Indianisms....????... Why so?

As a corporate newbie we had to go through an Indianisms training, to get rid of the commonly used Indian variants of the English phrases and terms. And this got me thinking about -  would it ever be possible to get rid of the icky Indianism that has been deep-rooted in our systems since generations...??

We Indians are a nosey bunch of people, we have an opinion/ view about anything and everything. It gives us immense pleasure to poke our long noses into other people's affairs. Be it their attire, their size or weight, their jobs, getting hitched or being single, having kids or the lack of it.... we never refrain from dishing out our unsought views and suggestions. But the moment we get a taste of our own medicine we shrink and wince and quiver.  Why so?

We grumble about our streets not being clean,but never seem to bother when we chuck out the next piece of chocolate wrapper. Why so?

We groan about the long lines of traffic and the damn roadblocks and traffic congestions, but we never give it a thought when we whizz past another red traffic signal or barricade. Why so?

We can write-off cheques as donations to a charity fund to get a tax waiver but we cringe at the thought of  lending a helping helping hand to an accident victim or a poor hapless chap on the street. Why so?

We are enraged at the corruption and scams in our country but never think twice when we bribe the traffic cop to get out of a parking ticket. Why so?

We despise the custom of dowry giving/taking but always are on the look-out for the girl  who has the most number of assets attached to her name or brings home the fattest pay-check. Why so?

We advocate that 'all Indians are one' but weasel out when our kids propose to marry out off caste/religion. Why so?

We allege that Politics is a dirty game and our country is going to the dogs but we never move our big fat asses and venture out of our homes to cast a vote and exercise our right. Why so?

We vouch and root for many social causes till it involves clicking the Forward button on an email but turn a blind eye when someone in our own vicinity is being a social nuisance. Why so?

We want new and more stringent rules/laws to be imposed by our country but we never make an effort to abide by them and are always trying to find a loophole to getaway. Why so?

We voice and raise our dynamic thoughts to sketch out a new India, but all our energy fizzles out when we have to take that tiny step forward to make a difference.
Why so?
:/

Governed by IT!

"The brain is a wonderful organ; it starts working the moment you get up in the morning and does not stop until you get into the office.” : P
But I feel on some days it stops working even when we do not have to go to office. : (

Being an IT professional and working 5 days a week for countless hrs a day, sometimes it really gets to me. And I remain in my work-mode even on weekends or when I m on leave.
How so?
Picture these incidents:

- Sometimes I find myself wearing the company ID card on weekends when I m just going out with friends for a movie or to the store to get something. : /


- Sometimes while driving to a friend's place, I try flashing my company ID card to the security guard there when he asks me to sign the visitors book, yelling ' I work here! ' : /
[ Happened twice already, he's surely gonna shoot me next time. :O ]


- Sometimes I hold my hands in front of the tap at home expecting water to flow out automatically without turning the knob on. : /
[ This ones a classic, and my Dad who was waiting behind me to wash his hands after dinner thought I was sleeping standing up. Sheesh : / ]


- Sometimes when I feel cold at home, I tell Mum - we should raise a ticket to get the temperature adjusted : /
[ Mum keeps wondering, has my daughter totally lost it! :O ]


- Sometimes when I pick-up a call (especially on the landline ) I m prompted to say " Hi Mark, This is Rino here. And my status for today is.... "
[ Standard dialogue from my everyday status call at work ]


- Sometimes I end my personal emails with ' Please revert in case of any queries. ' : /


-  I try to log on to my personal computer at home using ' Ctrl+Alt+Delete ' : /


- I do not access my personal mail accounts / certain sites at home thinking they might be blocked anyway.


- Sometimes  when I am using my personal computer at home and it's 1pm, I immediately log on to    FaceBook thinking that it will be blocked in an hour. : /


- Sometimes I try to login to my personal accounts using my office ID and password. And when the login fails, I keep wondering, ' Oh Lord! Have my credentials expired or did someone hack my account and change the password.' :O


- Sometimes I give my extension number ' 6431 ' instead of my mobile number,  making the clueless person grumble ' Crazy woman, Am i supposed to guess the rest of the 6 digits! ' . Sheesh : /


- Sometimes when I m watching a movie at the cinemas or on  TV,  i keep glancing at the right hand bottom corner to check the time and wonder ' Who the hell disabled the taskbar?? ' : /


- Whenever I see a black screen, I m prompted to type-in the ' ANT ' command to compile my java program. : /


- When I m stuck on an error which does not get resolved or even reproduced on my environment for days,  my dreams are filled with pages and pages of log file errors. : /
[ Nasty errors really kill my beauty sleep.. :P ]


- Sometimes when somebody doesn't follow what I say [happens most of the time], I exclaim 'He's encountered a compile error!'
[Yup I can get really nerdy at times. :P]


And the best one-


- I wake up at 9am on a Sunday morning and think ' Damn, Am I late for work today ? ' :O

Phew!
Yeah I know I really really need a break!.. :D

Do you have any occupational hazards to share???

First Interview!

Nope this post is not about my first job interview. This is about the first interview of my life. Confused?
Well I was 2 years and 6 months old and this nerve-racking interview was to gain an admission into a kindergarten of a prestigious school. : O

For many Indian parents, getting their children into the right kindergarten is simply essential. Why? Well, Obviously, the right kindergarten leads to the right primary school, which leads to the right secondary school, which leads to Harvard, Yale or Oxford or the prestigious IITs which leads to . . . Nirvana! :P

So my parents too were under the illusion that the right kindergarten was an indispensable launching pad for an illustrious academic career and they were hell bent upon getting me into one of the very famous school in our vicinity.

Thus started the gruelling sessions of preparing me for the interview, since the day they heard me babble out a few random words, my parents  started pointing out things around me and make me repeat those words. How boring! :P

Sometimes the guest and relatives who dropped by also started making me say things, which sometimes irritated me as they were just doing it for their amusement and never even gave me the promised chocolates.  Bribe a little kid, and don't even pay up!  How very mean. : /

So i would start to  become balky and refuse to answer their questions, and they would try to enact a little tough love by taking away my favourite toys, thereby causing me to go 'Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa' breaking all the bearable decibel limits, but of course ensuring that I got back my toys without  having to answer their stupid questions. Smart eh! :D

Dad would sometimes play nursery rhymes on the player, hoping that I would catch a few words and learn them, but I of course found the Bollywood songs more catchy and would start saying random words from Hindi songs and  prance around the room happily while the lady in the tape was going 'Jack and Jill went up the hill.....' , leaving Dad to tear his hair out and yell 'Daivameeeee !' ('Oh Lord!'). Yup it was quite a rhapsody and would have given any musician a severe heart-attack. : )

Though the tunes of all the nursery rhymes sounded the same, In the end, I still managed to master a few nursery rhymes, the only problem being I would pen my own lyrics on the fly by borrowing stanzas from different poems.. : /

So finally the day of my interview dawned and like everyday I made a ruckus about why I was not allowed to wear my favourite pink fairy dress, but my parents wanted me to make a good impression on the interviewer so I had to dress-up appropriately. Really is there a formal dress code for a kid interview too ??  :O
And so the demand for my fairy dress was settled with a bribe of a big milk chocolate. Yup chocolates remain the only way to bribe me even today! :D

The interviewer though din seem so impressed with my frock, but she used it as a prop and asked me to name all the colors in it.
Geez Mom thanks, if you would have allowed me to wear my pink fairy dress all i had to say was 'PINK' but now this multi-colored polka dot frock was gonna  land me in trouble. : (

So i was bombarded with a lot of questions ranging from my name, to what i had for break-fast, different fruit-names, nursery-rhymes so on. Yeah it still puzzles me that if a kid ought to know all these things for an interview, what were the teachers going to teach us in kindergarten. : /

They grilled me for 15 mins straight ( yes it seems like an era in kiddie world ) and luckily for my parents I being an outgoing kid then than the introvert person that I'm today, I answered most of  the questions cheekily.

Then came the bumper question that would seal my fate, the teacher asked me to draw a mango on a sheet of paper.I readily obliged and  drew a big blob with a leaf like thingie on the top and colored the entire blob green.

Teacher - "Baby, mango has yellow color not green."
Me (looking confused) - " Er... This I like."
Teacher (totally lost) - ?

What i wanted to tell her was that, I liked the green (raw) mangoes than the yellow sweet ripe ones. Mangoes will and always remain green for me. :P
Well my love for green mangoes got me kicked out of my first interview and my parents dream school.
Sigh.

After years of changing schools, I again landed up at the doorsteps of the same school that  had rejected me for my green-mango-love.
After going through my excellent score cards of the previous years, the principal was impressed and admitted me into the school even though there was no vacancy (as only 60 students were allowed in one class.)

.....That's how i gate-crashed into my parents dream school and became Class 4 Div- A Roll No - 61 student with an extra desk all for myself. : )

You see Mom Dad, you just had to let me do it my way :D

And even though i din attend Harvard, Yale nor have any plans to attain Nirvana anytime in life, I still  seem to have turned out pretty well. I think. :P

What's in a name?

I'm immensely proud of the unique name that my parents gave me, But it sometimes (*read most of the times) drives me nuts when people fail to pronounce / spell it right...

How hard is it?? Its just a four letter word R - I - N - O or more clearly just a two syllable word 'Ri' 'No'

There are people in my life who have been conveniently using different variations of my  name to address me, my humble efforts to correct them have always remained futile and

every time I try to correct them, they stare blankly at me with a whats_wrong_in_what_I'm_saying look  : / and that look Shhhshs me up instantly... : P

 So  I have been stuck with those variant-names for years now .

 Check these out:

 #REENA

My favorite math teacher coined this name for me.

 She handed out some test papers in my first year and my test paper had the name 'Reena' scribbled on it.

 I took the paper back to her and said that this wasn't my paper and so these weren't my scores.

 She took one look at the paper and said that it was mine and I suck at math.. : (

  I agreed that I suck at Math, but c'mmon this wasn't at all my name.. : /

 Me-  "Ma'am but my name is not 'Reena' its 'R-I-N-O' "

 Teacher-  "Rino ?? what kinda name is that ?? "

 Me-  "Ummm.. Er.. The one my parents gave me i guess ? "

 Teacher-" It doesn't sound right at all, and to me calling you 'Reena' appears simpler. So now stop arguing  and go improve your math scores."

 Me- ?

 And that's how I have been stuck with 'Reena' for the past 13 yrs now and though Math still creeps the hell out of me, I have so gotten used to it that every time I hear her say 'Reena' it makes me smile... : )

# RINU

One of my aunt and a neighbour calls me this since my birth, to them its easier to use the syllable 'U' than 'O' coz if you call-out 'Rinoooooooooo'  its sounds very shrill and 'Rinuuuuuuuuuuu' sounds very sweet.

Geez Aunties, thanks for changing my name to be in perfect harmony of your vocal chords... :P

But i got to agree that when my Mum calls-out to me as 'Rinoooooo' it does sound like some fishermen-folklore.. : /

# RENU

Most of the people call me 'Renu' as they feel no Hindu female name ends with  'O' , it should either end with 'A' or ' I ' or 'U'

Really ?? That made me embark on one of my life's quest of trying to find a reasonable Hindu feminine name ending with 'O'

Countless failed google searches and references has not dithered me in my quest yet, but a little help here would not b that bad.. : D

#R(h)INO

I swear I'll kill the next person who uses this word to address me. Really Rhino ???  Dude please use a spell-check, there is no 'h' in my name.. : /

My grandparents and maternal relatives back in my native place call me with many nicknames and I think they have actually forgotten my real name coz when the postman came with a letter addressed to me, my grandpa said "The address is correct, but who the hell is Rino?" Sheesh. : /

I'm sure the ones who have stumbled by here and are reading this post are vigorously making a google search to find out the meaning of the word 'Rino'. Yup I did it too, but the damn Google reports that Rino means 'Little King' in Italian and is used as a BOY's name.

Noooooooooo... Noooooooooo.. It's a girls name!.. a girl's name!... No matter what the pizza dudes think. :P

I really hate you 'Google' even though you help me a lot at work  for this defamatory remark that Rino is a 'Boy's name'. Bleah!.. : /

And I would also like to stick with my dad's version that he named me 'Rino' which means 'new' in Greek after reading the word in a political science book coz my birth gave a new meaning to his life.. [Wow! that's really very cool Dad, but I still wish you had picked up  the Book with baby names when u were planning to name your baby... :P]

Though I do have doubts regarding my dad's version (probably he just used this tale to soothe my feelings towards the bizarre name they gave me), my humble request to any of the  Greek experts who have stumbled by is please please do not burst my bubble ever.. : |

In college when I had introduced myself, one of the professors had exclaimed "Is it Greek!"

I had taken it as a question and explained to him that yes it was and it means 'new' in Greek.

But now that I think of it, he could have just been using the expression 'Your name sounds all Greek to me..' Sheesh : /

Having said and gone through all that, I too would want to name my kid with a unique name so that one day he/she can grow up and sue me for crippling him/her for life... : P

Guess it runs in my genes now... Muhahahahaha.. : D

How hard can it be?

She stares at the blank notepad open on the desktop screen .. The cursor blinking on the first line waiting for her fingers to type in the words ...
Thousands of words seem to be flying through her head.. But they seem to be flying at a speed even faster than light..without making any  damn sense... : /
She closes her eyes, trying hard to make sense of the haphazard thoughts in her head... It seems like every brain of her cell is processing a different thought and the  harder she concentrates,the ramblings just get even more distant ... : (
Suddenly she jumps up in her seat.. Eureka!!! .. Got it ...
Her fingers hit the keyboard and fumbles around looking for the right letters to key in her thoughts..
She finds the letter 'D'... But wait, was it 'B' that i was looking for.. No its was 'D'  for sure!!!.. Err.. what was it i actually wanted to write??? : |
The words seemed to have dissolved into thin air again ...
Oh God, why the hell is this so hard!!!! .. : (

She glares at the keyboard as if it was it's fault, that the words seem to play hide-n- seek in her head..
She looks at the blank notepad.. with a hope that the harder she stares at it, the words would magically materialise on her screen.. Finally she gives up and resolves to someday locate the Hogwarts school that would teach her this skill !

Ummm.. probably its the digital world that's making it so hard.. So she ditches the computer, pulls out a paper and picks up a pen to write the amazing second post for her blog..

But an hour later all she could get was a flower doodle, which looked more like the blazing sun.
Sigh.
... And some of her idiot friends had convinced her she could write.

Bleah ! : /

First Post!

Yippeee... Created my first blog.. Finally.... :D