COMA

Don't be misled by the title of this post - no, I am not in a Coma although some people think so after seeing me these days (said people include my boss, my wife and the three stray dogs who bark near my window at night). Nor is this a review of the Robin Cook novel. COMA actually stands for Committee but here I go again - getting ahead of myself. I can never tell a story straight. Deep breath now...ok...here goes...

Not many people are aware that the government in all its wisdom decided to have a group of people from various departments sit once in a month to coordinate their activities. Of course, this decision came after appointing ANOTHER group of people to decide. This group took about 2 years and 7 sub committees to simply state that there needs a monthly meeting between the various state departments of Electricity, Water, Roads & Buildings (R&B) etc. You might think this was a no-brainer - you are right!! Even I knew that and I AM a no-brainer!

Anyway, this committee was called as COMA (Committee for Organizing and Monitoring Actions). As I said, they meet monthly to figure out how they should coordinate all their activities to minimize disruption in our lives. An intrepid insider gave us a verbatim account of how these meetings go..

R&B: Friends, this is to announce that we plan to relay the MG Road in the first week of May.
Water: That's great - we will dig it up in the second week of May then..
Electricity: That's so unfair - the last time, they re-laid the SP road, you dug it up. You did not even give us a chance.
Water: That's not true. Plus we ensure that we dig up the drains too - that way, there is more impact because of the smell.
R&B: Children, Children! Don’t fight. Don’t worry, Electricity - we have been sanctioned 10 crores to relay the road opposite the school. You can dig that in August - when the rains start...
Electricity: 10 crores for that small road? You don’t need 10 crores for such a small road!!
R&B: Who said all 10 crores will go towards the road?

General laughter all around.

Now a new voice piped up - an unusual Man with a Conscience (MaCo) had recently joined the group

MaCo: Since Water is digging up MG Road, can’t Electricity also do their work at the same time? This way, we don’t have to dig up so many times and we can actually save the government money.

More laughter now - everyone was highly amused by this suggestion.

R&B: If we do that, half of our projects will stop and WE will make half the money. Moving on..any more updates?

Electricity: To cut down on electricity costs, streetlights will be switched off between 11 am and 1 pm going forward.
MaCo: But we don’t NEED lights at that time...why are we even switching lights at that time? Is that why I see lights in broad daylight but they are never switched on at night when I actually need them?!!!

More laughter in the room at MaCo's naiveté

R&B: Now that we had our share of laughter, any more business?
Water: We pump water from 6 am to 8 am every day - we need a power cut from 7 am to 8 am so we can cut down our supplies to consumer.
Electricity: That’s a great idea - this way you will cut down your power bills as well as your water needs. We can blame each other so the public never knows the actual truth..
Water: Agreed - great idea!! This COMA thing actually works...

MaCo: But what about the people? They have been promised 2 hours of water!!

Everyone: Who invited this guy? If we went by what people wanted, then we won’t have much of a job and COMA will lead to Death!!

Meeting ends...........

Top 10 ways of recognizing an Indian politician

I was recently asked by my friend a very simple question "How do you recognize an Indian politician". It really set me thinking - one usually sees someone and says "He is a born politician" but find it difficult to pinpoint the reasons why we think so...So continuing my "gyaan" on the Indian elections, here are the Top 10 ways of recognizing an Indian politician

10. He wears a trade mark khadi dress almost all the time - although he has forgotten the reasons for it.

9. He usually launches a tirade against his political opponents but we all know they are actually good friends in real life

8. He does not have a lot of money (if you read his affidavit while filing his papers). Sometimes, he does not even have a Nano (poor guy!). However, he usually travels with a entourage of Toyota Qualis cars - Tata Sumos are so passe, please!

7. He knows people (or has been) in at least 2 jails.

6. He works only about 80 days in a year - the rest of the days, he takes a well deserved break.

5. He is usually late for all public functions - blame it on the Toyota cars - they are SO slow.

4. He seems to be often misquoted by the press - all CDs of his speeches are "tampered".

3. He raves and rants against different sections of country, based on caste, religion, money, region, language etc. In fact, he professes to love the country while he seems to hate 99% of the people, living in it, based on the above criteria.

2. According to the Guruji theory, the number of voters in his constituency is exactly equal to the amount of dollars he has stashed away in Switzerland.

And the NUMBER 1 way of recognizing him (bang the drums, please)

1. He meets his voters once in 5 years. Meet him this year if you are lucky.

If you know of other ways, please do let me know!

10 Commandments on being a Dad

Someone asked me to write on my experiences of being a dad. I am not sure if I am really qualified because I only have two kids but I do have an uncle and aunt who had 11 of them together. I am sure they could have written much better but then blogs were not around then..so here goes..

In days of yore, a typical father would have packed off his wife to her native village for the delivery. A few months later, he would have got a telegram saying 'Son born mother healthy'. If he was lucky, he would have gone in about 2 weeks to see the child but otherwise would have seen his offspring in about 3 months to get his wife back!! How different is the world today.....

I remember when my first son was born - we were in the US at that time and I was part of the birthing process and expected to do a lot of stuff. When I had my first look at that wrinkled face, my first thought was "Oh my god - he looks so UGLY! Can I return him back?". Unfortunately kids don't come with a warranty so you CANNOT return them. They also do not come with a user manual (I searched!) so you are basically on your own.

In the absence of a user manual, we did the next best thing - searched in Google. No luck - we got this bunch of weird instructions that we could not follow - we were on our own.

When we had the next child (now in India), I was again part of the birthing process and had the same feeling - deja vu I think the French call it. But this time, we did not need or search for a user manual - we basically decided to repeat our earlier mistakes. Based on these two experiences , I think I am qualified to write down my 10 Commandments on being a Dad. Here goes...









1. Thou shalt not offer to change diapers - they SMELL!

2. Thou shalt not be surprised to see various colors of the rainbow on diapers - stool comes in different colors at that age!

3. Thou shalt not covet sleep at nights - if the baby wakes, YOU wake up

4. Thou shalt not ask advice from grandmothers, aunts, mothers or anyone for that matter. They confuse the hell out of you. YOU made the baby, YOU face the music

5. Thou shalt not return a baby because it was ugly when it was born. They do become human like later.

6. Thou shalt not believe when people say that your new born baby is beautiful - they LIE!

7. Thou shalt not believe your mother-in-law when she says that the baby looks exactly like you. SHE lies! Its called politics.

8. Thou shalt not interfere when siblings fight, unless really required. They usually tend to patch up things among themselves without adult interference.

9. Thou shalt sterilize baby bottles, nipples etc in the first month in hot water, keep it under running water the next month and just wipe it on your ars* the third month because its too much to keep sterilizing. For the the second baby, just jump to phase 3.

and the last one

10. Thou shalt take your baby out often (without its mother) to supermarkets, malls etc. Babies are the best chick magnets on earth!

I can see some Dads already nodding (been-there-done-that) and for the rest of you, believe me, that's how it ACTUALLY happens!

Here is hoping this has been helpful. Comments welcome...(use link below)

Being in PC's shoes?

In this frame taken from television, Home Minister P Chidambaram gestures as a shoe thrown by a journalist passes by during a press conference in New Delhi on April 7, 2009. Which begs the question - if a politician does not do well, shouldn't he actually get the boot?

Bosses are a pain in a particular part of the anatomy - Part 2

The story so far

Dakkan, who is my nomination for the "Worst Boss" award, has just cancelled my vacation so he could go to Singapore for a conference. This has really made Bhagyawaan angry. I have, as usual, left it to Ganesha to handle the situation. Now read on....

Monday morning was gloomy to say the least - I had 4 days left to cancel my tickets but had immense faith in Ganesha since He had never let me down till now but it was not a very happy Bhagwaan who woke up on that dull morning. I had to take an early morning flight to Bangalore on official work - this was when Bangalore and Hyderabad did not have the new spanking airports so when I came out Bangalore airport, it felt that I had gone thru a long train journey in a General Compartment. Dakkan had called in earlier to say that he was not feeling well and hence would not be in for the next few days! He actual words were "sick as a dog". Yeah! Right! I forgot to remind him about my Bangalore trip then said - what the hell!

Anyway, I reached Bangalore, did some hard work to earn my daily bread and went back to the hotel at around 10 pm in the night. I realized that I had to buy something for Baddu and was at a loss for options. It was pretty late in the night so I had no interest to go out and search.


Suddenly, I was watching cartoons and realized that there was shop in the hotel itself selling some stuffed toys. I went down to see if it was still open. Luckily, they were open although Walt Disney would have probably disowned the Mickey Mouse look alike that they were selling. I need a cup of coffee and stepped into the restaurant when I got the surprise and shock of my life!! I saw Dakkan with peering deeply into the eyes of a young lady who was definitely NOT his wife!! For a moment, I thought I had a seen a ghost but realized that it was not a dream. I guess I must have yelped because both suddenly both of them looked were startled and turned towards me. You should have seen the look on Dakkan's face - it was the first time that I saw a look of acute embarrassment and guilt on it. This is how the rest of the conversation went


DAKKAN: Oh Bhagwaan - I did not know you were in Bangalore


I : Ah


DAKKAN: I was just trying to remove this fly from this lady's eye


I: Ah


DAKKAN: It was troubling her - she is just a good friend of mine


I: Ah


DAKKAN: There is nothing going on between us...


ME: Ah!


You must have my notice my wide range of vocabulary in this conversation - pretty nifty, eh? It really made him nervous indeed. Sick as a dog - my left foot!! Now I was really fuming at his lies. This was when he made his last bloomer

DAKKAN: She is like my sister...

This was when the lady in question shot up - she gave him a dirty look that must have frozen him and walked out in a huff. I guess he must have suffered enough and walked out with dignity.

I took the early morning flight on Tuesday and reached office in the afternoon. I went into Dakkan's office - he was on the phone with his wife telling her that he was "stuck" in Bangalore because of some "urgent critical business issues". I could hear a lot of squawking on the phone so I guess it was not a happy party on the other end. I could see Dakkan sweating now and believe me - it was a happy sight!.

After maybe 5 minutes, he hung up and looked at me sheepishly - he had guilt written all over him. He gulped and said


"Ah Bhagwaan - I must congratulate you. You seem to have done a good job on the project - have been hearing a lot of praise from quite a few people".


I gave him my patented "I-know-BS-when-I-hear-it" look.


He tried again "I believe I owe you an explanation. Let me just say that what you saw yesterday will not be repeated again - I hope you wont talk about it to anyone. I have learnt my lesson"


I was about to retort when I realized that for the first time, I saw a semblance of truth in his statement. I guess he had REALLY learnt his lesson well. It was time to be a bigger man - I decided to let it go and was about to walk out...As I was near the door, he spoke again


"Bhagwaan - remember that vacation that you had asked for - well you can take it. I also plan to spend time with family but will be in town so you can take the time off".


I was pleasantly surprised to see his reaction and I could only mutter a thanks. I immediately went to call Bhagyawaan and give her the news. As expected, she was more than happy and said


"Remember that Mickey Mouse that you got for Baddu - he likes it so much. He has actually taken and kept it in the puja room just beside the Ganesha idol".


Then it stuck me about the connection- Mickey Mouse ->mouse->rat->Ganesha..Guess He did hear me - If I had not gone to get that Mickey Mouse, I would not have got my vacation. I need to settle the dues with Him today.

Concluded