The D-day for a DD..

"When you want something, the entire universe conspires in helping you to achieve it", said Paulo Coelho his book, The Alchemist. However, the conspiracy that the Universe got into just because I wanted something will prove to the world that the Universe is a complicated place to live in... and if you have such wishes, one must cater to it secretly and not with the knowledge of the Universe... or else... the whole of it will conspire to make you go through all of this... you will know what I mean.. sooon..

A beautiful Tuesday morning... but it isn’t beautiful from my perspective. Today, am supposed to pay the company I was working with for the past 20 months, to let me go... yes. Exactly. (For more analytical and common sense people here is the explanation: my company has a notice period, which needs to be completed. if else, one must pay a shortfall amount so that you get your experience certificate). Paying 18K isn’t exciting, is it?

"And the wind stopped blowing... the whole world came to a stand still... one could feel the difficulty to breathe if one was there when.... “I opened my eyes to see what has caused the natural calamity. It was my maid who had switched the fan off mercilessly as early as 8 am in the morning with the lame excuse of sweeping the floor (as if it really made a great difference to her!). I am forced to stop sleeping... the night is over, at least for me.

I get dressed up and am off to The State Bank of India. All I had to do was to take the money that people from home have deposited and get a Demand Draft. Wow... could things be simpler!

STATE BANK OF INDIA

10:00 am in the morning. I reach the gate of SBI. Though I found the bank closed, no amount of doubt accumulates in the most intelligent brain. I walk patiently towards the SBI ATM-withdraw the money-then to my surprise; I was thinking why the bank hasn’t opened yet. I enquire. “Today is SBI day madam. No branch is open today”. My thinking cap is still on. “So what? I have an Axis bank nearby”. Am elated and thank the Gods that I am in a metro and there are at least two banks in the same place.

AXIS BANK: I enter. Great!! Was already glad that the bank is open and to my surprise and pleasure, there was just one more customer inside! I walk confidently towards the counter and collect the slip. The elaborate procedure of writing it in the language the bank wants rather than simply saying, “I have 18K in my pocket. I will give it to if you can give me typed onto the special piece of paper that you guys have, that this money goes to so and so company.. chalo..rakh lo meri tharaf se..”, begins. The guard watches me with all the patience and doesn’t find it necessary to update on the technical difficulties that the bank might have been facing. He must have thought that I am busy writing something and might have been waiting for me finish off so that he could talk to me. Then, the voice reverberates, “Ma’am, we are really sorry. You will have to wait for sometime if you want a DD”. I muttered under my breath while I walked through the door after carefully keeping the slip in my bag,” No, I don’t need anything... Am just here to see how you are doing”.

HDFC Again, I am furious. If you know me well you will realize that I do not accept defeat... not so easily. Off I go in the direction of the new building, which hosts the HDFC bank. What if I have to walk for a few minutes and cross a road and climb a few steps? I have learnt really well from my experience so far. I know what is to be done. I head straight to the counter and enquire if they have everything working fine and if it was possible to get a DD. Affirmative. Hah... I fill up the next slip. (They should make a nationalized version of the slip, which is accepted in all banks... it is so tedious!!) I take the cash out, count the notes carefully and walk with dignity to the teller. She smiles at me and says, “Sorry ma’am. We do not take cash for DD. Please give a check instead”. How the hell did she know that I do NOT carry my checkbook around??? If looks could kill, you can say that God could have been scared that I would kill Him... I rolled my eyes and looked up at Him. This is really really not fair. L I deposit the money back to my account. (I know very well-the kind of risk involved in carrying so much money. I can see that you are already calling me a genius! Not yet. Read on. I walk back to the AXIS bank only to find that it is still not ready for me. I throw off the slip I kept in case I might need it and walk on.

ORIENTAL BANK OF COMMERCE My legs are so ungrateful to me. I have been giving them a lot of rest for the past 20 months, thanks to the software company that hired me. However, when I need them to do the least work of transporting me from the HDFC bank to the next nearest bank, which is the OBC, they seem to show faces... if you know what I mean. Finally, I reach. All I have is 50 rupees. So what? I have it in my corporate account. I can withdraw from the ATM they have here. However, the board shouts out to me “OUT OF SERVICE”. I walk into the bank after confirming that the ATM will be fine in another 10 minutes. The moment I walk in, my eyes are set on the old woman. I develop an instant dislike for her. I walk to the old man behind the desk and tell him clearly “Sir, I am not an account holder of your bank and hence I have brought cash. Will you provide a DD”? “Why not ma’am? You just need to give a photocopy of your ID proof”. That is perfectly fine. I fill in the details in the new slip they give there. The teller. She stares at the money, then the slip and then me. “Are you a customer ma’am? While I should have lied saying, “Of course! From the day I was born!!” I found myself telling her that I am not. She asks me to wait and walks to the old lady I hated. She was already giving me those stares that fostered my feelings for her. Now they were more intense and scrutinizing. Her voice is as harsh as I expected. “Sorry. I cannot give you the DD. Only for educational purposes can this kind of ….be entertained... non governmental…..” on and on and on. In short, I understood that I was a failure. I gave it back to her, “If your faculty is not even clear about…blah blah….blah blah…I do not have enough time to waste on you!” Wow… I felt great!!!

KARUR VAISYA BANK “I am not an account holder, so I have no check. I need to pay a non-governmental organization for which I need a DD. I have only cash. Can you do it for me?” The improvised and enhanced version of the statement is uttered. “Yes. Please fill the green form and take it to the teller.” I give him a stare, which must have communicated, “You better give me, or I will have to break your head.” Then, it just happened. I was holding the piece of paper with all the crap I wanted on it...

Yes... I made it!!! I have no words. I would have wept. I would have hugged the piece of paper or even kissed it. However, all I did was to keep it in my bag and to hop onto the nearest bus and get out of the bloody place!!!

When ambition hits the floor!

It was on a fateful summer morning that I decided I should grow up to become a Bus Conductor.. No other proffession seemed to have the glamour I could associate with the adventures of swinging from one pole to another ( Pardon me.. I was too young to have learnt about bar dancing! ), calculating so fast, whistling, ruling the crowd packed up in the bus and what not! Huh.. that was my first ambition..I was turning 6 in two weeks time.. I remember all the trouble I took to cut papers from my cousin's notebooks without his knowledge, steal a compass which was otherwise forbidden ( it was considered one of those "keep away from the reach of children" material) and prick holes on them, so that I can tear tickets of uniform shape ( I cant name the shapes yet) when my customers board my bus. Ahem.. a sound one hour of preparation before all the other pals came to play in the morning! Time wheels by and here comes next summer when I rarely remember the buses and poles and tickets.. My passion has grown with my intellect (?), as I realized I would be a teacher! Ah.. thats a salutable profession indeed.. As you all know, the journey of life gets tougher everyday..and hence,more effort was required to play teacher! 1.It was required to get dressed in a saree. This meant, I had to get an old saree from the attic, and wind it all around my little body till by pals were convinced that it looked more or less like the attire our moms wear! 2. Can you think of a teacher without a cane and a spectacles? Hard work again for the former(I chose to skip the explanation) and stealing again for the latter. 3. The toughest of all.. you had to remember some 30 odd names. Do you think each friend of mine was content with playing one student alone? They chose 4 names each at the minimum, all those names were what they would have chosen for themselves given a chance. There you go! So, I became a teacher when I was 7! Superb indeed.. you should agree that I am extremely intelligent! I was kissed by Lady Success until my ambitions grew at school.. I wanted to be a Khabadi (hope I spelt it correctly) player! If you picture me as a huge figure.. I am gonna prove you wrong! It wasnt easy to get a few feet near them, considering the proportion of my body. Khabadi girls were supposed to be well built, man-like and should look as well as behave like monsters.. Lets blame the poor genetic material I received. With all the enthu that I tried to play, I was admitted as a spare. And then, to my disaster and painful awakening,I was getting thrown up and down by the other team, escaped with a few bruises here and there.. With a warning from my parents, that dream came to an end. I suppose, my life then got too busy that the comparitively less important aspirations of owning a bakery, flying a plane(this one immediately came to an end when I heard my enemy at school mention it as his lifetime ambition) and many more of the sort stayed for a very small fraction of the childhood. Later, somewhere down the line, I spared myself of the responsibility. Gladly, teachers and parents took over. One of them said, I should go for english Literature (it should sound as an absurd option to you by now), another nodded agreement to Journalism, another said Law.. "my lad.. thats where your tongue is needed!" And back and forth, on and on.. till I chose Science for Class XII.. Aaaaaaaaaaah.. and a new set of skills suiting my talents were spelt out.. " You will make a wonderful so-and-so... blah blah... But, papa was firm that IIT is where I should be.. Struggling with the minimun IQ and all that.. you can guess the output of all the hardwork- they simply dint want me there! And so, I was set free to tell them the ultimate serious ambition I had kept amidst all this muddle- to be a Doctor.. And lo!!! (let me be slightly dramatic cos I was in tears while I played this scene in real life) my parents laughed at me! The last thing I expected. :( I tried to reason, no avail..to fight, nothing happened. And finally, they were tired of me and declared " Medicine is not a Brahmin thing". That was the last straw.. As any other teen, I was made to run for the enormous number of Engineering Colleges (almost 80 in number in that small state called Kerala). I found myself enrolled for EEE in one of the Govt. colleges. Huh.. you should see how glad my parents were! ( I still dont understand if they were acting or something. If yes.. they did it extremely well). And, the exciting 4 years of everything other than Electical and Electronics, I merge as a more nasty individual, who thinks she knows everything except EEE(you should be impressed with my honesty). Now.. here I am typing this out sitting in a cubicle, in a software firm ( MNC - sounds much better), in the great metropolitan city called Chennai.. wondering what the hell am I doing here for the past 1 yr.. or say..16 months, 10 days, to be exact (my math is still perfect). And now, as you should have guessed, I ambibe to do an MBA! Yes folks, exactly what you guessed..And I shall become one - unless I think of something more exciting, or lose interest altogether or the most probable and dreadful of all - GET STONED INSTEAD OF A DOG. I take this opportunity to mention that dogs and IT professionals (with all due respect) are in equal number as far as the Chennai population is concerned.

Blissfully hopeless blessing..........

It wasnt a spell or a boon.. I dint realize I had that power or curse or whatever you might chose to call it... But then, it had to happen.. If I am driving you into fantasies where you would be tempted to picture me as a charecter in one of Salman Rushdies's novels, let me tell you that my powers are much restricted.. in the sense that I DONOT benefit from it at all!!! And, what could be worse.. to the misery of a selfish soul..it helped my peers a lot! And so.. this blog is dedicated to the miseries I undergo because no one I know of has this power.. and this is how I protest........... Let me get to the point.. I have a remarkable inborn (?) naaa.. acquired capability of driving people away.. But nothing comes without it own rules.. So, here you go with the Laws of Selective Repulsion of Peers.. 1. It should be a girl.. definitely YES. (So, all the guys out there.. take a deep breath..RELAX :P ) This serves as the eliminating criterion. 2. They must be either sitting next to me at office, or go for lunch with me, or at least go for tea breaks with me once in a while.. And if you satisfy these basic Laws.. the final one comes along.. for all those who thought its an easy ride... 3. I MUST like them... ( Not that easy I suppose..) Having satisfied all of these......... this is what is probable... 1.You might get an onsite opportunity.. out of the blue.... YES!!! (the best one first, to keep you reading.. one of the management tactics I learnt all by MYSELF ) 2.You might get married and go off to a distant land.. 3.All of a sudden you might feel ambitious and leave the company... 4.And if nothing else.. you will at least be released from your project... This is precisely what has been happening to me for the past 1 year.. 4 of them left for onsite... 5 of them quit the company.. 5 of them got married.. 2 of them got transferred... aaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhh... So thats it.. Other ambitious candidates are hovering around me these days ..with luck almost ready to favour them.. ( I gues, someone leaked my little secret before I did) But the beauty of the story is that... I am NEITHER getting married.. NOR going onsite... not even quittinggggggggggg for the sake of some saddistic pleasure............ WHAT THE HELLLLLLLLLLLLLL... ! Some one please explain... There could be prospective Einsteins among you, who is on the watchout for research topics.. and this is the best way to start off..... And if you are swearing at me right now for taking the liberty or rather gathering the courage to bore you with such a tragedy in my life.......... WHAT THE HELLL AGAIN.... cant I do even THAT!!