small things that make us happy

Today, while I was listening to one of my most favorite songs – EK LAU IS TARAH (from the movie Aamir), I thought of all those people, rather victims of bomb blasts, accidents, etc. who didn’t do anything bad to deserve such a harsh punishment in life. I mean, you are dining in five star hotel, enjoying the meal with the people you like and then suddenly a bomb explodes and your life changes for the worse…. Or you are travelling in the first class bogie, enjoying cool breeze sitting on the window sit and suddenly a bomb planted in some bag kept on the shelf explodes!... all you can say is “what was my fault????...”…

Then I thought of small small things that make us happy …. This is what I could think..:

1) Sleeping in your own home, with all your family members around you… I mean, I have this kind of a feeling every night when I am home. With my mom on the bed next to mine, I feel that “abhi kuch bhi ho to chalega.. meri mummy ke baaju mein hun mai… bas…”…

2) You want to catch the 10.16 CST slow local. You leave the home at 10.00. You get the rickshaw as soon as you reach the main road. All the while, you keep praying to god that train be late. You reach the station at 10.13. you see the train approaching the station. You take the foot-over-bridge and run as fast you can and just as the train reaches the station, you too are on the station. And you jump into the train to get your favorite window seat!

3) Sitting on marine drive with the person you like… you look into her face and keep staring at her for the way she smiles or giggles… you keep blabbering some pakau Jokes so as to keep her smiling… you make up things and say it in such a way that makes her giggle continuously… needless to say, the smile that suffuses your faces is enough to keep you happy for the rest of the week!...

4) You are standing in a long queue for A/C bus. You let 2 A/C busses pass because you want that most favorite seat on the last 4^th row!... I have done that twice because I wanted to sit on my most fav seat!

5) You are travelling in train and are sitting on the window seat.. you are listening to FM Radio. You like some recent song and are praying that the Radio jockey plays you favorite song. You stick on the one FM station to hear that most recent song. You are just about to change the FM station and just then, your favorite song is played!... the kind of happiness that you get is just immeasurable!... only hard core music lovers would understand my point…

6) You talk to your GF/BF during the day. Then at night, before going to sleep, you check your mobile to see if there is any message from her/him. You don’t see any. You are disappointed. But, just as you are about to keep your mobile aside, you see a message “Gn Tc “ from her/him… I am sure that the whole night you will keep smiling!

7) you have some 5000 to 6000 songs on your IPOD (not knowing which all songs are there in your IPOD). One fine day, while you are travelling in KingLong Bus,you hear a song that start liking instantly. You become crazy for that song. You SMS all your friends asking them if they have the song. You spend the whole day waiting for someone to mail you that song. Just before going to sleep you happen to search for that song on your IPOD. You thought that you didn’t have that song. But just as a try, you search. And whooaaaa! You find that song right on your IPOD! Needless to say, you will hear that song atleast 10-20 times before you go to sleep!... this happened to me few days ago…so I can vouch for that fact that such a incident can happen!

8) You regularly get SMSes from a friend of yours whom you like very much. Suddenly he/she stops SMSing you. You get disappointed, but don’t call him/her. Suddenly, one fine morning you wake up to see a ‘Good Morning’ message from him/her. That would surely make you smile. And that day you will realize how much you missed not getting SMS from him/her…. Its never too late to acknowledge the love or liking for someone who is special to you (not necessarily GF/BF)…

9) You wake up in the morning, get ready for office. Mom makes tiffin for you. you are bored of the roj ka bhaaji-chapati. You reach office. Work for some time and go to have lunch. You open your tiffin to find the most favorite dish of yours (Undhyoo in my case). Your friends will easily gauge the happiness suffusing your face… and you SMS you mom for making such a lovely tiffin. Now your mom would be happy!

10) It’s a rainy morning. Heavy rains had lashed the city throughout the night. You look through the window and pray to god to disrupt the railways… you get up and switch on the TV . you hear the reporters say “itni bhaari baarish ke kaaran sabhi trains radd kar di gayi hai… stithi aur 12 ghanto tak sudharneki koi aashankaa nahi hai…”. You smile and your belief in god strengthens!

Autobiography of a Tantrik….

In last 4 hours I had 6 clients visiting me. One had a problem related to stomach. Three were suffering from marital problems and the rest two were having problems with their boss.

I cannot stop laughing when educated people come to me to get their problems solved. Of course I don’t laugh in front of them. but mun hi mun main bahut hasta hun…Whenever I ‘cure’ an educated person of his problems, I get a kind of wicked satisfaction. I mean, I am just a 5th grade student. And when I cure an educated person of his illness using my Mantras, I wonder what is the use of education that doesn’t teach you to be practical. Like, last week, I got this ‘patient’ who had lot of issues with his wife. He doubted his wife having an affair. This is how our conversation went :

Patient : Charansparsh Maharaj.

I just gestured. I didn’t greet him back. See, it’s a normal human psychology that if I don’t greet him back and instead I just gesture that I accepted his greetings, then I would have an upper hand in the meeting. As simple as that. He continued.

Patient: Maharaj, mai bahut chintit hun. Meri Biwi….

I stopped him just when he was about to complete his dialogue. I took his hand in my hand, closed my eyes said “wo tumse bewafaai kar rahi hai. Aur kisi ke saath uska chakkar hai uska”.

Hahahahahhaha.. you should have seen his face!

Patient: Baba aap mahaan ho. Aap kripaya meri samsya ko solve Karen…

Being a sadistic and anti-educated person, I asked him his age and qualification.

Patient: Baba, mai ek MBA hun… meri umra 30 saal.

If you had the ability to peep into my mind, you could easily sense that I was rolling with laughter. i enjoyed every bit of his superstition that an uneducated baba like me would cure his problem!

I continued “Baccha, tumhari naadi dekhke pata chalta hai ki tum bahut acche insaan ho. Tum bahut mehnati ho.” He nodded in agreement. I have developed a knack of understanding people. See, when he said that he is an MBA, that DOES mean that he must have worked hard for exam preparation and then during his MBA education. So, what I said was just based on his words. I didn’t use any extra-terrestrial power to judge that small a thing!..hahahahahah….. finally, I took a locket out of my pocket. I kept that locket is the ash-bowl in front of me. I closed my eyes for 5 minutes. And then gave him that locket dipped in ash.

Patient: Dhanyawaad baba. Muje aap pe poora vishwaas hai. Bas meri duvidha door kar dijiye….”

I didn’t say anything. I just responded by saying “tathastu” and smiled at him so that he would feel that his work will get done. The moment he left, I started laughing like crazy. I mean, what can my locket dipped in some bloody ash do good to him? How on earth do you educated people believe in me? Hehehhe… seriously, I am sure that I am not going to let my child spend waste his precious years in getting a graduate degree. I will teach him all the tricks of fooling people and he will be well off financially.

Every day I get some 20 patients. I charge them somewhere around rs.500 to rs. 2000 – depending upon the problem and the financial status of the ‘patient’. Like, if a rich ‘patient’ comes to get his problems solved, I charge him more. And you know what, the best part is that these rich ‘patients’ are like golden goose for me. I cut them very slowly. Usually, I start with a packet of ash. Then following week, I give them a locket, then a mantra, then something , then something! Hahahahahahhaha… I love these rich ‘patients’. Thank god for giving me such fat-wallet patients!

Today let me share a few things that I do to fool my ‘patients’….

What I do	Why I do that
1) taking the hand of the patient in my hand and acting as if I am try to doing a diagnosis by feeling the vein of the patient	This basically instills a good faith in the patient. He/she feels that what I am doing is absolutely right. He/she feels that I am trying to get to the root of the problem. hehehehhe…
2) Telling the patient to take a look at his watch and then waking me up after 7 minutes 40 seconds.	Sometimes, being precise helps. See, when I tell the patient that I am going to close my eyes to talk to the evil and the god for 7 minutes and 40 seconds, the ‘patient’ first wonders why “7 minutes and 40 seconds?” then I smile at him as if I know everything about his problem. He better shut up and let me do my work. This instills a deep faith of the ‘patient’ on me.
3) putting the hand of the patient in the ash-bowl and then keeping it on the crystal ball	These kinds of weird actions makes the ‘patient’ believe that the money that they are spending is worth.
4) while point number 3 is being done, I tell the patient to chant a mantra	For Instilling more faith on me! hahahahhahaha…
5) Giving a small packet of ash and asking the patient to dip it in a well or a river which is not at polluted.	The patient starts believing that my powers have really to do something with the PURITY of the water!....

Seriously, it’s very easy to fool people. The basic reason being the frustration of the people with the illness which has been tormenting them for days or months! See, suppose you have SOME illness. You try Allopathy, homeopathy, Ayurveda, etc… even if things don’t turn out to be positive, then naturally you will do that the world finds STUPID! And that is coming to a tantrik like me! The willingness to be up and ready is stronger than the normal logic of not trusting a tantrik. Sometimes, Superstition defies science and logic! And that’s when I make money!

If you see the things from my angle, you would realize that what I am doing is not wrong or illegal. People trust me. I give them SOME medicine or ash or something. Most of the times, the patients recover soon because of the faith than what I give. Psychological help or advantage is what I indirectly give my patients. For that they pay rs.500 to rs.2000! fair deal naa?... I heal you (however it maybe) and you pay me! Simple business!

Most of the people of my fraternity are not god-fearing people. At the end of the day, I do and pooja and ask God to forgive me for sins that I did throughout the day. Sins of looting people of hundreds of people. But then, I am going to continue to do this work till the time educated people like you keep coming to me! Hahahahhaa….

Use some common sense, scientific knowledge and logic and you will realize that my tricks don’t work! These “anti-superstition” NGOs are trying to spread so much knowledge. Don’t you listen to them?

Till the day your heart rules your brain to make a decision, I am surely going to enjoy my life…!hahahhahahahaha….

Tathastu!!!

A and D of being fat….

Last month while I was alighting from the rickshaw, I gave the driver a rs. 10 ka note. Abruptly he said “uncle, chutta do naa”. I got angry and asked him if looked like uncle. He apologized and said “sorry dost, raat hai na abhi… to andhere mein samjaa nahi”…I blamed the lack of light on this fiasco.

Last month, I was talking to an old classmate(female) of mine. We were standing near the bus-stop. A small urchin came by and started begging. She looked at me and said “uncle, kuch khaane ko do…ek do rupyaa do…”. I took out the wallet from my pocket and was about to give her a 2 rupee coin. Just then she looked at my friend and said “didi, kuch khane ko”…. This was the height! My friend- my classmate was called “didi” and I was addressed as “uncle”. I got furious and kept the 2 rupee coin back in my wallet.

(The above 2 situations are imaginary. They have been added just to give a context to my article :D)

Advantages of being fat :

1) You never have to sit beside the rickshaw driver. Like, suppose that the back seats have already been occupied and then you(a fat person) approach the rickshaw. The rickshawwala will give you a wild look. You would wonder what evil you have to done to deserve such a dreaded glance. Then he will request one the guys sitting in the back seat to sit beside him and you can easily enjoy the ride to home in a FULL seat!
2) Similarly, when you travel in train, when you sitting on the 3^rd seat, no one tell you “bhaisaab, thoda andar ho jao”; because he knows that even if u move a little bit, the newly created space wouldn’t be sufficient even to keep a quarter of his butt!
3) As children, when you are fat and chubby, you grab a lot of eyeballs. The thin ones keep being jealous of you. The thin ones will complain to their moms about being neglected. Their moms tell them to read point number 3 of the “Disadvantages of being fat” section!
4) You should feel happy that you represent the KHAATAA-PEETAA family! You are symbolic of the wealth that a family possesses. Be happy!
5) You have higher chances of getting a lead role in diaper commercials where sweet chubby-chubby kids are required. Not the bichara-lukdu-sukdu ones!
6) You don’t need to learn karate or any other fight art because ur sheer size would be sufficient to terrorize anyone!
7) As children, you get to go into the hands of lot many beautiful girls than do the lukdu-sukdu ones! Needless to say, beautiful girls would like to play with someone who is chubby-chubby, with cute-cute cheeks, with sweet smile, whom they can keep saying “allle…gulllu….maaru cutu cutu….alle alle….cho chweet…” Needless to say, your moms would be proud of you. Unfortunately, the lukdu-sukdu ones don’t have these pleasures!
8) Being huge or fat, you can easily bully others and try to create a macho-impression on the beautiful girls of your class.

Disadvantages of being fat:

1) Agreed, that you never have to sit beside the rickshaw driver; but suppose amongst the 3 passengers sitting in the back seats, there are 2 beautiful girls and 1 OK types lukdu-sukdu boy. When that bichara thin guy is made to sit on the front and you-the huge beast- are made to sit beside the beautiful girls, then I am sure they might start to think – “kitnaa motaa hai be...acche se baithe they hum log…ayaa gaya…bachpan mein aunty ne bhookha rakhna chaiye tha mote ko… to aaj acchese baithneko hota tha….!” I am sure that their hidden disgruntlement would surface on their faces. Needless to say, you will keep feeling guilty of upsetting beautiful girls (if the girls were shantaa-kantaa types, then it is OK…give a damn!)
2) Agreed that when you travel in train, when you are sitting on the 3^rd seat, no one tell you “bhaisaab, thoda andar ho jao”. But can you imagine the amount of HAAY you must be getting because you are occupying the seats of the 2 ordinary people. You pay the same fare and still you don’t get a place to sit because of your big butt! You would be a lucky to not know Marathi if you are travelling in Mumbai! You would easily hear words like “jaadyaa kuthlaa..baslaay aaraamat…nusti charbi bharli aahe ye maansaat….aaine khup ghatlay shariraat… chyaa aila hyachyaaa…!!”
3) Agreed that as children, when you are fat and chubby, you grab a lot of eyeballs. But the same eyeballs will start avoiding you once you are young. Beautiful girls want handsome, slim and fit guys! Not diaper-heroes or farex-babies!
4) Practically if you see, being KHATAA-PEETAA is a bane these days. I mean, being obese is the last thing you would ask for from God.
5) Diaper commercials form the least part of all the advertisements on TV. Rest of the Ads have smart, fit, thin boys as their stars!
6) Even though you think you can bully others by your sheer size, the lukdu-sukdu ones can surely make u run like hell and take all the energy out of you!
7) The moments spent as a small child are not registered that prominently in the brains. So when you are handsome and fit in your youth, you will many more chances to impress babes than will fat, chubby guys get!
8) Sometimes, girls like well-mannered boys and not bullies who keep showing their power. So in such cases, being a fat kid would surely be of no help!

All in all, the best fit for a human being is to be chubby in childhood and fit and thin in youth and later on!... this is what I feel !!.... :-D

WTF

Life is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you are gonna get… – Tom Hanks in FORREST GUMP.


Life, many a time, gives us instances to be happy and the rest of the times, it makes us say ”W T F!”…

So I was thinking about the instances that screw our brains… this is not an exhaustive list… I have tried my best to jot down what the moments when our brains get screwed…

You might want to shout out loud “WTF” when….:

1) You spend the whole day with your girlfriend/boyfriend and after an almost sleepless night you wake up with a Beep of your mobile. You smile and take the mobile in your hand and expect a sweet SMS from her/him and find out the SMS – VX-CITIBANK-Your credit card bill worth 15,835 has been dispatched to your address!

2) The recession is over, the company profits are amazing, the number of the projects coming into company is increasing and still the CEO of your company announces “There will be no increments this year. We are doing this so that if we get hit by a recession next year, we should be able to sustain ourselves”.

3) You are standing on the railway platform waiting for a train. You let 5 trains go hoping that the 6th train would be empty enough to let you in. But then you meet the same fate for the 6th train as you met for the earlier 5!

4) You spend 3 years in a company. You had worked really hard. You expected a promotion, increment and an Onsite opportunity. But then, your company gets bankrupt because of recession and leave aside promotion, increment and Onsite opportunity, you reach a stage when you forward your resume to all your friends and still end up not changing the company for 6 months! Extra 6 months of frustrations!

5) Election day arrives. One set of Politicians tries it best to convince why they are lesser evil than the other parties. You think twice before voting. Finally you choose to give vote to a very educated, promising and honest independent candidate. You go the voting booth, stand in the queue for 2 hrs under the sun and then when the elections are declared you find your candidate being bought by the party you hated the most …

6) It is a stormy night. The lightning keeps scaring you. Your desktop does not have a UPS. You are supposed to give a PPT to your CEO the next day. A very big day for you. You work on the PPT for the whole night. You save your PPT but then unfortunately, a surge of lightning crashes the mother board of your desktop. You end up SMSing your boss – I am suffering from typhoid. Won’t be able to come to office. … And then the colleague you hate the most ends up giving an amazing PPT to the CEO!

7) Your locality never faces a water cut. So you never care to store water. You go to have a bath. You turn on the shower and lather your body with soap. Suddenly, the shower betrays you. No water to wash even your eyes. You take the towel and rub your eyes and come out and end up using the only source of water that was available in the house – drinking water in the Matkaa!

8) You shift to a new company hoping that you would encounters babes or beautiful girls. You start imagining scenes were you are the Krishna of all the babes in the new company. Finally, you end up being a part of a 40 member team which has only 8 girls and out of those 8 girls 7 are married and the rest 1 girl has recently got engaged to someone!

9) Your BF/GF had told you to come ONLINE at 4.00 in the evening to chat. There is a blast in your nearby electric-house. You are not able to access your PC. You rush to a nearby cyber café to find out that you have to wait for at least 40 minutes to log on and chat with you GF/BF. At 5.00 PM, the BF/GF gets frustrated of waiting for you and assumes that you are no more interested in the relationship!

10) You are given an Onsite opportunity to USA. You are damn happy. You give your friends a lavish party because you know that you will now earn in dollars. You do a lot of shopping. You pack your bags and take blessings from elders. Your neighbours come and greet you and tell you that they are very proud of you. The next day just as you are about to leave for the airport, you get a call from your boss – “hi XYZ, I am sorry to tell you that the project has been scrapped. Sorry”… next day, you become the talk of the building! (this is a true incident. It happened to one of my friends!!)

11) You to a fancy restaurant with your GF. You both eat happily. The bill comes to around rs. 2000. You pull out your wallet from your pocket. You try to search for the credit card, only to find out that your mom had taken the credit card from your wallet the previous day because she doesn’t believe in living on credit. You try to search for any cash. Later on you come to know that your dear sister was in dire need of money, so she had taken the cash from your wallet. Now you just smile at your GF and ask her if she can loan you rs.2000!!!!

12) You buy a DVD from a CD-DVD wala on the footpath near station. You were told that the DVD had latest hindi movies. You go home and your mom and dad tell you that they would like to see the new hindi movies with you. You gladly put the DVD in the DVD player. All of a sudden, something-which you never want to see in front of your parents – pops up! Your parents stare at you. you try your best to explain them that goof-up happened not your end. You trusted the DVDwala. You would wish Dharti maataa tumhe nigal le…!!!

13) You are sitting with your Girlfriend in a park. there is no noise pollution. because of some pulses or Chana that you had for lunch, gases start getting generated in your digestive system. Needless to say there is only one outlet for those gases twirling in your stomach. Tactfully you try to give those gases a passage..so that there is minimum noise. But, unfortunately, you happen to sneeze and you fart out loud!!!!!.... you can't do anything except wish that your GF were deaf!!!

Because Dipen Eats Chicken…..

This April I turned 26. Being a gujju, I had already passed the expiry date of being suitable for marriage. I mean, by 26, a gujju needs to have at least one bakuli or a baku at home, he needs to be worried about which pre-school to choose for bakuli or baku. To add to these worries, you have Stock markets falling, government banning gutkhas, etc..!!..

I personally feel that I am a nice person. I work one of the best software companies in the world – HP. I have a good package. I, being an engineer from a very good college in Mumbai, thought that I would get any beautiful girl that I like to be my life partner! Only to realize that there are many more things to get an approval from WOULD-BE-FATHER-IN-LAW than just being engineer or working in HP or having a good salary..!!

For some reason I don’t prefer gujju girls. But still, because my mom is a very pro-gujju-bahu types, I thought ‘let me c how gujju girls are …’. Ekdum happy happy, I told my mama that I want to get married. Needless to say, my mama was damn happy. Since last 2-3 years I had been followed up for marriage. I was told that because of my resistance to marriage, I had lost 3 extremely good proposals. The girls were beautiful, were B.Com, were slim, could play Dandiyaa very well, were all-time Navraatri winners in their respective districts, knew how to cook Undhyoo, could talk in English, knew how to send an SMS and make and receive phone calls, could read bus-boards written in English, knew how to change password of their email ids, knew how to operate a computer, knew how to transfer money online, knew how to get new pass-books from banks, etc… I sighed because I missed the 3 best COULD-HAVE-BEEN-LIFE-PARTNERs!

I gave my details to mama. I was very happy because my credentials were very good. I was expecting a very good and well-educated girl to be my life-partner. 3-4 days later I got a phone call from my mama. He told me to take a pen in my hand and write down the details of the girl... u shld have seen the smile on my face… it was as if I was about to write the details of some gujurati-aishwarya rai!...

Height: 5 feet 3 inches

Colour : wheatish

Education : B.com, thinking of doing M.com.

Name : xyz (withheld for security reasons! J)

With a pen in my right hand and mobile in my left hand, the line went dead for some 5-6 seconds. I said “hello mama...u there?” Mama said “yes, beta. I am done with the details. This is all the info that I have”. Being a normal human being, you must have imagined the shock on my face...Right???? I mean, I was supposed to imagine a girl based on 4 attributes – height, colour, education and name!... I guess cracking CAT and getting into IIM Ahmadabad would be simpler than imagining the life partner using just 4 parameters!

My mama continued “but, beta, the girl is very sweet and beautiful. I have seen her. When she smiles, dimples appear in cheeks. She makes very nice tea.” I interrupted mama “but, mama, how about a photo? I mean, how can I judge whether I should go to Rajkot-720 kms from Mumbai, just on the basis of 4 parameters?... at least they should send the photo of hers so that I can decide whether she matches the diabetes-inducing fairy ingrained in my mind!”. Mama sighed. He had not encountered such a questioning-nephew before. He said “beta Dipen, they won’t give her photo. Even though the girl knows internet, she would not be allowed to send her photo”. Now I sighed. See, if the WOULD-BE-FATHER-IN-LAW is not willing to share her beautiful daughter’s photo, then there is nothing I can do from my side. Except for booking 2 tickets to Rajkot and meeting the girl in person! I was highly skeptical about meeting the girl because in all my visits to my home town I had rarely seen a beautiful girl as per my standards. I surrendered to my mama’s assurance that the girl was indeed like I had always imagined.

After a week, I booked two 3 tier A/C tickets to Rajkot. Man, was I excited to meet future Mrs. XYZ Dipen Ambalia! I even started imagining scenes where I introduce her to my boss as “hi Varun, meet xyz, my wife. Ane xyz, aa che Varun, maaraa boss”. Pheww!! Needless to say, I was jittery because I was going to meet a probable life partner!

I started discussing hows and whats of choosing a life partner. I mean, what to ask, what not to ask, how to behave in front of the WOULD-BE-FATHER-IN-LAW, what to look out for in the would-be-life-partner, how much to eat when the girl brings snacks and tea, how to end the whole meeting if I liked the girl, what to say if I don’t like the girl, how to evaluate the reponses, etc… My SETTLED friends guided me a lot. 4 days before the D-day, I thought of clarifying one thing that had been unsettling my mind since a long time. That was – whether the WBFIL (now I wont keep writing WOULD-BE-FATHER-IN-LAW, I tired.) would accept the fact that I eat CHICKEN!... WBFILs in gujurat are highly bent on having a son-in-law who is pure VEG! even if the son-in-law eats Gutkha, Tobacco, maavaa, etc – that doesn’t matter! It doesn’t matter whether the son-in-law is an engineer or works in an MNC or has clean character! The most important thing is HE SHOULD BE A VEGGIE!...

I knew that my being a non-veggie would be a problem. So I called up m mama and told him to tell the WBFIL that I won’t give up chicken and fish for anyone on earth. Not even for Preity Zinta. You won’t be surprised to hear that my mama rebuked me a lot for eating chicken and more than that he scolded me for being so bold to ask him to convey this SHOCKING news to the WBFIL. He then asked me to talk to my mom about my stubborness of being a non-veggie. I didn’t budge. More than a liking for non-veg, it was now more of a “why can’t they accept this” kind-of an issue. I mean, I wasn’t going to stuff fish or chicken in the girl’s mouth! Usko nahi khana to na khaye... why should I give up non-veg for her!...simple..! After a lot of deliberation, I told my mama to tell the WBFIL that I won’t give up chicken. My mama did as I requested him to do.

The WOULD-BE-IN-FATHER-IN-LAW turned into a COULD-HAVE-BEEN-A-FATHER-IN-LAW. I was straight away rejected for eating chicken. He was not ready to have a son-in-law who eats chicken. My good credentials couldn’t compensate my being a non-veggie! I didn’t lose heart. Because I couldn’t have tolerated having such people around me. Mama told me “ beta, Dipen, they rejected you because you eat chicken!”…. What on earth would happen if I ate chicken??????

Now she is married to a crorepati in Ahmadabad. Lucky she was! Sukarm kiya hoga XYZ ne! Otherwise she would have to live in a rented 1 BHK in Kalyan and travel in jam-packed trains in Mumbai and then crib about what Kukarm she must have done to deserve me as a life partner!!! “Jo hota hai acche ke liye hota hai” proved to be right for her!

All in all, I am sure that I am no WOULD-BE-FATHER-IN-LAW from Gujarat would allow her daughter to spend her life with me…and now you know why….because Dipen eats chicken!!!!!!!!

So now, my only option is some beautiful non-gujju girl.!!..... I hope my target audience is reading this blog…:-)

Those 3 alphabets….!!!

7.10 am, 12 April 1983 was the time and day when god thought of blessing this world by making me a part of it! :-D…

Just before dispatching me to earth, God gave His aide the surname, address of the family I was supposed to be a part of. That aide, I suppose, was a very careless person.

God had suggested the surname as ambaNI. But that stupid fellow messed up the last 3 alphabets! That’s how I ended up being an ambaLIA!!...

Not that I m not happy about being an AMBALIA. It’s just that life would have been very different if I were an AMBANI!....so, I thought of jotting down what difference my life would have experienced if I were an ambaNI instead of an ambaLIA!!!

 

Being an ambaNI	Being an ambaLIA
1) I don’t have to mention the floor number of the building where I stay (because the whole ANTILLA would be mine)	1) I specifically have to mention which floor I stay on.
2) I can go to Australia in a christmas holidays, to US in Summer Holidays and to brazil if I want to enjoy a safari. It would be a thrilling experience to see animals living in the wild and enjoying nature.	2) I go to Rajkot on Diwalis and to Jijabai Udyaan if I want to enjoy a safari! Needless to say, it would be saddening to see animals cry in the 5 walled cages in the zoo.
3) I face a problem of plenty as far as cars is concerned. I would be in a dilemma as to whether I should take Bentely or a BMW or a Porshe while going to a nearby restaurant.	3) I face a problem of scarcity as far as means of reaching station is concerned. I don’t get rickshaws to reach station. Half the distance, I have to share a seat beside the rickshaw driver. The rest of the distance I crib about the traffic.
4) I can gift a plane to my wife	4) the maximum I can think of gifting my wife is a Honda Activa!
5) I would have a confusion as to which bathroom I have to use to enjoy my morning showers…	5) I don’t have any confusion as far as having a shower is concerned!... there is just one bathroom. Problem solved!
6) I don’t have to worry about train derailment, trains halting at signals, odour-testing in trains, etc.	6)the moment I leave kalyan station, I start thinking whether the train will reach dadar at the right time so that I don’t miss the connecting MALAD fast local to reach Goregaon!
7) I don’t have to worry about appraisals, increments, rebuke by bosses for coming late to office.	7) in times of recession, I better reach office on time, I better complete work before time, I better outperform others so that I good appraisals and hence good increments…
8) I can’t sleep well in the night fearing how the markets will perform the next day	8) once I leave office, I give a damn about the office!... I should get my salary on time.! That’s it!...
9) I always have a threat from my business opponents who might want to kill me.	9) the only living things that I fear are the dogs outside our compound! Let aside any human being as an opponent!
10) I get to live with the pretentious world of the riches	10) I got to live with all my dear NRCites!... that means a lot lot lot to me!... the old days spent in NRC are more valuable to me than the riches one would get in ANTILLA. I am very happy with a simple, middle-class childhood that I have had!

And so and so forth…. After having lived the life of an ambaLIA, I want to see how life would be being born as a ambaNI… God, are you listening???!!..

WHAT TO DO IN SOMEONE ELSE’S PRESENTATION…

These are a few things that you can do in someone else’s presentation:

1) Without looking at the bottom of the slide, try to guess the total number of slides.

2) Try praying to god to create hindrances in the ongoing presentation. This will prove to you whether god loves to listen to your prayers or not. If the presentation encounters a problem, you can smirk and wink looking at the ceiling to thank god for listening to your prayers. Now that you know that God is in a good mood to listen to your prayers, make sure that ask for more favors from God. Ask for a better job, salary, onsite opportunity, good raise, promotion, no work, a beautiful girl/handsome guy in your team…etc…

3) Be a critic. In real life you won’t get many chances to criticize someone else or someone else’s work product. Presentations are a great place to realize your wish of becoming a critic. Try to find out flaws with the content or logic in the slides.

4) Show off. PPTs are a great place to show off your knowledge, creativity and innovativeness. Whenever you get a chance to point out an alternate way to reach a solution, do so. Managers normally don’t attend the Presentations to learn the domain or to understand a problem. Presentations are a great platform for the managers to know who in the team is contributing how much! So, make sure that you do come up with alternate solutions; in short Showoff!

5) Take revenge. Normally, in office, you would meet people who you hate and whose names figure in your “I am gonna screw (not literally) him/her” list. So make sure that you go through the PPT before your opponent’s actual presentation. This will help you in coming up with unanswerable questions which will surely stump the presenter and then you can smirk at his/her helplessness! In short outsmart your presenter.

6) Appreciate the PPT. A normal human being that you are, you would have a heart. Right?.... Someday even you could give a good PPT. There is an old saying “Give X to get X”. So make sure that you appreciate good PPTs.

7) Blame the boring PPT for world recession. Think of adequate reasons.

8) Act as if you are taking notes and then keep enhancing your sketching skills. Try towards fulfillment of your childhood dream of becoming a good sketch-artist.

9) Try learning Short-Hand…Imagine how difficult it must be for newspaper reporters to note what top-officials have to say in press conferences!

10) Try switching off your ears and then lip-read the presenter.

11) Now close your eyes and try imagining the contents of the PPT and the body language of the presenter.

12) Try to read and understand the body language of others who are attending the PPT and gauge if others and you are on the same level of boredom. Think of some test that you could make other attendees take to determine who topped the ‘boredom’ table!

13) Look at your manager. Learn how he suppresses his urge to dash away from the room because of the bland PPT.

14) Scribble enough on your notepad to show that you were very much interested in the PPT and then keep that page open when you get back to your desk. Bosses love employees with scribbled notes!

15) Jot down points that you like to copy from the on-going presentation to your presentation(if you happen to give someday)

16) Imagine that you are BILL GATES and imagine dressing down the presenter for disrespecting MICROSOFT-PPT by making such a worthless PPT.

17) Send some SMSes to your colleagues in the meeting room.

18) Come out with fake laughs which you can use when the presenter is trying to crack some apparently witty jokes.

19) Try some neck exercises. That will make the presenter feel that you are concurring with his points.

20) If you are bored with the PPT, take your mobile close to your ears and so “hello…hello…1 min…” and then go out of the room. Make sure your mobile is on SILENT mode to avoid any humiliation out of any chance of your mobile ringing when you are faking your monologue “hello…hello…1 min…”!

21) Try doing a [1]SHAVAASAN* if you are really bored with the PPT. you can’t help if the PPT is realllllllllly bad. God save your soul!

22) Keep OBSERVING the people around you to see if there is anyone else who shares the same feeling as you do.

23) Unnecessarily smile at some colleague of yours. This will create a mystery in his/her mind and also a mystery in the minds of others who were busy OBSERVING you. This will give rise to the energy level in the room.

24) Look at your watch 2- 3 times in 1 minute. This will make the presenter realize that you are getting bored and maybe he will try to cut down a few slides from the PPT.

25) Try verifying whether the speed with which you can count 60 seconds in a minute is the same as the actual time your watch takes.

26) Roll your tongue on your teeth and count the number of teeth. If you make even a small mistake, re-do the counting!

27) Get up and go to the pantry to have a cup of coffee.

28) Try to recollect who invented the projector. If you are not able to recollect the name, SMS your friends. Whoever replies back with the right answers wins the farthest seat in the next presentation!

29) If you get really bored, start coughing loudly. That will make others look at you as if you were doing a Salsa on a funeral! A gentleman/lady that you are, your will leave the room so that you don’t disturb others. And you can then heave a sigh of relief! Sit on your desk. Check mails. Play games for 15 minutes and then again join the group of morons attending the utterly disgusting PPT.

30) If the presenter is pissed off on you, then say words like “oh…yes..” or “ yes..right..ok..” or “oho… understood”…or “ok…got it”… This will surely make him believe that you are trying to pay attention; whereas actually speaking, you were thinking about point number 36!

31) In case your boss notices that you were not paying attention to the PPT, be sure that you ask the presenter question like “ok…I understood what you said…but how will that work in our system?.. I mean we have X and you are suggesting Y… so I am a LITTLE confused… could you please elaborate?”

32) Try to recollect phone numbers of your dear friends. If you are not able to recollect, check the address-book in your phone and then try to memorize…even then if you are not able to keep the phone number in your mind, then don’t try any further …just give up...! You must surely be one of those who had read only the MOST EXPECTED QUESTIONS TO BE ASKED IN AN INTERVIEW!

33) Stare at your palm and then see what evil deed did you do to deserve such a boring PPT!

34) Think of changing the company

35) Play old games like FLAME, X and O, etc.

36) Play games on your mobile

37) Try to recollect the headlines of that day’s newspaper.

38) Try to visualize the PPT in a slow-motion.

39) There’s a popular saying – “bad things happen to bad people”. Try to analyze whether you are a bad person and if YES, then to what extent so as to deserve such a criminal waste of your precious time (which otherwise you could have used to play TT, play computer games, sleep…etc)?

40) Think like an interior designer and think of changes that you could have brought to the room where the PPT is going on.

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[1] Shavaasan is a form of YOGA wherein you just try to lose track of the things going around and just relax your brain, if you have one!