1 Article You Must Read Before Turning 120

               

                 “The road to success is dotted with many tempting parking spaces” said Will Rogers; you realise this man knew you well. Of course woods are lovely, dark and deep and you always rated sleep above everything else. You take a vow to succeed this time and not rest till you have checked all the boxes.   

         You ask Google what makes a person successful and it immediately presents Thirty books that you should read before you turn Thirty. You start checking the titles and you have read twenty nine. The moment you pick up the thirtieth book to become accomplished in life, your wife reminds you are nearing forty.  Deflating balloons has been this woman’s hobby. 

         She shows you another article about 12 mesmerising tourist places that you must visit before you die. You read the article attentively and discuss places but chuckle inside; why would a person try to complete this list and what would they wait for when they have visited all these paces. 

         By now, you have spent enough time on the Google and the Artificial Intelligence  jumps in joy shouting it knows what this man is looking in life. It bombards you with similar recommendations. You are told about 100 Movies that you should watch in your lifetime, you are asked to see 7 Motivational speeches and also 11 ways to remember names of people (why me Lord/AI?). 

         It puts neighbourhood aunts to shame in broadcasting secrets and in an instant Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn starts yelling numbers at you. Twitter tells you about 12 habits that will increase your wealth twelve times (did they discover my bank balance too?) and Facebook tells 6 healthy diets for a healthy life ( Wifey I know this is you). When you open LinkedIn is tells you about 21 Ways to succeed in life. 

         You challenge AI to surprise you but it is hardly intelligent if not stupid. It keeps relishing in repetitive data that it generates.  You tell about the fallacy of number systems and the undue importance it is giving to the decimal system. You tell in today’s age one deals in binaries of 1 and 0. You ask AI to check the system in which it computes and also refer to the title of this article. 

         Next day you start getting emails from numerologists about your lucky number and how they will help you in not sleeping in the woods. You blame the AI for tracking your number system study. You also give up your efforts to find success on Google.

 

 

Being Human

I always believed I was human. I guess people around me concurred with that or in case they didn’t, no one ever mentioned it in my life. So, I was happy being human and probably relished at that till one day I opened Google on my laptop and it said I needed to prove that I was not a Robot.

I had a lump in my throat and surge of emotions inside. A part of me said since I was too efficient, google was confusing me with a robot. Another part felt a machine was asking me to prove I was not a machine myself. After a decade of failed programming efforts, my wife would have vouched I was anything but a robot but I guess google also knew she underestimated me hence did not ask.

I thought for a long time on this question of principle and then concluded I should do what I did best on most occasions, that is swallowing pride. I acquiesced to the google CAPTCHA challenge. To my further embarrassment, I later had to google to learn CAPTCHA meant ‘Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart.’

I took a deep breath, prayed to my guardian angel and braced myself for the test. The test presented multiple square boxes and asked to tick ones with traffic signals. I revisited my Driving licence test in mind and then realised it is best avoided to mention how I got my Driving licence.

The boxes presented by Google had signals written in Chinese language and now I had real doubts about the intentions of google. I kept ticking boxes and it kept replacing them with news ones fast. Language was not the only doubt. What about the box having pole of the traffic signal?

Probably I was as good as a robot or not as bad a human, it gave up on me and now said I should tick boxes with cars. I diligently kept on checking boxes but google google was for sure biased. It gave Vans and now I was confused if Van was also a car.

For a moment I felt like breaking the laptop but gave up the idea on imagining my better half in the aftermath. I felt if google was man enough, it should ask me in person if I was human. Google would have thanked its stars that day at not being a man.

After a long time, and multiple failed attempts, existential questions started coming to my mind. I now had doubts if I was indeed a human. The ghost of Ghalib presented itself and said he had written this sher for this day:

बस-कि दुश्वार है हर काम का आसाँ होना,
आदमी को भी मयस्सर नहीं इंसाँ होना

The irony is as soon as I got doubts about being human, google sensed my confusion and immediately declared that since I was so unsure, I could only be human. I felt like celebrating for days to come.

Next day google said it would take my Math test to declare me a human. I was better at Math than I was at Traffic signals but google missed the basic premise that only humans were supposed to make computing errors, not computers, so technically wasn't I was more human when I gave wrong answers.

But then, who has ever in this world appreciated a feedback. I took the only option available, swallowed pride and acquiesced!

Because Commitment means Everything!

You were always committed to whatever you did. You also believed that first step to be serious in anything was committing yourself financially, so that you automatically give your best into it.

When you decided to learn Lawn Tennis, you were so serious that you coughed up three months’ salary to buy best racket. Though you gave up the game after three days and decided to first build up stamina instead, (and though you dread to mention it in front of your better half) you are till date committed to the idea of learning Lawn Tennis.

So, after taking Guitar lessons on a not so good borrowed instrument, you realised main reason for your less than satisfactory progress was lack of serious engagement. You had your eureka moment when you realised westerners played Guitar well due to the quality of their set. You immediately knew you had to buy an imported equipment.

After doing online survey half the night and then accepting Grammy award in the remaining half while sleeping, you were fully prepared to own up new set. Online Samaritans had warned about salesmen tricking people into buying unnecessary accessories and you chuckled at being too smart to be fooled by such things.

You entered the famed Kolkata showroom of this famous brand and realised it was somewhat smaller than in your dreams. It ended almost as soon as it began, but then you realised the proprietor was a Bengali and hence, the simplicity. You were happy that you will not be billed extra for externalities.

If you ever have been to a Marwari or Sindhi shop, you will realise how they scream customers are God and then show you entire stuff of their showroom. You end up buying unnecessary items but Bengalis are egalitarian and they may even refuse to sell you something they deem you are not fit to use.

You thanked your stars for finding this economical showroom but wondered how four salesmen were stuffed into such a small space. You know any professional help you needed was now just next to you. You took your time observing various Guitar sets and took mental note of it. After thirty minutes when you had minutely observed everything, you realised any salesman was yet to express an iota of interest in you.

The one at the cash counter was seriously playing solitaire on his computer. By the look on his face you realised he was defending some international championship. Two others were debating American imperialism and hateful policies of Donald Trump. You were amazed by their knowledge and could not help but appreciate the overall awareness.

You decided to intrude into the space of fourth salesman who was aimlessly loitering in the showroom. You encircled him like a bee and gathered courage to ask him for Guitar sets. He wasn’t exactly pleased yet asked what you exactly wanted. You mentioned a price cap and he took out a Guitar and handed it to you. Buying anything was never so simple.

You wondered if you should ask for opening the wrapper but he was now busy talking on his mobile. You played the polythene above guitar strings for complete fifteen minutes and displayed you were no novice. As soon as he ended the call, you pointed towards another Guitar set gesturing him to take it out. In a fraction of a second, myriads of expressions crossed his face all of which screamed you had betrayed him. He curtly said that Guitar was expensive.

You now felt offended and wanted to tell him your credit card limit. You also wanted to say your spectacles though thick and unattractive were Ray Ban and you were wearing Calvin Klein Shirt and Levis jeans. Before you could react, he suddenly left the shop screaming to the guy on computer that it was lunch time.

The only thing that mattered in this world now was salvaging your pride. You told the guy at counter in stern voice that you wanted to buy the same Guitar that the salesman had termed as expensive. There was an authority in your voice and you never felt more confident in life. The guy at the counter nodded politely as if he had at last understood your worth. Your back was erect and your neck was so straight that you examined the ceiling.

You waited and waited and waited and then realised Bengal was the first province to get bureaucracy in the British times. Billing was some serious business and something that they deeply respected. All three salesmen combined their strength and settled on the model number after verifying hundreds of documents. They were also extremely cautious in writing the bill and you could not help but appreciate their neat handwriting.

All three of them bowed gently when you left and started discussing strengths and weaknesses of Irish Football team. You sort of liked them now. You confidently carried the imported Guitar with a swag and were now committed to it for your whole life.

You quietly tear the bill before entering the house lest your better half one day discovers it.

Disclaimer: इस कहानी के सभी पात्र और घटनाएं काल्पनिक हैं. इसका उद्देश्य किसी भी व्यक्ति, धर्म, समुदाय अथवा जाति को ठेस पहुँचाना नहीं है. बावजूद इसके, किसी भी real or imagined असुविधा के लिए खेद है. 

How to make the most of Meetings!

No other event in any organisation is productive as its meetings. The number of tasks that are accomplished through meetings are infinite and seven of them are listed now:

1.     Your boss has made life difficult in office and daily dose of Lauki, Taroi and Palak for dinner at home doesn’t help. There was an odd nostril hair peeping in and out but never had the ‘me time’ to take care of that. Once you are in a meeting with a promising power point, lights slightly dim to let northward pointing graphs (each taller than its predecessor) leave their mark and optimistic sound of the speaker acting as a lullaby, you get the perfect ‘me time’ you were waiting for.

2.     Despite your deep sense of meditation all this time, something still penetrated your eardrums and you now know what your organisation is working on, what you are working on and what you have always been working upon. You get that perfect ‘Eureka’ moment and feel excited about whatever work you have been doing/ not doing for a long time.

3.     You notice gloomy faces of your office colleagues, their increasing waistline, receding hairline and now you feel that you are not the only one with a dull life. You try to fool your heart that you are not missing out much on life.

4.     Imagination is the most important ability needed to survive in life. You craft a story why something did not work in the past, pull out reasons/excuses why present performance is bad and boast ‘acche din’ all have been waiting for a long time. You realise there was a philosopher inside you waiting to come out for a long time.

5.     Meetings help to scratch each other’s back and celebrate trifles like achievements. You can cut cakes, celebrate success and pose for pictures for the annual magazine. You may further agree on new ways to waste each other’s time and list out subjects on which further meetings are required. In case something has gone wrong, you can minute it in the meeting and claim ‘I told you so’ alibi.

6.     Meeting are like those free periods in school that allows you do whatever you have wanted to do for a long time. You can sketch, write and catch some sleep during this time. You can also utilise this time on social media, post pictures with #deepinwork/#amazingteam and update your profile.

7.     Meetings provide a reason to utilize the departmental budget to eat, distribute exotic stationary and just to make sure participants feel valued shower souvenir(gifts) at times. You try new sandwiches, cashews and devour candies. As mentioned in this article before, meetings also provide a perfect opportunity to prove you are smart!

Welcome, you have Arrived!

You had more faith in Newton’s law of Inertia than Newton himself and state of rest was all you ever wanted in life. This was not the world of your dreams and you have wife and kids who have been applying an external force to take them out. You sustain the force for a long time but it grows exponentially with time. You soon realize world peace is more important and even Newton would have chosen it if given a choice.  

Your wife says she wishes to go to a place that is popular yet pristine and you tell her that was an example of oxymoron. You complement yourself on wisecrack but anyways suffer the consequences for voicing that. You are now family’s odd one out and even the kids are on the other side of this divide.

You demonstrate your seriousness and surf the internet for a long time looking for various tourist sites. You search for hotels and flight discounts. During this time, you have gifted yourself spams for a lifetime. You start getting deals for hotel/airlines and there are even offers for baggage loss insurance.

You show all this to your wife as an alibi in being helpless in locating any site and you are reminded of ‘one that should not be named’ popups that have been receiving without any complain for a long time. You quietly open your laptop and book the first exotic holiday that appears on the website. You feel a large hole in your pocket and show the amount to your wife to salvage some pride. You get a consolatory pat on the cheek. Next few days are spent in shopping for suitable dress, hats and goggles and you are ready with an attire that screams ‘See how a tourist looks like’.

The D-day arrives and you board the flight. Your kids punish the flight attendant for committing the mistake of offering a candy one time. They also compete in who can press the flight attendant call button more number of times.

After a long arduous journey, you are at the hotel and it does not disappoint. All you want to do in the hotel room is to sleep on the soft bed and wonder why there is no such mattress in your house. You have competitive kids and they treat the bed as a Bouncy and demonstrate their high jump capabilities. You remember the fortune this booking has cost and do not ask your kids to stop. They also scribble their names on the hotel walls.  

Next day, you request the hotel to book a Cab and your driver is an English-speaking man. You now can only get impressed. He confidently tells you about the not to be missed sites and for next three days, you are his ungrudging hostage. You visit/do not visit places that he recommends and you sincerely want to live up in his eyes. You eat, drink and shop at places that he says befits your stature and you enviously calculate his cut in your mind.

Long traffic snarls in the place tell you that it is anything but pristine now. You buy chips packet, water bottles and cold drink cans like all other tourists to leave your own mark at the tourist spot. You still have to negotiate a long queue in entering tourist attractions and you haggle with salesmen and beggars during that.

Your kids take toilet breaks at odd places at odd times and locating a public toilet is now your favourite pastime. Soon you have experience of sniffing public toilets of various kinds and you realise finding a clean toilet would be the ultimate dream of any Indian voyager. You have also started appreciating Graffiti on the toilet walls. There are complex biological concepts demonstrated, love professed in pure primal forms and simple copulation described. You are confident that A L Basham named his book ‘Wonder that is India’ after having a look at graffiti on toilet walls.   

You reach a historical site and since you already have been tricked, you do not mind becoming a fool one more time. You hire a tourist guide at an exorbitant price. Soon you realise hearing him may spoil chances of your kids studying history any time. You spend rest of the time in reading information written at the spot to your children and the tourist guide. You extract your revenge by not buying anything from the souvenir shop that he guides you outside.

On last day, you buy Souvenirs for neighbours and relatives. One cannot miss telling them about the great time that you had and see their envy of not being at this site. You also duly click pictures at all places and make funny smiling face. You realize breathing out when the picture is clicked helps as it hides your family pack. You keep on doing that all the time. Once you are back, you get an uncanny feeling that your trip was a waste. You still post pictures on your Facebook wall.

You finally feel that your trip was a success when you have attained the objective of getting maximum likes!

Of Being Important and being the Main Man!

You always wanted to be an important man. You prayed to God and as luck would have it, God agreed to that. Ok, almost did that!

So here you were, in a profession where you became the locally available, affordable, approachable and still reasonably acceptable Chief Guest for various occasions. You were invited as Chief Guest in local book festivals, you were called to preside over at cultural events and then you were cutting ribbons at Puja pandals.

The people who invite you are humble, respectful and they make your life miserable to ensure there is Chief Guest at their event. They forward Good morning messages along with hoaxes on whatsapp, send Facebook requests and ask when they meet next why you were yet to accept that and call thrice a day to verify that you haven’t yet changed your mind. You get nightmares of being K..K..K..K Kiran from movie Darr being stalked by Shahrukh Khan.

You want the event to get over quickly and commit the mistake of reaching on time. Even organisers are surprised/disappointed to see that. They have been wrongfully denied the opportunity to call you couple of more times.

You are given a warm welcome by showering flowers as it befits a worthy Chief Guest. Slowly the soft flowers give way to Marigold petals and showering get converted to throwing them with force on your poor self. Some kids relish at hitting bulls eye and soon there is a barrage of hitting petals on your eyes, neck and your head. You feel the pointed petals sticking on your sweating self and finding way to strange corners of your body and you rush towards the dais to save yourself.

There you realise that the organisers did not trust you all this time. There is a horde of back up Chief Guests occupying the dais. The number of people on your side exceed those sitting in front as spectators and you feel like volunteering to sit in front but hold on. You also wonder how round table inaugurations would be perfectly workable in such scenarios and would also save the cost of a dais.  

You want this ordeal to end but there is one co-chief guest yet to arrive and you wait on and on and curse yourself for arriving on time.  You make small talk with person sitting next and share their concern about weather, politics and academic future of their child. You stretch your cheeks to portray how privileged you are to sit on this side of the dais.

To the relief of all, program finally begins and the announcer starts by eulogising about their organisation, its history and importance of this event. You now know that in the history of mankind, there never was or will be an event more important. Then the announcer turns her attention on your kind self. You discover virtues you never had and learn about your accomplishments in life. If you happen to share your name with a person who topped IAS exactly fifteen years back (Anurag Srivastava, IAS, 1992), you always got credited for that. You feel like you are betraying them as Chief Guest.

You are dying to finish this fast and rush along with others to light the auspicious lamp to ceremonially inaugurate the event. They have put a nicely decorated beautiful lamp stand but nobody thought they may need a matchstick to light that. A kind soul discreetly brings out a cigarette lighter but the lamp has a mind of its own and takes its time to comply. It is followed by a cultural performance which is not bad but you stare at the back of the performer as she was facing the crowd.

The speeches begin and go on and on and since you are the chief guest, you get the privilege to speak at last. In the meantime, you have thought about this article’s draft, checked your social media messages myriads of time and you also found yourself napping a couple of times. Suddenly your name is announced and you rush towards the podium. As you hold the mike, you have forgotten the name of this event but you vaguely remember what it is all about. Also, you were haunted by their calls but now you do not recall name of any organiser. You mumble few words about how great this event was, how great were its organisers and basically how great all of us are. You thank them for considering you worthy of this job but you only see yawning faces in front, as bored as you are.

The organisers still diligently clap when you end. You want to run away but they are profusely thankful that you could make it to the event and hold you on for a cup of tea. There you are made to swallow a plate full of desserts (read calories) and you promise to yourself that you will not commit this mistake ever again in your life.

Next day you commit yourself to another event.

PS: This is an exaggerated version of all what actually goes around. The writer, who incidentally is a District Magistrate, is profusely thankful to all the organisers who ever thought him to be worthy of being Chief Guest at their event :) 

Absolute Triumph of Idiocy!

Some things are beyond language!

You always felt it deep inside but couldn’t understand its full impact. In fact, great scientists failed to decipher it. Today we are talking about the absolute triumph of Idiocy, and that of dear idiots all around. This article is a humble ode although no words can do perfect justice to this amazing quality.

• 1.    Unpredictability: Men thought that all problems can be solved by supercomputers. It can make myriad calculations in Nano seconds and predict behaviour/outcome of any event. Only one quality defeated supercomputers and that was idiocy. Even the best supercomputers fail to predict an idiot and as their random behaviour has no pattern. Dealing with an intelligent person war far simpler and supercomputers were willing to be called an idiot rather than trying to understand idiocy.
• 2.     Omnipresence: It is the only quality on this earth that is truly omnipresent. It surpasses the artificial boundaries of nationality, religion, caste or creed and is spread evenly across rich/poor, young/old and beautiful/ugly. If there is any place where mankind exists, rest assured you will find idiots.   
• 3.     Numerical Superiority: The only thing that matters in this world is the numbers and idiots by far outnumber intelligent people. Idiots also never feel lonely as they always find company. They have unimaginable numerical superiority and in a democracy, they also choose the public representatives hence all elected representatives are especially sensitive to idiocy.   
• 4.     Social media compatibility: This is the digital age and all social media platforms are idiocy compatible. They have features especially suited to idiots and their entire architecture is based on it. People livestream idiocy and new people keep on learning from it. Different options are provided to spread it through pictures/status updates/tweets and no so social media platform can ignore this need to spread idiocy.
• 5.     Unimaginable Variety: The variety of idiots in this world exceeds the number of living species. There are idiots of zillion varieties and till today new idiots are beings located at astounding pace. Take an idiot of any field be it politics, religion or social butterflies and for every idiot on this earth, equal and opposite idiot exists.
• 6.     Tailor made for Lovers: Anyone who has ever fallen in love will vouch for this. When a person is in love, she/he happily does what is idiotic, love’s default mode is idiocy. For all intelligent snobs behaving haughtily, the probability of idiots finding love is disproportionately high. You now know the reason why you are or aren’t with the hottest person in town.   
• 7.     No Medicine Can Tame it: All artificial attempts to turn an idiot into intelligent have failed through the ages. You might swallow Almonds for all your life or drink ‘Shankh Pushpi’ but one can never get rid of idiocy. Even attempts to sharpen brain by playing Sudoku have failed miserable. For the idiots of this world only, Bollywood invented the saying ‘अब इन्हें दवा की नहीं, दुआ की ज़रुरत है’.
• 8.     Always on display: The favourite contest of this world is ‘See, I am an idiot’. The competition for deciding the winner is fiery.  Just look around and people find new ways to display it. The easiest example is English news channels in the guise of nation needing to know something. In reality, nation relishes watching idiocy; high TRP of such channels is a testimony to it. Entire market research of big companies is dedicated on making people more idiotic.
• 9.     None of us could escape is: Idiocy has proved to be more infectious that any bacteria or virus and spreads with ease. Entire societies get afflicted by different sorts of idiocy daily. No person on this earth could claim to have totally escaped it. It also has a hibernating quality and can appear after ages even in most intelligent people. In fact, it can co-exist and the sharpest person can be idiotic at the same time.   
• 10.  Happiness and Idiocy: Research has proved there is a deep correlation between being an idiot and being happy. An intelligent person worries about so many things and always finds a reason to be disappointed, an idiot is happy with a silver lining. In fact, an idiot is just happy. Now you know why ignorance is bliss.
• 11.   The Paradox of Idiocy: One can never understand all this and enjoy it at the same time. Once a person realises she/he has been an idiot, they further can’t be. This is the paradox of idiocy, you can only enjoy it only if you do not realise it. After that you can only envy!
• PS: In case you find this offensive, let the world know at your own risk :P