F.R.I.E.N.D.S.

The title of this post is sure to make you think of "FRIENDS" - the TV Series. Wonderful Series, eh? Absolutely. Awesome characters and great humour. Brilliantly written, brilliantly executed. Every episode is a masterpiece. Lots of emotions that the characters go through, throughout the series, but they still manage to tickle your funny bone. So much so that, they make you wish.. wish that your life was the same. And if half the reason for that is the way the series has been scripted, the other half would be that it is about "Friends".

Afterall, who wouldn't want a bunch of great friends around them. I definitely would. It would be so exciting. I would have some great stories to share with my kids and their kids. But alas, my life never felt as special as in the series.

No wonder, when I look back at my life today, I don't really have some great episodes to share. I mean, if you have done some adventurous or uber-crazy stuff, you would have something to share. And my life has been "extraoridnarily ordinary". But I don't love Joey and Co. for doing anything adventurous. What, then, sets them apart? What makes them special? One answer is, they are such "characters" (if you understand what I mean) that they make very lovable characters on screen. And the other answer for it would be, their life has been documented.

TRUE. And that's the sad part I realised when I looked back at my life. My life already had most of the FRIENDS' characters. I had already met Joeys, Chandlers, Rosses, Phoebes, Rachels or my sweet-heart Monica. But why do I still wish that my life was as good as the TV Series. I have two reasons for this well.

First would be, we just live life, we don't LIVE life. Worth mentioning here would be Ezekiel's (in the movie, Sex Drive) comments about the Amish people, "Sometimes I just miss the world. You know, I miss sarcasm. It's mostly lost on my people. And gambling."

And second would be, my life hasn't been documented. Because if it was, I'm sure it would have been as good as FRIENDS. There have been good days and bad days, but everyday there has always been something to be happy about. While we enjoy that instant, we don't care to remember it. We meet some very interesting people in our lives who we grow very attached to, but soon wander and meet someone else. And thus, God's greatest gift to Man, is also his greatest curse - Imperfect memory. If only we had trained our mind to weed out the sad episodes much more quickly and keep the happy memories forever. But almost always, its the other way round.

Let me try recollecting the names of all my "best buddies". During my schooling in Delhi, my life could be spelled as BAVA (Balaji, Aakash, Vikash and Akshay) at school or as S (for Sveta) at home. They were people I hanged out with every single day. Back in Hyderabad, it would be JATAPS (Jiddu, Adi, Theju, Aravind "Warrior", Pallav and Sriram) for a couple of years and then probably, PJ-MAS2TheC (Parrot, Jiddu, Makhi, Adi, Sriram, Sharan, Theju, Choudhury). And those school-bus journeys with ASK (Arvind, Sai Kiran and Kalyan). They were the people I hanged out with most, outside of the school and we were all Badminton-Cricket buddies too. Intermediate definitely was my best time, cause I only had fun. There was very little that I did outside of it. And my best buddies then were (K)RAANKSS (Kinnera, Rajeev, Amit, Amar, Nikhil, Kishore, Santosh and Siddharth).

IIT was a special place. During those 4 years, everyone lived life like one big family. Difficult to even mention so many names here but some of the closest of the closest family members were: H2MC2KT (Harish, Harsha, Manu, Chandu, Chinny, Kailash, TP). If I wasn't in my room, which was generally the case, I was at one of their rooms. And there have been numerous times when I would stay 24 hrs straight in one of their rooms even though mine was just next door. And IIT life wouldn't have been worth it if it wasn't for TRANSC-TV (Tapasya, Raj, Akon, Nalgonda, Singla, Chinny, TP, Vamsy). Not to forget the online "chat" friends - SAM (Sonal, Aisha and Madhu).

While all these years are only blurred in my mind, I remember the last one year, very clearly. It was so wonderful, I have already written a post about it. First 6 months could only be spelled as MANGPART-V (Madan, Amita, Nikhil, Golu, Pigy, Athni, Rahul, Tassu, Vamsi) and the next 3 months as TRTP (Tassu, Rachna, Tajji, Pratibha). In all my life, I have never felt as lonely as I felt April to June when I changed my priorities and placed Work before Life. It didn't take long for my company to tell me it was a bad choice. And all this time, I can't remember of anyone whom I spoke to regularly except P (Pratibha).

So except for a couple of friends, I can't really say I'm in touch with anyone I met more than an year ago. And since July, I have been more in the Party mood. So, I have met a lot of new people but am yet to see how many would become my close friends.

My Love Life - Quote

Every girl I ever liked was either "elder to me, married or already taken" and in light of the recent developments, "is a lesbian".

LUCK

I have just come back from watching the movie LUCK. A different kind of a plot but executed very badly with exceptionally bad acting. None of the characters made any sense to me, from Aisha-Natasha to Ram to Raghavan. And the "Grand-finale" was the mega-bomb to take away whatever little thrill, No! curiousity, the rest of the movie had managed to arouse in you. The script has few scenes which do not seem to fit into the normal flow of the movie but these are beautifully connected later on in the Hollywood-inspired kind of way. Except that once you have knotted together all the loose ends, you feel like "This wasn't worth it." Bottomline - If it were the work of a amateur, I would say good try but needs loads of improvement. Otherwise, UTTER CRAP. And you definitely are lucky if you haven't watched it.

But what did catch my attention was the concept. I am still wondering, do such people exist? Can anybody have such luck? I do know a few people who are very lucky but I am pretty sure all of them only have their heart in the right place (you would understand this if you have watched the movie). And if this movie even breaks-even, then we will have to call the Producer, Moussa, for getting away with something as bad as this. If I had my way, I would want to... forget it!

If we take the word LUCK literally, even I could be termed lucky, for I always seem to carry (Bad) Luck in my pocket everytime. Infact, I have something like the Sadim's (from Midas) touch - everything I touch turns into dung. And it works better than ever, in the case of girls. Every girl I ever liked was either "elder to me, married or already taken" and in light of the recent developments, "or is a lesbian".

And your rating is...

Finally, I have a Guest Blog. This is from one of my very close friends, Paheli. It's clear he was very frustrated when he wrote this but below is the post just as he wrote it.

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Whenever I am experiencing anything new I get very excited about it. Nothing unusual about it. But if, god-forbid, something is not PERFECT about it, I get inspired to write about it. Scream and tell the world, "Look, how wrong they are". No wonder, I criticse girls so much. (Although I say girls in general, I only intend to criticize only the stereotypes.)

Coming back, I have finished my first ever appraisal in a company. And I haven't been really impressed by it. Infact, I have been heavily disappointed by it. So, I thought I should voice my opinion immediately. And almost instantly after having decided to write this post, I had the every sentence framed up in my mind. And this is how it goes:

Location and Cast: A closed-room packed with a lot of Managers, Vice-Presidents, etc. Put differently, all the guys who call the shots in their respective projects/domains. But most of them are scared to even open their mouth here (unlike anywhere else) because, in the room are also BIGGER people than them (hierarchically). Also in the crowd are some noisy class of people. People who want to voice their opinion, even when they have none. And not to forget the FCPs (where MCP stands for Male Chauvinistic Pigs).

Procedure: A slide is brought up with an employee's details. Then, ideally, a constructive discussion must go on to discuss how well the employee has performed over the year and where all he/she can improve.

Scenario 1: If the employee's progress over the year has only been average, then he/she is immediately awarded "Average" and somebody calls out, "NEXT !!!". Everyone has only one thing on their minds, "Lets get all this done quickly. It's tiring."

Scenario 2: In the cases when the "somebody" on the slide has proven himself above the rest, everybody is silent at first. This is because everybody is waiting for one of the BIGGEST guys or the biggest mouths to speak first.

Scenario 2.1: If one of the BIG guys says, "I know him. We both get along well. I expect he would have done a good job on the project as well." And immediately, the Project Manager jumps in with, "Ofcourse, how could he not have done great on the project." And everyone agrees with whatever the BIG guy proposes.

Scenario 2.2: If instead, the discussion had started out as, "I hardly know him. How did he do in all the aspects." Then it would depend on how many BIG mouths are there to speak for him. And if he/she happened to be in the good books of a BIG mouth, or someone who is himself in the good books of a BIG guy, consider him/her to be rated "Exceptional". Else, it will understood to be written in his Development Needs, that "Need to do more NETWORKING".

Scenario X: This scenario is rated 'X' because it is special. The speciality of this scenario is rooted in the very definition of "Relativity" and its ineffectiveness in rating people. I say this because what if more than 10% of the group had done a great job and proven themselves "Exceptional" on the Absolute scale...

So, this is what you are supposed to learn from the way Appraisals are done...

1) NETWORKING is important. We have always heard this, haven't we? But we only never understood its significance. What it really means is, "At the end of the day, what is important is - Who all know you? So, leave an impression on everyone you meet.. and meet a lot of people"

2) TEAM WORK - Apart from networking you are supposed to believe in Team Work... So leave the work for your team.. It's not only you, I have heard this PJ before as well... Except that, only now can I see where it originated from and also realised that it's not a PJ..

The post I intended to write on Appraisals in companies ends here... It was meant to be an exaggerated view of showing where we were lacking perfection...

But before I got to writing this post, over some coffee-break discussion with colleagues and friends, I realised I wasn't exaggerating as much as I had thought I was... Although the blog as a whole is an exaggeration, but it is still true. In the sense that, each of the scenario's did take place in someone or the other's case..

While I was happy that my exaggerated prediction (if you could call it so) was proving out to be true, I was also heavily disappointed about the same.. And overall, I was more disappointed than I had reason to be happy.. The whole cause of an Appraisal was lost :(

Paheli

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And this is where the Guest Blog ends

Our Roads and Us

In about an year of driving to and fro my office, I have only seen one accident happen and fortunately or unfortunately, I never saw it Live. I only arrived on the scene about an hour late. But this week alone, two incidents took place.

Incident 1:

I was on my way to the office, as usual on my bike. Then along the way I saw a huge crowd at the side of the road. There were even people who had climbed the divider to get a glimpse of what had happened (such a thing can happen only in India). As I crawled through the inevitable traffic jam, I saw a couple of people who were bent double and they had long bamboo sticks in their hand. I noticed that the ends of the sticks were damaged a little. There seemed to have been a lot of beating that took place. Further there was a bike standing nearby with its seat removed. And everyone was looking on the ground. I strained myself a little - stood on my toes, bent sideways - to get a glimpse of whatever/whoever it was the crowd was lost in but I could get a glimpse of neither a body nor blood. I crossed the scene of the incident, parked my bike at the side and asked somebody who was coming out from the crowd, "What happened?", and he replied, "Snake".

Incident 2:

This incident happened just the day after the previoud incident took place. I reached a junction and noticed that the traffic was stagnant. Nobody was moving. Rather everybody had tried to move and got into the way of someone else. The result - Something similar to the pic below.

(this pic has been flicked from Hindu.com)

Everyone was stuck behind someone else in a circular kind of a fashion. Taking full advantage of being on a bike, I weaved my way through the traffic in what could have been the longest route to cover 25 m. Then I noticed what could have triggered the congestion. There was dust all over the road and half the road was blocked by some large object. Whatever it was, had fallen on the left side of the road causing some amount of damage to the one-room, tiny shops alongside the road. And the object was nothing but a, lorry. A lorry carrying dugged earth had overturned and fallen on its side blocking half the road. I couldn't even imagine how such a large, slow-moving vehicle with a full-load at the back manage to overturn. And this proves, that "IMPOSSIBLE" isn't a word in the dictionaries of Indians. It also justifies the love we have towards Physics laws-defying stunts in our movies.