Caesarean Rhapsody

Yesterday, a good friend got hit on the head. A Mangalore Roof Tile (Elxsi has tried to maintain the Portuguese look of it's first development centre) hit him above the right temple. Unaware of this he kept walking with the rest of us, when one of us spotted the blood. The wound was bleeding profusely and before he knew, his shirt sleeve was drenched. We rushed to hold him up since he fainted at the mere sight of it. A few girls around the corridor screamed as if they got a whiff of a skunk's hindside. One of them ran into the cafeteria (which I later realized was in search of some Savlon) Mind you this person is a 6'3" gigantic Puneri and at around 100+ kgs. he was more than a handful for us 2 shorties. We managed to seat him on a sofa in the reception and dabbed a Savlon soaked cotton on his wound. The girl promptly made a old-style pankhaa out of a newspaper. I remember seeing a faint smile on the bugger's face at that instance!!! Anyhow, we stuffed him into a van and drove him to the nearest hospital. As we were approaching the car, we had to shove a lot of people to clear the way, which included my HR. She got almost blown away by the way I snapped. And later she had no complaints, as she personally came up to me and asked about the hurt dude. Aaah, the bliss of it all!!!
Ok, back at the hospital he was getting dressed by the oh, so beautiful final year medical student. God bless the nurses for having taken an early lunch break. Since my colleague was almost unconscious I had to do some form filling and that's where the problem occured. They needed the father's name and address of permanent residence, which of course a big question mark. Puns apart, I found myself fumbling with my cellphone, calling the HR department and getting all the details of this fellow, who I had met but 4 months back. The nurse arrived and gave me a list of painkillers to be purchased. I went to the pharmacy outside where I found a long queue. Although my friend wasn't in a life-n-death situation, my patience wouldn't allow me to stand in a queue, that too on an uncharacteristically hot December afternoon. The only solace was the chicks from the medical college run by the same trust as the hospital. When it was my number the man across the counter gave me an uninterested look and figured I wasn't a local from my request (which was obviously in hindi). He almost tore the paper with the pull of his snatching action. "Aaram se bhaiyya!" I growled under my breath. He went about his chore. What I found extremely annoying was that this dude was looking at the list as if he had never seen those medicine names before. He used to stand in front of the rack as if staring into space then pull out a box and then replace it. I finally lost my nerve and snapped at him "Kya pehle kabhi dekha nahin kya. Ibuprufen aur amoxicyllin hi to hain!!" He looked at me in the most constipated way and said, "Haii knhow what you whant!!!" (The 'h' (hetch) is crucial to the exact pronunciation). Finally he handed me over the stuff which I paid for and left. The doctor arrived by then and he gave him an injection in each arm. We realized it was 2 hours since the lunch hour was over and decided to hurry back. So we stuffed the bruised guy into the van and returned to the place we call office. Once there, we were flocked by curious (ahem) girls (double ahem). We, especially I, felt like Bruce Willis alighting from the spaceship in Armageddon. Of course there were tales to tell, albeit nothing as dramatic as a space rescue mission. A scratch on the head, that too in an IT company, now that 'is' something!!!

Here is a complete list of Haddock's abuses, sorted by the book. The person hosting this site must be major Tintin, or rather Captain Haddock fan.

This guy is the soul of Tintin comics if you ask me. Zimbly too good!!!!

I represented Tata Elxsi at the SOS Corporate Quiz on Saturday. The HR at the company had a small quiz to filter out 2 teams. Didn't know that my company had so many avid quizzers. Almost everyone who came, seemed to know more than I did. Finally the legacy of COEP Boat Club quizzing made a difference and I, along with 3 others were shortlisted. I paired up with Keetri L N from DSP group for the final showdown.

The main event was at the ITC Windsor Manor Sheraton. The same hotel where Pushpak was shot and believe me it's much better than what we see in the movie. All the wings and floors are named after British lords and their wives, the architecture being heavily Victiorian. Somehow Bangalore has a fixation with naming stuff after the Brits. Anyhow getting back to the event, the organizers SOS and Vakil Housing were introduced. The quizmaster Movin Miranda is a well known figure in Indian quizzing. The guy was the quizzing sensation when I was probably romping around in my diapers and bib. There were teams from biggies like Motorola, Infy, Satyam, Oracle, Wipro, CGI, Mphasis, O&M, HP, Texas Instruments, Intel, ICICI Bank. But we held a big grudge against the organizers for allowing college guys to participate in a corporate quiz. Anyways, I later realized we were being kiddish, trying to run away from competition and somehow managed to convince my partner the same. On the inside I felt a tinge of fear for the aforementioned companies have all got teams who are regulars at corporate quizzing, here in Bangalore. But somehow, our stars were really shining bright that day and we got 23 answers correct out of 35 in the elims. The cut off was at 18 (Ogilvy & Mather).

In the finals, we had a slow start. Rather, out of the eight rounds, we were absolutely scoreless for the first 6 rounds. The score keeper was having a gala time announcing our score with a hint of mischief. He even said "Tata Elxsi seem to be waiting for a mahoorat to open their account." It felt absolutely ludicrous to be sitting there on the stage with better answers coming from the audience. In the 6th round Keerti got one right, putting a handsome(?) 10 points against our name. Before the final round the scorekeeper again quipped, "Although they can't win from the position they are in right now, Elxsi will be happy to be able to exit with some grace." I still don't know what connotation of 'grace' did he intend.

The final round was a theme based one. There was a central theme which was to be identified based on some clues to be found during the round. There were 6 questions, the answers to which would share a common thing between themselves. The standings at this point were

1. Motorola (80)
2. IIM-1 (75)
3. IIM-2 (40)
4. Ogilvy & Mather (40)
5. Mphasis (30)
6. Tata Elxsi (10) (that's us)

The gamble was that if we could identify the theme after the very first question was answered the team would get 50 points, after the second question 40 points and so on. We could however lose 20 points for a wrong answer at any point. O&M got the first question right. Their question was "The members of the British parliament had called a strike as a protest when the Order of the British Empire was conferred upon whom?" The answer was The Beatles. I promptly wrote it down. The next answer "Jacques Chirac" came from the 2nd IIM team lying 3rd. This was where my days at BCQC helped me. The theme was clear and often used in Pune quizzing circuit. It had to be "Real people to have appeared in Asterix Comics". I raised my hand immidiately attracting the quizmaster's attention. I wasn't alone though. The IIM at 2nd position had also got it right. When the quizmaster announced that we both would get the points, we thought he'd split the 40 points, still leaving us at the bottom of the heap. But when I looked at the score board, it showed 50 against Elxsi which was now the 3rd highest score. The next direct was ours. We got it right and steered clear from any danger of being overtaken by any other team. We were so excited that both of us jumped out of our seats for a high 5 and waved at the second team of Satyajit and Gaurav who had also gone hysterical in the last pew.

It was a big upset and everyone congratulated us during the photo session that ensued the prize distribution. Our team also won the best team name award. We called ourselves "Locked Stocks & 2 Smoked Out Squirrels", a name that I had suggested when I partnered Siddharth Natrajan in college quizzes.

It was when I entered the office and a deluge of mails hit my inbox, that I realized the importance of our success. It was a precedent for the company, which enthused the others to take up this activity. The Head of HR has asked us to have regular quizzes so that we can build more teams to send to such events, which are no doubt prestige issues when company profile comes into question.

Anyhoo, the bottomline is…..I'm elated! I'm proud!! O' Hell, I'm so many things at the same time!!! Go Elxsi….Go BCQC !!

• when someone treats you like a kid just because you look younger than your age suggests
• when some two-face, no good, colleague steals an opportunity from you
• when you see people finding their calling at job or in life, while you don't know what the hell you were doing till date
• when you have to reluctantly gulp the crap they serve in the company cafeteria
• when people in other companies or departments can find better jobs (mo' money, honey) while you have to worry about a stupid bond that you signed with your firm
• when someone takes you for granted
• when no one other than you listens to rock in the entire company
• when some stupid colleague comes up to you and raves about the latest remix in which a model is bursting out of her clothes
• when everyone around you seems to be busy while you sit at you computer typing nonsensical words

I seem to be getting a lot of work done these days. Here's all I accomplished today:

1. Got rid of the skink. Followed it around while the housekeeping boys at Elxsi poked it out of hiding and drove it out.
2. Paid my mobile phone bill. Had a lot of issues to settle with the guys at Airtel. Thought today was a nice day to let out all the acerbity I was holding back.
3. Put up a link to a blog dedicated to Pune Times. You can now visit "A Cruel Waste of Forests" from the link that sits right at the top of the blogroll.
4. The MS applications continue to amble on. As the deadlines close in, it's time to run the final checks before I submit my applications. Darn these US universities. Can't they have a better system of admission installed?

A not so pertinant fact to part with. When I was studying for GRE I read that cubicle is a small chamber generally used for sleeping. I think I'll be taking things more literally for the rest of the afternoon

Adios, amigos.

There's a small lizard in my cubicle. God knows where it came from. But it's been disturbing me since I arrived in office. I saw it the moment I put my bag down. Right on top of my calvin poster on the softboard. It's been sitting right there for the past 2 hours. Unmoved, unfazed by my attempts to shoo it away. It simply won't budge. I am therefore sitting at an uncomfortable distance from the table. Every little sound startles me. Every now and then my eyes quickly glance at the poster, tracking every small action of this mini-monster……argh I hate this!!!!

After a long time at Tata Elxsi, I feel like I have actually worked for what the company pays me!!! According to me work would be when I do some productive activity for the company 3/4th of the time I am in office. I was in my cubicle for around 11 hrs and 46 minutes yesterday. Was working hard at a problem haunting the team for the last two weeks. The hours just seemed to pass me by. No polling the mailbox to check if someone had mailed in the last 30 seconds, no firing up the browser to see if someone had left a comment on the blog, no excuses to stretch and relax my limbs or gulping down oodles of coffee with Marlboro Lights the entire day. Past week and yesterday have been extremely productive and the feeling’s exhilarating….or in Dilbert parlance empowering!!!

Today's the day that saw the birth of a poet. A man who rocked the music scene through the 70s. His controversies kept him not only on top of the charts but also endeared him to every rocker. his psychedelic style will be remembered for years to come. Ladies and Gentlemen, Mr. Mojo Rising or more popularly Jim Morrison from The Doors

Sadly, the day also saw the departure of another great man in the same industry. Shot by a maniac outside a hotel on 8th December 1980, he succumbed to his injuries two days later. This bespecktacled guy stole the heart of many-a-girl with his mop-top buddies. Most of his songs, with the band as well as solo, went on to achieve platinum status. Their song "Yesterday" is the song with the maximum number of cover versions in the world. A legendary singer and humanitarian, who can ever forget John Winston Lennon.

Every year Ten Downing Street in Pune has a party to mark these two events on the 10th of December. I had promised myself I'd attend this bash at least when I start paying my own expenses. But as things go, I can't physically attend. But through the music I intend to live up the memories of these two Gods of music. Peace!!!

I don’t know if anyone has ever pondered so hard on the points I am about to enumerate. But to me they seemed important nonetheless. I would expect a huge lot of flames after I post this, but I couldn’t care lesser. Anyways, here goes.

1. If a woman says she can live without a man, she’s independent. If a man denies the need for a female counterpart, he’s labelled “gay”.
2. If a girl takes up a predominantly male job, she expects to be treated with respect. Would a girl ever date a guy who’s loves ballet or kathakali or even worse be a hair stylist?
3. If a girl respects her parents’ wishes, she’s firmly attached to her roots. If the guy listens to what his parents have to say, he’s mama’s boy.
4. If a girl dumps her boyfriend she’s moving on to better things in life, while if a boy dumps his girlfriend he’s characterless and philandering.
5. If the girl seeks a rich mate, she’s looking for security. If the guy loves a rich girl, he wants to bag the father-in-law’s cash.

Now I won’t say I ain’t biased. I am. Some even say I am a hardcore MCP. But then things were getting a bit too lop-sided these days. It is the females who are oppressed and are under-privileged, who need the banner of women’s liberation to come out and claim equivalence. Not some fucking two-bit socialite whores who need a topic to get off on a lazy sunday afternoon. What’s with all this hue and cry by some socially aware sisters (as they like to call themselves)? Oh and did I mention they all travel in their Mercedes’ and cannot be seen without their Guccis and Swarovskis. “Oh daaahling, have you seen my new Louis Vuitton Bag? Isn’t it just a cutie.” And if there’s going to be press, they’ll be sure to hang out with the hottest little enterpreneur or some other celebrity.

What’s the connection between the hags and my bullet points, you say? Well it all boils down to the all time favorite, Pune Times. Every now and then they’ll come out with some article corroborating the very points I just thrashed, with some aunty “in focus”. Every article that I have till date read in that piece of shit tabloid is how city girls are going through hard times, what should girls look for in a relationship, how girls in pune ache to be socially acceptable on consuming alcohol or smoking. What they conveniently miss out is the not-so-glossy real picture. They have no say on the alarming numbers of female infanticide victims. Nor do they have anything to share about the low education standards in most of Pune’s rural neighborhood.
I am sorry if I am hurting anyone who’s honest and truly involved in social work, but just so I get the message loud and clear to these brainless metro bitches and especially the dolts at Pune Times, here’s what I think of you….