Game of Thrones Season 4 Episode 6 Review - A Few Good Men 'GOT style'

Ever wondered about the outcome if we mix and mash the two movies, ‘Gladiator’ and ‘A Few Good Men’. Episode 6 gives us just that if not more, except that you’re rooting for the accused and hoping like hell that someone in the Jury might have a little bit of that thing the guy in ‘A Girl Next Door’ kept talking about (moral fibre, in case you’re wondering).

But let’s start from the beginning. Episode 6 kicks off with old chums Davos and Stannis arriving at the Iron Bank of Bravos through this grand entrance between the legs of a massive statue which might be a big deal to westerners, but for us has been a usual sight while entering those awesomely designed Hanuman temples right in heart of Delhi.

The trouble is that the head of the finance committee at the Iron Bank, which decides whether to sanction the loan to Stannis, happens to be Mycroft from Sherlock himself. And let’s be honest about this, people of normal intellect are not likely to stand a chance around the 250+ IQ Mycroft, leave alone these two ragged oldies whom you can only imagine cheering for West ham United in some dark and depressing British pub. In my head I could literally place Mycroft making all his deductions about these two and pretty much figuring out their entire lives without even batting an eyelid.

In any case, the entire proceeding seems to perfectly resemble a VISA interview where the applicant’s ego, morale, self-respect and dignity are carefully crucified before rejecting his/her plea. Davos tries to plead with them that Stannis is the only plausible choice they have if they ever wish to get back their gold, although I really didn’t get Davos’ rationale of ‘He’s the best choice. Hell, he even cut my fingers ensuring misery for the rest of my life. So awesome he is’.

Post this Davos heads to the bathing chambers to bring along the services of his old fellow-pirate Salladhor Saan in return for some gold in a scene reminiscent of what must have transpired when Vijay Mallya tried to buy Chris Gayle for Royal Challengers.

We move on to the rescue mission of Theon Greyjoy, or whatever is left of him, led by none other than his sweet sister Yara Greyjoy, who seems to be the future image of what Arya Stark aspires to be. I can literally imagine Arya’s prompt response on being asked by the HR interviewer ‘So, where do you see yourself 5 years from now?’ Arya: Yara Greyjoy it is, with a bit of Brienne strength.

Yara’s plans of course go horribly wrong when her brother, who by now has lost his identity and believes himself to this pleasant fellow named Reek, raises an alarm and we have a face-to-face situation between the two parties, the rescuers and the ‘let’s kill the rescuers’. To sum it up, the latter party wins with Yara bolting the scene and the castle as fast as she could, not that she really had the choice of strolling out casually considering there were a pack of hounds running after her. In an almost continuing scene our sweet twisted Ramasay gives Theon the luxury of a bath for having stayed loyal to him and reveals sinister plans for some other day. I feel bad for Theon. Although he was never really portrayed as the viewer’s favourite character, it’s really sad to see him converted to this mockery of a person. It is quite ironical how in India if someone’s penis is cut out, they hardly become this submissive and instead just start going ‘aye chkinei, shaadi ka paisa?’ (just a dark joke, relax).

Meanwhile, Daenerys has started her own version of Diwan-e-khas. The episode featured just two cases dealt by Dani Dearest and the mere thought that there were 212 more requests lined up made you realize what Kejriwal found out the hard way, that Janta durbars don’t really have a very happy ending. More so when you have 3 sweet pet dragons that time to time go on this dinner spree of wondering herds.

Back in King’s Landing, Varys seems to be filling in where Lord Baelish/ Littlefinger left and continues on their common thought of ‘let these blue-blooded stupid Royalties feel that they are running the show while we continue playing Master of Puppets with them. Muhuhaha’.

Quite frankly, Lord Varys seems to be one dangerous character and once you get over the Darren Lehman resemblance to this guy, you realize the scariest part about him is that you don’t have the slightest clue as to what he actually wants. Lord Oberryn, who really should be called Enrique Iglesias of Westeros, finds this out too in his conversation with the former.

And now coming to the final part of the episode and quite frankly the only part that mattered. Tyrion’s trial begins with Tommen recusing himself from it. Tommen, unlike the PM candidate of our currently ruling party, seems to be self-aware enough to set off and not take part in matters that he does not have the maturity to preside. This leaves us with a more reality-depicting image of Tywin on the Iron Throne with other jury members on either side. The other jury members being Mace Tyrel, essentially a white Alok Nath (incidentally he’s also Margaery’s father which makes the analogy almost too correct), and Lord Oberryn, who with his antics during the trial reminds you of that Delhi friend we all have who interrupts all your romantic stories of new relationships with ‘voh sab toh theek hai, but sex hua kya?’

Frankly the witnesses of this trial made the ones in ‘No one killed Jessica’ look more honest. Right from the vicious old fart Pycelle, who seems to be modelled on Asaram Bapu, right to the final nail in the coffin, Shae herself, but let’s get to that later.

In between the trial proceedings, after the first few witnesses and during what seemed like a recess, Jaime Lannister tries to appeal to the Sreesanth in his father and offers to strike a deal just to get his brother to live, something to which Tywin agrees after adding his million stipulations. But apparently, there was no real requirement for all that.

Some real wise person had once said ‘hell hath no fury like a woman scorned’ and boy, scorned Shae was. When I saw Shae’s testament, I really had a nervous chill down my spine and made a quick call to my girlfriend to check if all was fine post yesterday’s fight. While her reply of ‘shut up Abi, talk to you later, in office’ was not really the most romantic one a guy has ever heard, but it sort of relieved me.

Peter Dinklage’s acting skills were never really a doubt, but over the next seven minutes his acting makes the viewer go through his feelings of vulnerability, despair, betrayal, misery, resignation and finally blind fury in a manner seldom executed by television actors. If you did not pause and replay the scene where he goes ‘Watching your vicious bastard die gave me more relief than a thousand lying whores’ then you probably do not know how to pause and play on VLC. (try ‘spacebar’). His confession was so much like a positive version of ‘You Can’t Handle the Truth’, that Jack Nicholson would have nodded in acknowledgement.

I am still a little unclear on the trial by combat situation and how exactly does one go about this. If, like last time in Arryn Palace, Tyrion gets to choose his representative, then it’s not really a bad deal and I don’t get what the hullabaloo is all about. I would much rather have all my trials this way and keep choosing the Great Khali as my rep. In fact, I was even wondering why in the world Ned Stark didn’t think of this trial by combat option. As the episode ends, you wonder who will be Tyrion’s representative? Would it be Jamie Lannister, likely to get superhuman strength in his left hand fuelled by brotherly love post watching Jo Jeeta Vohi Sikander, or Tyrion’s good old ally, Bronn, who’s middle name is ‘win by hook or crook’. While we have to wait a week to find that out, the one thing we certainly do know is that Tyrion might very well go the Deewar Amitabh Bachan way and get tattoed on his arm ‘Mera baap madar**** hai.’

Game of Thrones Episode 5 review

Game of Thrones Episode 5 review

So I am little sick of the million spoilers for GOT that social media is abound with, that too without any form of Spoiler Alert* caution, which has truly led me to declare Monday as a social media avoidance day till I have caught up with the latest episode.

And I figured it’s best to follow the age old policy of ‘If you can’t beat them, join them’. So here goes the effort of trying to review the latest episode of Game of Thrones with a comical perspective. Plus, if nothing else, this will at least prevent the ass whooping I get in QuizUp (Topic GOT) against participants from pretty much everywhere in this world. Call me a racist, but it really felt sucky having lost to someone from Bangladesh.

P.S: I haven’t read the book, and am not even inclined to, since that will essentially prove to be a big clustered ball of spoilers for me. Don’t want to ruin a show I am enjoying that way. Any prediction I would be making in the course of review, would be purely from my judgement and not prior knowledge.

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The episode kick starts with the crowning ceremony of sweet little Tommen Baratheon, aka Incest Son 2, which proceeds without any complication, so much to our relief. Kid Tommen, with all his niceness, indeed feels like the male version of Daenerys Targaryen, which judging from how Westeros is for men, essentially means he will be dead by the end of the season. He even does this sweet little gesture of exchanging glances with prospective wife Margaery, which goes surprisingly well with Cersei. Cersei and Margaery even have a decent respectful conversation, which somehow I could not fathom, considering Cersei’s disdain for Margaery, courtesy the latter being a fellow conniving woman, has already been established. Probably Cersei heard of the phrase ‘Kyuki Saans bhi kabhi bahu thi’ and saw the inner Tulsi in Margaery. I really would never know.

Cersei would then go on to lobby with Tywin and subsequently Oberyn, (the 3^rd Judge for Tyrion’s fate) trying to not-so-subtly get them in favour of her view of judgement for Tyrion. At which point everyone’s inner voice shouts out “HE’S YOUR BROTHER FOR HEAVEN’S SAKE. STOP COMPENSATING FOR YOUR EXCESSIVE TWISTED LOVE FOR ONE BROTHER WITH HATRED FOR THE OTHER”.

Tywin went on to give Cersie a typical South Delhi dad-daughter lecture about how bad they are doing monetarily and how their fiscal deficit makes India’s seem like a shining story. Apparently, having enough resources and money, and still screwing up with debt has always been a white people thing. I love the references to the Iron Bank of Braavos, which seem so much like the GOT version of World Bank; giving loans here and there to essentially make countries fight amongst each other while getting them to agree to their well-thought stipulations. I can almost visualize a UNO for Westeros as well. Go Ser Ban Ki Moon.

Meanwhile, Daenerys Targaryen is put up in a dilemma to either charge at King’s landing with some recently acquired ships or stay back to free the slaves she had already freed once, but who seem to have been enslaved again. Talk about incompetent friggin people. “YAY, We’re free!! (Enter New Masters) Oh shit, not again.” Taking into consideration that her army is not there yet in terms of strength and how she has to be all righteous, she makes the second choice. Also, I don’t get why her main advisor Jorah feels that they would not be able to take over King’s Landing. She has DRAGONS for heaven’s sakes. Does he not know how awesome dragons are? If Bhutan were to have actual dragons (not the imaginary ones they currently do), they would have been capable of giving India a scare or two. Go Dani Targaria (attempted pun at an RHCP song), King’s landing is yours for the taking. Curb the Martin Luther in you, and go get it.

Littlefinger/Lord Baelish and Sansa arrive at her aunt’s (Lysa Arryn, sister of now departed Lady Stark) place, at which I was frankly a little relieved initially, because knowing Lord Baelish, god knows which ‘Sex Cave’ he could have taken her. Here we get to again see Lysa Arryn’s sweet and innocent son Robin (excessive sarcasm), who some might remember wanted to make Tyrion fly through his “Moon Door” last season. You might recall Robin has been breast-fed by his mother till an age he really shouldn't have been and seems like a miniature version of Joffrey. So when we hear of his mother’s plans of hooking up Sansa with him, you indeed feel for Sansa. The poor thing really seems to be a magnet for Twisted sadistic younglings and has managed to jump out of the frying pan right into fire.

We also get to know that apparently Lysa Arryn and Lord Baelish have been quite an item, so much so that she poisoned her husband (who was also the Hand of King before Ned Stark in the opening of Season 1) at the behest of Littlefinger, while all thought it was the Lannisters. Lysa Arryn also apparently has a libido that puts Sherlyn Chopra to shame and wants to marry Lord Baelish, something to which he agrees just so that she shut up about the poisoning of her husband. Obviously he wasn’t expecting that she would have a priest right outside the door to put that to action. Talk about not giving a man even a second for double thoughts. Lysa Arryn also promises to scream like hell when they consummate their marriage and boy, scream she did. It’s little ironical that the guy who’s causing all that screaming has been being given a nickname ‘Littlefinger’. Lisa Arryn also has a nice sweet conversation with Sansa, asking very pleasantly if she had been impregnated by Littlefinger. Such a normal aunt-niece conversation. And to think of it, all that my aunt ever asks me is ‘Beta, shaadi kab kar rahe ho’.

Brienne and Pod continue on their journey and get to know each other a little more. Pod apparently is a complete city-boy squire who can’t do shit when on a roadtrip and Brienne starts giving him some credit only after knowing he has at least one murder to his name. Such are the ways of Westeros, clearly an ace requirement for blossoming friendship. Their story seems like a little less twisted and gender-interchanged version of Arya and Hound’s personal little adventure. Talking of which, our sweet little Arya is getting more sinister by the day and has started this cute practice of loudly naming everyone she wants to kill before sleeping every night. This sort of explains how the first thing she goes for in morning is a little bit of sword practice. Arya’s ballerina style of sword practice doesn’t sit well with our Brock “Hound” Lesnar whose life’s motto seems ‘Elegance be damned, I’ll just eat my opponent’.

Meanwhile in wild wild North, John Snow’s Night Watch party is getting ready to strike at Craster’s Keep, where of course Bran and his troupe are held hostage. The big bad bully at the Craster’s Keep who thought there’ll be no end to his Haryanwi ways of raping around is finally killed by our awesome Snow boy. This frees all the women in Craster’s Keep, who had not really had the best of times for the last few days, months and pretty much all their life. I can almost visualize them forming a Gulaabi Gang of their own. Move over Madhuri, Westeros ladies in the house!! Also in a moment that would have done Maneka Gandhi proud, John Snow’s dire wolf Ghost has the last laugh against Rast, one of the Haryanwi guys, who had been sadistically tormenting him last episode.

But my personal favourite moment of the show was when Hodor does something that is not so eh…Hodor-like. When Locke of the night watch (who has made Jon trust in him by now) tries to abduct Bran, the latter possesses Hodor, who simply breaks Locke’s neck displaying strength that would make Hound feel like a small girl in comparison. This made me cheer for Hodor like I cheered for Austin in class 6^th (not sure if kids they still do that). Personally, I think Hodor is  awesomeness redefined. Wouldn’t it be just brilliant if one day Hodor just shouts out something like ‘Teri ma ki chut langde, mai nahi utha raha tujhe’. Honestly, I would be willing to give anything to see that happen. In my mind, Westeros should just have one king and that is Hodor. Cheers for Hodor, In Hodor we trust.

I’m atheist and I know/force it

It’s ironical how things completely turn around over a period of time. Whereas yesteryears saw many radical atheists being completely boycotted by religious sorts and the entire society looking at them as if they were humanities students of Class XII, currently the story has quite drastically turned around.

It started with the odd powerful statement of ‘Religion is opium for the masses’, which has been credited to everyone ranging from George Carlin to random angry intellectual looking celebrities to anybody wearing spectacles to the original Karl Max in pictures shared over Facebook (black background with a hint of smoke). And now it has sort of reached a peak with everyone who knows the meaning of the word opinion having an opinion about it.

For our generation, ‘I’m an atheist’ has almost become the second coolest thing to angrily say, post ‘I hate Mahatma Gandhi’. Mostly, when asked why they have such noble thoughts, it’s followed by a blank ignorant face quite similar to the expression of a science student on being asked Viva questions. Post which there’s this feeble voice going ‘eh dude, I eh read this article on Facebook’.
‘What did the article say?’ you fetch.
‘eh, It was a long article yaaar. I mean it was Friday and I had this party to go to and all’….
‘Ahh’… you judge.
‘But but, (passion back in his voice) when I put ‘I’m an atheist’ as my Facebook status, I got 30 likes. Some of them were girls’

There are indeed a lot of advantages of being an atheist. You are able to eat any animal you want to and when you want to. You are able to ask irritating question to others like ‘So you mean to say God’s completely fine with you eating Chicken on Wednesday but has a problem when you do it on Tuesday?’. You’re able to post awesome status’ like ‘Id Mubarak to all my Muslim brothers’ which make you look ‘oh so secular’ (ironically you never see a ‘Happy Diwali to all my Hindu brothers’ from the same people; it’s just a ‘Happy Diwali’, which tells you the whole secular story really. Sometimes excessive secularism becomes sort of unsecular)

Realizing you’re an atheist has become like the modern day Nirvana moment. It’s pretty much the ‘bhakchod’s version of enlightenment’. Quite similar to Buddha and many others who meditated for years for their own enlightenment. The modern human practices his brilliant worthy life filling his mind with all great positive thoughts of any and every possible way to get more money, fame and sex, till he finally discovers the social media picture of ‘Religion is opium for the masses’ and in this eureka moment attains his atheism. The internet is indeed our personal Bodhi tree.

It’s quite interesting to see the range of atheist. From the stout atheists who would go all Kohli on you if you dare to praise your own religion, to the relaxed atheists (few and far between) to the convenient atheists (atheist as long as I am not in deep shit, post which I go ‘pls bacha lei bhagwan, pls’.)

Which is all, quite frankly, absolutely fine. The issue starts when atheists start becoming the new fanatics in terms of imposing their opinion on others about this topic of opinion-imposing religions. (Notice the irony) The issue starts when atheists become all incredible hulkish over anyone making any statement remotely connected to religion. The original statements might be ranging from innocuous to outright stupid, but the reaction from our atheist brothers is scary and kind of hilarious at the same time. The usual statements of ‘Religion has caused wars’, ‘Religion has killed people’, ‘Religion prevents me from jerking off’ are thrown with such abandon that you almost start feeling ‘Religion’ is the pseudonym for Adolf Hitler or Idi Amin.

I quite don’t understand atheist reacting angrily to someone feeling their religion is the best or even better than other religions at some issue. To feel biased towards something you are linked to is probably the most natural feeling in the world. Isn’t it natural for one to be biased towards their own mother than anybody else’s? Again, not drawing a parallel between mother and religion, but just implying that being biased towards something/someone you believe in and are connected to is absolutely expected. Any human who would claim to not have this is either lying or a saint at a much higher state of mind. As long as one’s not affecting anyone else’s life because of this notion, one should be absolutely entitled to have that thought. Lambasting one for thinking so is sort of inexplicable. Let’s just be fine with anyone being anything: religious, non-religious, one who believes their religion is better, one who believes all religions are equal, etc.

I’m no expert really when it comes to religion, but from my humble learning I am pretty sure that no religion really prescribed wars in the first place. It was the human interpretation which screwed things up and from time to time, still keeps doing so. If tomorrow we have a world where every single person is an atheist, are we certain that no one will fight one another or there would be no killings or wars? Somehow, my pleasant experiences with humanity make me feel that the chances of that happening is less than the pope keeping ramadan fasts.

I have a great belief in wisdom of our ancestors and the ancient Urdu saying of ‘Zan, Zar aur Zameen’ being the reason behind all wars and fights is something that I have found extremely agreeable.
Zan = female
Zar = wealth
Zameen = land
Again, not blaming these three (before the sexistbusters come and slay me), but suggesting it’s just the crazy insatiable human desire for them that could be placed for majority of the wars we put religion to task for. Religion quite often becomes the scapegoat for many wrongs. In essence, it’s not the Arab Muslim terrorist who came and bombed your building, but a helpless hopeless uneducated poor guy whose home, family and life got destroyed because of a drone your country’s government sent in their quest for oil and mullah. All other factors being the same, he would have done exactly the same had he been from any religion. Notice how he didn’t go around bombing the Vatican City.

The good aspects of religion, the festivities each bring along celebrating community feeling and helpfulness is also something that the world needs. Probably atheism could do with a festival of its own. Or celebrate all religion’s festivals with the same zest which is what I am pretty sure was originally intended. It’s unfortunate to see Atheism go down the same way of Socialism and Communism. Ideas that were beautiful and logical in essence but got screwed up in implementation due to angry people, people with less understanding, people just going with the flow or the worse kind, materialistic people pursuing their own agenda. The need is for some flexible, broad-minded, calm and composed Atheists to stand up and be willing to hear others out before pouncing on them. Will the real Atheist please stand up. Please stand up. Please stand up.


P.S: Not that it matters but my personal alignment is leaning towards agnosticism. Being confused is a way of life for me.

B-School Experience

The 80-90 born generation in India likes doing two things. The first is socializing on online platforms, and second is pursuing an MBA.

Everyone likes ‘doing’ an MBA. As a matter of fact, for most Indian males, on the list of things we like doing by preference, MBA will be a close second.

Now, for 40 percent of the population MBA is simply a very expensive Rapidex English Speaking course. 20 percent do it since they just want to postpone the act of actually working. For 10 percent, getting married was proving to be difficult without that MBA degree. The rest 30 percent do it, since the other 70 is doing it, and it seemed like a smart thing to do.

But a B-school experience ain’t really a B-school experience, unless it has the following:

The ‘I’m not here for placements’ guy
Every b-school has at least one of these ‘I’m not here for placements’ guy. He generally follows it up with a ‘I’m here for the learning’ and what not bull-crap. The ironical and equally irritating deal is when you see the ‘I’m not here for placements’ guys salivating as soon as the first company comes to campus and applying for every profile at every damn company. The kind of feelings most harbour for these irritating fagots range from strangling to a more pleasant poisoning.
The only true ‘I’m not here for placements’ people in B-schools are the former engineering students, who are genuinely not here for placements, but for girls. Since post seeing the b-school brochure, they felt confident that the sex-ratio here will be at-least better than their engineering colleges.

The B-school Girl
There are essentially two kinds of B-school girls, the good ones and the bad ones. The bad girl b-school girls drinks beer and will start dating the baddest guy within a month. The good and innocent b-school girl however does not drink beer, talks over phone with one guy, lunches with the second guy, forms team for stupid projects with the third guy, goes to gym with the fourth and cries about her erstwhile heartbreak with the fifth. Take your pick.

The philanthropist Teacher
Every b-school will have one philanthropist teacher who wants you to leave it all and instead do something for the society. She’s one person who just refuses to accept that you are simply a materialistic as***e who’d readily sell his soul for money and instead wants you to focus on weird things like making the world a better place and helping poor people. Most students love her to death except a few who actually pretend to love her even more. Such are the ways of the world.

The ish-tud
The ish-tud is quite simply one person who’s just too cool for everything. He’s too cool to study, too cool to date a girl, too cool to care for frivolous things such as money since his dad had plenty of it, too cool to prepare for campus placements, too cool to care for frivolous thinks like laws and everything. He’s almost like a mini-version of Salman Khan right in your class, except that he’s not really well-ripped and has not really ever dated Katrina Kaif.

The Real-Head
Every b-school has a head, who’s generally titled dean or director or Head of Department. But his real power in the institute is equivalent to Manmohan Singh’s in our sweet country. So who’s the real boss then? Well, every b-school also always has one guy, who in an unassuming position, basically runs the institute. He’s the one to take all the decisions, decide if you’ll get expelled for getting caught drunk on campus, save your gullible a** if you get in any trouble and essentially decide how smooth your MBA will be. He is more essential to the institute than well the students and the professors, and just below the all-important companies campus visiting companies.

*P.S: I might act all out against an MBA, but being quite a materialistic assole myself I’m happily pursuing the same. And it’s been a fascinating experience to say the least. For starters, for a guy who’s suffered all his life from a premature greying of hair problem, a b-school is simply a brilliant place, since the balding problems of so many of your other classmates make your hair problems look less striking, which is quite simply a very new and fantastic experience.

The Birth of Jugaad-Man

Superheros have always caught my fancy and I have forever had tremendous amount of admiration for them. Completely platonic form of admiration that is. I mean nothing weird or anything you know.

One thing that really amuses me about superheros is the disguise these guys have. I mean when Superman has to turn from his geeky alias of Clark Kent to well, Superman, all he really does is basically take of his glasses and do his hair a little. And every body around goes like, ‘Wow, who are you? That’s such a new face. We’ve never seen you before.’ Which is really a little strange u know, considering when I took off my glasses, did my hair differently, and then tried acting fresh with a girl she really did recognize me and even slapped me the next day and the day after that.

But what makes you think is that what would have Superman’s disguise been had he been in India. I mean maybe he would have had to just put on some deodorant and people would have gone like, ‘Wow, who are you? You don’t even have body odour. Are you even Indian?
Or maybe he would’ve just had a complete body wax. Then people would’ve gone like, ‘Wow, you’re not hairy. You really cannot be Indian. Are you Chinese? Will you stop working after few days? Are you here to take Arunachal Pradesh?’

But there’s really no way we can have an Indian well-respected Superhero. I mean think about it, what really is Superman’s biggest achievement?

(Now some of you might be tempted to answer that his greatest achievement he wears his underwear over his pyjamas, but on a serious note, that’s less of an achievement and more of a dressing style. I mean poor guy goes about saving the whole world and all, and the moment someone is asked about his greatest achievement, all we hear are stupid underwear on top jokes. Wearing underwear on top is not really an achievement, and I’m pretty sure even I could do it. I’d probably look very silly and people might stop talking to me, but that’s another story)

Coming back to the point, Superman’s greatest achievement was the fact that he managed to push the whole of earth and change planetary positions to save it from a speeding android. Which really is hardly a big deal here in India, because we all know if we pay Rs. 1100 to any goddam pandit he’ll not only change planetary positions, but even reverse the solar system, juggle a little with the planets, play football with them and god knows manage to do what all.

So for India, what we need is somebody customized for India. Somebody made for India. No superman n all that jazz, but somebody like Jugaad-man. Yes, a Jugaad-man, who would have Jugaadu solutions to every Indian problem.

For example, if Jugaad-man were to see a frustrated writer committing suicide out of depression, he’ll give him a Chetan Bhagat book to read. And soon the guy’ll realize how much of gift he has or how much better he is than some of the modern day literary geniuses. You see, a Jugadu and permanent solution custom-made for India.

To deal with the problem of eve-teasers and molesters, Jugaad-man’ll go and give them naked posters of Mayawati, which’ll just end their sex drive forever. You see, another jugaadu and permanent solution.

If someone’s making hate speeches on communal lines, our dear Jugaad-man’ll go and lock him up in a room with Navjot Sing Sidhu and Arnab Goswami for a whole day. After spending 24 long hours in a single room with these guys, the most verbose of the hate-speech givers would have lost their will to talk for good and will be pretty much zombies. Next day headlines, Jugaad-man saves the day.

For villager dying out of hunger because of a bad crop, jugaad-man will go and suggest them the unique solution of unlimited loan for which you don’t need to pay back. In form of Dowry. Displays complete out-of-the-box thinking you know.

Pretty soon we’ll start having slogans like ‘In Jugaad-man we trust’ or ‘It’s a cycle, it’s a rickshaw, no, it’s Jugaad-man on his Jugaad vehicle’.

More to follow on the amazing tales of Jugaad-man…watch this space…

The ‘Corporate’ Life

Now Madhur Bhandarkar would like us to believe that the corporate world is one big bad world where you have to sell your soul, send escorts to rival company workers to get trade secrets, kill colleagues, finish off their families and what not, but end of the day, and quite disappointingly so, it is simply a bunch of people working together. Simple routine boring work and nothing else.

But that said, it doesn’t mean it does not have its share of spices, ironies, absurdities and outright irrationalities. Here’s a brief view on all that’s stupid and silly in those superb coveted organizations mostly based in glorious glass buildings in Gurgaon.

For starters, I would want to throw some light on this beautiful job title called the ‘Analyst’. It’s rather ironic that how twenty years before there was indeed no such job title whatsoever, none of us ever grew up thinking we would grow up to be a world-renowned ANALYST, and now every second guy is working as one. Who exactly is this analyst, what the hell does he analyse and how come there is suddenly a need of so much analysis, are questions that a curious mind is bound to have.
Well, in crude terms an analyst is to a service organization what a base level factory labourer is to a manufacturing organization. He (and forgive me for being a sexist here, but it’s just too much pain writing ‘he/she’ everywhere just to be socially correct) is the one actually making those colourful ppts, excessively large excel sheets, incomprehensible PDFs or whatever it is that analysts make.

Just as a factory labourer is for a manufacturing unit, he is the one actually involved in making the product that generates revenue. Likewise to a labourer, he is subject to insanely long working hours, is sometimes working on weekends, is putting his body on line for the manufacturing process *and has to listen to ten different morons on how he could do his job better. Again, just as is the case with factory labourers of manufacturing units, the higher one is from the analyst role and farther away he is from doing actual revenue generating work, the more money he will be making in his monthly pay-cheque.
Then why do organizations need B Tech/ MBA degrees and all that jazz for this labourer role? Well cuz this is Services baby, and that’s how they roll.

Having that cleared up, let’s look at the other amusing things of this ‘corporatelife’.

The ‘one’
Now every organization has a ‘one’. This one is quite simply a person who pretty much has ‘management’ tattooed on his forehead (not literally, but if suggested he would readily do that as well). He is somebody who would have an extremely complicated way of saying the same things you would do. For ex, in a great strategic highly important team meeting focussing on finding solutions to do more work, you would say ‘I guess all of us should just work more’ and he would say ‘Every associate needs to synchronize his individualistic competencies with organizational objectives and push the achievable milestones so as to increase the returns our corporation(mild applause). He is someone who would spend one hour every morning on each of the higher-up on discussing matter like career path and streamlining goals, while you would be working your bu** off on those darned reports that never seem to get over.
The ‘one’ is usually as uptight as Mayawati herself and makes a curious horse like sound even when he walks. He prefers to wear RayBan all the time, which really is a rather curious sight particularly in the loo, and chews gum so vigorously while working that it reminds you of a cow. The one is loved by everyone in the office except you and your lousy mediocre un-studlike group, who are the only people to see what a douchebag that person is. The one is the only person who is able to maintain the coveted ‘work-life’ balance, which brings me to the next point.

Work-life balance
It’s a bullshit meaningless laughable term invented by management to fool you. Period. Let’s move on.

Buddy Concept aka Forced Friend
Your HR-assigned buddy is one who’s supposed to like you and help you settle in office, but in reality looks at you with as much disdain and contempt as you look at a Vivek Oberoi movie. Curiously, it seems an HR policy to make buddies of opposite gender, which seems a bit like how in class II your teacher made you sit in boy-girl boy-girl pattern. Of course if you are an engineering student, then you simply take it as good fortune or in rather crude terms office ki setting.

For the buddy, it’s pretty much like how your parents forced an adolescent you to share your room with your cousin when he was coming to your city for few days. The happy cousin arrives thinking he’s welcome and has no idea how you’ve been pleading for last two weeks to not have to play this stupid and irritating role. So it’s not really her fault that she hates you. And god save you if you’ve been in an organization for too long and are yourself made someone’s buddy. For starters, a new-joinee exposes the fact that the buddy indeed doesn’t know anything about the organization or doesn’t have a jack of a clue on how to setup the system, use the office tools, etc. Secondly, during lunch-time the buddy and the new-joinee enter into a sweet little hide-and-seek game, where the new-joinee is intently looking for the buddy for a nice cosy lunch, and the buddy is doing everything short of hiding under the table to dodge the joinee so that she could go out lunching with her group. Enough on the subject, let’s move on.


STILL TO COVER in Next write-up….team lunches, engagement activities, performance review, office lifts, HR=the art of using 5000 words where 5 would do



*body parts put on line=read ‘eyes’ for staring at computer for 14 hrs a day, and ‘lungs’ from smoking, which is a habit eventually all analysts take up, and ‘liver’ from drinking incessantly, which is a habit an analyst takes up on Fridays to make his life feel less miserable.

Being Somewhat Fat

I wish I was a really fat guy. I mean really fat. Like some 120 kilos or something. Unfortunately I am not. Unfortunately, I am somewhat fat, hovering around 80 kilos, which for my 5’8’’ frame, is fat enough for thin idiots to make fun of me, but is not fat enough to generate some much appreciated sympathy, concern or even, and I am being a tad bit optimistic on this one, nice old-fashioned love.

Being somewhat fat is the worst kind of fat to be. For starters, you just don’t get to understand which side are you on. If you call yourself fat, then the really fat guys start looking at you accusatively and let you know in not so subtle ways of what it means to be actually fat and how tough life is for them, as if it’s all your fault. And if you deny the fatness, then god be with you, for every single thin idiot around you will snicker and crack jokes at you till the end of humanity, and if they are the really sadistic kinds they might even poke you at all the not-to-be poked places, and this ain’t the facebook poke I am talking about.

The process of choosing a t-shirt too gets absolutely redefined if you are somewhat fat. The criterion becomes essentially a simple one too. Any t-shirt in which your man-boobs don’t show is a good t-shirt. If it can actually cover your ever-expanding belly and make you look somewhat fit, it’s really an additional bonus. But here’s the tricky part. There’s an oh so thin line of difference between a t-shirt that fits you perfectly, and one that’ll eventually accentuate your man-boobs if you gain as much as a gram. Seriously, why couldn’t god just give boobs to men? Look at the advantages. First, we would have our own ones to look at and play and hence, won’t be wasting so much time just gaping at the ones owned by the opposite gender. Imagine the amount of constructive activities mankind would’ve managed to perform in such a utopian society. We would have really been milestones ahead in technology, art, science and every such field we should be ahead in. Second, the poor, good-hearted, well-meaning and love-deserving somewhat fat people like yours truly would never really have to worry about them. In such an ideal scenario, the world will look at them and theirs’ from the same viewpoint as it looks at the female ones today, ie the more, the merrier. Now there could be a third, fourth and so on, but the writer has just realized this point is getting pointless and the readers should realize that a raw nerve of the writer just got touched, and thence, the mini-rant.

Worse still, all somewhat fat guys almost always have an extremely fit guy in their close friend circle, unfortunately so. And when I say fit, I mean FIT. Like different people have different ambitions in life, say to be rich, famous, respected, etc. This idiot’s core ambition of life would be to stay fit. He would be the kind of fitoholic who actually gets up early in the morning for his morning run, which extends some thirty-five miles. This, when the unwritten laws of humanity clearly state that the only time normal humans should contemplate getting up early in the morning, it should be for awesome sex, exams, not-so-awesome sex, urgent flights, moderate sex, trains and bad sex, in that exact order. Coming back to the point, not only would this guy go for his early morning run, but he would do so in the tiniest of shorts, barely covering his body-parts that really should be covered. And yes, these people don’t breath heavy when they run. Oh no, they don’t. They just run, and run, and run, and run, look around a little bit, and then run a little more. (The writer was contemplating writing ‘and run’ few more times, but better sense eventually prevailed). And when they are not running, they make their somewhat fat friends feel like a hopeless ball of misery, literally as well as figuratively. They would actually look down upon you with the greatest contempt, and again this is literally plus figuratively since most of these idiots are quite tall, and say very slowly, in an almost Vito Corleone-like tone, ‘Dude, you need to get in shape’.

The first couple of times, you’ll just ignore these idiots, because you’re just a cheerful person. But eventually, their raw sadistic coarse tone would get to you, and you’ll agree to go for some sports session with thy fitness himself. In my case, this sport was badminton. Now, don’t take me wrong, I like badminton. It seems a nice sport. My earliest memories of childhood include watching Jeetender playing the same sport in his brilliant detergent-proud-making white attire and simultaneously singing, courting with females and what not (Yes, I didn’t have cable TV till I was 13). So, in all earnestness, I really was looking forward to it. But somehow this fit idiotic friend of yours, who by now starts seeming like a steroids addict to you, will convert the nice and sweet sport of Badminton into Spartans Vs Persians, with war-cry effects and all.

For starters, they won’t even start playing once you are at the court. Oh no, not all. They would first perform the blessed art of stretching for ten minutes, and then warm-up for the next twenty. Now first of all, an average middle class guy who grew up in a crowded society is just worried shit that if you don’t start playing immediately, some other wicked soul would come and usurp the damn court. With these tense thoughts in your mind, it’s tough to even look in another direction once you’re at the court, let alone just waste time stretching and warming up for half an hour. Second, who in the crazy world invented this whole process of stretching? Honestly, a guy getting in such obnoxious positions anywhere else would be just considered plain and simple lewd. What if some girl watches, and concludes we are being just typical Delhi men. I mean, as it is most women are convinced that all us Delhi men are rapists, women-beaters, professional eve-teasers or at least chauvinists. So we really need to avoid such controversial practices to protect our already damaged reputation. And then for a somewhat fat guy, there’s always that risk of just getting stuck or something.

My final query to the fit guy, what in the world does warming-up your muscles mean? Isn’t the whole point of playing just that? Why would one want to warm-up the muscles and then re-warm them while playing. Won’t the muscles just get too darn warm or something? Till date, I genuinely believe that I might have actually given my evil friend a fight in the match if he hadn’t completely mind-ninja’ed me and just exhausted me before we even started. Hell, at least I would have managed to win at least one point in all of the three sets that we played. Negative tactics, I tell you.

I would end with saying to all you fitness obsessed freaks, I am somewhat fat, and I am proud of it.
(No I’m not, pls suggest me easy ways to lose weight. And pls hurry, my girlfriend’s losing interest in me)