When I was in Delhi - Week 6

 "When I was in..." is a danger sign in most conversations. By the time these words roll out you know you are in for a treat. And by treat, I mean a monologue of the ego-pic proportions. Usually associated with people who were in the armed forces, this cliche is currently being used by all and many - including yours truly.

And, as the title suggests, my dialogues are based on the 40 odd months I spent in Delhi. Let's have some samples then.

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1. When I was in Delhi, I talked to a dog in Hindi.

This happened just a week after joining at the company in Gurgaon. After a day's work, we were all sitting in the auto meant to take us back to our place. And suddenly a dog came sniffing around the auto. Fresh mallu flesh smell was the first for him I guess. He tried to progress into the auto, which was occupied by myself, my friend from Kerala and two others. Seeing this, I waved off the dog saying "Jaa Jaa". This amused my friend. "You were saying 'Po Po' till yesterday. Why Hindi now?". My reply is legendary now - "This is a North Indian dog. He can't understand Malayalam."

2. When I was in Delhi and we served the visitor raw atta and he had to fetch water from the fridge by himself.

The summers in Delhi are notorious for the heat. As the Celsius climbs up, monkey's climb down and enter our flats. And when the three brave bachelors tried to drive him away, the monkey snarled and tried to bite, which drove the said bachelors to their rooms. This gave free access of the house to the monkey, who spent some time eating the atta, which we had brought an year ago. Then, he coolly walked up to the refrigerator, opened it, took a bottle of water, opened the bottle and drank from it. Once he had his fun, he left. We had it all on camera, have lost that since.

3. When I was in Delhi and nobody would take my seat.

This happened on the metro, and was discussed on an earlier blog. Us friends were on our way to Dwaraka for a bite at the Malayali Restaurant there. When a space opened up, I nicked in front of my friend to grab it, and jeered him about the same to make the most of it. A beautiful girl walked in the next stop. As was the wont in that age, I tried to get a second look, but was unable to do so because of my seated position. I kept asking my friends, "Ne irrikyada, njn ninnottae" - "Please sit man. I want to stand". This was repeatedly quoted in Malayalam, in a fairly loud voice. The girl got down at the next stop, and I still haven't got that second look.

The next stop came. As he was getting down, a guy who was watching all this said to my friend "Ninnaku avidae irrikyayirunnu. Avan itreyum chothichathu allae" - "You could have sat there. He was pleading na". MALAYALIs are everywhere.

 

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At the pace I'm going, I'll soon skip a week. :D ;)

Until next week then.

Words of Wisdom - Week 5

The moment I wrote "hopefully by Sunday" in the last post, I knew it was doomed. It's Thursday today - Friday in another two hours - and it's only now that I'm starting this. And the reason for the delay this time is the words of wisdom I received once from a senior, who's name escapes me now.

What doesn't escape my memory's ken are the following five words of wisdom that were shared with me by some great minds. Let's start with the reason for this week's delay.

1. "Your ability to produce coherent sentences is dependent on your creative juices. And like all juices, this needs time to refill."
I had a meeting to attend this Tuesday. Remembering the above words, I chose not to write the blog over the weekend, as that would have left my creative juices dry for the meeting.

2. "The speed of the fan, the amount of sugar in your tea - all these are prospective problems."
Said with respect to Marriages, by my dear friend Gulf's co-brother.

3. "If you've ten problems now, you know all your problems. You don't know how many, or what problems you're going to have in an year."
When Anoop said this to Vivek four years back in that old room in Delhi, he wouldn't have realised how many lives he was re-routing. When Vivek was torn between choosing to stay at DMRC (this being safe) or going to Germany on a scholarship (this being his dream), these words drove him to his dreams. And one by one, the rest of us took the leap of faith.

4. "Make sure the girl is the last one to send the message in a chat."
I still don't understand the concept or advantage behind this one, but I followed it for the better part of a decade. Thank you Chaithin for that.

5. "You're six foot tall right. Then why do you stoop? Stand straight and walk proud with your head held high."
This advice was given to me when I was returning home from school one day. And the source was some old man painting the wall of a random house.

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Until next week.

Self appraisal - Week 4

So, we finally arrive at the fourth week of the journey - at least by the standards here. This post was supposed to go up by Sunday night, but it got delayed cos of the fact that I started writing it only today. Silly reason I believe.

So, it's April, and it's the time of the year where everyone looks forward to - cos the INCREMENT is coming. Not for me though. This annual roller coaster I had experienced for three years in the private sector has been replaced by a more continual, sedate stream. Despite this, the process of self appraisal has not been done with.

But I'm not here to disclose my achievements for the past year. I'm trying to tie this post back to the first one in this series which was posted one month back. In that, I had mentioned that to force me to change, I am going to keep track of my reading and writing schedule by means of papers stuck to my front door - so that it can always remind me of my (lack of) progress.

Let's review shall we. In the writing panel, there are after this one, four entries. So it fits the once a week criteria - though last two weeks posts were two days late and last week's post was really written in 2014, and left in the drafts. The only reason why I'm writing this is cos I couldn't find anything coherent in the drafts.

In the reading panel, there are three entries - the last of which is 23rd March. Which means I've not only failed to meet my target of reading every other day, but also failed to read anything over the past three weeks.

In another panel, I had written all the major chores I had to complete as on 20th March - 7 in number. 3 have been completed and one has become obsolete now. So not that good of a showing again.

If you were to read the last three paragraphs, and to rate me, I'm not highly confident of achieving a high rating. But therein lies the issue with our system - terming a period as different shades of good, bad or average with respect to preconceived notions.

As far as I see, my self appraisal would term this period as "significant improvement". While in the four week prior to this, I had read nothing, written nothing and all 7 of those chores were still pending, by starting this habit, I was indeed able to register significant progress.

It depends on the apt choice of the reference. If I had chosen a four week period from my teenage, then I would have fared really bad in reading. If I had chosen a four week period from two years back, I would have had bombed in writing. If I had chosen a four week period from... wait.. I was always this bad with chores.

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Until next week.

Hopefully Sunday. ;)