Lets NOT TALK about Confidentiality please...

[WARNING : All the characters and events in this post -- even those based on real people -- are entirely fictitious. The following post contains highly confidential matter which sould not be read or referred to, by anyone either living or dead.]

I don’t know if there is any confidentiality policy with regards to blogging. No, I am not talking about the ones which we actually HAVE to read before clicking the “I Agree” button, I am talking about the spread of critical information which you share in your blogs.
You might be tempted to write your heart out in your blog which you believe is just like another brick in the wall, that it will be just like another drop in the ocean, but no, that is not the case always as I learnt it the hard way.
One should always keep in mind that there are some people who derive, what can I say some pleasure by passing on the information to someone whom you believe should know about what you have written in your blog in hmm… your death bed or some other places or situations where you might gather such a huge amount of sympathy so as to escape scot-free from being ravaged or eaten alive.
Don’t get it? Let me elaborate a bit. Suppose you have written something in your blog and don’t want the faculty to know about it (I have heard rumours that faculty does read some of the blogs, but I am quite sure or rather pray to god that I am not one of those lucky elite!). But now as there is with any good masala movie, comes a villain, lets call him “Mr. Squealer” or Mr. S for simplicity.
Now Mr. S. goes through your blog, being a self confessed smarty, he interprets the meaning of your blog in such a way that the best of interpreters and compilers are put to shame. Now armed with these WMDs (now using the information given by you against you is like, a person, borrowing your dagger to stab you), he decides to take some expert opinion on the topic. He thinks and thinks, and as it is quite obvious, there pops on his head a bulb which glows with a blinding brightness. He concludes, who can be better than “Guru Devo Bhava”, yes he goes to the faculty who is also the self confessed “Know It All” or in other words, the master of that subject.
They discuss all possible interpretations and other unforeseen inferences and conclusions which will put the best of critics of Bollywood (if you read DC, you will know what I am talking about, for instance let me tell you that the review of Titanic read as follows “It is a pretty sick movie with people drowning, and if you are the person who derives pleasure from other peoples’ suffering, this is the movie for you!” yes, I am not kidding) to shame and make the innocent blogger gloat with pride for writing such a masterpiece with so many interpretations, easily beating the paintings of Da Vinci as it was illustrated in the best selling novel of Dan Brown, “The Da Vinci Code”.
Now the consequence of such enlightening discussions or tete-a-tete of Mr. S leaves little to imagination. The poor blogger is left to the gallows, that too in the best case.
Now, the moral of the story is, No, I don’t want some elaborately written pledge of confidentiality upon which we attest with our blood. What I am asking is, there has to be some sort of a code or something regarding the use of the information gathered from our blogs especially when you meant them to be taken in a light vein with no aforeseen harm to the society and to the human race.
Please give it a thought.

My Achilles heel

As I have said in the heading of my blog, “Life is a sexually transmitted disease”, but you shouldn’t forget that “life” is not like some other incurable diseases, it IS curable and that is the root of all the problems and it is the ultimate truth of life.
I was trying so hard not to talk about this incident which will, I believe will change me for ever, even if I don’t give it much credit, I will be just deceiving myself. I read in one of my friend’s blog about how he doesn’t miss anybody even if he loves them very much. At that time I just had a hearty laugh for his immaturity. When you really care or love somebody, it is not in your powers to miss or don’t miss them. They actually BECOME a part of you and they show in every action you take. The values and things your loved ones stand for become your OWN and becomes a part of your very personality. So, when do you ACTUALLY miss your loved ones? When you are not “yourself”. That is, you remember your loved ones when you are not being yourself, when you are not what THEY have made you what you call “me”. And thus, your mind takes you to the loved ones and you cannot help but think about them.
So, what is this incident I was talking about which has changed me? It might look trivial or inconsequential to *beep* but the problem is, if you ASSOCIATE a big part of your life with even a small thing, may that be a piece of trash, it becomes very significant to you. But being lesser mortals, we humans always tend to “associate” and “identify” with all the thing they spend even a fraction of time in their lifetime, this is how you create your own experiences.
Though I am not such a huge believer in paranormal or numerology, I don’t take much time in putting one and one together and make a two.
It all started when I was in school and to be more precise on 5th September, 1997. Yes, that was the teacher’s day and me being the school prefect had to suit up to take the reigns from the principal and lord over the lesser mortals. I remember that day distinctly as I was trying hard to read a chapter on Mother Teresa. I was having a hard time cramming all the awards she has won which I must concede ran into pages and pages. I was cursing her for being so good. How was I to know that she will die on the same day. Man I was feeling terrible. Yes it was also because of her death and the world losing a good human like her. But also because I had one of the most major accident in my life which led to the selling of my bike (Yamaha RX 100). Also, I tore the suit which was sewn for the same purpose and from that day I don’t own a suit.
After that incident, a month later on 5th October and again a month after that on 5th November I met with more accidents that too I was rammed by a metro liner. Which paradoxically was like a merc of the public transport. It was at this time that it dawned to me that there has to be something with this 5th phenomenon. From that day, I try not to drive on 5th.
So, if you are thinking that 5th was unlucky for me, then even a child would have guessed that 5th May 05 i.e. 05-05-05 would have been a disaster in my life. And that child wont be wrong in guessing that.
My dear pet dog about whom I alluded not that long back in my post http://bookophobic.blogspot.com/2005/03/dont-even-think-about-it-god.html
passed away on that day. I don’t know but something inside me broke on that day. We were taking him to the hospital almost daily and he was living on glucose bottles. Seeing his condition was really heart wrenching to me. He was after all, with me right from my childhood. He was something that I cherished and was a reminder to me about how I was before in more carefree times. I don’t know but why we have pets whose average life span is far less than humans. Maybe an elephant or turtles will make better pets. Even if they aren’t so good and useful as what dogs and cats are, they will at least save us of all the pain!
I was cursing myself daily for being home on what was becoming quite obvious as his last days. But I couldn’t even leave him like that. Me and my brother used to fight wildly on this issue as I didn’t want to look at him in that condition. I remember we were still fighting on that damned day. My father was out of station so I went to the hospital on that day at about 7:30 pm to find that it was already closed. But the board on the wall displayed “Open 24 hours”. I was just furious and so helpless that I lashed at the supervisor there. I went to the dog squad and asked someone to come and see if something could be done.
Thankfully 2 people arrived at our house and said that he wont make it to the morning. I was so damned pissed at them for saying that. I told them that the hospital was closed, they said that the doctors lived nearby but wont come to the hospital in the evenings. Now, what kind of sick bastards are they? Seriously that’s why the veterinarians are supposed to be such second grade citizens (if they are actually humans i.e.). By this time Boozoo’s health had deteriorated and with great pain I suggested that they give him a fatal injection or something to atleast put him out of his misery. To which the dog squad people said that why to do that in his last hour and to let him die in peace. Man it was the worst day in my life. I wished that some metro liner should hit me and save me of this situation at home!
Not able to look at him in his condition nor having a heart to walk away, I sat on a chair in our verandah separating me and Boozoo by a wall from where I tried my level best to pacify him. God, so many thoughts came to my mind, but none of them was good all were equally depressing. After some time, I went to take a look but he lied there motionless. My mind was completely blank. I didn’t know what to do, I came to my room and started the tv.
By this time my brother also came back and he took it very badly. I had completely forgotten about my brother altogether. If there was someone who was more close to Boozoo than me, it was my brother. Even my mother, for whom Boozoo served as the only security when everybody was away.
That night I was not able to think anything and I don’t know when I slept. But in the morning, my father arrived. I could hear what was happening but I didn’t wanted to get up. But you know, how life is. Of all the innumerable hours we sleep, that one day when I tried the hardest to sleep and to cut down on the noises, I was not even able to get a wink. So I decided to keep a pillow on my head so as to just cut away the voices of the people from the dog squad who had come to take him on his last journey. And all that time, I was trying hard to run away from reality. I am really a weak weak man!
I got up after an hour or so when my father returned, unable to stay in bed and trying hard not to go outside even to the toilet lest I will see the empty bed of Boozoo and wont be able to control myself. My father came and my mother asked him where he was buried. It is at this time when my father started describing that I just couldn’t help myself and involuntarily tears started rolling from my eyes. I don’t cry usually but when I do, I am just inconsolable. It was at that time I looked at my parents to see them all controlling their emotions, I know that he meant more to them than what he was to me. I was always away from home right from my school and was partially away in IIIT too. But my parents and my brother were always with him. And they stood there tall and I felt so low for not being to control myself. Really, I might be bigger physically but I have a long way to go when I truly grow emotionally. I was feeling like a child, like I was on the day when I brought Boozoo to my house without my father’s consent. I used to take care of him of course with the help of my mom. It was all not so bad as he was in fact the only true memory of me of my childhood. My brother used to say that “hum kutton ke saath hi bade hue hai”, at that time I used to laugh at him at interpreting the statement differently. But he wasn’t wrong. We always had a pet right from my childhood. But at that time my parents used to screen us from their demise. They said that I was very ill and in a bad condition when our first dog who ironically was also named Boozoo died. My parents always said that I was weak but I used to dismiss their comments. But now I know, I have a long way to go emotionally. I might be the strongest among my peers physically as I always was, but I discovered that I am very very very sensitive to my own dismay and who can know that other than your parents and of course your friends.
I called one of my oldest friend and informed him about Boozoo he came rushing to my house because he knew how huge this news was to me. Man my friends KNOW me more than I do myself!
I went to the hospital the next day to collect the reports of his blood tests. Now talk of irony, seems that he suffered from some sort of a lung cancer. Now of all the smokers and dopers in this world, why him? Is there any justice in this world? I confronted the doctor and asked him why he wasn’t there the other day. One thing led to another and he said “whats the big deal?”… opsss wrong answer. I broke a long standing promise, a word I have given to someone special before I came to IIIT. I punched him smack on his mouth. Of course it hurt my knuckles as his teeth seemed to be harder than my knuckles but it felt good anyway. Maybe that’s the reason people fight in the climax. It is not about hurting the villain or something, it is about the “Feel Good Factor”.
My brother went to the grave the next day, he too didn’t go when Boozoo was being buried and planted a sapling at the site near his head. I too wanted to go there but didn’t have the courage. Finally I half heartedly went to the grave yard and tried my level best not to find his grave (which I didn’t btw). Maybe something inside me said that if I didn’t find his grave, there might be a chance that he will still be alive and will return someday. I thought about the families of the victims dying in the innumerable accidents and thought that they too would feel the same thing about finding the bodies of their loved ones. I didn’t try to find his grave to date.
I might go on writing about the sweet memories I shared with Boozoo, but it will make me feel worse. He was actually there in all my moments of greatest achievements in my life and the happy memories far outdo the sad ones that I have near his end. Those memories are enough to cherish and keep me going throughout my life. My brother wants another dog and wants to name it Boozoo too but I have reservations about this, I don’t want to lose any more. It is bad already and even my father is giving the initial resistance which he gives usually whenever I wanted to bring a pet. But once I used to bring a pet as I did 3 previous times, it is actually he who really takes care of them too. Maybe he too has something with the pets which reminds him about his past too.
Now I look forward to the next presumably apocalyptic days which might come in my life viz. 05-05-50 or 05-05-55 but I hope it is a metro liner at that time too. I am more than willing to being hit by it rather than losing something that I hold too dear more than my life. Future seems to be bleak but this is how life is. So I will try to take the past in my stride and walk into my future because, after all, tomorrow is just another day.

Me a JOBBER

So to all the unfortunate souls, still toiling under the "student" status, heehaaw what a bunch of LOSERS!! I am a jobber you dont have a job you are a student na na na na na....
Now that i have gotten that out of my system. Let me tell you something about my first day at the company.
My date of joining was "Friday the 13th", at the end of the day i knew why horror movies are made with that very same name. The day was a complete disaster to say the least. I was expecting just a mild session with the trips around the office park meeting various people and getting back after 3 to 4 hours at max. But man i was mistaken!
I was at their gates at 8:30 A.M. "SHARP" as was mentioned in the offer letter. I saw many employees err… associates or partners (as the company calls them just to make the slaves feel better and work even harder for their over lords) checking in at that early hour. That was the first shock of the day. Come on, you cant expect any employee to turn up at 8:30 in the morning, that is weird!
Now, after the initial strange encounter of meeting with the regular zomby employees, i tried to convince myself that it was just an anamoly int their system and they must have something very important to do or an important deadline to meet. I was wrong again as i realised at the end of the day. Another rooky mistake of failure to read the ominous sings early!
We were called inside and given the company id cards or the access cards ( to all the STUDENTS out there, this is the magnetic id card which you swipe in front of the doors, now don’t go pressing the cards on the doors of your company, rather find the detector, the thingy with the blinking red light and then put your access card before it and the door will open. Hope you STUDENTS with limited mental capabilities understand the complex workings of a true jobber) and we were directed to a conference room with DELL PCs with LCD monitors.
Now, I thought of relaxing a bit in the AC’ed hall but our evil HR walked in and after showing us what actual OA means, went on asking for the names, nicknames, hobbies, place you came from and college, the animal you resemble and all such sort of crap. I as usual, as the well trained student of IIIT would know, I turned off my attention to the disturbance around and was thinking about more important stuff like when I would he getting my first cheque. But suddenly, in a complete disregard to my thought processes, our evil HR decided to ask me to stand up and ordered me to tell the details of all my fellow “associates” like the date of birth, name, nicknames, their father’s names, their great grandfather’s name, their time of birth and also the exact time and date when they attained puberty.
As you could have guessed, I was what can I say, at loss in producing satisfactory answers which the evil HR took very un-sportingly. Her expressions were like when you find a cock roach in your sandwitch in the mess but to be more precise, her expressions hinted as though she has found a lizard with it’s whole family in place of a cockroach.
She started shouting and became all senti that our offers were “provisional” and that we will have to secure atleast 60% of marks in all the pop up quizzes and the projects which I failed very miserably. She also imposed a fine of 2.5 lakhs for referring to her as "Ma'm" and was saying something about flat architecture in the company which i didnt get as the company building seemed to be quite steep consisting of 5 floors.
Believe me guys, it is not a good start when you start the first session in the company with a failure. But, everybody is not such a cool customer like me. The above mentioned episode had no bearing on me whatsoever and I started to count the number of digits which will be in my check with much aplomb and alacrity.
After this, there were several sessions of why the company was so great and also some of the training classes and a bunch load of submissions of our documents and photographs.
Every now and then, somebody will come in and say how critical it is to secure 60% in ALL the tests and assignments and projects.
Now, I saw at the watch and it was noon already and I was waiting for the HR to say that you have worked so hard for the day and to take the month’s pay in advance. But, the HR lived up to our expectations and was “evil” to the core. She kept on sending loads and loads of senior associates to take classes after classes.
Now, being a IIITian, you should know that we are quite conservative when it comes to attending classes. Any class either too early or too long or too boring or too informative or in a class with bad vastu or on a Monday or in fact in the main building is a strict no no to us. So, as you can expect, sitting on my ass with no enemy bots in the LCD monitors was quite depressing and I was longing to see the sun outside even though it was like 50 degree C. I had a vague memory of sitting in such marathon classes in Narayana in my +2 but now I have matured quite a bit and I know that any class which extends beyond 7 minutes is a complete waste. But I suspect, the corporate companies somehow don’t understand that golden rule. They believe in getting the employees glued to their chair.
11 hours had passed now, it was 7:30 in the NIGHT and the classes seemed to be quite never ending though they had one thing in common. Their grim warning and senti tone of that 60% rule. Man I was so pissed at that time with this number “60” that I was ready to kill Prashant (since his roll no. was 60... hope you could understand my frustoo'ness). As you can see, I was really really sick of hearing the same old warnings but more importantly, 11 hours on the first day!!!
The day didn’t end there, we had to wait for another hour to fill in the bank documents which I completed in about 1.6 minutes whereas the other “medhavi” associates who were mostly from NIT- warangal, nagpur, rourkela, trichi etc. took around 40+ minutes to do the same. And to make the matters worse, I had to wait for those dimwits to complete their decoration in their name and email address fields in the form. Talk about dumb asses!
Finally I was free at about 8:10 pm (almost after 12 hours of hectic job of listening and listening) when it was finally over. But our evil HR wasn’t going to leave us so easily. She handed us a form for some medical checkup scheduled for the next day at yes you guessed right at 8:30 AM “Sharp” in Care hospital.
Now there is a limit to everything, you just cant scare and harass the new “Partners” of your company like this on their first day. Enough is enough.
I don’t know how I drove back to the hostel. I came to the room, flung my bag on the chair and crashed to bed. It was at that time I decided to chuck the offer of this crappy company which was not even worth “60%” of my effort. I think that all the corporate companies derive their profits by "rinse drying" their employees of their blood, making them the slaves in their pointless struggle to achieve some graphs with steep slopes on their profit’s slides.
I am looking for a company which considers it’s employees as atleast human beings and not the proverbial “kolu ka bail”. Really fed up of my first taste of the MNC lifestyle and have decided to trim my expectations and prepared myself mentally for long hours of ordeal in the company I will work in near future (which looks like a far better option than the present company I work for....here, I doubt if I can say that i "worked" for it per se on the first and most probably the last day of going to the company).
Now, as far as the medical test tomorrow goes, they can test that thing on my hand called the middle finger! You see, I want to enjoy the student life for as long as possible before the inevitable truth of life called “slogging for a living”.