Now with the Reserve Bank of India tightening norms before giving loans to businesses, unless they prove they are big enough to be able to repay, companies may use this tactic in their favour.

The entrepreneur can fight his case for a loan before the reluctant banker saying: “See, this employee was dead last week and we didn’t notice because our ACs were on 24 x 7 and we have too many employees with even more work to do!”

Now, for a company who can keep its air conditioning system running 24 hours and for a system so effective that the dead employee stayed a week without a stink, its owner will definitely have enough revenue to repay the loan…LOAN PASSED!

How about a daily report with a ‘dash’ marked against this dead employee’s name. Will this qualify for a business loan? After all we have so many employees that we can’t keep count of one and all…big enough to qualify for a loan?

Well, this is not a joke…this happened in an office I know very well, where an employee died in a road accident and nobody knew till a couple of days. Whether the HR department knew of the mishap was of course not known, but the fact that a mail was circulated to its employees apprising the incident speaks volumes of the insensitivity of certain people. And what’s more disturbing is the fact that the manager who had prepared the daily report after his death was cheeky enough to put a dash against his name. Thankfully though he didn’t write “DEAD” as his comment/ remark. Sales and marketing guys are always capable of doing and writing such remarks!

We call ourselves a closely knit society. But then incidents like these go to show that we are worse than animals, to put it straight. Neither the dog nor the wild elephant will leave its dead. Well, humanity RIP!

But then Man proposes, God disposes! I proposed that I will not be a wildlife activist ever, neither will I work for Animal Planet. However God had other things in store for me. The Almighty has His own peculiar ways of justice which is why although I’m not a wildlife activist or working in Animal Planet, I’m being instead made to work in a wild, wild office.

Inside the office, one feels that most of the people (no gender bias here) are carrying day-old food under their arms and have also smeared their bodies with yesterday’s left-over and decayed food to keep themselves cool as done by elephants, hippos and buffaloes.

Probably coming from the town of Bedrock as depicted in The Flintstones, most of these animals have never heard of deodorants and are probably unaware that it costs jut Rs 20 to get one.

Now it’s 1.30 and it’s feeding time – except for the chomping, petty quarrels and growls over a piece of roti, loud burps that letting out droplets of saliva and spraying on passing victims – you will not hear or see anything else. These animals show the instincts that can give any wildlife enthusiast the fright of a lifetime.

By 3.30, these animals after such a heavy lunch are ready to take a nap. How do I know? The loud yawns suffixed with something like the growl of the lion give the message loud and clear that if the hunters (read the prowling bosses) were not nearby we would have been fast asleep. Unable to take the forty winks, the uncomfortable animal now open his shoes letting out a gush of caustic fumes that has the potential to make a person faint. And as this animal is oblivious to the pollution he is causing, others silently suffer unable to tell him to put on his shoes and save them from the stink and the sight of tattered socks.

The scene now transfers to the washroom. It seems like a make-shift hospital from World War-II. Footmarks all on the tiles, the wounded animals gurgle, blow their noses and force coughs to remove the last remains of phlegm – all loudly, very loudly.

But my jungle story doesn’t end here. The Delhi monsoons have left a trail of destruction and here in my office the destruction shows with many wearing dark sunglasses, concealing their red eyes and spreading the virus of eye flu around – how wild can one get!

If you thought the music is horrendous, wait till you get the hang of the lyrics – they are absurd and ridiculous. With all due respect to Mr A R Rahman, he has done a crap of a job with this anthem, which should be recomposed.

If you thought AR Rahman’s Commonwealth Games’ Anthem is enough to give you sleepless nights, wait! The Delhi Anthem for the Commonwealth Games titled ‘Dilli Meri Jaan‘ by Dr Palas Sen will surely put you to sleep. The song is such a drag and gives you a feeling that our doctor sahib is still stuck in his early Euphoria days.

There are even fictitious reports that like Himesh Reshammiya’s chart buster song, ‘Jhalak Dikhlaja‘ had attracted ghosts in a small village in Gujarat, AR Rahman’s ‘Jiyo Utho Bado Jeeto‘ is believed to have brought all the dead music composers to life, weeping uncontrollably. So the floods in Delhi! People near Suresh Kalmadi’s house in fact heard Pancham da crying and pleading not to play the song. It was only after the Games Committee members swung into action and played Palas Sen’s ‘Dilli Meri Jaan‘ that he fell asleep instantly as if hit by a sedative dart.

Really after all the mess created by the organising committee aka Suresh Kalmadi, both AR Rahman and Dr Palas Sen have ensured that they drive the last nail in the coffin…good going. At least they are living it up to the expectations of the vulturous media waiting to pounce on any given opportunity.

So what will it be? Will these songs be recomposed or will be played repeatedly across all FM stations that people get used to them? Or will be another Rs 5 crore for recomposing it? Well, you never know…Yeh Dilli Hay Meri Jaan.

Darwin’s theory of ‘survival of the fittest’ here has been proved totally wrong. The perfect ‘mundu‘ is the case in point, where this inferior creature can co-exist with its dominant variety. The genes of the mundu creature are simplistic in nature and reacts suitable to the calls of the superior dominant variety – running errands ranging from washing its clothes, tiding its room or simply tolerating or even so doing what this superior dominant creature should have been doing for itself. The mundu creature never complains – one characteristic scientists are now study to identify this super gene and utilise it in plants in famine infested areas of the country.

Now the characteristics of the superior dominant creature: This is more of a virus, a small infectious agent that can replicate only inside the living cells of organisms. Ideally it is too small to be seen directly but after several mutations it has now taken the shape of a human, making it difficult for scientists to identify, separate and destroy them. This virus is a result of parents’ pampering and is most likely to be found in the middle-class populated areas. Ideally it attacks the mundu via vicinity contact and eats up its immune system, making the mundu its virtual slave.

The virus cannot detect the basic duties of a human being and thus gets these duties fulfilled via the mundu creature. There are times when the mundu retaliates this virus, although the occurrence of the mundu fighting back is very rare and scientists believe that such behaviour of the mundu is one in 10 billion. After the superior dominant virus attacks the mundu creature, it usually resorts to blogging as it is doing now.

Notes: The word ‘mundu‘ is a slang in Hindi language meaning a person who runs errands for others or a slave that has been exploited by its master(s).

With the mail confirming that the flexi-timings would be applicable from September, the mid-management or the mid-level manager along with its trusted ones went into a huddle. The motive was to manipulate the policy to suit his near and dear ones. If his colleague-friend is tagging along with someone else (read ‘me’) for his daily commuting, he will now bend the provisions in the policy so that it complies with the timings of his friend.

While I have two colleagues with whom I have to co-ordinate to get my timings to office right, I almost forgotten the third one who had made a late appearance to the scene in commuting along with me and incidentally the friend of this manager. So one can understand what my timings will be.

So tomorrow is my judgment day. I can either come and go at a suitable time that fits my bill or can make changes so as to suit the purpose of this gentleman whose very sight gives you the creeps and you start hating yourself for being such a loser to be working in the same office with him. Knowing me, I will probably silently suffer and vent out my frustrations blogging again tomorrow. I need a miracle!

But amidst all these changes, some things remain static like, sweaty colleagues who stink like dead dogs beside the highway, the burps loud and clear after lunch that you can separate easily the muli parantha from the paneer or curd and obnoxious figured lady colleagues donning even more obnoxious apparels that show the liabilities of a healthy life. O yes, I work in HELL! But above these, what had remained static or more appropriately stagnant is the road to this Hell. There is water on this road forever and the faece from the toilets of the factories near the road where hundreds of workers work each day raise a stink that is unbearable. The road, which resembles that of a mire has turned the red soil into black mud and welcomes you everyday as if to say: Still here? Isn’t this enough reason for you to quit…what a loser!

Occasionally good Samaritan factories try to fill the potholes (rather lakes) with rubble making it a driver’s nightmare instead. The sight of creaking cars with huge boulders kissing the floor and breaking axels, wading through the waters seems as if coming to office is more like competing in a dirt rally where only winners make it to the finishing line.

Now I was getting used to this prevailing faece smell, mud and the black water as were the others. Standing on blocks of bricks hungry workers gobbling on chole-bhaturay or rice and curry from the carts beside the road, oblivious to the prevailing stink – I was getting used to this sight each day…but that was till today.

After parking the car carefully and ensuring that my feet don’t land on the muck, I waded through the water from brick to brick ensuring that the shine of my leather shoes remains intact and most importantly that I reach to the attendance register before the cut-off time. While I was entering the office, I saw a couple of mounts of rubble and guys hastily trying to fill the potholes.

Other days I would mark my attendance and come upstairs to by desk, but today was different. Well, had it not been different, I would not have been writing this post. My urge for a packet of biscuits was much more than my urge for starting work early. And as I tried to cross the road towards the small makeshift shop-on-the-bicycle, splash!!! An overexcited worker who was filling the potholes with huge pieces of brick and mortar, let one fall in the puddle near me. I was covered from face to my shoes with flying droplets of the black slush. I let out a shrill cry, fired a volley of abuse at the perpetrator of the crime and hurried back to the washroom, my urge for biscuits buried under the rubble now! After several minutes of washing and cleaning, I still feel colleagues are discussing about how much I stink!

The entire mishap reminds me of Albert Szent-Gyorgyi, the Hungarian Biochemist, who had once said, “Water is life’s mater and matrix, mother and medium. There is no life without water.” I wonder what he meant by ‘life’s matter’!

I intend to go home early, throw all the clothes I’m wearing and scrub my body…probably I will take a medical leave tomorrow.

On one such occasion, I blended with the background and saved my skin and that of 3 acquaintances and a cousin of mine. It was in the early nineties and ULFA militancy in Assam was, though not in its peak, dominant. It was the evening of the day before a cousin sister’s marriage in Sivasagar, an ULFA infested district then. Those days marriages were conducted in banquet halls where guests were also provided rooms to stay. On this occasion the banquet hall was probably a couple of kilometers away from my cousin’s place. Another cousin of my age with three friends of his had also come to attend the marriage.

Before dinner all five of us decided to have a drink or two before going to my cousin’s house where dinner was being cooked for about two dozen of family members. After a drink too many, my cousin and his three friends got sloshed. Since the house was just walkable distance we decided to walk, my cousin along with his friends singing and dancing in the streets. Then came an unfortunate cycle-rickshaw, seeing which my cousin and his friends barring one jumped on to the rickshaw. The rickshaw puller protested and cried for help and as I watched them arguing with the rickshaw puller came a jeep full of policemen with batons and rifles in hand. My cousin was pulled by his jacket and thrown into the back of thejeep, another gets a jab on his back with the butt of the rifle and joined my cousin and the third? Where’s he?

As I continued to walk at a leisurely pace pretending I was not with them, came the third running with all might and as he neared us shouted, “police…police…run…run” and continued running followed by another jeep full of policemen. The fourth friend of my cousin who was besides me all this time said, “let’s help them.” Realising that it was no good fighting with the baton-welding law-enforcing system for some acquaintances whom I had met just a couple of hours back, I decided that saving my skin was the best option. So continuing at the same pace, without looking at him I hold his hand and whispered, “if you want you can go. But we will need one person to go home and tell our elders that my cousin and his three friends have been picked by the police…I will be the man…you go ahead and try to save them.” As I completed my sentence, we saw the third victim’s plight. Realizing that the police would catch up with him anyways, he gave up the chase below a blazing street-light enabling the furious policemen to get a good view of the areas in his frail body where they should be hitting.

Seeing this, our good Samaritan friend who just a couple of minutes back wanted to help his friends from the pangs of the dozen of policemen, too said that it was a better idea to inform the elders at home instead. But that was never to be…my cousin and his frightened friends from the back of the jeep called out his name and pleaded for help. I took probably three big steps to break away from the fourth probable victim and walked away into the night. Thankfully my cousin and his friends’ calls for help from me were drowned by the cursing of the police and the ruckus the old vehicles were making.

I soon reached home and gave a full account of how things unfolded adding my own dramatic opinions and feedback so that they swing into action immediately. Thankfully however, realising that they had picked the wrong guys, and that they were not ULFA cadets and were just college-going revelers attending a marriage function, the police dropped the four of them home just as some influential elders were about to go to the police station.

Now my fundas of life are:

• Remember what the flight attendant says: In case of emergency put on the oxygen mask first and then try to help others.
• And remember what Dale Carnegie had said: The only way to get the best of an argument is to avoid it.

This Harry Truman quote has great significance…now I know it well! It was just after I completed a project that I held very close to my heart – bringing out a city guide book. After successfully commissioning the guide’s content, I consulted several friends, mostly marketing professionals, on how the guide would fare in the market. Please let me confess here that I’m very bad in marketing…I can’t…I don’t have the gift of gab.

I can remain invisible for 365 days and get things done as instructed to me. But to sell something…I dread at the thought of meeting people, introducing myself and selling a product. With very minuscule budget, my marketing friends were the best bet to help me out in bringing in sponsors and advertisers. I was pinning my hopes on them. I have heard them talking big – rubbing shoulders with bigwigs in the industry…getting sponsors for my guide would be easy – I thought!

With whatever resources available with me, I placed everything on the table. I printed a couple of dummy copies for my marketing friends to show their clients.

The first look evoked an invariable ‘wow!’ So it would be an early evening meeting with them to discuss the prospects of the guide. Rounds of beer followed and excel sheets shown, estimates made and profits shared. Colors of the sedan I would have to gift my friend for bringing in sponsorship for me were also discussed and as the night grew old and with every burp all were forgotten.

By next afternoon another proposal, another profitable idea from my dear friends lit my hope’s lamp and by evening I had already raked in more imaginary money than I thought my guide book could make, followed by a morning when everything was forgotten – time to move on!

I never lost hope or probably my faith on my friends was even more for my brain to comprehend that I was being taken for a ride. Months of persuasion and desperation led to calls being not answered or ‘will call you later’, mobile phones being lost ‘so I lost your number’ and friends remaining on official tours to almost all cities of the countries thus ‘I will come to Delhi and speak to you.’

Gradually and sadly enough I came to know who was hitting on my head – repeatedly and more fiercely. Knowing well of my limitations, I started giving the slip to these friends and decided to scrap the entire project. Today the left over copies on my desk tell me everyday that not all good things have a happy ending.

Now my fundas of life is:

• If you play dead, you will be skinned.
• If you are footing the bill in the bar for a friend you are stupid and if you believe what he tells you now you are actually allowing him to treat you like a stupid again.
• Never believe a friend after he had two beers

The traffic snarls caused by a broken down old Maruti 800 car or an even more dilapidated DTC bus is given a new twist and combined with the story on rain…that’s the power of news I suppose! And overexcited anchors, who put words in the mouths of the panelists and jump to assumptions at the drop of the hat, giggles and cracks jokes that evokes more ire than laughter proclaim that the whole of Delhi is under water and people are living in their cars on highways.

But we must admit that they have competition and they have to show their mettle. If Chinese journalists are reporting 9-day long traffic snarls, their producers will obviously expect their correspondents to report waterlogging and traffic jams lasting 5 hours!

The decisions of the management of these so-called NATIONAL CHANNELS can make good entries in the Great Indian Laughter Challenge. I think it’s a joke that a person sitting in far Chennai or in the North-east is wasting his time watching the rains in Delhi – correspondent standing on flyovers (adding to the chaos) giving piece to camera (PTC) and answering to questions from an anchor who wished the correspondent was neck deep in water to prove a point. You will not believe me, but in a couple of cases an over-excited Sagiraka Gosh almost came out of the screen to prove that she was right. God! these channels should ban all anchors from consuming sugary stuff before they go on air!
Hindi channels? Well they have seen bigger floods in Bihar. Most of the journalists in Hindi channels hailing from that part of India (which part…no clue! check the map) had actually survived a week of the great flood clinching to wooden doors and bloated cattle reaching the Gangas then on to Yamuna and then straight to their respective studios in Delhi. Their perspective of the deluge in Delhi is different. They want to see rich Delhiites in Mercs sinking in underpasses (they will give the last push if they have too) and South Delhi totally submerged in water with the residents standing on the roof-tops and crying for help.

More than the authorities who have been at the receiving end of all news channels for the last couple of weeks, I will be more happy to see the blue sky and golden sunshine. And while these comedy channels (oops! news channels) will move on to find other victims, I will have more issue to write on. Till then beware of these patrakars who are on the prowl to make headlines, for they will leave to stone unturned to drown you or keep you stranded on the Delhi streets.

Now my funda of life is:
My hay while the sun shines seems irrelevant now. It should go: Make headlines while the clouds stay

I travel each day from Dwarka to Okhla to my office via the outer ring road, where construction/ beautification work are being undertaken. I leave home at 8.00 and reach office (if I’m lucky) at around 9.30, which is a driving time of one and half hour to cover just 32 kms. With a cut-off time of 9.40 am in office, it means if I reach after 9.40 for four days I get a day’s pay cut. This has been the norm since 2008, when construction of the flyover near the airport started. So should I feel proud that I’m taking a day’s pay cut each month for the Games which probably I will not even go to watch?

When I see the way the decision-makers work, I feel it was a wrong city to host the Commonwealth Games. Here’s why? The single carriageway flyover on the outer-ring road near West-end was built for vehicles coming from the airport, but surprisingly today, the flyover is used by vehicles going towards the airport. Probably in the history of building flyovers this is the one flyover which has been reversed. The fact that this flyover was reversed within a month from its operation speaks highly of the planning the civic bodies had undertaken before spending crores of rupees on it!! A friend of mine, when the flyover was reversed, jokingly said that a couple of politicians might have missed their flights…Well, you never know, he might be right! So should I feel proud of that Delhi is hosting the Commonwealth Games?

Now the coordination of each departments is so superb that you will now find the newly planted grass and plants under the flyovers with a coat of paint. Can’t it be that the flyover is painted first and the plants planted later…rational perhaps! From Pancheel to the Savitri flyover there is more that a kilometer long traffic jam each day. Why? Even I’m confused now. The entire place besides the one-carriage Savitri flyover is being dug and every couple of week the signage proudly declaring who is making a mess of the place changes. But I should be proud that Delhi is hosting the Commonwealth Games!

The Delhi government has raised taxes, or slashed subsidies, on everything from cooking gas to diesel, and from mobile phones to clothes, to raise Rs 850 crore (Rs 8.50 billion). Not a big deal. But when you see, read and hear reports of officials and politicians allegedly taking the Commonwealth Games as Come-on-wealth Games, I feel cheated. I know if not cent per cent, 50 percent of these allegations or reports are absolutely right. So should I feel proud that Delhi is hosting the Commonwealth Games?

I have very limited resources for broadening my knowledge base, so whatever I write are mostly based on what I see with my own eyes or taken from (reliable) sources. So a FM station tells me that the construction work of the stadiums for London Olympics to be held in 2012 is almost over. But here we have barely a couple of weeks left and now we are running against time hoping that we can complete them before the Games. I hope something like the Ferozeshah Kotla cricket ground doesn’t happen where the final India-Sri Lanka one-dayer last year had to be abandoned because of a dangerous pitch, bringing nothing but disgrace and also putting a question mark over its stature as an international venue.

Just today former Australian swimmer and Olympic gold medalist Dawn Fraser has urged the athletes of her country to boycott the Delhi Commonwealth Games citing security threat and the city’s lack of preparation to host the mega sports event. While our authorities might take it lightly, there is some truth in what Fraser said: “The Indians are telling us that security will be right. But they have also been telling us for months that their stadiums are ready to go, too, and quite obviously they are not. So what else are they keeping secret?.” Well, we are very good at keeping secrets…so please wait till October! The security in a small market in Dwarka 6 and 10, which I usually frequent will perhaps answer Fraser’s query on security. Nobody goes through the metal detectors and who cares…there is not a single policeman in sight. But then I should feel proud that Delhi is hosting the Commonwealth Games!

And while all efforts now seem to be focused on completing the projects, we seem to have forgotten a very important aspect – training players of the public transport to be courteous and to follow traffic rules. There has been talks of replacing the DTC buses which are dirty and in dilapidated state. I can bet my life if one doesn’t find a broken-down DTC bus stranded on the middle of road everyday. Cows were happily mating on the road near Munirka and Masjid Moth flyover till yesterday and haggling with auto-rickshaw drivers is a norm. Pedestrians are still not using overground or underground passes and I have seen drivers of the AC DTC buses smoking bidis with a bus full of passengers. So should I be feeling proud that Delhi is hosting the Commonwealth Games?

Lastly, what is the relevance of these Commonwealth Games in the 21st century? The Commonwealth refers to those countries who were formerly part of the British Empire. Where is that empire now? And the head of the Commonwealth is the Queen, whose rule our fore-fathers had fought and died to gain our Independence. And although the word Commonwealth means ‘common well-being’ we all know well as to whose common well-being the British empire had in mind! So what’s such hullabaloo all about? Beats me!

No doubt Delhi will probably look better with all the beautification work that are being undertaken. But at what cost – my one day’s pay each month or three hours of my life each day spent on the road due to traffic snarls or the tax on my beer which I now pay? It’s true that deep down each Delhiite hopes that the Commonwealth Games are successfully held, but the way things are going, I have real doubts…prove me wrong Mr Kalmadi. I will be more than happy to be wronged. But my view remains the same – India will do better in soccer if Bengalis quit playing the sport and the country will do better in athletics if Suresh Kalmadi quits…as of now we are stuck with both!