Category — Attempts at Sarcasm

The Barclays Premier League evokes very passionate reactions from many youngsters of this agrarian country. The excitement provided by the footballers, their ill-perfected skill and their phony girlfriends reaches orgasmic levels at times. This devotion towards the game – especially towards some silly League in England – which is broadcasted at prime time on one of the better channels on Indian television is fast becoming a concern to the intellectual integrity of this nation.

On the day when the Prime-minister’s daughter was feted for her contribution towards science and its development in this country by none other than the Infosys Science foundation – the pioneers of slumdog outsourcing, many ill-advised youth were deeply engrossed in dissecting the bones out of Manchester United’s loss to Leeds united.

The photograph above has some illustrious personalities from(L-R)-

NR Narayan Murthy (Mr.Infosys), Amartya Sen (Nobel Laureate), Hamid Ansari (Vice-President of India), Upinder Singh (Award Recipient), Kris Gopalkrishnan (Cool Dude Infy CEO), Mohandas Pai (Infy HR Head). The most notable fact about all these great minds is that none of them have ever bothered discussing football in their lives – let alone incidents in some obscure league in England.

The complete apathy towards one of the “nearly” great fairytales of all time combined with the lack of willingness to bother about other league not shown on television at primetime is a huge matter for concern to Infosys and to the nation. The biggest outsourcing company is losing some of the best brains of the country not to football but to the Barclays Premier League.

Education is considered of prime importance in our country. Engineering doubly so. The employees of the Premier League are not exactly education enthusiasts. None of the characters who make a living out of the eyeballs that are glued to the television in India and China bother to go to Universities. Neither do they know Fourier Transforms, Binary Phase Shift Keying Techniques or Effects of Deforestation. Quite contrary, the Barclays Premier League is always on the look out for exploiting the educated and “unsettled” Indian viewer. A quote by Manchester City CEO Garry Cook brings out my point more clearly -

“China and India are gagging for football content to watch and we’re going to tell them that City is their content. We need a superstar to get through that door. Richard Dunne doesn’t roll off the tongue in Beijing. Ronaldinho brings access to major sponsors and financial reward.”

Only the noble outsourcing companies, can save this country from this growing malaise. Infosys need to market themselves better and make themselves more appealing to the masses. In order to rival the entertainment bouquet provided by football and BPL in particular, Infosys should start primetime shows educating the masses about Software Development Life Cycles, Acceptance Tests, Beta Tests, Clean Coding Convention and Practices. With a few desi items showing ample cleavage to keep the insatiable engineer interested, the programming would be a grand success.

If the situation worsens, Infosys will no longer find able engineers to perform data entry jobs for big clients like General Motors and British Airways. This situation has to be nipped in the bud. A mass awareness campaign should be initiated making the youth of this country aware that – India is primarily an agrarian nation. That they have an opportunity to sit in a cubicle and attend calls from US clients. It is a privilege that most youngsters who dont have a broadband connection to read this post dream about. To discuss about follies and shortcomings of uneducated, impassionate European and African chimps who earn more in one week than the Prime Minister of our country earns in one year is not sustainable in the long run and will have disastrous effects on Infosys and Indian economy on the whole. The faster this problem is sorted the better. Else Infosys will never ever earn the cult status that Intel or IBM enjoys. And it’s all due to Barclays Premier League.

This is not a fable. Previously I might have made up some rather bizarre first person posts, just to strike a chord with the readers. But this one is totally, absolutely, brutally, physically true. As true as Michael Owen’s love for Liverpool.

There has been this digestion problem that I face that just refuses to go away. As with Yossarian’s liver troubles in Catch 22, it neither aggravates nor vanishes. It keeps on popping its ugly head from time to time and causes me discomfort. A lot of medication has been tried. All of it worked for a certain duration. And then again, ’twas back to square one. Some very enthusiastic members of family decided a while ago that homeopathy – those white tablets which when magnified could resemble naphtalene balls – was the way ahead. And I had to rest faith in the homeopath to find a panacea to this recurring ailment.

Being my first visit, I was told to fill a thick booklet beforehand. In hindsight, I think I should have scanned the booklet for it would have really been apt for this blogpost. The booklet needed me to fill all possible information that even my mum wouldn’t bother asking. It was fun. So I thought while flipping through the pages and writing a big “-N/A-” for most questions.

My number was called and I handed over the booklet to a guy at the front desk. I could see from his face that he was clearly dissatisfied with my resonses rather the lack of them. Yet he chose to smile calmly. He looked at me affectionately. We are living in the times where 377 has been legalised. It is no more a taboo. I felt a slight churn in my tummy. He politely reminded me that I’d have to give verbal responses to all the questions since I had acted like a jackass by not taking the booklet seriously. He escorted me to a small room. I was quite relieved to know that I would not have to answer to him – 377 not withstanding. To be honest, I was expecting the doc to take over from here. But hell no!

Two female sidekicks made their way into the room. I’m not a great judge of person. But both seemed to be in their early 20’s. Pathology or pharmacy graduates, perhaps. I don’t know if it is the standard protocol to be questioned by both of them in unison. But my shin(e)y,glowing face must have made them re-think their routine.

There was a pause. Some smiles. Without further ado, one of them nodded their head and mumbled, “Start”. Now, I had no voice recording up my arse, so I started slowly. Stammered and stuttered. Mostly in angrezi. Within a few minutes I realized that both of them didn’t really enjoy the Queen’s language. So I switched to a cocktail of angrezi, marathi and hindi. I finished off the basic problem, symptoms all in one go. Instead of being asked to leave, I was asked an innocuous two word question that would make the next 90 minutes worse than sitting through Kambakht Ishq – “What else?”

Now, there was a sinister plot behind the question. It was designed in such a way that come the later stages of the booklet, it would bite you in the backside. Lets get to the booklet now, shall we. It was the most amazing example of what I would call “ethical voyeuring”. It asked you everything – what you ate, why you ate, when you ate, how much you peed, did you smell your pee, how much water you drank, how much did you sweat, if you loved summer or rains or winter, if you had dreams, what did you see in your dreams, when did you dream, if you had any fears, how was your sexual appetite, if you thought about blondes and jerked off in the shower, the frequency of the previous activity, your joys, your sorrows, your reactions when you were angry, your fraands, your views on fraandship, your admiration for Paris Hilton’s chihuahua (the dog i meant), your relationship with the milkman of the second cousin of the President of Tajikistan et al.

After the initial bit pertaining to the problem, the femme fatale decided to quiz me on my dreams -

Do you dream ? Erm. Not really.

Have you never ever dreamt in your life ?

Yes. I have.

When was the last time you had a dream ?

Hell. I remember.

No. But still ?

Seriously no clue.

What happens in your dreams?

Whom do you dream about? *mutters*

Do you dream about yourself?

Well. Yes.

Do you ever dream about friends? Some special friend?

*at about this time I realised where it was all headed. For the next twenty minutes, they beat about the bush without uttering the “girlfriend” word*

The questions were very innovative but they really could not muster the nerve to ask me face to face if I had someone with whom I cuddled up every weekend. I kind of laud their sheer enterprise though. They tried all they could to unsettle me but I wouldn’t give an inch.

Questions included -

How were you in school ?

And what else?

How was your nature in school ?

And what else ?

Ok.All that is academics. Is there something else you’d like to tell about school/college life?

And what else ?

How many friends did you have in school ?

And what else ?

How were your relationship among friends ?

Is there one friend whom you’re still in touch with?

And what else?

Do you tell your secrets to your parents ?

Do you have any special friends whom you share your secrets with ?

And what else ?

Now I think about it, I feel really grateful to them. No one has ever taken so much interest in me. And in the 90 minutes that I had with them, they fondled me with so much affection. They made me feel important. They had a heart. They really understood me. It was Kissmat KKonektion all over. *sob* *sob* I extend my deepest gratitude towards them. I won’t be meeting them for a while I guess, but I’ll never really forget the time we spent dissecting my past.

After the interrogation, I was taken to the Doc. Ironically, he barely conversed with me. He just read through all what was written by one of those dames and prescribed me a course of those tiny naphtalene balls.

As I sit here poking ridicule at the entire process, they’d also have had a silent laugh at me and my responses. By now, they’d have forwarded my details to couple of matrimony sites as well as a prospective customer. But I’d prefer to believe that silence is golden. And I’m convinced that I kind of steered through the questioning very tactfully. After the Arushi homicide case, India TV had a shocking expose (acute over the e – as in exposay) of the messages she had sent a guy about a day ago which read somewhat to the tune of – ” u r mah bst bud. lv ya lds. kss. mwah. mwah. “. Now, if I do something which would make me front page news in this country, you know where to look for the shady details, don’t you ?

People are advised not to do it immediately after dinner. But I am an exception. And I have no inhibitions about doing it either. My mum vehemently opposes me and constantly reminds me that such behaviour may have disastrous consequences in the long run. But the obdurate son I am, I pay no heed. I put on a pair of black shoes – minus the socks – pick up my cell phone and rush out of my house. There’s a slight drizzle in the air. The shoes get dirty in the mud puddles. That is why I wear black shoes. I am twitching a bit. Uncomfortable. I start taking a few fast steps. It helps to release the nervous energy. I fiddle with the Livestrong on my right hand. Everyone comes well decked with gloves and belts and protein shakes. The poor yellow thing is my only accessory. I look up at the windows. I do not see people staring out. I breathe a sigh of relief. Less people, I console myself. Its difficult to do it in front of the experienced men , especially when you are an amateur.

And I finally enter the gymnasium (incidentally , its derived from ‘gymnos’ – that is ‘naked’ in Greek). Its pretty late in the night. So there are only 4 people inside. I’ve got to know their names as the five of us are the ‘Night-Riders’. Obnoxious Hindi numbers are blurting out of the music system. And thankfully, there are no ladies at this oddly hour. We’ll discuss more about them later. I start my warm-up. It involves jumping in the air and then trying to touch your hands to your feet. I fail miserably at the latter part. The trainer has given up on me. So he doesn’t really care. Then, its time to do some push-ups. Its an exercise in futility. Meanwhile, the songs on the music system are going from bad to worse. Suddenly on TV, Maushami Udeshi starts gyrating to a song sequence. The entire gym stands still. The music is lowered. I have a sip of water.

If you end up going in the peak hours, you’ll find a lot of feminine company. It gets slightly embarrassing when you realize that you cant lift 10 pounds while the femme fatale next to you is carrying 20. It makes for some interesting observations though. For one, any outsider would think, that a gymnasium is a ideal place for the economically under-nourished male-trainers to hit on sassy feminine students with bloated pockets. I had similar perceptions till I joined. But let me assure you, it is not true at all. In fact, its the other way round. Seriously ! I’m not kidding.

The damsels, behenjis and aunties et al leave no stone unturned to ‘bond’ with the trainers. Perhaps, there’s a rustic charm in their toned bodies which I fail to spot. Yes, the same charm associated with the milkman, postman and the ilk. It would be unethical for me to comment on their marital harmony, so I won’t .

I move from one machine (darn, my technical writing sucks) to the other quietly, unnoticed. I do well with the weights and with the leg exercises. Its the shoulders and arms that I struggle with. Its close to 11 pm. And they are about to shut shop. I complete my set of exercises before making small talk with the guy at the reception. Given my forte to reproduce conversations, I will try and recreate one now :

R: Aaj kitne mare ?

C: (assuming its weights) 40. *wants to rush home*

R: Bas. Humne to bahut mare hain ! *sinister laughter all around. you can smell promiscuity in the air*

C: *tries to get his Gerrard autobiography which he’s left on the table*

R: Good book. I flipped thru and loved the pics. Koi great footballer hai kya?

C: Haan. Theek thak khel leta hai !

*He is copying something into his external hard-drive. I safely assume its a fitness brochure. I give him his space and leave*

I start walking back. Its not far from my home. The raindrops falling. Shoes getting muddy. But I don’t care as they’ll dry up before I head again tomorrow. I am feeling good about myself. Lots of thoughts enter my mind. I have a very tough decision to make. Which movie am I to watch after heading home ? I settle on Kung-fu Panda.

10. The last time I went to a movie theatre, I carried a book on Electronic Circuits with me. And when the national anthem was done with , I asked the doorman for his torch. And then read half the book in serenity over the next two and a half hours.

9. Very early in school, I was adjudged the Best Actor at a massive inter-school gathering. I had played the role of a vulture in the school play. Now, I can safely say that my acting career reached its peak at the age of nine.

8. Throughout my childhood, I aspired to become a bus conductor. The entire routine of punching tickets and ringing the bell at every stop fascinated me to no end. My mum advised me to study hard for she told me it took great academic scores to be a conductor. I believed that. She even told me that drivers earned more than conductors. But money never played any part in my aspirations. It was me and my punching machine.

7. For a long period, Judwaa (Salmaan Khan double role anyone ?) was my favorite movie. But then I had never heard of the Scorceses and Kubricks and the Kurosawas.

6. I hated my pre-school. Grandad was told to sit outside for the entire duration of two hours. After an hour, I used to come out of the classroom and was taken home. This continued for good part of two years. Thus, I bunked half of the first two years at school !

5. The first football club I supported was West Ham United. Because the Hammers got relegated, I was left with no team to support in the Premiership. Moreover, I couldn’t follow them on TV. Hence, I had to choose another team. And thus I became a Citizen for life

4. I still believe in the theory that  storks fly with babies all wrapped up and give them to mums who ask for them. Procreation is all bullshite.

3. For three years I thought Tiger Woods was an animal.

2. I nearly blinded myself while playing Holi as a kid. Since then, Ive stopped playing Holi.

1. I have reports which suggest that I contain miracle ingredient Z-247 in my bloodstream. That imparts in me an ability to be a subtle liar.