Fun @ Work

Yesterday we celebrated Fun @ work in our office. Putting that simply, no one is expected to work. The theme of the day was to wear your traditional dress and flaunt it around. The day started with a gloomy look, hardly anyone following the theme. The exception being one pretty girl dressed in a sharara( am I spelling it wrong?) , which added more beauty and shine to her already shining face. I had brought my Weshti to office ( henceforth referred to as WT) , as I was really scared at how the stray dogs in my area might behave , after seeing me in WT and was not ready for a public strip show. It was safely tucked inside my bag and most of my colleagues had done the same. Well I started taking a survey of how many people had followed the theme (the unsaid thing is that sampling was carried out only for female population!!). The other theme was already underway , people crossing the same cubicle repeatedly , trading stealthy but charming stares , making acquaintances etc.
The real story of me wearing a WT starts now. Having been imparted with that knowledge only the day before , I had just memorized a few key steps as told by my room mate ( he deserves a beer!!), just like how any recipe will be jotted down as bullet points. As the judgment time came , I missed the order of the last two steps and was fighting with my WT for quite some time. Finally after a number of attempts , I finally succeeded and the key thing Is that I never had to adjust it till the EOD. Then the rest of the day I had to carry my suave looks around. To be honest , I never thought there would be a good response for me on a traditional outfit , but the response was really good, from a few girls too!!. That was enough to sabotage a few days of sleep for me. Then finally our manager , who leads our group , always known for leading any initiative from the front , entered into office. I was taken aback , I expected him in a pucca traditional dress & he was dressed to the full in formals. But as everyone else he had the whole armor hidden in his bag and when he came for the rounds to see the level of compliance, I was flabbergasted. His looks wore tradition from top to bottom. It was very much a traditional Maharashtrian dress , his head adorned by a Gandhi toppi.

Finally in the evening, the real celebrations started. To start with , people who did not comply to the theme were singled out & the rest of the group started giving punishments , like asking them to sing a song( the punishment was supposed to be for the erring ones and finally we turned out be the sufferers). Then there was a cat walk for all the lady participants & Voila! , this is something I was expecting. There was cat calls all around , we as a bunch of guys were making the event more colorful. The whole event was happening in the terrace and we guys were immensely enjoying the girls walking the ramp. Then we had a real boring session of Fish pond , which defied the very meaning of a fish pond , by becoming more formal & without any real teasing chits. Finally we had the Mr & Ms. Traditional. Our manager was adjudged as Mr.Traditional and when it came to Ms.traditional, the crowd was really good at showing their fondness for all of the participants. Finally it turned out be the pretty girl who I had mentioned in the staring , who won the accolade and her face shone with more prettiness and charm.( Not to mention that a few nights of sleep are gone and hence the ill effects of the same on my work).

Finally we had two Vadas and a piece of cake delivered to our desks & I had to be content with the same. Finally my inner mind reminded me about the dogs in my locality and then I promptly went to the wash room and got back into what I was in, in the morning

Religion as it appears to me

My heart was burdened with so much of pain, when I read the news that the abducted Indian was executed in Afghanistan. If they do it in the name of the Almighty, then the very purpose of the religion is meaningless. What had that innocent man hailing from a remote village in Kerala do? An insane reason that he was working for an Indian company working on assignments in afghan, or was it a part of the purported message to the outer world. In any case, I really sympathize with the family of the bereaved. When I came across the same news in the morning, there was a small note that the news has not been confirmed officially and I hoped for the inevitable not to happen. Might be I could have overlooked this piece of news like others which are flashed across innumerous websites. But instead of spending a few minutes of my time in simply gazing at the news item, I was left to wonder what meaning the words civilization and modernization adds to our life. We still have some barbarians living amongst us, guided by a bunch of insane minds and to top it all they say they do all this in the name of God. We humans are always used to putting the blame on somebody else and in the recent times we have resorted to putting the blame on the God Himself. We do talk about sophistication, modernization and all the other fancy terms, but tend to ignore the underlying fact – they don’t seem to apply their minds in cases like these, where your heart is in sync with a cause of total irrelevance to the mankind. You might argue that simply due to the environment where they were born & groomed might be the root cause; we are simply overlooking one key fact. They believe they are guided by a religion and a religion if followed truly is essentially a beacon. It does not see who you are, where you were born etc, it guides you towards the right path. And any such tool is of extreme use, only when the hands which hold them are pious and pure enough to appreciate the meaning and the purpose, which is severely lacking in cases like these. Preaching values of humanity and compassion will be the theme of any religion and let us hope(the best thing which can be done by me and you) that these minds be capable of seeing others pain as their pain and suffering and start really appreciating the meaning of the religion and it’s very purpose.

The Indian Notion Of Peace

Whenever any bomb blast happens in any part of India , the Indian goverment is quick to find a way out. They immediately point their hands towards one of the three key terrorist organizations operating against New Delhi ( JEM,LET& Hizb M). A statement is then read out to the press which strongly condemns the incident , followed by a similar statement from the Pak establishment. Then there are special teams formed to investigate the crime and things start at a snail's pace. There is no point in talking or making peace gestures to an country whose national policy( unofficial but obvious) is to de-stabilize the Indian establishment. Take the last natural disaster that affected both India and Pakistan. India was quick enough to announce a relief package worth 25M$. Ah, that being a real big amount , most of the Indians are left to wonder as to how this money will actually be spent. Might be 5M$ will reach the needy (Read those affected and not those in power) the rest might be siphoned off into the hands of the terrorist organizations. And when the New Delhi blasts happened, the govt was still opening borders and shaking hands. Why should we continue doing this?. The govt has no rights to assume a moral role and offer an relief package of this sort. The time I’m writing this , someone on the border or in some other part of the country might be conspiring against Us. Think of the effect terrorism had on our country, particularly J&K , where peace is less felt. Months after terrorists attacked the parliament , India was on the brink of an wat with Pak & the news which was doing the rounds few months back was that a group of corporate heads, mainly from the US had succeeded in convincing the Indian movement not to go ahead with the war. It is not that the US does not understand the pain of terrorism, but their version and definition differs. Terrorism which originates from the lands of their allies does not confer to their definition. My take here is that Indian govt should have taken a strong position at that point of time. It was very much obvious how shaken the Pak govt was at that time. Better late than never, we should start taking some measures in this regard. As to what these measures can be, me being a common observer and not an astute policymaker, cannot offer that great a solution or anything of that sort. The least that i can do is to suggest that the establishment take clues from what other nations who have been plagued by terrorism have been adopting. If we don't send proper messages at junctures like these , we will be taken for granted and in our case the opposite party is very good in sending mesages, the last being that they are not terribly affected by the earthquake as was portrayed by the media , by organizing the delhi blasts.