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