How to be around people - Lessons in Stupidity

I've known myself to be a colossal bungler of conversations. It's not a newly-acquired skill or trying to be that much more relatable but it's just something essentially missing in my head. Common sense, is what my gut says, and I've never really doubted it. From being casually funny to being an in-house embarrassment, my personality is a combination of most features a clown might die to have. Last night, our boss's place, I dropped a measly tomato piece next to his carefully placed plant and a fork eerily close to someone's shoes. When you do these things, you must always ask yourself - do I belong here? Try and quietly move to the other room before someone even notices the lettuce at their feet. Or, when you happen to tell people what others have named them. Strike that. Don't do that. It's not welcome. Back in mid-2000s, people may not have noticed with too much smoke in the room, but now you're probably earning more than you should and someone's bound to call you out. Or put it on the social media, but you're not in U.S. and in India, half of us are busy taking selfies anyway. Yes, you don't do much of that too unless you know how to crop your colleagues from photobombing pics with "Wtf are these two up to?" looks. You also don't, may I emphasise, tell your colleague's girlfriend that he skipped work to bring her to the party or tell her that he made her sit next to you in case there was a food accident waiting to happen. You don't mess with people's relationships. You take it easy and take a rain check for office parties.

SOS - Save our Sandwich or What Happens When Colleagues Learn Skills for Hostile Situations

Day 1

So we begin at 8am, that's where the story really fleshes itself out, with little help from the narrator. If you look around, you'll see faces, some deeply expectant, some made heavy from sleep, while the rest in a corner, gleefully watching. We'll come to the corner later. There's
a heavy set man, with lips and ears protruding, and his eyelids are wide open, as if inviting combat. Some may say that he's got it right - that it is, after all, a hostile training camp. His noisy coughs punctuate the silences, as screeching door handles provide a grinding chorus. And then, we begin.

The trainers, shipped from England, are ready with tools, kits, and video clips to demonstrate life skills in dangerous situations. The expectant ones are ready with pens and notebooks, the sleepy ones shuffle in their seats, trying to angle their arses to doze off again. The ones in the corner, well, remain where they are - exercising their peripheral vision to look around.

So the first trainer, starts off with a dizzying list of things that people need to watch out for - lot of it common sense. But as they get drawn in, the room begins to carry a worn look, as people suddenly realise with rapt attention that their lives have been missing lists, medical kits and tragically, some fitness. The trainer seems to catch the aura and he begins to further unleash darker stories about people being kidnapped and perhaps even dying. The coughs continue, and papers rustle with breathtaking speed, necks jerk downwards and in the corner, a man intently gazes into oblivion, fantasising about, er, a sandwich.

He imagines flattened meat, slapped on bread with fresh vegetables and as he reaches out with his hands, a ball point pen rolls off on the floor.

Okay, all of you! The trainer announces a short breakfast and the herd makes a noisy exit, and the world returns as a fuller, sated place once again.



12:55pm

By now, everyone is struggling to balance their burps with etiquette and the medic calls out for a volunteer. All eyes dart on the floor, and the wily trainer, picks out the most sleepy from the lot and puts him flat on the floor.

While the irony is on, our man in the corner, now fully comfortable in the cosy air conditioned room, finds himself slipping, going down, easy, and there finally. Sleep comes quickly and before the person next to him has point number 5 scribbled on his notebook from the power point, a light whirring noise, like a motor, jars him.

Turning around, he spots our man, who is now sporting a zen like aura, which makes him look no less than a Munch painting (no, not Scream), if you will. The harmony soon breaks when a sharp elbow pokes into our man's dreamless paradise.


4:30pm

The day has trundled along, with reams of white cloth spread on the floor, fake broken bones crying for relief and fake blood doing the rounds. As gory real-life incidents play out on screen, the mood resembles a tragedy, with people forgetting about medicine, and contemplating suicide.

Our man in the corner, who has now downed four cups of tea, and smoked an equal number of cigarettes, pledges to himself that he will conquer humanity's troubles by er, volunteering? No, no, he shrugs off the thought as soon it is about to perch on his head. Like a victor approaching an open arena, he broadens his shoulders, looks around and pledges one percent of his salary to the animal NGO, which had last week sent him letters to save donkeys suffering in brick factories of Nepal.

All right, everyone! See you tomorrow! The trainer's booming voice brings the curtains down.

Hello back to my blog

It's been a while since I wrote and that sentence makes me feel incredibly old. It's been a while since I was married too, and that itself has been a huge change and a turnaround in life. The very process has taught me many things, which life does not give you time to write about. Those memories are re-lived over endless cups of chai and staring outside the window or in conversations with friends. But, marriage is also healing. But, none of that right now. I am kind of 'healing' and that's still work in progress. I went over few of the older posts, and I realised there is lots I have said and lots which I no longer say to anyone now. It is kind of disquieting at first. Nothing very literary or very liberating either, you may say. Have I changed? That's a question with possibly a hundred answers and none of those on my fingertips as of now. I am a better person for some, a bit lethal for more than I was before. I have some untied threads from the past, like everybody else. And, there's no shame in admitting some of the wrongs still come to mind once in a while. Just the wrongs though, not the good bits.

Travel has been immensely healing, and I cannot begin to talk about how much my companion has added bigger quotient of happiness by being with me on those trips. I have held his hand only to feel happiness come back in spurts and that's as soppy as I have ever been. Like I said, possibly a hundred answers and maybe this is one.

So, where does that leave us? Luvverly-jubberly

When life is event less, or at least I'd like to think it is, there is little to write home about. Let me go over the few interesting things that happened last week - at least, not much happened, or rather if something did, it's cheap and nasty to talk about it now.

The world is duffed in with the same ol' and, I would like to agree with Oscar Wilde in Vera, "I didn't make the world."

So, what else happened? The city is neck deep in talking about the Games, even as the nutters preparing for them or those doing the hand-job dissolve more currency into it, us taxpayers can only behave like doughnuts. And, surprise, surprise, Pakistan stood up for us for the Games preparation even when the goras nearly barfed up in the village. Yes, things are relatively better here, and they must like it.

Forget snake charmers or dog catchers, maybe some song performances can save it. Munni, listening?

Also, not so surprising fact, the Kenyan delegation is happy. *Chuckles and falls of chair*

Up next, the poorly watched T20 matches didn't get their fair share on viewership, as people hardly could remember teams with names like Lions, and Bushrangers. No, don't blame me if these sound straight out of late-night tv, but it was actually prime time cricket. Oh, and yes, while Dhoni's Super Kings lifted the cup, no one looked.

Overseas, when Iran's Ahmadinejad suggested some people in the US government were involved in 9/11, there were lashings. The debate veered off into Iran's "illegal" nuclear activities and how Israel is in danger.
However, some light was shed on surveys conducted in the US that show 42% of the common people are skeptical of the official investigations in to 9/11. Obama needs to sink his teeth into this mess and not just announce more tax cuts.

"Nobody is more desperate to find ways to grow the economy now than the current occupants of the White House and their economic advisors." http://savannahnow.com/column/2010-09-26/zapp-please-drop-your-19th-century-economics

Moving on, love beginning to show from UK's two brothers, Ed and David, whose story sounds fabled. Shadows or not, there shall be more to this than just pregnant girlfriends in the weeks to come.

Meanwhile, Leonardo Di Caprio has vowed to help save tigers in India. Let's hope he does more than just being mouthy about it. And just in, Colin Montgomerie has said he wouldn't pick Tiger in his team. :P



Happy Mundane.

Dunno what gives

Labelling thoughts and emotions, wording thoughts, stringing together memories, what a way to be. A few years ago, I would pick up my fat diary, open it with my pudgy fingers, gingerly remove the dog ears, and pen few alphabets.

The online space is numbing, very not-me kinds, somehow the idea that has developed and found favour in all these years is that globally, people are connecting faster through internet, and now with technology such as hand held phones keeping you connected all the time, is a puzzle.

The idea of digitising thoughts and punching keys to make yourself heard. Or, in this case simply, read.

So, the grammar, intonations, everything has to be fashioned as per the demands of the technology we seek. We cannot scratch and overwrite or spill ink on the page anymore, or feel the guilt of bad handwriting.