Batman V Superman review/rant

Disclaimers:
A) spoiler alert
B) this post will be probably be as long as the movie itself.

First things first. A lot of people had immensely high hopes from this movie. Seemingly drawing its source material from 'Death of Superman' and Frank Miller's 'Dark Knight returns'. (If youve still not seen the animated movie, drop everything and watch it at once. Unless you are operating a hydraulic crane. In which case, place said crane gently on the ground first). And helmed by Zack Snyder (Watchmen, 300, Sucker Punch). I loved Watchmen mainly because of Snyder's wonderful handling of one of the darkest comic fictions ever (watch it!). Ok, so maybe man of steel was a dud. But Zack seemed due for a big one. After all, even Suresh Raina takes India to victory every once in a while. And there the disappointment started. I will enumerate below:

1) 'Bro do you even Gotham Knight?' -
Batman is an icon. A symbol of anything that you wish him to be. You could have just asked him to mouth "dont vote for Trump" and that wouldve solved the world's short term problem. And yet, in this movie, Ben Affleck walks around more dazed and intimidated than ever. Don't get me wrong, I absolutely loved the nightmare sequence. But what's with The Dark Knight killing people? Or worse, branding them? Mid-life crisis? Or has somebody been reading too many Phantom comics lately? A murderous Batman seems like an oxymoron. Like  Shahi Paneer. IMHO, Ben Affleck is not a bad Batman. He was what the script needed him to be.

2) The plot has more holes than salman Khan's jaali-wala ganji in hello brother. The movie spent 5-10 mins in the beginning showcasing the mayhem in metropolis. Which is understandable, given that it serves the dual purpose of justifying both the killing extravaganza at the end of 'man of steel' and also Batman's anger at an 'alien God'. But then you spend more time justifying again and again why it is absolutely essential that the caped crusader have a wrestlemania-XVII showdown with The Red Cape. Which includes, lex luthor (I'll come to him in a minute) holding Superman's mom hostage so that he can make him a balwantrai-ka-kutta type henchman to take out Batman. Superman-The guy who can crush tanks with his bare hands, can survive in space without a suit, has x-ray vision, heat vision, extremely keen sensory perception, ability to read minds and break time-space barriers. And who, just 10 mins later, senses Lois lane's fading heartbeat and takes a strategic timeout to save her and share sweet nothings. Makes you go 'what? Why didn't he just save his mom the same way?'

3) This irritating exchange passed off as the climax:
Supes: Martha!!!
Bat: Martha??
Supes: Martha!!!
Bat: Martha??
Crimemaster Gogo/audience: Ye Martha Martha kya hai, ye Martha martha?

4) The future movies plug -
Why can't you just do a marvel and include those random footage of future justice league entrants in the post credits? Do you have to destroy the flow of an already limping narrative to do that? Also, why is there no Green Lantern? Or Martian Manhunter? Is there like a quota on the number of alien players like they have in IPL?

5) The Wasted Characters:
Lex Luthor : supposed to be a diabolical mastermind, the arch nemesis of a 'God who lives among humans'. Instead, Jesse eisenberg's acting is what you get when 'that guy from Facebook' makes out with 'SRK from Darr'.
Wonder Woman : Gal Gadot, like Andy flower in the 90's Zimbabwe team, tries hard to inject the wow element in this rapidly deteriorating drama. But fails because of way less screen time than she should've been given. Like Andy flower, in the 90s Zimbabwe team.
Batman : see point (1) above
Superman  : Zack goes overboard with his exposition of 'How does it feel to be a God with limitless powers in a world where people hate what they cannot understand' . Superman is in a constant state of brooding and resignation over the fact that he will never feel accepted. And so He does the heroics not because it is the right thing to do, but because it is expected of him. Which leads his mom to remark 'you don't owe this world anything'. The only reason I don't hate him is because he is way better than Brandon Routh (who got our hopes up, only to take a giant flying dump on our collective faces)
Doomsday : the creature featured in this movie as an uglier version of godzilla apparently has a much better physique in his comic avatar. But in the movie, he just seems, as Kangana Ranaut would describe it 'adrakh ki tarah idhar udhar se fel gaya hai'.

Its probably not that bad a movie. Those among us who have witnessed Prem ratan dhan paayo (these are the people who will survive the nuclear Holocaust, whenever it happens) will survive this as well. But that's the thing. It was not supposed to be just another movie.  It was supposed to be the beginning of another franchise that fans deserve. Also,  I've seen Batman v Superman and India v West Indies in the same week. So I need to vent. Ok? Sorry. Bye.

Self appraisal a.k.a. "please-dont-fire-me-please-please"

“Here i stand, head in hand, i turn my face to the wall” so sang the beatles. Almost an year into my first job, the words echo my feelings to the T. Although the beatles would never have expected their words to be used in such a context. But then i don’t think the beatles were made much aware of the complexities of an office life. My feelings were heightened last week when announcements of a self-appraisal came in the mail. Suddenly i am being forced to take stock of my hitherto ignored work life.

The last many months have been like a wild party nite out. That’s not to say that its been awesomely fun. In fact, the other way round.  In a drunken binge, one sleep-walks through the night only to ask others the morning-after “dude, what the hell happened last nite? Did i do something stupid?”.  I asked something to that effect of my colleagues regarding the work that i’ve been supposedly doing all these months. But apparently, they’ve been busy doing nothing as well so instead i delve into that existential question with the stationery strewn around me. After almost a day of contemplating whether to make lofty claims (client satisfaction: ‘saved client from raging fire in building and terrorist attacks on two separate occasions. One of them being weekend/national holiday’ or individual initiatives: ‘instrumental in election of the new world bank chief’) or be honest (satyamev jayate, anyone?), still cant decide how to go about it. So i use the oft-abused tool of procrastination (‘lemme sleep over this’)

I try to rewind the past few months in order to dig out any possible tangible contribution that i may have unknowingly made to the world in general and my organization in particular, still drawing blanks. Maybe i’m like that guy in memento. Only during office hours. Maybe i’m doing things and not remembering them. I do remember loads of chai. Innumerable cups. The daily office ‘chai-time’ is the biggest obstacle to our economic independence. Look at china. They work like bloody machines. And us? My routine can be roughly described as under

Alarm rings. Curse alarm. Check mail. Curse boss. Snooze. Sleep. (loops 3 times). Wake up. Curse nobody in particular. Brush teeth. Chai. Check mail. Shower (optional). Forward mail. Reach office. Check mail. Chai. Open all of the MS Office tools  and 3 windows in each. Ogle at hot news presenter on TV (damn, wots with these news channels? They have more gorgeous women than that congregation of desperate me-too-upmarket shoppers a.k.a Phoenix Mall and MTV combined).  Check mail. Curse boss. Chai. Repeat till lunch. Lunch. Chai. Repeat activities of first half but with more chai’s before 7 pm and more cursing after 7.

But, I digress. Coming back to the entire cribbing-yet-working syndrome, I don’t blame myself (like any self-respecting narcissist, i rarely do). I still think i’m too young to be working (although my thinning hair and rapidly gaining paunch suggest otherwise). From looking under my bed for monsters a couple of years ago to intermittently checking the red beeping light on my blackberry for ‘urgent’ mails, fear has undergone a metamorphosis. But it is, people tell me, inevitable. After all ‘rozy-roti’ ka sawaal hai, they reason

I think people were referring to these two

So i decided to do a real self-appraisal. Not the corporate ‘my poop better than your poop’ thing, but a real heart-to-heart with my only witness being God. Apart from my neighbour . And the canteenwala who brought me my daily cuppa and decided to hang around.

Here it goes:

Achievement/key skills :

• To survive an year of corporate life (drudgery): I must say that this was an extremely difficult goal to achieve. Although quite simple to the naked unassuming mind, the first year is the most diabolically difficult phase of one’s life. Although i have not done it with particular flair or panache, i have managed to survive. I have also managed to sell 76% of my soul. I hope to complete 100% in the next year. Although pretty much has been downhill from the moment i received my first salary (at which point i must admit i did get pretty emotional and outrageously claimed that my entire life was a build-up to that particular moment) i have yet not been charge-sheeted with any crime. But I do have a knife in my drawer. Just in case.

• Presentation skills: This one is easy. For the past one year, there never has been a day where i have gone to office without pants. I guess that covers it. Literally. :P

• Team Playa:Throughout the year, i have made sure to not disturb the rest of the team when they were on strict deadlines. Hence, I have left early from office on most days so as to ensure zero disturbance from me.

• Stress management:Stress management is elaborated as “ability to maintain calm in times of pressure and handle stressful and crisis situation with efficiency”. I believe i have done exactly that for the past one year. Like when the canteen walla unexplainedly left before his scheduled time just when i was craving for maggi in the evening. Ok, so your friend met with an accident but doesn’t professionalism count for nothing?? I mean, he could’ve made maggi before he rushed like crazy. And true to its word, maggi takes just 2 minutes. I believe i was the better man in that situation as i “managed to keep calm”. And except for the odd incident where i ended up behaving like a freshly-beheaded chicken, the past year has really showcased my stress management skills at different points in time.

There was much more i could write, but it suddenly struck me that the office appraisal form required immediate attention. and the moral dilemma of whether to gas hopelessly or be truthful and fair returned to haunt me again.

In the end, i did what any over-educated man with advanced IQ and immense logical reasoning skills would do when faced with such a dilemma. I tossed a coin.

P.S. : This piece was written while listening to background music, which, though soothing, also has the inherent flaw of making everything you write seem profound and funny. So in case u think its lame, blame THIS (link) for it.

I believe i have wasted enough of your time. Let me make it up to you. Guys, please click the link below for an awesomely funny video. Girls can pls click the same link for the video of twilight-the movie. :P

http://www.youtube.com/user/officialtwilightfilm?feature=results_main

Diary of a so-called i-banker

Its extremely simple to be an i-banker. In fact, after surviving the intensely competitive (i-banking was named the 2nd most intensely-competitive sport, the 1st was obviously snail-racing) world of i-banking for 2 whole months (including working saturdays) I think m qualified enough to pass judgement on what skills are required to become one.

Throughout my work time, I have conducted painstaking surveys which included ppl from accounting as well (after all, they are also human) and made a list of the skills. However, since the final result of the survey was accidentally destroyed (my boss thought it was a tissue paper/annual report since it had many indecipherable scribblings) I will try and recount them from memory.

1) Candidate must be a carbon based life form.

This is as far as I can recollect.

Anywys, based on my personal judgement I can advise that the following qualities will go a long way in helping u become an awesome i-banker (some ppl think 'awesome i-banker' is an oxymoron. Those ppl work in sales and have rural stints)[1].

1) Staring blankly and having a long pause after each word. This misleads ppl into thinking that u actually know wot ur talking about.

This is also the reason why I think that atal bihari vajpayee would have made a gr8 i-banker. However he chose an intellectually-more-challenging profession. Well, to each his own, as the romans used to say[2].

As a corollary never keep to the same topic for more than 5 mins. Change the topic before the other banker can say ‘Rakesh Jhunjhunwala’. (This will be suitably demonstrated later when I run out of points in this very post)

2) Be secretive - this seems fairly obvious. A successful magician, a successful i-banker and tiger woods (almost, till he got caught) have this quality in common. They never tell[3].. Now, there might be a few smart ppl who mite question as to if this (bein secretive ) is that imp a quality why am I blurting it out on a post? That would mean m not that good an i-banker myself, in which case there's no sense reading my post. But m assuming such smart ppl would rather be pulling their own neckties and choking themselves than read this post, so I continue unabashedly.

3) Keep to standards – Simply put, it don’t matter wot shit you write as long as its in Verdana font, Size 12, single line spacing

(To be continued....)

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[1] Yes, I am that cruel with words.

[2]acually, the romans used to say 'to each his own ****' but since I assume this post will be read by adolescents as well (i can mentally connect with them), I will refrain from using the same adage.

[3] Altho with a magician it is different. He does not tell because he doesn't know much anyway. He jus does wot the rabbit tells him to

If life threw lemons (A.K.A. FMS Oscars 2011)

There was this nice quote which went ‘If life throws lemons, make lemonade’. Since then, there have been numerous funny versions of it. I today tried to think what my wonderful batchmates from the 2011 batch would do if life threw lemons at them. So, here goes,

If life threw lemons

Sasi – would beat the hell out of the lemons with chappal until they agreed to do whatever it is that he wanted.

Pandey – would ask the lemons to set him up with a nice Brahmin gal

Saby – would ask life/lemons to give him sutta/water/money/other random stuff that he may/maynot have a need for. In addition, he will ask the lemons to drop him to college as well.

Ritu – would bitch about one lemon to the other lemons. Every week the unfortunate lemon in question would change.

Sawa – would stop talking to Life for 36 hours until it agrees to give him apples as well. In which case sawa will pay 200 bucks to life.

Shanky – will be pleased at finding permanent audience for his jokes. Will terrorize the poor beings with his demonic laughter. Will also flirt with them if they are male lemons. He will also try to generate as much publicity using the lemons as possible.

Garima – will discuss art movies with the lemons. However, after a brief period of time (2 years or so) will realize that the lemons are inanimate objects. In which case, she will begin to look at the lemons themselves as objects of art.

Chockani – will accept the lemons gracefully. However he will fight for apples as that is wot he really wants. he will be suitably rewarded with apples as well, which will drag him into a controversy where he will be blamed for unethical acts.

Varun satia – will be sleeping and will wake up to find spoilt lemons.

Kundu – will be too busy studying to notice the lemons. On noticing the lemons, she will promptly clean them and make space in her room for the lemons. (Also, the lemons will be neatly labeled)

Rana – will advice Life on how throwing lemons is not such a good idea n how life should bring about diversity in its operations. He will quote from management and other books to prove his point. Finally, life will agree to give him apples if he shuts up.

Rodeja – Will give life lemons. Will condition the lemons into accepting him as their leader. Will also speak in funny accents to the lemons.

Manu – will bully the lemons everyday till they commit suicide. After that he will proceed to bully life itself into submission.

Nirmiti – would color the lemons with different colors thereby irritating life and getting back at it.

Malay – will crush the lemons with his bare hands and make lemonade to impress a certain someone.

Suhas – will do a wiki on lemons. Thereafter will do a wiki on life. After that, will go ahead and download all classical songs involving lemons.

Reetam, Pradeep & Diven – wil get into an existential debate on lemons which will however also involve Marxism, naxalism, euthanasia and other philosophical stuff which in the end have nothing to do with lemons whatsoever

Rishi lalwani – will be happy on receiving the lemons. However, he will misplace the lemons within 2 days and then forget about them altogether.

Govinda – will do weird, unmentionable things to lemons, be convicted and spend the rest of his life in prison. Sometimes will get drunk and call other people’s lemons at nite.

Harsh Pandey – will try to make more sense than the lemons and will fail miserably.

Vikas Jaglan - will not be present when life throws lemons but will ask someone to proxy for him. will demand for 'matthi & achar' along with lemon. In the end, he will say 'arre isse accha lemon to main fek sakta hoon' and will draw up a B-plan for throwing lemons at random people

Lateral candidates – will demand a shot at the fresher’s lemons as well.

(This piece is intended as a satire and as my ‘thank you’ note to my dear friends from the batch of 2011. In case any of you are offended,i'm really sorry, lemme know so i can make changes..i'd also recommend another quote for u, it goes 'Dont get mad, get even' )

Also, more to follow…. Keep watching this space.. :D



Demystifying MBA jargons

1) GAS- a.k.a. goli is a technique developed through years of doing nothing and yet escaping getting a a$$-whooping. The basic requirement of gassing around is a working knowledge of the English language. That’s it, although a rich imagination would go a long way in furthering your prospects. It’s a very important weapon in the arsenal of anybody who wants to be rich/famous/pseudo-intellectual. Its not much distinguishable from ‘content’ which like the rain-forests of Africa, is rapidly dwindling. In fact, I would say that

• Gas = Unconfirmed content

For, eg
Martin Luther King : I have a dream blah blah… (GAS) (till he finally succeeded)
Dean : Game over!! You are not giving this semester exams (Content)
How to find out if you are gaseous or merely human?
Step 1: Take a serious sounding topic of your choice.
Step 2: Try to speak on it without in any way referring to the topic or coming remotely near to it but with random facts and in a manner so convincing that it feels u own wikileaks. Be liberal with clichéd phrases and conjunctions.
Step 3: look around for comments/reactions. If people look at you approvingly, it means u can gas successfully. However, if people are disapproving or have a hand on their mouth, it either means that you have gassed unsuccessfully or you have literally gassed. You need to watch wot you speak in the first case, and watch wot you eat in the second.

2) Day minus 1 : contrary to popular notions, this doesn’t involve travelling back in time. It’s a concept designed to satisfy the egos of companies which are more inflated than Pamela anderson’s 36DDs(or is it 34DD, I haven’t been keeping track lately)..it basically means all the companies in placement season which come before the first company. (confused? My job here is done.)

3) Push/pull(context:placements) – This is as old as our college itself. But strangely enough, not even our college watchman dhansingh (whom the britishers left behind) has any idea what it means. The definition is as everchanging as a bjp spokespersons comments and may mean anything at any given point of time. The only thing that is constant is that it happens. Legendary placement secretaries have compared it to the revolutions of the sun around the earth (apparently, placement secys are not that well-read).

4) GBM – ‘A place where ppl collectively agree to disagree’ is the best way to describe it. Its full form is general body meeting. And the folks ensure that it stays so (i.e. general) even if there’s an agenda to every meeting. The decent way to handle a GBM is either drunk or with loads of popcorn and in one of the back-seats. Coz sometimes its more entertaining than a mithun flick in Bengali.

5) PSA – A tool originally envisioned to get new student into the MBA mode, its nowadays used by seniors to get assignments done from juniors or just for kicks. Its expanded as pre-session assignment but the facchas know it by different names like ‘Pervert Seniors ka Attyachar’.

6) Induction – formalized ragging (read:content building) with odd hour deadlines and odder assignments. More advantages have been pointed out of this exercise than wot vicco claims from its ayurvedic toothpaste, however, like the latter, its still to show concrete results.

7) Bulk deal – A bulk deal can be for anything and everything in a subsidized b-school like ours. From laptops and mobile connections to accommodation and cannabis, we demand bulk deals for anything and everything.

8) SOPbox – A process in which candidates to a post introduce their candidature and are immediately subjected to Roadies-type torture(makes Raghu Ram look like a 5 yr old). only marginally better than stripping people naked and then laughing at them. However, for all that you know that might be the next logical step. This has been advocated as a way of filtering out non-serious as well as candidates with morals/honesty from the process of selection. Pakistan uses this method to select its Army chief. In fact I propose that the next SOPbox be recorded and the footage sold to India TV/ Colours tv channel. Definitely prime time stuff I say.

9) CV point – Any stuff that you include in your CV. assumes special significance during certain time of the year (between December to February). CV points range from the super-speciality (e.g.:awarded TIME magazine ‘person of the year’) to the mundane (e.g.:helped old lady cross the road). There have been instance where people have made an entire CV based on references only from Wikipedia.

10) Stalling – a process by which you ensure that a company is pissed and definitely walks off your campus. Usually recommended for adrenaline junkies and extremely gaseous people (Refer: ‘Gas’ above)
(More to follow).. :D

Greenfield love

(This piece is a serious article. Which basically means it was written after i was high)

I am faced with a problem. It is a problem confronting many of my generation and most of the people my age group. I don’t know what I want to do. It is this restless phase in life where I’m thinking of changing the world but simultaneously a voice in the back of my mind has slowly started turning cynical. And there are very few things more dangerous than ur own mind being cynical about you.
So, I weigh my options. I could be an i-banker, I seem to have the necessary qualifications for that. I could pursue music, I seem to have the passion for that. I could even be a writer, I have the stationery (looking at the quality of writers nowadays I am convinced that all that is required to be a writer is the proper stationery, in my case, MS Word). But, then again the voice at the back of my mind speaks out. It has its reservations on all of the above. You can’t be an i-banker it says, you don’t have ur fundas in order. You cant be a musician coz you’ll never be that good. You cant be a writer coz well, being a writer is nothing nowadays. In the midst of all this I try to concentrate. I lay in bed, not sleeping, thinking about the place I want to be and the things I want to do. Suddenly, a vision comes to my mind. Of someone, or rather something I fell in love with.
I have never been a particular fan of Kerala as I’ve always considered Ahmedabad as my adopted city. Considering that I spent 10 months of every year there, frankly I dint have much options. I used to actually dread going ‘home’, as my mom would call it, because I felt terribly out of place there. Nothing seemed to match. I didn’t like all this greenery, I missed the concrete. Most of all I missed the ice-cream parlours, the cricket-matches, the restaurants, the movie theaters that so dotted the Ahmedabad skyline and which were so obviously absent from kerala’s. I have always wondered how I would’ve turned out had my dad never left kerala and I’ve never liked the idea. It had become a part of my life’s plan to continue to hate kerala for as long as possible.
But this summer was something different for me. The minute my flight landed in the Cochin International airport I had a feeling that something was different. And sure enough, it was. Kerala had grown. From being this irritating girl that u try hard to avoid during childhood to a woman so beautiful that u wonder if this was the same stupid girl that used to bug u during childhood, the place had grown. Or maybe it was that my perspective, my vision had changed. Which again can be explained by the fact that, even I had grown. Grown tired of the concrete jungles, grown sad at the hustle of city life, grown disgusted at the selfish attitude of people. The coconut trees and the greenery didn’t seem as stupid as before.
In a few hours, I was home. The dream house that my father had built and which apparently I had shown no interest in (because I never wanted my parents to leave my adopted city ahmedabad) welcomed me. For someone who’s got somewhat used to living in a hostel, the thought of having a house about the size of the entire hostel is a surprisingly refreshing. Then began the routine of meeting relatives. Carriages of memories come rushing back drawn by the old familiar faces. The usual questions ‘How is studies, how are ur friends, are you eating well’ and the unusual ones ‘when are you planning to stop studying, did you find a (new) girlfriend, do they have gramophone records in delhi?’. I juggle through all of them. Suddenly my eyes dart past the eager, questioning faces to the scenery outside. How could I have missed all this beauty the entire time. I rush outside to my verandah and stand there with a sheepish grin on my face, waiting to be introduced to my once so-irritating-I-tried-to-avoid friend. Yes, god’s own country it is I guess.
I finally had some idea what Ms. Arundhati Roy saw in the country side while she was writing ‘The god of small things’. Kerala is melancholy. Like all beautiful things, it is mystifying. It seems to be hiding something within its painfully smiling visage. Or maybe it was me. But I totally fell in love with the sight. Specially during dusk and dawn. I could listen to the stories that it told me all day long. Stories of working mothers and drunken fathers, of brilliant children and performance pressures, of old spinsters and even older witch-fables,of buried treasures,of houses illuminated by oil lanterns in the evenings, domes of temples, of boats threatening the calm of still rivers, of all-night performances of kathakali. There are more but this suffices at this point and is enough to get me to cross over to the other side.
But what totally takes my breath away is the rains. I’ve never been one who admires rains unconditionally. I’ve realized this one thing about the monsoons as with other things. Whether you like them or hate them totally depends on the ambience that ur in. Just like what is atmosphere in a night-club is suffocating in a local train. Obviously, u would not like the rains when its flooded your house and your car and drowned your precious clothes. But the countryside is an altogether different affair. The rains stimulate the greens. It flirts with the plants and brushes against them coyly. The trees move in response to the gentle breeze. They wave. They complain. They love. Compare this to the concrete jungle, where all you can here is the consistent pitter-patter of the raindrops on rock-solid foundations. But here, the sights are different. And the sounds, absolutely so.

Pls get off-track!!

(This piece is a satire. To be taken with a pinch of salt.. and lemon.. and tequila..Repeat till u hit the floor.)
I was quite happy. The day had gone off quite well, infact much better than I’d ever expected it to be. Re-entered a class I was thrown out of, got my first attendance in that particular subject for the semester. Somebody even had a spare homework assignment that I passed off as my own. And, the icing on the cake – I was re-admitted to a dissertation that I’d been so generously thrown out of. In fact, if I’d stood against Nitish Kumar in the elections for bihar, chances are I’d have probably won thereby showing a huge electoral middle finger to the exit polls. So, the natural tendency would be to book a ticket and enjoy the holiday season with my near and dear ones. But sadly, only to hear that the trains are all blocked/running hours late. The reason: people sitting on the tracks.
My first reaction was, its ok, they’ll do their stuff that they usually do and go away. After all, the railways tracks are quite famous for that. Maybe the Constipated people of India got together in the traditionally-inviting environs of the railway tracks in a bid to overcome their bowel wars. But more than 24 hours down the line, these people are still sitting there. Surely, the bowel wars cant last that long. Then I came to know of the real reason for the wars. A community called Gujjars fighting for reservation.
Now, I’ve never followed politics keenly. So I still don’t know who these people are and what they are fighting for. I thought as long as we’re in an independent country and people are not killing themselves over Rakhi Sawant’s show on TV, everything ought to be cool. No? Well, apparently not. This made me shake off some virtual dust off the google news website and look up gujjars. I found some articles like this
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/delhi/N-Railway-lost-Rs-16cr-due-to-protests-this-year/articleshow/7142657.cms
That has got me thinking (and its pretty hard for me). The railway lost 16 cr due to this entire thing?? N it’s the 3rd round of this?? What do people think it is? Some sort of a competition? Or is it like
Guy 1: ‘Hey dude, do u remember how we sat on the tracks for 2 whole days?’
Guy 2: ‘ya man my bum hurt so bad but it was so adventurous though we got nothing out of it.’
Guy 3: ‘We were sitting for a reason??
Guy 4: ‘Who’s up for round 3?’
And everyone goes ‘Hell, yeah’, including guy 3 who has no freakin clue why he’s there in the first place.
I mean it in the nicest and politest of ways, but gujjar guys, can u get off the freaking tracks? I’ve got friends I wanna meet and I just cant spend my time in the train listening to super-sonic babies wreak havoc or old couples complain about their arthritis any more than is usually required. Please get some less-obtrusive (n infinitely less irritating yet effective) mode of getting attention like maybe undergoing mass sex-change operations, leaking nationally sensitive material, dropping a kid into a man-hole tunnel or entering in Big Boss/Roadies. But this track-capturing, my friends, is simply irritating. No wonder, the British were more pissed off with civil disobedience than people blowing up courthouses and stuff.
Now we come to the possible solutions. How can we ensure that these people don’t end up as natural extensions of our railway tracks? As of now I can think up of only these.
1) Pay other people to use the railway tracks for what their more efficient alternative use as open-air toilets. In fact, Mr. Pranab Mukherjee could think up of some NREGA plan along these lines which will also ensure full employment. (Also, this is one thing in which the women wont demand 33% reservation). Basically, you pay people to produce crap. Its not that radical an idea if you think about it. Companies like GM have been doing this. TATA recently did this with its employees coming up with India’s answer to the zippo lighter, named Nano.
2) Give them non-operational tracks to sit on. (although, how the government will manage to do this, m still not sure)
3) Spread them all-over India so that the progress of one particular state is not affected. This will help in two ways. Firstly, it will cause small stoppages in the trains all over india causing the people everywhere to take notice, thereby giving more teeth to the gujjar agitation. Secondly, there will not be complete blockage in any particular regions.
4) Considering their expertise, they could be employed to block trains world wide..This is in MBA parlance referred to as ‘leveraging on ur core competence’. Track-blocking could be encouraged as a fledgling industry with 26% FDI and tax deductions. (If you cant beat them, join them on the tracks)
So, while I wait for the trains to start moving again, I can only express my anguish at the system which has gone off-track. The east has the Maoists, the north has kashmiri extremists, the west has the newly created gujjars and the south have rajnikanth fanatics and a.raja to handle. And meanwhile, I also realize that I have missed out on yet another deadline of my dissertation. But now I don’t fear any more. The next time I am thrown out of dissertation, all I gotta do is go and sit on those tracks.. :D