Consulting

Consulting is when four people are assigned to "Meet, Collaborate and Execute a Challenge Efficiently and Effectively" in a month; basically a job that can be mopped up by one person in two days.

The Untold Gandhi...

Smriti Irani (Bahu of Saas bhi kabhi bahu...) is all set to launch a TV serial depicting the untold story of Gandhi. So we will finally get to see:

• A good looking, uncannily fashionable Gandhi
• Evil British officers with devillish looking smiles
• British officers' wives with garish make-up and long bindis
• Gandhi having a car accident and losing his memory... to become Nehru for a while?
• Gandhi's Ba outliving him by several generations out of public demand

Yup, it's an untold story alright...

So much to live for...

* A career, which depends as much on whims of others as on my skills...
* A marriage, in which my wife lives far away from me and I can see her only once a month...
* A fat paycheck, which vanishes the moment the next month arrives...
* Wonderful mornings, which are either gone by the time I wake up or arrive after I've reached the perennial morning of my workplace
* A Wonderful city, which is burning itself to cinders over who is Marathi, Bhaiyya, Hindu, Muslim....
* A great country, which is pulling itself into the mud, under the pretext of going back to its roots....
* Children, who will grow under the influence of the malls, cartoon network and video games, for whom freedom means pocket money and going to malls alone, instead of playing in the open spaces and maidans...

So much to live for...

Cleopatra

I was having a discussion with one of my colleagues at work about Egypt and I don't recollect how but we got into this talk about Cleopatra.
He (my colleague) got into story telling mode and he told me that Cleopatra had married her younger brother to stay in power and she also killed her sister some time later in her life time so as to usurp the kingdom from her.

History and its weird tales !!!!!

The Question of Loyalty

I joined the company I currently work for almost two years ago. When I joined I heard everyone around me talk about 'bearing up with' the two years and then switching jobs for a more lucrative offer. Me? No. I wanted to stay, I believed in what the company spoke of as its philosophy. I wanted to stay, be part of the family.

Almost two years now and much has changed. I'm married. I have a family. I want to give them my best as well as save for my children when they arrive. I want something for myself as well -- a job that I will always want to excel in. A challenge that I would be raring to face everyday. There's so much I want that I wonder if I'm being too demanding. I have so much as well right?

Four hours of traveling in a day, people packed like sardines in the train; every single day. A work schedule that demands more and more all the time, while I feel myself giving less and less. I can see people cheering with me, swearing at me, loving me, hating me, resenting me. It is great contribution if you work your ass off on weekends or for twenty hours a day. But at the same time it's blasphemy if you ask for compensation for it. You should not be drinking too much coffee, not even when you're trying to keep yourself awake through the night so that you can meet some of those challenging (read unrealistic) deadlines.

It's a hard question, the question of loyalty. especially hard when you're really not sure if you're being loyal to the company who's values you believe in, or to those individuals who seem to work overtime to circumvent them.