Being boring......rehashed

Enbiem had once put up a lovely poem called Being Boring by Wendy Cope on her blog.  I instantly loved it and the humor she has used, and i forwarded it to all my buddies.  Here's the poem:


Being Boring 
 
If you ask me 'What's new?', I have nothing to say
Except that the garden is growing.
I had a slight cold but it's better today.
I'm content with the way things are going.
Yes, he is the same as he usually is,
Still eating and sleeping and snoring.
I get on with my work. He gets on with his.
I know this is all very boring.


There was drama enough in my turbulent past:
Tears and passion-I've used up a tankful.
No news is good news, and long may it last,
If nothing much happens, I'm thankful.
A happier cabbage you never did see,
My vegetable spirits are soaring.
If you're after excitement, steer well clear of me.
I want to go on being boring.


I don't go to parties. Well, what are they for,
If you don't need to find a new lover?
You drink and you listen and drink a bit more
And you take the next day to recover.
Someone to stay home with was all my desire And,
now that I've found a safe mooring,
I've just one ambition in life: I aspire
To go on and on being boring.


-- Wendy Cope


Now my dear friend Mr.Pawan Arora found the perfect excuse to provoke me and replied to my email with: "Good one but I think you can add on to this."  The fkr knows me too well and that i'd grab the slightest opportunity to do anything other than work.  So i stirred up my noodles a bit and sent him my version of the poem.


Now to really get this poem, i'll have to introduce u to its two main characters: 


Pawan (toinng) Arora is a man in his 4th or 5th decade.  His seniority (in age and designation) oozes out of the tone and body language he uses with us junior folk.  Otherwise he's just a great guy....who has an ability to knock ones wind out with a well timed razor sharp one-liner.  But during the last year this dude has lost a lot of his old cheerful nature and has become more and more serious every day.   


Manjrekar is a friend who works in a competing organization, a kid just out of college, typically cocky (!) and smart mouthed.  He peaked the popularity charts at work because 'somebody' made up the story that he was regularly 'servicing' his boss when out on meetings in his car.  You know how impossible it is to let something like this go!  There was a whole slew of manjrekar jokes involving car seats, inconvenient steering wheels, flossing, chocobars, etc etc etc.  You got the picture right?


Well here goes....


Our Toinng Arora is a nice old man
His abilities noone can question
But lately he seems to be bogged down by
Work pressure and traffic congestion


He rarely replies to mails sent by
Old buddies who love him so much
The intimacy seems to have worn off a li'l
Now that we are not physically in touch


Wake up dear friend, goof around a bit
Get out and get wet when its pouring
You're surrounded by so many silly idiots
There's no reason to go on being boring


Look at Manjrekar, a fine young fella
With mischief written on his visage
He's on for a joke or a quip or a poke
Or even for a naughty little massage


He's eager for action and also adventure
He keeps lookin for things more exciting
But God knows why he picked an activity where
He can add to the thrill just by biting
 
It will help his career (at the cost of his rear)
And surely this cant be called whoring
As long he has a boss and that boss has a car
His life will never be boring
:-)


- Vivek Rao

Aching to break free

Boozy called to say that he had to work all through the national holiday on monday, when everybody else was at home with family and friends hogging on Diwali sweets.  Often in the past he has worked through Friday nights and weekends, struggling to keep up with deadlines.  That conversation got me thinking about the freakin insanity of the whole thing.  Doesn't the "work to live, not live to work" concept hold good anymore?  I have seen friends in equity sales, investment banking, or for that matter, in many arbit profiles, burning out by the minute.

In our whole distorted ordering of priorities, we end up giving such a ridiculous weightage to achieving (or holding on to) a fast track career, that we actually stop living.  We used to have so much fun in college, with little or no money in our pockets.  But then we walked on a programmed path towards becoming an engineer/doctor/CA/MBA/Businessperson and entered the rat race.  No, this is worse.  This is a shit race.  We are all turds in a fkin shit race, gettin flushed away so fast, without getting a chance to leave any kind of mark. 

Even just in my limited social sphere, i know so many young people who are unhappy with what they are doing.  I'm not talking about people generally cribbing or being greedy for more.  I'm talking about the unhappiness resulting from wanting to do something different.  Something more meaningful or fun, or something reflecting our innate nature and individuality.  And i'm talking about the kind of people who can never be at peace with the fact that they are working on a pre-designed job description in a pre-designed grade structure, and knowing that they can be effortlessly substituted by another dummy in a tie and a good shirt, who'll probably do the job as well, if not better.

I'm not in any way trying to suggest that a corporate job is bad.  If you have a job profile that you like and are getting paid to your satisfaction, it can be really great.  Promotions, bonuses, responsibilities, status....lots of good things to look forward to.

But if you are continuously unsatisfied and are pining to do something else, which will probably give you much more happiness and peace even if it is at a lower income, i hope you are lucky enough to have the courage to make that change.  I'm still working on tightening my balls enough to finally break free.  I want to give a shot at some long standing plans.  If they dont work out, i know i'll be able to pick up a job again, satisfied that atleast i tried.

And that situation need not be all bad.  For example, the place where i work is amazing.  Bosses are great (though you cant have the same bosses forever....who knows if there is gonna be a terrible one in the future), culture is nice, have some good friends amongst the colleagues, etc.  This is the kind of place where I can work for 20-30 years without being desperate to move.  But inspite of all that, for a long time now there has been a constant unhappiness lingering under the surface.  I know i have to try doing something on my own.  And i know i have to explore my creative side.  I just have to do it.  Its now or never.  There's a lot of clarity about that, but its still so damn difficult to take that final call....

Why are silly things like losing a year or having a gap in our CV so scary to us?  One of the things we are probably most afraid of is falling behind our batchmates and peers and being thought of as a laggard.  Fk it all.

This one is from the eyes of my friend boozy, and is for every person stuck and slogging it off in a deadbeat job...

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Aching to break free...

I get out of my home and

There's an eerie calm on the street
I head towards the station

Dragging my tired and aching feet

It feels so strange to climb

The railway bridge all alone
Noone pushes or gropes me

Or even tries to flick my phone

Even the train pullin in slowly

Has a lazy air around it
No need to hunt for a toehold

Its so unreal...there's place to sit

My heart is sinkin fast

As the office block gets closer
The security guy signing me in

Seems to whisper "what a loser!"

Project reports & Status reports

& data analysis spreadsheets
Deliverables & deadlines

Hammer down like drum beats

The dull glow from the monitor

Lights up my swollen eye sacs

The keyboard rests on the monster

That I've grown instead of 6-packs

I am utterly exhausted

And my poor back needs some healing

But all thats nothing compared to

This deap-seated unhappy feeling

My tired body and weary mind

Are screaming out a warning
Yet, what am i doing in office again

on a beautiful Sunday morning?

The only great thing today is

I dont have to stand in line
The coffe machine, the photocopier,

food counters & urinals are all mine

But I wonder where i'm heading to

Is this what i'd set out for?
The momentum has somehow built up so

Things dont make sense any more

Get an email from an old friend

Has some pics of the good ol' days
A guitar, drums, beer bottles,

Great buddies who've parted ways

I wanted to play guitar and to write..

I wanted to do something cool
Something to pour my soul in

But i'm sitting here like a fool

The empty feeling inside me

Is screaming out a warning
Yet, what am i doing in office again

on a beautiful Sunday morning?

- Vivek Rao

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Life...

Does it really matter if somebody likes
These random words, a few scribbled lines,
This life itself is poetry
Those were at most concocted rhymes...
:-)

Coupla old pomes

One day our office guys were just doing our usual tp of mail-mail which started because of some over senti goodbye mail sent by a departing colleague. Then all of a sudden Toinng sent us a heavy poem on tears which he had come across. Found it hard to digest, hence scribbled this one:

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Tears

Tears that escape a broken heart
Tears that flow when friends depart

Tears that are due to bruises or cuts
Tears come when you are kicked in the nuts

Tears when you are delirious with joy
Tears when your girl goes out with another guy

Tears when you are holding your newborn
Tears when by mistake you delete all your porn

Tears are crazy unpredictable things
They come out either way your fortune swings

Tears make you an emotional mess
So its better to shut that tap soon, unless

Pretty girls sympathise with "oh my poor baby"
And that leads on to more interesting things, maybe!

- Vivek Rao

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My wife has a pair of twins for cousins...two really sweet girls, Asmu and Appu. Hardly a few years back i knew them as tiny tots, and they are already more than a head taller than me (now we all know thats not very difficult to do!). Now A&A keep running into school projects that are over their heads (thanks to our great education system), and wifey tries to help get them out of the mess by: helping build something for their craft project / doing net research for some stupid write-ups / hunting for arbit photos or images on the net, etc etc.

A few months back we got a frantic, last-minute call from the twins about a project where they were supposed to write a poem for class the next morning, and they had made no progress at all. While wife was directing them to search on the net for obscure poems which they could copy, i got a thought and wrote this thing:

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half of me.....

do you want to know a funny little thing about me?
i'll tell if you promise to listen with care
its about the best gift i've got in my life
nothing else even begins to compare

i'm a little different from what you can see
you see... i am actually just half
its just half of me standing and talking right now
i can see you are just itching to laugh!

my other half is pretty and smart and witty
my other half is a big part of me
my other half is actually my beautiful soul mate
my best friend for eternity

we share all our things, our thoughts and our dreams
we've even shared our first heartbeat
i'm talking about my darling twin sister
she is the half which makes me complete....

- Vivek Rao

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I dunno how that went down in class, but the kids liked it; atleast they said they did!

Crazy lines

During a boring lecture (predictably!) during my second year at JBIMS, I was feeling particularly edgy, was doodling on the last page of my notebook, and so I tried an experiment. I just penned a rhyme, letting the words flow without any pause for reflection, just letting my absolutely random thoughts spill over. This took less than 2 mins to write. Totally weird stuff!

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Heat and Cold

Whatever we know till today
Is something no one will ever say

But truth is a strange game, do you
Prefer the truth till your face is blue?

Can conscience play a gentler role?
Or can you ignore it, you troubled soul?

Because tomorrow your perspective
Can be twisted and turned into something new

Then above the mountains things will change
This world is not beautiful, but strange

So gallop on, your minds horses may
They will never ever escape the day

Forever they lie bound and trapped beneath
My shallow dreams and my grinding teeth

Whatever we know till today
Is part of a bargain street-side play

- Vivek Rao

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he he he he he

On health and stress....

I went through a lot of bad shit, health wise, from Sept to Nov 2007. Was hospitalized 4 times in these 3 months, with extremely weird symptoms which scared the shit out of me and my family. Doctors couldn't figure out what it was, and hence they poked and probed most parts of my body and put me through a host of exotic tests, and they still couldn't figure it out. As specialists discussed and debated every new possibility that was thrown up, stuff like vit b12 deficiency, heart trouble, pulmonary embolism, neurological disorder etc, I couldn't help thinking what kind of future lay ahead for me, or whether there was gonna be a lengthy future at all..!

By Gods grace I pulled out of all that unharmed. When I was down I kept thinking about how I had abused my body with junk food and a pathetic lifestyle, and how I will turn a new leaf, so to say, when I recover. Turns out, its been almost one and a half years since, and I am still doing a lot of the same wrong shit which got me in the mess to begin with. I sure dont want another jhatka to help me come to my senses. In the coming months I'm gonna focus much more on moving towards a healthier lifestyle.

I also spent a lot of time thinking about all the superficial meaningless stuff that I spent so much time bothering about. 'High stress levels' was the one common point all docs seem to agree upon. It seemed so funny. I have a good life, really nothing to complain about. Fantastic family, great friends, decent earning, all comforts, etc etc. And yet I was stressed out. So if I already have all the things that really matter, what was I running after?

My bro told me I had lost all my joyfulness and playfulness that I had when I was younger. Somewhere down the line I had become too serious, too uptight, wound up, maybe even angry. I had convinced myself that I had a lot of responsibilities to shoulder and things to prove. And this was not unique. We see this so often amongst our friends and colleagues. Perhaps we're taking life too seriously. Far too seriously. Quasi and Rashmi helped me a lot in getting out of this mindset. I still have a long way to go, but I'm so visibly more relaxed and happy now. A lot has changed and I'm thankful to Q and R. I'm really having fun now!! :-)

Anyways, I wrote this in Oct 2007 during my lowest point mentally and physically, which is why it is kinda extra-cynical. :-) Just wanted to share the thought with you, though... All said and done, cant help feeling that sales is quite enjoyable, to a point, and a nice deal cracked does give a fantastic kick! :-)

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Confessions of a sales-guy....

Well this is gonna be quite an exercise
On whether i can still rhyme; or otherwise!

My rythms all rusted and wit unused
Creativity has just been a word abused

For i spend it all on client meetings
On instant smiles and beamed-out greetings

"Sir you really have a beautiful office!"
or "Our competition can never ever top this!"

I talk about a beautiful long-term relation
While trying not to work out the SIP calculation :-)

"Ha Ha! Sir that was a really good one!"
& "more benefits? why not! consider it done..."

Constant agreements and contrived pleasantries
Smile on the face; both eyes on the proc fees

We're selling to the clients & then selling to credit
We're selling to the boss, "look how i did it!"

Sitting at home, watching television
While the brains churning out a pipeline revision

Instead of pretty ladies with bodies perfected
My dreams are now full of all clients prospected

Amid songs of collateral values and ageing of debtors
I'm down on my knees proposing with sanction letters!

In this chasing of numbers, this whole wild rush
Am i forgetting myself a wee bit too much?

Chill out, old buddy! You've a long way to go!
Whats the point of a great act if you dont last the show???

So i'm gonna sit more often with my pen and my paper
And try to put together, a song or a caper

I've no idea whether i'll be able to write
But with some beer and some music, i just possibly might! :-)

- Vivek Rao

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Sleepfully yours,

Its a frighteningly boring day at office today. Frightening because we just had a sales review meeting in the morning today, and the numbers were looking really bleak. So with an overcast mood on a bright sunny day, I returned to my desk with a resolve to get things moving. But seems like today is one of those days when you just cant help feeling lethargic no matter what you do. Haven't slept much last night, and am feeling damn sleepy. Tryin to stay awake by chatting with chana and typing this post.

I usually have great trouble fighting sleep during trainings and product presentations. Dunno what it is about these things, but i get instantly sleepy. And sometimes the speakers just drone on and on giving gyaan. I sleepily worry about getting caught, then imagine how the speaker must be gettin pissed seeing my glazed eyes and my intermittent and untimely nods and shakes, and then i get this unbearable urge to giggle. Though i snortle and choke over my suppressed laugh into momentary wakefulness, i'm in deeper shit by now as many eyes stare at me. Thankfully its not long before i'm half snoring again.

I'd written this during a ghastly presentation on some system integration, as a desperate attempt to stay awake:

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Zzzzzzz....

integration....phintegration....
i dunno what he's tellin me
at absolutely random moments
i nod my head all knowingly

eyes are heavy, sinkin fast
i force them open time to time
the murmers are now homogeneous
cant make out a single line

oops! did i just jerk awake?
how long was i jus nodding off?
the talking guy is starin hard
i nod rapidly, squirm and cough

its a losing battle; not bravely fought
sleep is a bitch with stealthy charms
may i stretch out 'tween the chairs for a while?
i'm desperate to throw down arms...

- Vivek Rao

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