. What’s a 5 year old doing on eBay? Wait a frickin’ minute more. How the hell does he even know what eBay is, let alone how to BUY stuff on the site?

I didn’t know what a PC was until I was 10. The internet didn’t exist. I walked to a neighbour’s home to make phone-calls. I first used a mobile phone when I was in college. I was doing a research paper on Google in my Engineering college, when it was just registered as a company, and people were just discovering search engines. Wikipedia and Web 2.0 is still WOW.

And there’s this new bunch of kids, for whom Google, Wiki, mobiles, broadband, wireless, eBay, cash cards, Pentiums are a given. Like TV was for me. Like radio was for my parents.

Goddamit. I’m already feeling old. And I’m just frickin’ 25.

(1 votes, average: 3 out of 5)

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No, its not metaphorical. And no, its not a joke.

My company is a nice place to work. Really. The people are damn smart, the environment is competitive yet casual, and I can wear my jeans and sneakers to office every darn day.

But then, God save you if you have to pee between three and four in the afternoon.

Let me explain. Of the few simple yet sublime pleasures of life, spraying the cannon after a few minutes with a full bladder is the most gratifying experiences of all. (Or hosing the lamp-post, or letting loose the lone water-pipe or the simple one-number. Whatever you wanna call it. Go pee.) And when an office floor is as cold as mine, it is but natural for a man (or a woman for that matter) to make a few quick stops to the restroom (finally! now I realize why toilets are called restrooms!) and relieve oneself of the unnecessary pressure. Only then can one think straight. You get what I mean.

So imagine this. You are walking towards the restroom (REST-room) after many minutes of foot-tapping and fidgeting with your pen. And just as you take the left turn towards the restroom, you freeze.

Because you see the mop-cart and a warning-sign that reads, ‘Caution. Floor is wet’. Because, there is only one person who cleans the toilets in our floor to a sparkle. And that person is a she.

Don’t get me wrong. This person is unbelievably industrious, excellent at her job, and very efficient. But the way men run helter-skelter when she’s about to enter the men’s-room is indicative that something is wrong somewhere. Karma, Gaya, Yin-yang, whatever.

She’s all of five foot (and maybe an inch). And pretty tiny at that. But six foot giants scoot off when she’s in our floor. I have heard of people catching a lift and going to upper floors just to take a pee. (I’d call that a sneak pee, but it would be too lame, even by poor joke standards). I mean, however proud a man is, one place in the whole wide universe he would not want a woman to walk into him is in front of the urinal.

Many questions arise in my mind (Does she knock; how does she make her entry; what do the guys already trapped inside do; worse still, what about the poor souls using the commode; what kinda sheepish grin do they have to put up when they step out; yada yada) but I let them pass. As I exit to the lift lobby.

Life is funny as hell, I tell ya.

(4 votes, average: 3.75 out of 5)

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I always worried that I would go back to campus after a few years, as a prestigious ‘alumnus’ of the institution, where people would address me as Sir, serve me coffee in the Placecom waiting room, and herd me to presentation rooms and guest houses. When all I wanted was mess chai and walks on the ring road. I worried that by the time I would go back to glean memories, I would be just a ghost, with hajjar memories of the place where no one would know me.

But just then.

Had this opportunity to go back to campus this month. I went to L to tell my juniors about my role and my company. To review CVs, to talk about career choices. To just talk. And it was just fantastic.

The trip was interesting at many levels. On my trip from Singapore to Delhi, I met a sardarji on the plane, who couldn’t speak much of English, and wanted help with his menu, his seat belt, talking to the airhostess etc. Turns out this paaji is a farmer in Punjab, and, the Sarpanch of a village in Jalandhar district, has already toured Sydney, Brisbane, Canberra, Singapore and London. We talked as if we had nothing to do (we didn’t); him chatting me up incessantly in his chaste Punjabi, me replying in Hindi and at the same time trying to make sense of what he was saying. Have had a similar experience once before in my summer internship when I landed in Amritsar. But this was funnier :) (especially when he started talking about which MLAs he was chuddi-buddies with).

Then spent just 10 frickety fricking hours in Delhi Airport (trying to sleep in all sorts of poses in the insanely uncomfortable Delhi airport chairs) because of fog. Reached Lucknow just in time for my presentation (which went pretty well, I think). Then talked and talked with all my friends, about career choices, interviews, companies et al. And ate missi di roti and sarson ka saag in the mess. Then dinner with all my IIC juniors. Bhai, maja aa gaya.

Then the crazy Delhi-Gurgaon story. Had a one day stopover at Delhi on my way back to Singapore. Met with five friends, my aunt, my uncle and my cousin in half a day. And ate Delhi chat at Om Sweets in Sector 14 of Gurgaon. And did I mention the bike ride in the nut-crunching cold without winter clothing? I’d rather not.

Anyhoo. It was a week of meeting old friends, eating good north Indian food, and saying stuff like “are you fuckin’ kidding me?!” while driving past run-down Gurgaon buildings, hearing about prices of matchbox sized flats (1.5 crores INR wonly). Week well spent, I’d say.

(1 votes, average: 3 out of 5)

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