Recession blues!

or No, this is not another post on how "Since the economy is 66% consumer driven, when consumer spending slows, the GDP begins to fall. Consumer spending slows for a multitude of reasons: when the consumer can no longer get reasonable credit rates, when he's fearful of loosing his job, when his debt load is higher than is comfortable, when he already has all the stuff he needs. The economic cycle has periods of expansion and contraction. A recession is a contraction.(Yahoo! Answers)" End of theories, here!

...And finally, it arrives! What all began as the hush-hush talks about how our IIM-ed and ISI-d friends at Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns, would eke out a living without their 8-figured payslips and merely manage to survive only on cheap Frito (Leh)ys and Corona (Bear)s; and as it escalated to the serious talks of our end to partying on Thursdays(warm-up), Fridays(get-set-go) and Saturdays(the day before) and giving up on the single KF pint(that's the only revenue we bought to SPE/two people) and thinking of various alibis for our lady-loves to spare us on their next Chaitro/Year end/(50+25)% flat sale shopping sprees; and finally, all the brouhaha about the unforeseen, lurking monster from the past(1929) that is slowly going to relieve us from our jobs and meagre salaries for non-performance, that scared the living daylights out of us.

There was no silent way to go for the killing. It made a lot of noise, and spluttered a lot of blood and gore here and there. Although, it did conceal itself, like the Trojan horse, the frightening details in the seemingly lucrative package of an alternative and revised performance based variable compensatory scheme, broken up into individualistic and holistic goal achievement metrics, the message was loud and clear. Loud as the crack of the fidayeen bullet that took Major Unni's life at the Taj, as we all heard from Kolkata, while cursing our times; Clear as the intentions of the next political party that we are about to stake our lives into, this FY elections. Like everything else, that's also how we would have to live with the recession. On your mark, get, set...

Top 10 things that you should remember to get you going:

1. Limit spending. Spending is contagious, like a yawn or a sneeze, or like tucking into a Zinger even when you had lunch half an hour ago. Often our subconscious(and sometimes our girlfriends!) leads us into glitzy shops in super-malls with expensive things; many of which we have no need for. Believe me, you will survive without that Tommy red undie, or a 5.1 mp camera in your cell.
2. As good as it sounds, a bottle of Fosters/KF/Carlsberg at any regular bar is around a 100 bucks. Affordable, right? Multiply that with 2(at least) each evening(leaving apart the farewell parties/birthdays/treats and other social events), and 2 evenings(at least) every week, and for every week, for every month. As bad as it sounds, you can do the math.
3. (I would have said to turn of the AC when you drive to office, but thanks to CESC for your sleepless nights, and to Apollo for 42 degrees in the shade, I wont be that cruel). Car pool is good; chartered bus is better(fixed time, fixed expenses :) )
4. Power saving lamps, power saving fridges and power saving ACs should be the mantra to shed off that extra electricity bill. I sometime hear of power saving capacitor banks; don't know if they work.
5. If you are a sucker for downloads/torrents/P2P/iMesh/RS, better skip over to the unlimited version of your broadband, to save yourself from a shocking BB usage bill. Try as you might, you can never limit yourself to the quota, how much you schedule all your d/ls late at night!
6. Lunch from home is a very good idea. Its not pansy, sissy, or inconvenient to carry a small Thermos-box to work(Dude, it's your Mom or whoever cooks lunch at your place, who's taking all the pains, not you!). Its also healthier than the roadside crap or the Cheeli Chiken/Frayied Rise that you have at your local food street.
7. Smoking kills your sperms. Unless you want to be celibate or suffer from ED, cut down(I didn't say quit, I know the pains!) on smoking. Alternatively, you can also do the math to get a tentative figure of how much you actually spend on ciggies.
8. Go for investment in real-estate and other bearish options like LIC, FD, MIS etc. unless you really know what you are doing.
9. Credit cards.(Should have been way up the list, forgot all about it). The 10% cash-back on dinner and movies is nothing compared to the remaining 90% that is being debited from your account. And, Titanium and Super-Platinum cards are not being given to you alone since you are a loyal customer; every fool walking with an i-card in Sector 5 has one.
10. Use Blackle.com. 1,204,510.432 Watt hours will be saved.

RainMan

My red side-bag didn't have an umbrella. To tell you the truth, even my red side-bag shouldn't have been there. It doesn't at all go with my pinstriped trousers and my formal shirt; even no more with the corporate sewage that I carry home, as my extra baggage, everyday. Looks more like a weathered artifact stolen away from its more carefree times.

So I went into the rain. Thinking, semi-consciously, what might be the consequences if I cannot make it to office due to a violent bout of sneezing, and a sore throat. It was a gentle rainy breeze now, with the occasional flashes of lightening, like Someone up there with a 80-200 tele lens, trying to capture the throngs of scampering people, in a single frame. Luckily, got hold of a cab(Omni), moments after I stepped out of the IT park(its also called a park, nomenclaturally equivalent to the one where little happy children gleefully chuckle when they smudge ice-cream on each others' faces). Plugged on the hands-free, and stuffed the ear-phones to shut out the world(Using the hands-free and incessantly listening to the radio while transit, is one rampant disease that WHO will fail to eradicate from the IT brethren). Windows were shut, probably since the girl opposite to me, blissfully crooning loudly whatever was being played on her radio station, feared the wind would mess up her hair, or spoil her mascara, or something.

I whacked the window-seat as a fellow passenger stepped out at Ruby. That's when I finally managed to slide open a window, carefully watching if no one gets irritated by my sacrilegious act. The first spray of the brewing Kaalboisaakhi fogged my Crizals with microscopic droplets of rain, through which the bright headlamps and street lights blurred out; and I looked to see a Wong Kar Wai-ish motion blur of colours, in the otherwise garish, familiar parts of the City.


...

Carefully maneuvering the Alur chop in the murir thonga in one hand, I lighted a GF(regular) and headed for home. The roads were still blurry with my rain-smeared compound vision, and the man-holes, opened up just before the elections, made it no easier to walk. The ciggy cinder was also having a tough time fighting the big droplets with full momentum, as it tried to douse the flame. Yet, it felt good. Like a surprise break from my regular, complacent sinusoidal world of Office-home-sleep-office. As I reached home, I could hear it. The storm brewing, both in and out. It took me a few moments to comprehend which would be more dangerous to bear. A fateful droplet won at last; as it extinguished the last attempts of the flame to burn it all. Spitting it out, I stepped in.

Smell the sun

Sunshine on my shoulders, made me happy
Sunshine on my eyes, should have made me cry
Sunshine on the rainbow, have looked so lovely
Sunshine, the rarest, faded in time.

Some things, in the world, looks so simple
Others, can be there, just for a while,
When I, looked out, I saw the moonbeams,
To play, in my tears, and disappear, in a while.

Love is, to comfort, to please and to feel,
To bring out the smell from the lilies, to steal
The Joy and Laughter, found in the chatter of muddy kids
In the satisfaction of the lemon-slice, of a day's only meal.

For the urge of Being...

I think, therefore I am human,
With wild ramblings
And incoherence
Filled with high hopes and serendipity.

When I try to understand you,
When I give all I have
When I ponder over sweet, fleeting tales
Of lullabies which makes me not sleep,
But brings me back to life.

With reason, and logic, and with all the God-forsaken maths of living,
With envy, and sadness and grief rising from the depths,
With love, with empathy, and with belief in the Master,
I try and try, to delve
Only to fall back in the same hypnotic confusions.

Two little shards of broken glass,
With grainy dreams in sepia tones,
With green thoughts, and rusty body,
And little dissolved specks of hardships
Makes me who I am, yet am I?
I am human. Cut me, I'll bleed.

Apples and Oranges

It's fascinating to meet different people, in the same City, who think differently. It shows sometimes that you aren't a recluse. It shows that people can have independent thoughts, have different prerogatives, and ideologies, living out of the same length and breadth of the City. The same chayer dokan, the same solving of socio-economic problems from around the globe in the chayer dokan, the same people solving it, the same pulse of the laid-back, procrastinating City driving the people, and the same chayer dokan giving back its signature pulse to the City.
Yet, I find people having the same difference. You feel you are'nt alone anymore. People have made decisions, or taken it through compulsions, as you have. You can finally find people who reads a para twice in a novella just to visualize the scene, who thinks that cheap Vodka is a slow killer, yet tastes great with Appy on the rocks, people who act like a Walt Disney animation film on Sundays, 'coz they know its going to be Monday sooner than you know it, who thinks Mithunda isn't just an actor, but a walking, talking, Shaolin Temple who can wipe off the scum of earth by his power packed dialogues, more than his punches, and people who think infidelity is as guilt-free an emotion as wanting to fall back in love,again.
...


Although, I am yet to find someone who feels sniggering isn't always meant to hurt :)

A post...long overdue.

Birthday. Friends with a heart-shaped chocolate cake. Songs and a lots of laughter. Eating till your belly bulges out first, farting it out later. Smoking up under the shade of broken bricks, under the open sky, as open as it can be in a thriving metropolis. Friends again, this time with a goo-ey chocolate cake(lotsa' chocolate, I know!). Cutting the cake, at the pillar-sill of a renowned eatery. With burning candles, and street urchins joining in for the song(mostly,the cake!). Shaking a leg. Smoking up again, with a Floyd playlist. Dreamy, hazy, unobtrusive and cross-faded, with momentary lapses of reason. Warm chocolaty moments of love, brushed away. Going to sleep; waking up again at the dead of the night to sing the birthday song, again. Going to sleep(or maybe coming off it?), at last.

Maya

Give. Take. Life is. will be. to die for. have. wants. desire. change. common. happiness(in pursuit of). Monotony(the order of the day). Defeat(only when you compare). brutal arrows of self inflicting pain(ha ha ha :) fooled you!). of pretty desires. dreams in a corner. of blurry red and yellow. lights. distance(how far can you go before you reason with yourself, Where are you going?). of love. of low self-confidence. of becoming. of getting away from it all. of a soft hand ruffling your hair. to die for. will be. Life is. Take. Give.

Frivolity of an Ecstasic Man and a Thinking Woman

"In sooth I know not why I am so sad..."
...
And there, over the wanton wisps of her hair,
Through the white sinewy threads of string,
She wreaths a poem with her mystic air,
A pensive gaze, a Monalisa smile,
And she waits for her Romeo, forever
...
As the salty breeze makes love to her hair.
...


Juliet...I wait by the sands of time...
The shores beckon me...to dive, and give it all up...
Yet I wait...for your cold gaze, to cut through my foolish desires

To punish, the audacity of my wanton thoughts.