An ode to Ms Mary!

I got a mail
from a Ms Mary
today
She is got Viagra
she says.

Ms Mary if you are reading this poem
just a note to say
that it is kinda hard to
control my laughter
when your full name
is Mrs Mary Slaughter!

:p

Yeah I suck at poetry I know! But what the heck I have been spammed!

Jest a smole note to dell you peobles that regular pawst will be up on Sunday! When the Bose is away it is awl work and no pley! Sigh!

When the Boss is away...

Dear Boss,

Just a small mail to tell you how much I am missing you. Please come back. I know that you and your family deserve this hard earned vacation but you have certain duties too you know…if I may put it that way.

Let me tell you of the happenings in office while you are away.

1. I have taken your place as Bulldog now. I am sorry we called you that. (Which means they must be calling me Hitler, imperialist and slave driver too... *sob*)

2. People are wondering if you have picked me up from NIMHANS. And a certain group of people are scouring the HR manual to ascertain if "mentally challenged" people come under the purview of our "Equal Opportunity” employment guidelines.

3. I did not know that Foxy needs to be guided like a spastic from his chair to the meeting. He got lost yesterday and landed up in another meeting where he took some serious notes. His handwriting is very nice though.

4. Mr. IT Architect is driving everybody up the wall. He keeps his servers droning (he says it is humming) throughout the day. The notice next to the sever that says "Do not switch this off" has become "Switch this damn thing off". Currently he has asked for a security camera to focus on his work station to catch the culprits. We tried to circumvent the camera like in those Hollywood movies to no avail. Then we hit upon a brilliant idea! Bribe the Security man. It worked!! The security camera is now turned off from time to time so that we can switch the servers off. Mr IT Architect thinks he is spooked tee hee. It is fun btw.

5. Got to tell you about Ms Blah Blah. When you come back allow me to prostrate before you in absolute admiration. I came close to strangling her about 450 times yesterday. After the 451st attempt, they had to restrain me and HR asked me to take the day off. Then she slapped Ms Blah Blah. I protest! That was not very professional. I want my rightful chance to slap her too hmmpph!

6. Most of the people here are getting themselves treated for CMTD (compulsive multiple tab disorder). The treatment it is hoped will allow them to surf the web without tabs when you are not around.

The list is long, and right now I am realizing what it is you put up with. 12 very individual individuals of which one is cracked, one is absent minded, one thinks he is spooked and one goes blah blah blah and the rest are always browsing the web.

So Boss, please come back soon. I promise to behave myself in the future. *sob*

Your very sad Marcom Manager,

Silverine

Reality Cheque!

"Anjali" said the boss with a pained expression. "Why are you so...so..." he faltered as he searched for a suitable word, “...so cheap!" he finished with a look of shame and grief.

"I am cheap I know," I said defensively "but I have my reasons." I finished my voice quavering. My face burnt with shame.

“What could be a possible reason for this!!!” exclaimed the boss in a pained voice!

“There are somethings you won’t understand” I said resignedly.

“Try me.” said the boss kindly.

“I cannot manage with the money I get. So I have to do this to make ends meet" I explained my eyes welling up with tears.

“But there are more honorable ways to make ends meet you know!" exclaimed the Boss.

“This is my business!" I said firmly. I didn’t want to be judged by people who did not know what my circumstances were. That was none of their business. I do my work to the best of my abilities and people should confine themselves to that!

Boss sighed and looked away. He couldn’t look at me. It is sometimes hard to accept certain indigestible facet of a person you thought you knew well. I could not meet his eyes either. As I walked away I could feel his gaze boring into my back. I didn’t have to turn back. I knew there was anguish in his eyes.

On the other side of the cubicle the other marketing managers sniggered. Everyone had heard the exchange. Everyone knew. My ears burned. But I walked out off the floor my head held high.

Boss looked at my receding back for sometime and got back to work with a heavy heart. He took out the pens that I had ordered for the event and looked at the bill. Each pen cost Rs 5/-. He sighed. How could he give these low cost pens to the people who would attend the event he wondered? What would they think?

He opened the box of pens the other team had ordered. They were Rs 15/- a piece. Boss thanked his stars that the team was able to spare him some for his event. He took out the fifteen rupee pens gratefully and...almost passed out when he beheld them. It was the exact same type of pens that I had ordered!! But unlike his smart, astute, sharp, shrewd, canny, clever, streetwise, and very intelligent and sophisticated marketing communications manager, his peer's marketing managers had paid Rs 15/- a piece!!

He never called his Marcom manager cheap again…for some time (He has a short memory). She on the other hand bought Nike Tee Shirts for the entire team with the money she saved.

Conversation heard on the floor the next day.

Boss of other teams to their Marketing Managers: Look at that Silverine's team members. Always wearing Nike, Reebok or Adidas Tee Shirts. Why do we have to wear these saggy baggy Tirupur T shirts? Why are you all so cheap?????

Road pests!

There is a species of people on Bengaluru roads that requires me to immediately buy an AK 47 or Kalashnikov and or a hand held rocket launcher!! And if I cannot procure the aforementioned weaponry then I am gonna settle for my mother’s Vakkathi *!! I am that pissed off!!

And if I cannot get a Vakkathi then I might in desperation have to take my eyebrow tweezers to poke these people in the eye!!!

Now if you are rolling your eyes wondering why I am frothing in the mouth on a foul Monday morning then hear me out. There is this species of homo sapiens in Bengaluru who consider themselves the self appointed guardians of bike headlights! They live and breathe bike headlights and they get pained to see one burning during daytime. Their aim in life is to spot a burning headlight and inform the rider no matter what the circumstance. If they were to spot a Formula One car with its headlights on, they would jump into the race track risking their life and limbs to inform the driver. I guess they were born that way.

Mother (to her six month old baby): Say “mama” sweetheart! There’s a good boy!
Baby: Your bike headlight is on!
Mother: Sigh!

Now you see what I am up against?

Let me describe this species for you. They are mostly pedestrians and come in all age group, sizes gender and ethnicity. While their intentions are good their mode of communication is rather dramatic and its after effects catastrophic!

The moment these people spot a burning headlight they go stiff, their hair stands on one end, eyes pop out of the socket and they get that horrified look on their faces as though they are witnessing an alien baby bursting out of your stomach! And thats not all! They will then lift a quivering finger and point to you gesticulating wildly with the other hand making you lose control of the bike in absolute fright! And if you don’t get a heart attack looking at them, you will definitely come under a BMTC bus, lorry, army truck or Hoysala! And if you are lucky and escape coming under the aforementioned vehicles then you jam your brakes in fright so hard, that the resultant traffic pile up has a cascading effect till the new Bangalore Airport!!

It doesn’t matter to our guardian angels that you almost lost your life and limb because of their concern for the headlight. As far as they are concerned...BIKE HEADLIGHTS SHOULD NOT BE ON DURING DAYTIME!!!

Now if you see a girl in a black Honda Activa with a big knife jutting out of her hand bag, stay clear. And if you want her to continue blogging, please depose on her behalf in court. They don’t provide Internet connection in jail, especially for prisoners on death row I heard.

*really big knife!

Memoirs of a suppressed artist

Warning: Ah well you all know what it is by now!

I suck at lying. Now...I am no angel, just Untruth Challenged. "Face the music girl" said my dad when I was 5 years old and knee deep in trouble. I had gone and written all over my second brother’s untidy home work book with my crayons. I am talking Camlin crayons that is next to impossible to rub off. Now 8 year old boys are not exactly the big brotherly types. They are wont to regard anyone younger to them by a second as pests. They don’t go "ooh look she has drawn a Butterfly in my Maths Class Work book. Cho chweeeet" They are more likely to go "THWACK" followed by grounding for one week for hitting "poor little defenseless baby sister and I don’t want to hear what she did grrr"

My brother didn't need to hire the Scotland Yard to investigate the butterfly in his notebook. All he needed was Scotland yards best ladder as I was very good in climbing trees when I had drawn butterflies and houses in his books. Though I did not know why he was so mad, I knew that my drawing angered him for some reason. I had no clue about home work books and how mad teachers became when it had crayon scribbles all over it. Amongst the list of "Most Corny Excuses for not doing Homework” compiled by the teachers in my brother’s school, the most prominent were:

My sister tore my home work.
My sister wrote on the homework and I found out only this morning.
My sister took my home work book and she doesn't remember where she kept it.
I have a younger sister.

His teachers tut tutted when they saw me and patted my head gently muttering "Such an angel and that M makes out to be a devil tch tch!!"

When I was born, the writing was on the wall for my parents that the house walls were for writing and not for holding their home together and segregating rooms. And it took nine long years for them to finally retrieve the walls from my firm grip and scrape off the ten inch thick coating of crayon wax and restore its dignity and rightful duties. There was not an inch of space on our walls that didn’t have my drawings. When in the night, my parents lay exhausted in their bed, they would look up and thank god that I couldn't reach the ceiling. And then I guess they felt bad and counted their blessings because I never got punished for the same I remember.

Punishment is a big no no with my Dad. He is an engineer and like most engineers he tends to use his professional qualifications a tad too seriously. I mean he believes in STRATEGY!! Every problem in life had to be dealt with a pre approved strategy.

His first strategy was to buy me a blackboard. A very effective strategy it turned out to be too…for some time. I scribbled on the blackboard to my hearts content and when I couldn't scribble anymore as the thick layer of crayon wax prevented anymore writing, I wandered to the walls.

Strategy Number I was quickly reassessed and Strategy Number I Version 2 was released. Strategy Number I Version 2 was combing the house with a fine tooth comb for crayons and then throwing them all out and buying me chalk and a new blackboard. This strategy was also very effective...for sometime. I drew to my hearts content on the black board and then when the black board was full of avant garde art, I continued to the walls. My parents looked at each other and realized with a sinking feeling that buying a black board without a duster was not exactly the thing that got you a Nobel Prize for Foresightedness.

Strategy Number I Version 2 was rehashed and Strategy Number I Version 3 was released soon after. According to the specifications of this strategy a duster had to be bought post haste and it was done! This strategy worked fine for some time too and then my parents found a bug in this strategy too. A rather annoying bug that necessitated either one of them to come to my room and clean the blackboard about 567 times a day. You don’t expect a 5 year old, running on 6 to clean a giant black board do you duh! On retrospect that should have held onto Strategy Number I Version 3, because nothing is more effective in curbing a child than asking her to clean up after her. He /she soon learns that throwing mud on the floor is not fun and throwing water on the bed is also not fun nor writing on the wall. But my parents were not yet the hardened parents they are now, and we should excuse their inexperience and subsequent failures at the hands of a very experienced child.

We are err I am digressing peoples and if any of you are not snoring by now, let me tell you of Strategy Number I Version 4 that was rolled out by my parents soon after. My father as usual was the Project Manager and my mother, the Team Lead. It was decided by unanimous consent that they would ‘hire’ two techies to do their lowly jobs as part of Strategy Number I Version 4. Soon two techies were "hired" to do the code (“Clean her blackboard or else!!!”). Pleased with the success of Strategy Number I Version 4, my parents resumed their role as homemaker and breadwinner. All was well in the house after that for ....one day. The lowly techies like most techies got fed of the constant coding err dusting and one of them whose name starts with the alphabet M, devised a novel plan to get rid of the job. He – you wont believe this- introduced a bug in the code!! He secretly bought a box of crayons and gave it to me. Soon the techies were back to their life of doing what they usually do and Project Manager and Team Lead faced another failure.

And pssst they never found how I got the crayons and blamed the school for the free crayons we got in art class.

Blackboard was thrown off and my parents sat and scratched their head for a new strategy! My mother felt that next strategy should have a healthy amount of spanking for better implementation! My Dad was horrified and vehemently turned it down for Strategy Number I Version 5! Strategy Number I Version 5 involved painting about 5 feet of the wall from the ground in oil paint. Strategy Number I Version 5 was a huge success. Fed up of the wall refusing to accept crayon, pencil or water color markings, I retired to other activities. But then the artist in me was not satiated. The urge to scribble soon overcame me and one day my mother gasped and nearly fainted when she beheld her expensive sofa with multicolor balloons carefully drawn with red, green and blue crayons. The dining table too was decorated by art nouvelle and so were the cupboard doors and doors.

My mother had enough and read the riot act to her daughter and her daughter’s father. Henceforth, she declared, every scribbling on the wall and elsewhere had to be cleaned up by the artist and her father. Failing which she would take her sons and go to “her” fathers home! Faced with the possibility of scraping acres of walls, furniture, dogs, neighbors, relations, dhobi etc off wax crayons, the father formulated Strategy Number I Version 6. According to this strategy, the two lowly techies were re-recruited by the scruff of their collars and drafted to remove every piece of writing material in the house on a daily basis and keep it in the shoe box on the cupboard. Strategy Number I Version 6 was a resounding success.

By the time I was eight, the artist in me was deader than a dodo. The family heaved a sigh of relief till the tailor in me raised its head. But that is another story I will tell another day. But for one long year, people in the house had to endure their shorts, shirts and sarees being cut into shreds. Nothing very unusual you might think. But this happened when they were “wearing those pieces of clothing” you see. :p

Have a nice weeks folks!

Happy Dassera!!