Gardtners Paradise

As I walk through the lobby where I swear on my pains,
I take a glance at my buddy and realize he's disdain
But that's just perfect for workers like me
You know, we shun fancy things like publicity
At 4:30 in the morning I'm writing codes
Gopi prepares the streams and Motu ploughs
Fool And I've been codin and workin so long
That even the guard thinks that my mind is gone
I am a man too bland, I'm into discipline
Got E-Miner Guide in my hand and a beard on my chin
We've been spending most our lives Living in Gartdners paradise
We smile and data cries Living in Gartdners paradise
It's hard work and sacrifice Living in Gartdners paradise
Our work gets sold at discount price Living in a Gartdners paradise
An interviewer kicked me in the butt last week
I just smiled at him and I turned the other cheek
I really don't care, in fact I wish him well
Cause I'll be working my head off or would be burning in this hell
But I ain't never punched my C'Rater' even if he deserved it
A worker with an attitude? You know that's unheard of
I never make ppts but I got a good slogging nack
And my buddies agree I really dont hag
If you come to visit us you'll be bored to tears
We haven't havent made a ppt in almost 2 years
But we ain't really quaint, so please don't point and stare
We're just creatively impaired
There's no ppt, no ATM Not a single creativity
Like the culture of Harappa It's as primitive as can be
We've been spending most our lives Living in Gartdners paradise
We're just plain and simple guysLiving Gartdners paradise
There's all the time for sin and vice Living in Gartdners paradise
We don't fight, we all play nice Living in Gartdners paradise

Basti Mein Masti

This post is dedicated to a dumb'hh' yet smart,omnipotent,omnipresent and omniscient Manager babu who manges everything except himself and his work. What does he manage then is the question that comes to our minds..Well the answer lies in this post.


Jokes apart,for only sometime though, Basti is neither a 'Kasba' nor a'e' small(read as iss maal) town, its a strategic darohar to which our manager Babu belongs.


Its been my childhood dream to be a like one of the famous riders on the storm,but don't see it coming true in the near future too. But for our manager babu this dream came true some years back when he drove from Basti to walterganj,and from their to Khalilabad on his way back to Basti passing through Dubaulia(pronounce: Dooba Lia) and Hariaya.



With a red ghamcha tied over his forehead just like the famous head bands of 70's and a yellow muffler draped round his neck their was no one stopping his twin cylinder 120 cc rajdoot (jaandaar saawaari ek shandaar sawari) except for the railway fataks. He tried jumping over a few of them (to be precise two),but the results were not great. In the first attempt he landed in a tube well and in the other landed straight on the iron pole(Ouch! that must have hurt).

Anyway lets not take the glory away from our hero as he biked around in 'Tour-De-UP' singing to himself -:

'Riders on the staarm,

Riders on the staarm,

Into this house were baarn,

Into this world were thrown,

Like a dog without a bone,

An actor out on loan,

Riders on the staarm'

Having tried all the available hair styling gels,sprays and aeils(oils) he is still to be really satisfied with one that holds his hair tight throughout the day,in his words,'Jakdan achi honi chaiye,Majboot pakad honi chaiye'..the only solution he says he thinks would help him get it right was the one that was sprayed by a cast in 'Something about Mary'..Can you guys help him on this..

This guy as got a great business sense..If it were not to his haart aches making him write his ali money he would have re-scripted the story of Indian banking Industry. Some of his current achievments are -:

a) Leading a team of 4 people two of whom quit after 4 mnths and cannot be traced ever since . Reports claim that one of them felt that it was better to live like an animal(at Ranthambore National Park) than work under Manager babu and the other is so caught in the ire of revenge that she plans to become an IPS and book him under virtually every section of Indian Law..

b) Setting up ATMS : After failing to manage MBA graduates our Manager babu has been able to manage 2000 labor spread over 200 locations. All of them were motivated to finiss(h silent) the job as quickly as possile. The results are splendid. None of the new ATMS work. The bank gains from the customers usng other bank ATMs. This according to Manager Babu was his strategee.. well done..but I hope he's not given the task of opening bank branches as that would be deadly..

c) Identying appartunity that no one else thought of.One of them that I remember well and had taken me aback was the idea of mountain climbing on weekdays. the logic was it gave us an edge over our competitors. Are you dumbhh..can't you understand..you'll be at the top bhai..

I'll come back tomorrow with the Beer part of the story..Stay connected!

The Tale of Two Marwaris-Part I

Marwaris refer to a community of entrepreneurs who originally belonged to Rajasthan, particularly, regions of Marwar and Jodhpur; and certain other adjoining areas. The community of Marwaris originally belonged to certain specific pioneer social groups, which included -:

Agarwals(Mittal, Killa, Birla, Jatia, Khetan, Mour etc)
Maheshwaris (Sodhani,Mundhra , Bajaj, Somani, Biyani, Taparia)
Oswals (Kankaria,Bengani, Bothra, Baid, Kothari, Bhansali , Giria)
Khandelwals (Sarawagi etc)

The ones highlighted are the two breeds that these two Marwaris belonged too.

The bank was on a growth path and hence recruitment was on a high even for cost centers,like the one that I worked in. This recruitment brought in many people but two of them were very different from the others .The only difference being that one was an Agarwal and the other an Oswal.

Mr Agarwal was a perfect salesman and from the first time I interacted with him I felt 'what is he doing out here,he should be their in the market selling apples and pears'.On the other hand Mr Oswal resembled a pot bellied 'halwai' who had been told to wear a shirt on his way from the sweetshop to the bank.

Mr Ags(blame it on England to get me in a habit of cutting names short) was a true megalomaniac. His holiday plans would be of 30 day trip through Europe in a personal jet liner which included stopping on the way at Ibiza,enjoying the finest wines in the French Breweries,relaxing in Slovakians hot water baths,mingling around with the Swedish beauties and then sleeping in the royal bedrooms of the Queen's palace. By the time he ended we would have seen it all..but the pilot of this imaginary jet liner would always break our dream shouting ' get back to work you bastards',and so we would all get out of it with a jolt. But Mr. Ags never got this jolt ,maybe because he wasn't dreaming!

Mr Oswal on the other hand was a true Marwari. He would walk back home to save 20 rupees,withdraw the minimum amount that the ATM could vend and always ask me with a baffled look on his face 'Why doesn't the ATM dispense coins?'. He was a true believer in maximising utility when things came cheap and minimising it when it came at a price. A true believer of 'free lunches' which most Eco Grads wish to be this guy went a step ahead and practised 'free snacks' along with 'free lunches'.Had the Bank served dinner too then it would have got extended a step further.

Both of them had their own dreams,their own set of objectives and a path they had drawn that would lead them to achieve them.

Mr Ags was never going to be satisfied with the job he was given. Given the kind of plans he made he should have been recruited right below the CEO as the CDDO or the 'Chief Day Dreaming Officer', with a special mention of the fact that 'rest of us just cant beat him on that'.
Such were his plans that his colleagues listened to him carefully till he spoke about anything but work, Yet,he was confident of giving his plans a true shape if not in this creepy bank then somewhere else.

Mr Oswal was a result oriented person who believed that the mantra for success lied neither in hard work nor in intelligence but in your luck which in his word was 'Babu,kaam karne se aaj tak kisi ka khuch nahi hua,Sab Mathe kaa Lakeer Mein hai'. Having said that he would gave me company when I worked late in office listening music on his 'Desi' i-Pod while munching either peanuts or pop corns.

Aren't they different but they had one thing in common.They wanted to make the maximum money in the shortest time and that was the all important node that brought them close to each other. We roamed around together and as i started to loose my interest in working for the Bank which these two Gentlemen had lost one week post their recruitment we started to spend more 'quality' time together.

Shift in to Shift Out Part II

I was finally into my apartment. It had been a long 'adventurous' day and I wanted to end it as soon as possible so I made my way into the bedroom to sleep. There was no fan in the room and presumably so as the house was supposed to have an AC. As I switched on the AC a whole lot of dust and waste flew onto my face. I couldn't have imagined an AC doing that and on closer inspection realised that the 'gadget' hanging out of the back wall wasn't an AC but an old,rusted cooler. Things through out the day had made me feel miserable and this made me furious with anger. I dialled in my landlord's number and had to listen to 2 minutes of 'gurubani' before she answered my call.

Working in a bank had made me used to hearing pick up responses like 'hi there','hello','hey how are you' or if not these then the courteous voice mail messages. However the landla'n'dy picked up the phone and said 'Oye,kya hua tujhe,ghar kee chath gir gayi kya jo 10 baje phone kar raha hai'..I was awestruck ,but soon realised nothing like what she said had happened. I told her why I had called to which she replied saying' People of your generation are too used to the comforts of life..you take everything by what it means to you..what I meant by an AC was an Air Cooler and not Air Conditioner'...she added that the cooler needs to be fed in water before switching it on and that the pipe that leads water into it was at Mrs Chandana's(another Lioness) who had gone to her son's place in Kanedaa(Canada). Before putting the phone down she said that she had a spare table fan at her place and she could lend it to me. I thanked her for the favour and said it would be great if she could do so.

Was this day ever going to end? I called up one of friend's who lived near this place and decided to go to his place to sleep. Finally here I was sleeping in a living room with two fans rotating above me at max rpm.

The next morning I called up my Boss to tell him that I had some work to do and would be late to office.The "work" I had to do was to sort things out with the property agent. A meeting was set up for 7 that evening between me the property agent and the landlord to clear all our doubts and answer all my miseries.

On reaching office i realised that my good friend 'Mr Radio' had told virtually everyone from my super boss to the cleaning staff,everyone had the smirk on the face and sympathy in the eyes which simply meant i was the holy cow to be put on the line of laughter and jokes. Having said this and experienced it too i was waiting for the clock to tick 7 PM.

Finally the time came and for a change all the concerned parties were on time. The landlady was clad in a shinning blue suit(I was wondering if she had come straight from a round of 'Giddha' practice) and was wearing a broad smile on her face. The property agent,Mr. Timmy was busy switching between his three cell phones,saying 'excuse me' every 5 seconds to answer the phone calls. Well,finally my landlady broke her silence and told Mr. Timmy to switch off his cell phone and the tone in which she said it made him actually switch them off.

The problems were getting answered,just like those of farmers in a drought hit state or of people in a flood relief camp. After around 15 minutes of trouble shooting in which I was promised an AC which was to be an Air Conditioner,one time cleaning of the apartment and Gas and telephone connections within a week Mr. Timmy thanked us both for our time.

As we all moved out of the apartment we saw two towering personalities standing right in front of us. I didn't knew them and so I think didn't Mr. Timmy,however the landlady did know them.
She greeted them but they were not their to share our smiles. To start with without saying a word one of them slapped Mr Timmy and the other asked the landlady that how could she rent out that place to me. What followed was an extended session of abuses all in their Bhangra language. The lions were roaring but the old lioness was also not to give up that easily and the fox(Mr. Timmy) was sitting in the other corner of the room waiting for the axe to fall over his neck.

Finally the growls became less nosier,the lioness snarled for the very last time and then the herd of lions turned around to get hold of the lone fox. After this wild African safari thee conclusion was that I had to vacate the den and the fox had been ordered to payback the rent,deposit and security within half an hour. In the mean time I was told to pack up!

Shift In to Shift Out-Part I

Yeah that's what happened after I finally found a place to live in Andheri! The search had finally resulted in me deciding to move into a apartment in a society which by the name of it sounded as if it was the name of a rare variety of lions..'Sher-E-Punjab' and the growl of this lion'ness' did sweep the carpet off my feet(desc in Part II).

Anyway I moved into this 1 Bedroom apartment in this 'wild' society and the day I chose to shift was not that great. Mumbai was shut due to a Bandh called by one of the leading political party and with my landlord in my current apartment standing over my head I had to leave..Somehow I managed to find a lorry and here I was out of my ever so bright and beautiful apartment. Everything seemed to be fine,till the lorry stopped with a sudden jolt and on listening to the driver's conclusion that some bloody part had broken down I looked up to the sky and said 'WHY ME?'..

Here I was exactly half way between my previous apartment and the new accommodation with all my belongings loaded in a lorry that won't move even an inch..However a ray of hope came in the form of a tractor trolley and we(me,the driver of the lorry and two helpers) basked in the light. The tractor rides seem so much fun when you see Shahrukh and Priety in a romantic song,but trust me they are not. With the monsoon clouds over your head and humidity at ts peak with everyone passing you looking out as if they had seen an extinct mammal all you can think is 'bas 5 minute aur'..

Finally here I was outside my new apartment ,please note 'outside' cos there I was for almost 3 hours with my fridge on my right and the TV,DVD and suitcases on my left. The keys of the house were unavailable and after approximately 10 calls to the property agent in which I heard all possible caller tunes from 'Careless whispers' to 'Tutak tutak tutiya'..the property agent finally answered my call and said he would be their with the keys in 10 minutes. Not to state that he did come after a hour and the keys came after 3 hours. I finally moved in and before leaving the lorry driver who had been ever so patient waiting their with me all this time said ' Sahab wapas shift hona ho to phone kar dena..utha lenge samaan'

Out of' Box Office'

Trust me we weren't a flop team but being a member of a cost center in a sales aggressive profit centric organisation the days that you would have spent working in the head Office were always numbered. From the day we stepped in fresh from campus we heard more from our colleagues and seniors about a possible shift than about anything else.
Well finally after about 10 months we were told to roll up our LAN cables and let the hardware engineers dismantle our PCs. We were shifting to a new location,which some of us including me had never heard of. Few of my colleagues who stayed near the new office wore the brightest smiles while rest of us discussed the best options to commute. Of the various options available the best and most lucrative was to shift to Andheri.The reasons seemed logical..closer to office meant a lot of time saved commuting,less time spent in traffic jams and with a few multiplexes coming up in the adjoining areas the opportunities of entertainment on weekends were not one to be doubted about.

However this meant that going to Bandra would be a 'distant' dream and having got used to crossing a subway and marching my way into the 'queen' of Suburban Mumbai I had second thoughts about moving to Andheri. Totally confused as i am always, yet more. The topic of discussion in every forum at office was either on grievances on being treated like a step kid thrown into the darkness of 'Andhera'ee or regarding opportunities elsewhere. While the gossip market was boiling with emotional temperatures soaring I was busy looking for a place to live in Andheri to which i never wanted to shift. Yet,as I cannot remember the last time I did what I wanted to do I went on a full scale house search in Andheri.

On the other hand my flatmate got transferred to Delhi and after bidding him farewell,here I was alone in a 2 bedroom apartment. Calculations were on regarding how much I would save,how much would I spend,blah blah,but the truth still remained I did not want to shift....