Because I nod while listening to you, say 'Fair Enough', and then go ahead and tell you the REAL way of doing things

You remember that annoying guy in your MBA class who just had had had to have his views heard in class? Except they weren’t really his views, just the teacher’s views reworded?

Remember that rather prim-and-proper female in your last competitive Group Discussion, who sweetly opened the forum by introducing the topic? And then listened? And summarized everyone’s points, just a little more prettily in the end, and concluded them as her own?

Remember that know-it-all, who loved to give you advice? Truthfully, you were going to make that choice anyway. He was just the guy who kicked you from behind as you dilly-dallied on the diving board at your rather-scream-inducing-scary-deep swimming pool.

Fast forward a few years, some sexy hair straightenings and cuts, a few rather well tailored suits, and there you have her/him – a Consultant.

Now, I have had the fortune of working with consultants. Err, actually, I am a consultant.

And to be rather frank, as much as you might abuse me, and however redundant I might be to your actual value chain, I do love being the one who delivers that final painful kick to your not-so-well-shaped behind and sends you tumbling into the dark waters. Or even better, you pay me, to tell you exactly what you’re doing wrong. My pleasure, dear Sir.

*End of boasting*

Because, well, let’s face it, there’s a reason the net is full of consultant jokes.

And well, you know you’re a consultant, when:

• Your wardrobe looks like a Van Heusen/Louis Philippe showroom
• Your biggest joy of the day was conjuring the most complicated IF function in your excel sheet
• Your emails to friends contain tables
• You love bullet points
• Your ketchup bottle has a minimum-level mark for the next bottle to be bought
• You find it easier to write a report than to read one
• You’re the preferred secret keeper. Because, let’s face it, you know everything about everybody, you just can’t say it.
• When your girlfriend puts on her best slutty look and coyly tells you she’ll make it up to you, you ask her to put it on email
• You have nightmares about forgetting to file your time sheet…again.
• You ask for bills for…everything that the client might remotely agree to pay for.
• You have a frequent-flier card for all the major airlines, and enough points for lounge access, and a bank balance which doesn't necessarily reflect the same
• Your whole team has a Blackberry
• Everything you say has a mental (*Conditions Apply) in the end
• You add a ‘contingency expense’ column with a ten per cent buffer to all your holiday plan excel sheets
• Oh, you have a holiday plan excel sheet
• Actually, you have an excel sheet for…everything
• You mentally audit literally everything in your life…the long queue at the petrol pump…the inefficient service line at your favourite restaurant…the possible cost saving which can be implemented by your flatmate…a possible time saving in your Mum’s cooking regime in the kitchen…the system for timely replacement of toilet paper at your office….
• And well, let’s face it, you can pfaff your way out of tough spots

That said, this might be a good time to mention that I have frankly met some of the most intelligent/impressive people in my current office. So just in case you are from my company, and know me, you’re probably that awesome person who inspires me each day to come to office, find faults with others, and mail it to them in the most amazingly beautiful excel sheets.

*End of ass-kissing-in-case-you-think-of-firing-me-for-this*

So. Not. Joking.

The Last Molecule

I have been gone a long time. And I guess I owe my six loyal followers an update.

The past week has had my highest high, and my lowest low. What makes it worse is the fact that perhaps, my real lowest low is yet to come. And for once, putting it down in words just makes it worse.

My highest high came with the realization that home really is where the heart is.

The lowest low? The realization that the Pie was apparently not worth dying for after all.

The future lowest low?

Try being broken down by will. Try putting yourself back together, when you least want to.

And it’s ironic that today is the day I read this post by Atrisa. Today is the day I read about Hadness.

Today is the day I decide to wait.

The Storm before the Calm

The rain outside drowned in the silence within. She felt the drops of water trace slow paths down her body, carving a sculpture in their own might, her clothes sticking to her drenched skin, protecting her, torturing her, slowly. She could hear the clouds rumbling in some far off world. She could hear her heart beat, her raspy breath, her dress moving against her skin. She could hear him.

Not a word had been said.

She cast a glance at him. Drenched, he stood in a corner, half in the shadow of the solitary bulb flickering threateningly in the middle of the broken down shelter. She saw the light reflected in his tormented face, his lips, his eyes. His eyes. The distant hollow seas, once stormed with emotion, distant, and calm. He blew out the last of his smoke from the degraded cigarette and tossed it in a corner, the smoke lingering around, in a futile attempt to hang on. The silence was thick, omnipresent, welcome.

Their eyes met.

Gently, she reached out to him, and placed her shivering hand on his chest. Drops of water from his skin followed her fingers, making their way across before she could stop them. The thumping of his heart drowned out the last of the silence, as she felt herself pulled into his arms, shivering uncontrollably as his warmth permeated her cold skin. She inhaled sharply and closed her eyes. The world she believed in, had ceased to exist. All that lived was that moment, that touch, that oneness, that safety. That moment, when they realized they were no longer alone. That touch, to complete what their souls had known long ago…to complete each other, to be one, together, in each other’s arms. His hands were strong but gentle. His lips were probing, searching against her skin for a home once dreamt of. His skin amalgamated into hers, burning its way into hers, one, the way it was meant to be.

The storm that ensued put the rain to shame, as they spent the night in each other’s arms, clinging on to a hope they hadn’t known existed till then.

As the first rays of the sun shone through, their eyes met. His eyes. The seas tormented by the storm within, the calm long gone, hope struggling its way through.

She felt her skin, bruised, thriving, burning with the memories of the night before. She felt him within her, inside her, consuming her every breath. She knew then that she was his, completely, with the very last breath in her body. She saw him tip his head in her direction, and step out in the sun.

Life as she knew it, had cruelly altered its course.

And not a word had been said.

Why most Bloggers are anti-social nervous wrecks and plain cardboard crazy

It’s because we lead highly strenuous nerve-wracking lives, that’s why. Don’t believe me? Let me walk you through it, my little naïve one.

To begin with, we end up looking at this whole world as a blogging opportunity. Are you talking to me, and did you say something really stupid? Blog post. Did my shoe heel just break on the most important day of my life? Blog post. Did I just drop ketchup all over myself but can pass it off as a story about my annoying colleague? Blog post. Did I just have a dream that progressed in bullet points? Hell ya, blog post! It sounds dreamy, but somewhere along the line, it can get a little tiring. Specially when you start leading a life that is either so boring, or so amazing, that you have nothing to write about anymore. Nothing that you can make fun of, share with the world, laugh about, or even worse, crib about wittily. The amount of pressure that your blog puts on the life you lead, sheesh, don’t even get me started on it.

And then there’s the constant need to be funny. You know, because no one wants to read a depressing blog. Or even a happy blog. So if you cry, cry in a funny way, and if you’re happy, make sure you’re clutzy-happy, or your readers just won’t like you. Especially when there are a gazillion funnier blogs out there in the world. And crazier. Let’s not forget crazier.

And the next point will be best understood by people working in Sales. Not just any people, but those crazy ones, you know? The ones who check up on their regional teams every hour to find out the number of special anti-pimple soaps sold in the last sixty minutes, and have a n ongoing trend analysis in their heads. That’s what Blogger Stats does to you every time you put a post up. It drives you just that crazy. Where you wonder where each hit on your blog came from, whether the person actually read the post, whether it’s been shared on Stumble Upon or Digg, whether it was the correct time of the day to post, and whether they actually liked it enough to follow you or even better, comment. And just like it takes all the willpower in the world to not just go ahead and buy out the whole stock of anti-pimple soaps yourself just to make your numbers look good, well, we have to go through the will power test of not tracking your own page views, and commenting on your own blog anonymously. It’s pure torture I tell you. Of course all bloggers will also tell you that they write for themselves, and it doesn't really matter whether people read and whether they like you. You know, just like the sales numbers on the anti-pimple soap don't really matter. The soap was actually introduced to help mankind and its skin issues. Because it makes the FMCG company feel good about itself, and sleep peacefully at the end of the day.

And as if all this was not enough, blogging can be rather taxing on your personal life. To begin with, people actually pester you to feature in your posts at most times, as had happened with my old blog here. But then it turns out, they’re not very happy when you actually do write about them, because you by chance ended up mentioning the stitches they got on their bum recently. Hey, I tell it like I see it! Well not literally, I didn’t actually see the stitched up bum. Oh well. And then sometimes, to escape from public scrutiny, you blog anonymously…which gives you an initial high, knowing you can write whatever you want without it getting traced back to you…but eventually switching in and out of the gazillion different profiles just drives you crazy enough to end up in a mental asylum with a Multiple Personality Disorder. And when that happens, the friend with the bum-stitches will not really volunteer to help.

So you see, it really is difficult to be a blogger, and it’s a hobby that requires grit, determination and will power.

Oh, and someone just pointed out that you need to be a talented writer to blog.

Hmmm.

Nah!

When Life is a Reality Show

I just spent an entire day in bed. It wasn’t just lack of good health, though that was the main reason. It was also to quite an extent a lack of will. I’m not sure why. I think I had nothing to look forward to in the day, till evening. So it somehow never occurred to me to actually get out of bed till evening. Don’t ask me why, even if your mouth just fell open, that’s just how it was.

Except, when evening came, I realized what I’d been looking forward to wasn’t happening after all.

And then it hit me.

Harder than the crazy freak lightening outside my window.

I just wasted my entire day.

And I will never get it back.

I got out of bed, still in a bit of shock, and headed straight to the shower. I needed it. I needed to clear out the sudden avalanche of thoughts that had hit me when I was least expecting them.  And in those fifteen minutes in the shower, I went through a quick recap of life, just the way it is.

I am twenty four years old, and don’t necessarily have a lot to show for it.

I am anti social, to say the least, at the most important of times.

I currently live a life hidden from most people

I’m currently not in love with my job, circumstantial as that may be, and suddenly treat it as something I have to do, to get that sum of money that pays the rent at the end of the month. Because you see, one day eventually, I’ll be a writer, and I’ll sit somewhere on a beach or in the mountains writing my next novel, being at home, naturally decently rich, and just enjoying the company of my family.

Reality check. I have a job that is nowhere close to me one day being a writer. I’m not even trained to be a writer. I don’t even write that well, and the term is simply a self proclamation. I have one blog which I killed, one blog that is struggling to live, and one blog that will never see the light of day under my name.

Don’t get me wrong, I am wonderfully happy right now. But because of something completely different. In fact, I am so happy, that it overshadows any circumstantial crap that happens, a job not going well, a blog not being followed, a story never told. There is no self pity. Because right now, I consider myself luckier than I’ve ever been in my life, happier than I’ve ever been in my life, with a clear thought of one thing that I know for a fact I’ll devote my life to, if allowed.

There is no self pity. But I think perhaps I’ve forgotten to care about some aspects of my life. Or maybe worse, I’ve actually gone a stage beyond self pity, and into a land where I’ve just learnt to ignore them altogether. Because you see, one day I’ll be a writer, with the love of my life, and it just won’t matter anymore that I didn’t manage to finish my project on time and got my first bad rating.

Maybe I need to get back to reality.

Maybe I need to get out of bed.

And do something.

P.S. The evening plan is finally happening after all, and I can't stop smiling. But, either way, I’m glad I got out of bed. Before I get into some real trouble. Like get thrown out of that thing that pays the rent at the end of the month.


P.P.S. I just realised I called this blog Life Unlimited, and I spent my whole day in bed. Now I'm just plain ashamed.

Because sometimes, there is no choice

Right now, at this moment, as I half sit-half lie down on my bed, I am absolutely completely exhausted.

Reason?

Well, remember how I was supposed to register my lease at the far end of the world and the landlady didn’t turn up, and so my day got wasted? Well, she did turn up today. And Mumbai is sweat-like-a-pig hot in October.

Also, remember how I was supposed to clean my room last week, and I put it off till Sunday? Umm… well, that didn’t happen either. Until today, when every possession of mine decided to revolt and hid in random corners of the room forcing me to finally clean it.

And apparently I put off the grocery shopping a little too much as well. I had this gem of a realization when I saw my maid cleaning the toilet with the laundry detergent today.

So, well, it’s been a slightly tiring day. (Enough that I just typed embarrassing instead of tiring. Which is weird, cuz it was anything but an embarrassing day, rarity as that might be.)

But, really this post is about my dirty room, which is now so clean that I am looking at it like a proud mum who’s kid just came fourth in the weird lemon and spoon race at Sport’s Day (what was with those races anyway?! I once took part in a plait race… a hearty applause for anyone who can correctly guess what that is. Anyone?)

To fully be able to understand my emotional outburst you might want to see how dirty my room actually was:

Yes, I live here.

Wait, a close-up might convince you of my hazardous situation just a bit more.

Some things cannot be explained via captions

Don't ask me how. I really don't know.

At this stage let me point out that I am NOT a 24 year old bachelor who drinks beer and sits on yesterday’s pizza, and wonders if it’s time for his weekly shower.

I happen to be a lady.

The fairer, and supposedly cleaner sex.

Oh well.

Now since at the moment I feel like a rather super hot cleanliness goddess, and since it’s been some time since I wrote in bullet points, here are some of my tips for cleaning your room:

• Plan and time your cleaning excursion carefully. It takes surprisingly lesser time to empty your cupboard on the bed, as compared to stuffing it all back in.
• Be prepared to be pleasantly surprised. You know that ear ring you couldn’t find, the watch that your dad gifted you, your new pair of slippers, and the chocolate you only half ate…it’s all there, somewhere. Well, maybe the pleasantness might be slightly subjective in the last case.
• Be a brat. And I am not kidding about this one. There’s a reason your cupboard won’t shut, and there’s stuff spilt everywhere. You have way too much of it. Dispose, dispose, dispose! Because simply put, you never really will have anything to wear when you need it, so might as well not have anything to wear in your clean and less populated cupboard.
• And when I say dispose, it includes your holey underwear. I don’t care if it’s great for ventilation!
• There will come a point in your cleaning saga, somewhere an hour into the excursion, when everything is out on the bed, and the room looks ten times worse than when you had started, when every muscle in your body will ache, and your mind will throw only one thought your way…”Give up! No one will know…” DO NOT LISTEN TO YOUR HEAD. My solution? Tell someone who’s about to visit you that you’re going to clean up your room. Then someone will know.
• Keep a bug spray handy.
• A bottle of Glucon-D never hurt anyone.
• Do not attempt to write a blog post after it.
• In times of panic, remember, there is always the bed box and the top of your cupboard
• And of course, going forward just keep your room clean so you don’t have to go through the above melodrama ever again.
• Hahahahahaaaaaaaaaa!!!!!!! Sorry, just couldn’t get through that one with a straight face.
• Find a flatmate who's a cleanliness freak
• Ask your mum to visit more often
• Or at least take pics of your clean room. No one ever believes you otherwise. Specially next week, when you try to convince them just how clean your room once was.

And this is how clean my room is right now. And my cupboard shuts!

Am I awesome or am I awesome?!?!

Well, usually there’s a pretty blue rug there as well, but my bottle of Pepsi happened to explode on it yesterday, so it’s out of action for some time.

Yes, I like rugs in my room.

I am a lady, after all. And a lady has pretty rugs in her room.

No, it’s not pink.

Hmph.

Just Because

Well I opened this window to write something nice, but frankly after the crappy day I just had at work, I’m in no mood to write anything that might be remotely decent to read. And with my current quality of writing, well, I don’t even want to try.

In the meantime, I was cleaning my desktop, and found this one pic that I had saved carefully and rather importantly.

You know how Facebook is meant for you to be social? And how your birthday happens to be one day that even the most unpopular person gets a rather large amount of wishes on the site at least? And then you actually try to be socially moral and do the good deed of replying to each wish? Well, apparently if you’re fast enough and efficient enough at it, this is what it means:

Thanks again, for bringing out the real annoying and abusive socialite in me.

Why Mondays Officially Suck

Well, because they do.

And because you’re perpetually hung-over from the weekend. Even though you actually just use the term to sound cool, because in reality you were in bed all weekend, and are simply hung-over from the fact that your muscles had been out of practice and it was just plain difficult to move your fat ass early Monday morning.

Also because you have a hectic and tense work day ahead, except you’re the only one who seems to take it seriously enough to get some work done. And hence there’s no work done.

Also because your land lady decides that the middle of Monday is the best time to go register your lease in the far end of the world. And so you take a half day and head to the far end of the world. And then she decides to not turn up. She also informs you that she will not be turning up the next day, because well, it’s a New Moon day. (At this point I was kind of thinking werewolves and the demure Twilight-y Bella Swan, but something just didn’t fit. Ya, I know. I’m obsessed.) She was also kind enough to say that since Navratri’s coming up, that might be a good time to register. Might.

And then Mondays the day you curiously fall ill in the middle of the day and just can’t figure out what happened.

Monday’s also the day your Blackberry decides to surprise you and starts a little game of hide and seek. This is how it goes: It hides its messenger service, frankly, the one reason you purchased the damned thing to begin with, and you spend the rest of your life seeking it and trying to download a newer version. No, I’m not making this up. My BBM literally just got fed up and disappeared from the face of this planet, or the face of my phone at least. More on that if and when I figure it out.

Mondays suck because you decide to order from Mc Donalds for once, and you realize that unless you follow their happy price menu, your bill happens to be not-so-happiness-inducing.

This is also somewhere around the time when you realize that you have enough expenses coming up to eat into your measly savings, and you start wondering whether there’s still time to ditch the Mooney landlady and head to some homeless shelter with a lower rent.

Monday’s also the day right before Tuesday, which somehow promises to be none-the-better. Because Tuesday is hung-over from Monday and all that went wrong on the fateful day.

Plus, it’s New Moon tomorrow, remember?

And Robert Pattinson, really?!

P.S. But as all my posts recently go, there always is a happy ending. There’s a hug, there’s a song, there’s Simpsons, there’s a lot of food, there’s laughter, and there’s simple happiness. I know, happy me is just plain annoying isn’t it? It’s funny, I think I was a better writer when I was frustrated and sad, wittier too. But frankly my dear, I wouldn’t trade back to what I was even if you offered to hand me the freakin’ Pulitzer Prize!

Midnight Rant

This is the second night in a row that I’m awake way past my bed time. Yesterday I was awake because the lil pinky appeasing pain-killers kind of screwed my sleep cycle and caused me to stay in bed all day, and up all night. The doc said it’s all in my head, to which I told him it’s all in his head, but that didn’t really make any sense, so I paid up and left. Also, I didn’t actually say it, because I didn’t want him to recommend me to a shrink, but you know I completely communicated it to him through eye signals.

And tonight, well, I was awake most of the day, and the pain killers are over (even though the pain is so not, you know, maybe my eye-to-eye communication with the doc isn’t really working too well) so I clearly don’t have that excuse to be awake right now. So, the truth perhaps? Well. There’s too much in my head right now, and it’s almost impossible to sleep till I sort it out. And the simple fact of the matter is that the matter can’t be sorted out, because to sort it out, I need to shout it out to the world, and the only trouble is, that I can’t shout it out to the world, so it’s a funny little circle there that I seem to find myself in at the moment. I would almost describe it as chasing my own tail, but that’s something puppies do. And my nephew. He does that too.

Oh, did I ever tell you guys about my nephew? He’s the cutest little thing in the world. Also a brat, I think. Learnt to pinch me at the age of 10 months. Oh well.

Don't fall for the cute face people, he's just plotting his next mischievous plot!

1 AM. Time to fake a yawn and tell my brain to shut the hell up and sleep.

But then again, I just got a message that made me smile and want to cry out of smiling at the same time.

Life’s good, people.

Of Pinky Woes and Other Things

So here’s one of those completely random disconnected posts that I truly believe one day I shall become the Master and the Queen of (Weirdly the only thing I’m wondering currently is whether Master and Queen should have started with capital M and Q respectively or not, huh?). Actually, to understand the genesis of such posts, the most basic explanation that I can offer at the root of it all is simply that I suddenly think of way too many things to write about, all interesting enough to feature in my head, but not interesting enough to actually stick in my head for an entire post. Whew, that was a long sentence, wasn’t it? But made sense, didn’t it?

Anyhow, my head’s recently been nice enough to point out the tiny little changes that have been taking place in my life. You know, those little changes that some annoying part of your head notices, and you sshhhh it up, because, clearly, that part is demented. So what if I suddenly have a love for shoes, and happen to own a few pretty pairs. And oh well, thanks to my flat mate’s generous donation, I have some rather flowery tops, and well, they’re obviously not black. And well, my room currently has stuffed toys. And some cute red things.  And I like dresses. But hey! That’s called looking good…has nothing to do with changing from being a dude, to well, you know, err…a girl? Oh wait. This blog is currently pink. Which is totally the latest most masculine colour ever. *rolls eyes*

Oh, and talking about pink…you know that farthest little finger that you have…that rather useless thing you never pay attention to? Specially the one on your left hand, unless you’re left-handed, then your right-hand. And if you’re ambidextrous, well, take your pick amigo…Anyway, coming back to the point, what I really wanted to say was, PAY ATTENTION TO THAT LITTLE PINKY! It happens to be rather important. And you happen to notice it only when it’s in a plaster and out of action. Don’t believe me, do you, you cynical fool? Well, you will one day, when it’s gone, and you realize that the hand bidet in the loo happens to be on your left. Or when the zip of your dress goes all the way up in the back, and the only way to zip-unzip is to squirm your way through it and use all the flexibility of both your arms and hands. Now, try it with one hand. Hah! (Sigh, yes, I know, you might want to go and Google ‘bidet’. It’s ok, I’m not going anywhere. And yes, I know, you were probably more intelligent than to buy a dress with a zip at the back. But. Oh. Well.)

My cupboard is rather overflowing right now and begging to be cleaned and organized. Me, the supposedly awesomely organized person, is going to let it beg till Sunday, I think.

Oh, ever played the game of LIFE? I happen to be a fan. But somehow in my version have lost quite a few of those pink and blue pegs signifying people, and hence always end up running rather short of the correct gender by the end of it. Thus enter same-sex marriages. Advanced, my game of LIFE is, I tell you.

Now, I had something else to write about, but somehow in the middle got distracted by someone posting the Twilight – Breaking Dawn trailer on Facebook. For those who haven’t read the books, and those idiots who actually like the series, here’s the summary of this part in not so many kind words: Bella marries vampire. Werewolf angry. Vampire+human go for honeymoon. Vampire regularly breaks the bed, the wall, everything while concentrating on his fun-time during the honeymoon, because well, he’s sooooo strong, and little-human-Bella could be torn and broken into two. But hey, sex is important, so he exercises super mind-over-matter-type-yoga control and ends up breaking everything but her during it. Oh, and of course super vampire sperm impregnates her. And this being a super vampire-human mutant baby grows rather fast, and oh, in the process starts eating Bella from inside, and breaks a few bones kicking around. Awesome sauce, no?

I’m sorry, but that book series just took feminism back quite a few decades. Stephenie Meyer hit the nail so hard on the head that all those wannabe feminists drooled and fainted on the spot. Truth is, I’m no one to judge. I did after all read the whole series, even if I was scorning it throughout (Couldn’t get past the really bad acting in the movies though). But apart from it being my supposed ‘research’ for why the hell girls fall for this book, well, maybe I did enjoy it one tiny little bit somewhere inside. It really makes me wonder. Are all girls by default wired deep in their heads as helpless and clumsy little things that need a sexy vampire to save them and make life worth it? And then we grow up and bury that deep inside and pretend to be all strong and independent and subscribe to the women-of-today type crap?

While in reality, maybe, all we really want in life is our own perfect Edward Cullen.

After all, this blog is pink.

*Groan*

P.S. While I just infuriated the feminist world out there by that last thought, please do note, I’m just pointing out a few hypocrisies in myself. I did almost puke a few times in those books. But I did read all four. *blushes*


P.P.S. Ok, so the blog isn't pink anymore. How long did you expect that one to last now, really?