Randam Rangan- Reloaded

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Life has become marginally better. I had a much-deserved vacation after a whole year. I've been such a sincere employee (never mind that I write such flamboyant resignation letters before walking into the sunset) at every place I've worked in that I've never taken a holiday. That is not to say that I have not travelled. In the past year, I've been to Vellore, Madurai, Trichy, Virudhunagar, Sivagangai, Cuddalore, Salem, Dindugal, Thirunelveli, and Thiruvallur. All of this Tamil Nadu darshan was on work, of course. That means travelling non-stop in a government car, ordering room service, and eating by myself while watching Makkal TV. Also, the company in the car was always dull. Some poor government bloke trying his best to appear tip-top in the proceedings. Some UN fellow asking me questions about Lord Ganesha's significance in the cultural fabric of rural India. Some bored driver singing MGR songs dutifully. Some fat doctors telling some famished villagers not to eat mutton because it's bad for the heart. Some dinners with carrot halwa and lots of mutton. Most of my travelling was tragicomic. Half the time, I'd never react when someone addressed me as 'Madon'- Madon, you want coffee? Madon, what is General Studies? Madon, are you married? Etc. I still take a moment or two to react when I'm madon-ed.

Anyway, so after vacation, the next good news is that the other divisions have also shifted to the new office. So now, everybody has to travel for a really long time and we all rejoice in this collective misery. While getting back, I take a train because I'm sure I'll drive myself insane if I sit in that van for longer than 1.5 hours. I like thinking that the traffic is a conspiracy to make me unhappy. I take these things very personally. When the signal turns red just when our van was supposed to cross it, I imagine that the traffic cop hates me intensely. Then I become all why-me and I get mighty furious with the world and all the universal stupids it has. Bus politics is hugely funny though. Route 1 people Vs Route 2 people- when did you get home last evening? Why is the van going to her street when it's not coming to mine? Why does your van have better seats? Why can't that pighead get in on time (this is my everyday refrain and this is the only thing I say)? The van driver told me today, "Madon, enaku manda pichukudhu". Me too, young man, me too. I wish I were an eighty year old thatha who'd passed plus two during the British times. I could have thumped you on the back then.

N and I are working on a super-dark, super-complex plot line. All the main characters are female (we are fascist about such things) and it's all terribly exciting. Bossman likes it and we're going to work on it furiously. We'd love to make it into a graphic novel (we are both sort of in love with Marjane Satrapi) but bossman thinks a comic format will be more economically viable. In any case, we're on it, on it, on it. It was a lot of fun picking names from the Online English-Sanskrit Dictionary. I can already hear Professor M from Stella shake her head sadly at the Sanskritization of her Dravidian students. So sorry ya, but Shyama sounds much better than Karupi. Life is like that.

N and I finalized the plot line in Ode Cafe (obviously)- the ideal place for ideating. There was a couple sitting a few tables away from us and we were the only customers. The boy was an obvious US fellow- ara touser, faded t-shirt, bored man of the world expression, and he was telling the girl all about some dumb second hand car he'd bought with his dumb dollars. The girl didn't look interested, but we were pretty interested. We kept giggling at all his US-isms- "For Thanksgiving holiday, I went on a drive to yada yada", "Our football team is the best in the Milky Way"- I mean, the boy wasn't just talking, he was holding forth. It was quite obvious he wanted his baritone to ride in the wind so that everyone there could benefit from his words of wisdom (we are uncommonly vicious when ideating). So we listened to everything he said, including his ideas on marriage and what Obama should do next. The girl was curiously quiet. Maybe she was trying to listen to the pretend-conversation that N and I were trying to maintain. It was quite bizarre and sad all at once. This moron chap and this silent girl and us writing about people with Sanskrit names.

There is a 3-5 pm New Year party at office tomorrow with innocent cake, chips, and Coke. I am sure the Office Funnies will crack about ten unfunny jokes and piss me off. Someone from TOI called me today and asked me what my New Year resolutions are. L works for TOI, so every time some journo in her office wants a quick quote and can't find anyone, she passes on our numbers! N is the flood specialist because her house gets flooded during the monsoons unfailingly. So there's always a person from TOI quoting N's opinion on the rain. I get called for any gender-related stuff because I was fool enough to do MA General Studies. But New Year resolutions! What were you thinking, L? That's not even my line of specialization!

I spoke on Chennai Live [104.8] today. Only, it wasn't live, it was recorded. Heeee. It was some show on children's literature yada yada. I felt like a moron because I was talking very responsibly and all. Such a Madon, such a Madon. Anyway, I'm sure I convinced everyone who heard me that am a godawful genius and that if your kid doesn't read our magazine, it's going to be pretty stupid when it's sixty.

That's all. Happy New Year, everyone. Don't tell me your resolutions.

Business Studies for Dummies

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So, I was in the Commerce Group and all when I was in school and the great Mr.Rajagopal was our Business Studies teacher. He is still there in school, with his red pen and carefully arranged hair. Rajagopal Saar used to entertain us with statements like "Hindustan Lever given the best sloka" while discussing ad campaigns and slogans. Anyway, I always thought Business Studies was a lot of BS. I mean, you'd have a big section titled grandly COMMUNICATION and it would list some 40 different ways in which communication can occur, including making faces and current pass. Then, it will analyze all this in multiple levels asking profound questions like Is it communication if communication happens only one-way? and this would be followed by a major diagram with arrow marks and all to make you feel on par with the Science Group.

One of the great raging debates in Business Studies is whether BS is a Science or an Art. Since I never bothered to read any of these sections in my textbook, I'd make up on-the-spot answers which I knew would impress Rajagopal Saar. For this debate question, I wrote this long essay on how Art and Science are inseparable Siamese twins and how people like Da Vinci excelled in both and how the myth of Icarus preceded the invention of the aeroplane etc etc. I concluded my answer by passionately imploring that the Business Studies community put an end to this divisive debate and come together as a human chain for the betterment of humanity. Rajagopal Saar was overwhelmed; he gave me full marks and hailed me as a genius in BS- which I most certainly am. The golden principle while BSing is to make sure that your language is so tip-top that nobody minds that it is nonsense.

Anyway, when I stepped out of the academic world to the real world, I realized that apart from causing me a lot of angst, my education did little to help me handle real life situations. The only concept from my Business Studies class that I've used in real life is 'esprit de corps'. I keep telling HR that the office esprit de corps is low and that we must throw a party to raise the morale of employees. I was hoping that speaking in managementese would impress all these MBA folks but it hasn't worked so far. Sigh. It's a bad, bad world.

As a person who has worked in a GO, worked with several NGOs, and who is presently working in a Private company (I'm sorry, I'm so much in answer-paper mode now that I can't resist stressing on some words to make you think I've said something noteworthy), I have formulated a list of Practical Survival Skills that you will not find in any textbook. And even if you do, they probably would have given Latin names to everything and you'll never use them in daily life because you're not sure of the pronunciation.

Survival Skills for Government Offices

1. Understand that you are no longer an individual when you join the Government. You are a file. All they have to do to erase you from the face of the earth is to lose your file. And you thought Hollywood was so great at making scary movies like this. Accept this and shut up.

2. Age is an achievement. If your colleague's incompetence is growing with each passing year, it is a tremendous achievement because he/she has stuck at being incompetent for several more years than you have. The Government of India lauds such loyalty with royalty. Accept this and shut up.

3. You should have passed your Raashtra Baasha and attended NCC/NSS in school/college. We don't care if you've done a whole lot of things in your life that qualify you for the job otherwise. Accept this and shut up.

4. Marking documents 'URGENT' or 'IMMEDIATE' does not impress anyone, least of all the office boys (who are mostly 40 plus) who are in charge of the photocopier. Such labeling does not disrupt their usual procedure: a. claim that the photocopier in office has suffered a breakdown, b.collect money from Accounts to go outside and get the job done, c.claim that the Xerox place outside is busy and that more travel is required to get this done, d.get more money from Accounts, e.bribe the Xerox man and modify the bill f.get more money from Accounts g.shove the documents somewhere and forget about them.
Nothing in Government is urgent or immediate. Accept this and shut up.

5. The people you report to will be morons. Don't strain yourself to inform them that they are morons. They are not interested in information of any kind.

6. If an important person who comes to your office does not have a Dr. before his/her name, you should not address the person as Mr. or Ms. It has to be Shri. If the person has an IAS after his/her name, you have to keep chanting that this person is Shri.So and So, IAS. This is more important than anything else that will be said in the room because nobody is listening anyway.

7. The more computer-savvy you are, the lower you are in the hierarchy. The badge of a true Superior is the ignorance of technology. If you are high up in the hierarchy, your Secretary will check your mail, leak important communication (like the fact that 15 members have expressed an interest in your daughter's Bharat Matrimony profile) to the grapevine, take multiple printouts of your email and pass them on to you. Depending on your mood, you can choose to a.make rockets b.make boats c.doodle. Nobody in Government Offices cares about email, so just stop agonizing over the fact that you never get a response. Send us a courier and we'll consider creating a file for you.

8. Understand that as a Government Employee, you cannot protest by calling for strike. Nobody is working anyway, so your grand Civil Disobedience movement is sadly Routine Procedure. If you at all hint that you'd like to work for a change or for change, prepare to be ostracized. You will not get the 11 'O Clock special sweet tea and nobody will talk to you on the staff bus. Sniff.

9. Government Employees make it a point to make long STD calls over the office phone because they are nationalistic people who cannot confine themselves to regionalistic acts like making local calls only. Don't doubt their motives and hurt their feelings. These are the true upholders of the Constitution. Applaud them.

10. Don't watch Shankar movies if you want to be part of Government for the rest of your life.

Survival Skills for Non-government Offices

1. D is for Development, D is for Delhi. If you want to fit in, get a boycut (if you are a girl), or grow your hair (if you are a boy). Premature grey hair helps. Wear kurtas only. If your appearance does not fit this description, you will find it hard to get any work done in/with NGOs.

2. If you are part of an NGO, your duty is to hate all other NGOs. Because you are the only one wanting to be noble. The rest are all wannabe nobles. Especially hate NGOs that are working in the same line as yours. You have decided to help domestic violence victims, why the hell should anyone else want to help them too? Copycats.

3. Never be united while protesting. If X NGO has decided to call for a protest march protesting the fact that X GO has not responded to their repeated emails, there is no reason for your NGO to join in just because you are also pissed about the same issue. Instead, have a marathon protesting the same thing next week. If they distributed brochures, you distribute boondhis.

4. Be interested in HIV. HIV is Happening in the Development field. If you've always wanted to go for free dinners in Five Star places, HIV is what you must be excited about. Grab a few change-the-world kurtaed kids in your office who are proud that they can say the word 'sex' without giggling, ask them to do 'research' on HIV, submit their earnest reports to UN agencies/INGOs, get funding, and man, life starts looking up.

5.Choose a small village randomly and collect lots of trivia about it. Whenever there is a discussion with NGO-types, refer to examples from this village to justify your world-shaking wise statements. "Do you know that as we speak people of XYZoor are dying of mosquito bites? Please switch off the fans, let the mosquitoes bite us too, we must empathize, not sympathize."

6.Use public transport and make this fact as public as you can. Say no to Nano. Every NGO-type cares about pedestrian rights. If there's a lull in the number of things you can protest about, pedestrian rights can always be used as a gap-filler.

7. Be angry, very angry. If you at all hint that you're not angry about people not being angry enough, you will get chucked out of the NGO double-quick. NGO meetings are full of angry people who quote Karl Marx and state that they find his theories orgasmic. The adjective 'orgasmic' shows how mature we NGO peoples are, we don't giggle, no sir.

8. If you don't understand something your boss is telling you but are asked for an opinion, say that you find the issue 'interesting'. This is a safe word which means nothing but could mean anything. Your boss is happy since he/she can go back to the funding agency and state that since your NGO finds the issue 'interesting', please shell out the dollars.

9. NGO peoples have a love for the local. You visit Five Star hotels for HIV meetings only because you are forced to. Otherwise, you are happy to bond with Suppamma who sells aatu kaal soup by the roadside. Frequently make statements like "Nothing beats roadside paani-puri with the flavour of grime!" Wear your fashionably worn-out Fab India kurta and enjoy the roadside rendezvous giggling with your colleagues about how delightfully local you are.

10. Don't watch any commercial movies if you want to be in an NGO for the rest of your life. Unless you're critiquing them, of course.

Survival Skills for Private Offices

1. Office Meetings are held because people at the top are feeling lonely in their cabins. Stop trying to find a point to them.

2. The Accounts Department was set up to ensure that you don't become too efficient in your job. They will delay payments you've promised to make and make sure that everyone thinks you're a Cheater-Liar-420.

3. Maniacally CC every mail you send to everyone in your address list. Even if they are only Santa-Banta jokes. Nobody should feel left out.

4.Be ultra-nice to the underdogs. Learn their names, congenital diseases, and list of children. If you want access to the grapevine and be a good player, you need to know whose grandpa died and when.

5.Shout at your superiors, never at the people you're delegating work to. The superiors will admire your 'enthusiasm, passion, and articulation'. The others will simply screw up the work for you.

6. If someone you're delegating work to is not cooperating, call him/her for a one-one meeting. Look deeply into his/her eyes and state 'I know you don't like me' in a deep, depressed voice. This will unhinge the person and you can use the moment to impress upon him/her that you are not here to win an election but to get work done. You will see that the person tries to give you as many sunny smiles as possible for the rest of the week in an effort to show you that he/she actually likes you. Compliments on clothing are also to be expected.

7. If this does not work, send an email in officialese and CC it to the bossman. If you feel that the bossman should not be seeing this, make a small typo in the email address. For instance, instead of bossman@company.com, type bossman@compeny.com. It's highly likely that the person concerned will not notice the typo (not everyone is a sadistic editor!) but will think that the mail has actually gone to the bossman and there are no options left now. All you have to do is to trash the bounced-back mail.

8. Have at least five tabs open on your browser- Youtube, Blogger, Rediff, NDTV, and something work-related. Practise switching tabs rapidly. So the minute you hear footsteps, switch to work-related tab AT ONCE. Writers must always have a blank MS Word document open.

9. Don't wait for teaboys to serve you tea/coffee. It shows a feudal mentality. Besides, shifting tabs when you're holding a cup in one hand is difficult. Making your own coffee at the pantry keeps you up to date with the office grapevine, too.

10. Don't watch Art movies if you want to be in Private for the rest of your life. The more you know about Vadivelu, the more popular you will be.

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This post is dedicated to Rajagopal Saar. I hope it will raise his esprit de corps.

Random Rangan

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This week was highly productive in terms of work because we didn't have internet for three whole days and I did not know what else to do at work. No rediff message boards, no stat counter watching, no comment replying, no googling for random people I know [several of whom are registered on Bharat Matrimony], and no ranting with people in other offices who are similarly occupied. Also, only my division has moved office. The other teams are still sitting elsewhere, so there aren't too many people on my internal chat applet whom I can buzz. There's this guy who keeps burping in office, so the minute he burps, I buzz N and ask her if she heard it. N says 'Yes!' and swears, I swear some more and then we desist till the next burp. I miss burp-broadcasting. Also, there are no rakshasa paintings in this new office and I sorely miss the lilac rakshasa on my ex-pillar.

The staff bus has a TV, so we watched Khaka Khaka on the bus for two days. Surya is probably the only man apart from King Vikram who can look awesome with a moustache as thick as that. The Office Funnies cannot sit. They have to act like it's a picnic and stand on the footboard and distribute chips while making jokes. We watched Pokiri today. I've seen it earlier with Nush who was doing some gender-related research on Tamil cinema. But instead of 'researching', we kept laughing at Vadivelu's kondai. But my god, Vijay needs to bathe. Astonishingly grimy-looking person. The Office Funnies also keep the volume at maximum, so my ear drums were sort of exploding. Then everyone else on the road was looking into our bus because of the noise. I tried to look intellectual and uninterested in the proceedings- I-keep-my-distance-from-Vijay-movies type look. We watched Vijay hit songs in the morning and I'm shocked that human beings can actually move that fast.

We went to this cafe place near office which has two talkative ducks, two non-talkative Nepali boys, and a noisy wind chime. The wind chime is huge. And every time it clanged, I'd think I was in Thailand or something. I've never been to Thailand, but it felt like I was. So this cafe only has sandwiches and some such pretend-foods. And the Nepali boys found it so funny that we'd actually come to eat there. They ran to get the bread after we placed an order and sat there determinedly making conversation with the two ducks. They never stopped laughing till we left. The cafe has a boutique, too. The boutique has all these ancient-looking things if you're mad about decorating your house and being really classy. They were selling floating candles and all and some people actually bought all that. I can never understand people who buy stuff like this...sure, it looks pretty, but how long can you sit and watch a candle?! Anyway, it was a total Harappa-Mohenjodaro excavation place. I got bored in half a minute after I looked at the price-tag of an old looking kurta (maybe somebody from the Indus Valley civilization wore it while dying or something). But I liked the cafe. It has nice, wooden deck chairs and a huge catamaran someone ten times my size can sleep on. Besides, I really liked that wind chime, probably the only time I'll ever get to feel Thai in life.

I've been wanting to eat tiramisu this whole week.

And my god, what's happened to this city? When did the traffic become so crazy? Sometimes, I really want to cry when the signal doesn't change ever. There's no space on the roads at all. Where's everyone going?! Pahh. I actually cried on Monday because the bus didn't move for fifteen minutes in Kodambakkam. Nobody saw though. I'm very suave when I want to be.

That's all. I want to slap a few people very badly, but I can't.

Ideating

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So we've moved office and as usual, I have to travel for a really long time to get to work. But we've got a staff bus now and it's not all that bad. Besides, I've got a cubicle all for myself (yay), so I can feel important while rotating on my chair for hours on end. We creative people like to call the process 'ideating'. If someone catches a writer/illustrator looking dopey and staring at the ceiling or performing some other ritual of time-wasting, the 'artistic' person merely flicks away the dumb marketing/sales guy who dares to raise a question with the statement "I'm ideating, go away, peabrain." We also get to throw tantrums and demand samosas to satiate our creative cravings.

It's the good life.

I like this job because it brings me closer to my childhood. I notice that this has a ring of Wordsworth to it, but I don't mean it in that idyllic sense at all. I'm not going to burst into paeans about lost innocence and daffodils behind my ear. I like kids in a thoroughly non-maternal way- I like them because they are so terribly funny. Every morning, when I leave for work, I see hundreds of kids on hundreds of scooters, sitting sleepily behind their fathers/mothers. With these big rectangular bags which are almost always a starchy navy blue. A lot of them wear glasses, too. Most of them have an excess of face powder and a nice big handkerchief pinned to their shirt fronts which they will never use [what are shirt sleeves for!]. And I love the way they sit with such discipline through all that sleep like large bugs with wings spread out.

You take any pair of kids walking to school and they always seem to have something mighty important to discuss. I'm not trivializing their issues one bit, god knows, being a kid is pretty tough. But I love how animatedly they do their analysis. No problem is ever too small to be dismissed. I remember I used to wrap myself into a straw mat and sit behind the door for hours on end as a kid. It was supposed to be my quicksand. I'd watched this Tamil movie in which some guy murders a woman and throws the body into the quicksand and I was utterly fascinated by the fact that the earth could swallow someone up like that. So whenever I was feeling bugged in life, I would go into my quicksand. I'd then imagine that I was liable to be crushed by an elephant which would fall into the quicksand any minute- so I'd sit very quietly for a long time with my heart in my mouth. Of course I knew it was all bosh, but my fear was real because I wanted it to be real. I was, and still am, a huge fan of suspense.

I don't think my mum ever believed in PG ratings because I used to watch all sorts of scary films with my cousin. Our hot favourite was Padhimoonam Number Veedu followed by Adhisaya Manidhan. These were the cult horror movies in Tamil in those days. One of our favourite passtimes used to be walking past Door No.13 in my cousin's apartment block. We'd pretend to be really scared and I'd imagine that the peephole was actually an eyeball stuck on the door. I would pretend I heard footfalls and run like a mental for no reason other than the fact that I felt like being scared. I love this Roald Dahl story in which a kid stands on a carpet and imagines that it's full of snakes. He tells himself that he has to reach the end of the carpet without stepping on one...the boy's terror when he accidentally steps on a 'snake' is palpably real. I love that story because it captures so well the delightfully wild working of a child's mind. Somewhere down the line, we lose this streak of originality, this marvellous gift of beating boredom by making up our own movies inside our heads.

Our company had done this big event for kids in Chennai, Coimbatore, and Hyderabad in August. We had all these competitions and thousands of children took part. I was one of the judges for the Story-telling event. Of course, all the kids had come prepared with a story that delivered a moral at the end. When they reached the part when they had to say 'MORAL: A friend in need is a friend in deed' or something similar, you could see the relief on their faces. It said, thank god this is over and thank god I didn't forget. Kids who forget midway have interesting coping mechanisms. I used to get a 'coughing fit' every time I forgot. And I used to think I was a splendid actor, too. Every evening, I'd have to recite a few million nursery rhymes to my mum and I'd forget some word here and there...what I'd do, I'd launch into a 'coughing fit'. Then when I remembered, I'd make what seemed like a superhuman effort to recite the rhyme through my suffering. I thought I was damn convincing, too. I was really shattered when I realized later that everyone knew I was hamming. Some kids scrunch up their foreheads and try to look very intellectual in the hope that you'll not ask them dumb questions while they're trying to remember. Some will turn glassy-eyed and look like they want to cry. Some will go back to the start of the story and begin all over again and nine times out of ten, a big smile will break out on their faces when they reach the part where they stopped and are now able to continue successfully.

In Hyderabad, there was this kid called Saloni who was only five. She'd come with her big sister who was pretty little too. Saloni wanted to be part of this Story-telling deal though she was under-age and all [yeah, you can be under-age even in an event for kids if you're that small]. We said okay because she was just too enthusiastic in life. Saloni looked like a kid who'd sprung out of a sunflower. She was wearing this brown pinafore with the mandatory kerchief pinned to the front. Anyway, she immediately began telling me a long story about two characters called Dharmabuddhi and Paapabuddhi. Dharmabuddhi was this nice, boring man and Paapabuddhi was this evil man and so and so forth. She told me the whole story without forgetting even once. I was damn impressed because she kept her smile throughout the session. Even in parts where Paapabuddhi was bashing the brains out of Dharmabuddhi, Saloni looked delighted to be telling the story. In between, sometimes, Paapabuddhi became Paabuddhi or Paapapabuddhi, but who cares, Dharmabuddhi beat him clean in the end through some strictly ahimsa method. So this kid qualified for the next round of Story-telling which was Story-writing and then telling (we're a sadistic bunch of adults). This is the round in which all the moral stories usually fly out of the window. We'd given the first line beginning and the kids had to write a story with that. Saloni sat with her paper for a while, chewing on the pen. Suddenly she gave the paper to me and said she didn't know how to write a story and would like to leave. I told her that was quite alright and took her to her sister.

Some ten minutes later, I was walking purposefully towards the canteen when I saw Saloni bawling her guts out to her distraught sis. Apparently, the kid was so ashamed that she'd not been able to write a story while everyone else was scribbling away to glory (everyone else was at least older to her by 4 years). I was amazed because she had been such a stoic little soldier while handing her sheet back to me. She never let a tear drop there before any of us. And it was only when she was back with her sis that she thought it okay to show her disappointment. I wish I could be that brave sometimes. I did some mega pep talk about what a champion she really was and how much I loved Dharmabuddhi. Then I told her that she'd have to wait for the prize distribution because she was going to get something 'special'. Kids love the word 'special'. I spoke to whoever-whoever and we got the MC to announce a 'special prize' for Saloni for being such a star. You should have seen her run to the stage, she was on top of the world, she was. She looked like mustard spluttering all over the place. Her sister came to me and thanked me in this very quiet way. I was very charmed by the amount of grace that the kid had. I mean, plenty of parents were walking around like gorillas, thumping their chests angrily because their genius son/daughter lost because of 'cheating'.

I try not to forget what it is to be a kid; something I find missing in a lot of writing that comes to us. When I'm writing a story for kids, I try hard to go back to the days when I used to cook elaborate chalk-powder meals [white powder for rice, orange powder for kesari- my doll family never ate anything else...just rice and kesari]; the days when I could stay under a table and welcome all passersby to my house; the days when an elephant might, just might, fall into my personal quicksand.

I'm such a sucker for nostalgia.

Blah and Bleargh

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Today at work, I read a few hundred blog posts about the Mumbai attacks- hate-posts on media coverage, hate-posts on Barkha Dutt, moving posts on solidarity, Prasoon Joshi's Is Baar Nahi, Pakistani reactions on blogosphere, and rediff message boards which are unfailingly decorated by elaborate morons.

I went to Domino's for lunch all by myself and ate a pizza with lots of chilli flakes. People from some other office had come and they were all trying to make jokes while eating. I wonder why that happens so much. We have a bunch of office funnies at work, too. People trying to top each other's jokes constantly. People with encyclopedic knowledge about the life and times of Vivek and Vadivelu quoting their lines in unfunny contexts. These people at Domino's also tried singing along with that painful song from 7G Rainbow Colony which was playing on TV. I can't stand the fat guy in that song who tries to look so damn troubled in life. Office Funnies should be banned. I want to put up a sign that says 'Don't Be Funny Here'.

I walked past SIET college on my way to Domino's and was surprised by the number of women in purdah streaming out of the gates. Like a murder of crows. Why anyone would want to wear a veil, I don't know. I'm too exhausted to be politically correct and talk about "but of course, if it's their choice, we must respect it". Because I refuse to respect a choice as daft as this. Walk down the road looking like yourself, for god's sake.

I was supposed to go for Persepolis tonight, only, they'd most helpfully taken off the movie. I like this Marjane Satrapi. She's cool.

We're moving office, so my division has a holiday tomorrow. Yippie. We even had a rain holiday last week. Life is looking up.

Last night, Nush and I smuggled dragon chicken from Wonton into her house. A salary and a debit card are the only compensations of adult life. We ate it with great relish at midnight while discussing all the lunatics we've known in our lives.Wonton has the best dragon chicken. Masala Breads has the best caramel custard.

So I have three days this weekend and I have no intentions of stirring from the house. I'm getting old; this thought especially struck me when I realized that I wasn't enthusiastic about amusement parks anymore. No 'Once More Polama Daddy?' left in me. I don't want to walk around with a no-longer-cool wristband in the Madras heat. I'd rather stay at home and cultivate my personality.

So that's all. I wanted to blog about something terribly intellectual, actually. I half-wrote the post inside my head. But I'm too bored to type it out word by word here. I'm getting really old. Soon, I'll be writing my email on white paper and have my secretary type it for me.

There's nothing new to read also. I am going to read Franny and Zooey again now. Such a such a such a happening life, it is, it is, it is.