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Saturday, November 13, 2004

Smiley Goes to Vipassana

You? Vipassana? Are you sure? Mr. Sharma enquired.
Hold on dude, I told my friend on my mobile, turned towards Sharma and gave him this Duh look. Why do you think I drove all the way to here and filled in this silly application form?
Do you know anything about Vipassana? Sharma enquired further.
Dude, I will call you back. I told my friend and gave this give me a break dude look to Sharma and told him. Yeah I know everything about Vipassana, Dalai Lama, Buddha and Angelina.
Who is Angelina?
Did I say Angelina? I meant Leela. She is friend of mine. She took this course.


Sharma looked very unconvinced.

For the first time I realized that admissions are not automatic and not granted. I need to pass through Sharma's scrutiny. I became very nervous. I already bought four oversized Jockey Underwears for this meditation thing. I am not going let them go waste.

I put my mobile in silent mode and sat a little erect.

A lot of young men like you (thank you baseball cap) walk in and they get disillusioned in no time. Sharma said. Besides they end harming themselves by developing this intense negative feeling about the whole thing. Do you know what it is like to spend ten full days at Vipassana? Its not a vacation. You will working intensely for ten hours a day for full ten days. Everything you see, feel, eat will be against your will. Some times a minute lasts for days.

Bah, I endured a flat chested, whining, crying chick for a month. Everything was against my will. I can do this. Besides if Fairy can do this, why cant I?
Who is Fairy?
Did I say Fairy? I meant Leela. She is a curious chick. If she sees a road, she will definitely cross it. Ha ha ha.

Sharma threw my application into a dustbin.
I got extremely nervous. Now what am I going to do with those oversized underwears?

Look Mr err...Smiley, Vipassana is not fun, its not an adventure, its not cool, it needs total dedication, hard work and submission of your will.
Sounds like me.
No, of course not. I have been practicing Vipassana from the past twenty five years. I have seen thousands of people. I know. I dont want to judge you, but please think about the whole thing again.

Dude Sharma, you will regret this moment for the rest of your eventless life. You are denying Vipassana an oppurtunity to get in touch with Smiley. You are coming in between a historic and momentous moment. Can you tell me that I am not going to be the next Buddha? You cannot.
By denying the oppurtunity you proved yourself to be judgemental. Which means, you are still judging events, people. You are still associating them with your self, ego and past. I would say you wasted twenty five years of your life.

I added, What I said about you is true. So , its going to hurt your ego. You havent conquered your ego. Instead of admitting the fact that you were judgemental, you are going to deny my admission. Good bye Sharma.

Sharma, took the admission out fo the dustbin, he turned it over and jubiliantly said, Ha! You need to be introduced by an old student. No one introduced you. So I cant let you in.

Hope beckoned. I immediately took my mobile. She this Rani Mukharjee I told you about did this post after she did her Vipassana. I read it. It is technically as good as being introduced by her.
Rani Mukharjee did this course? Where?
I meant Leela. She is a good friend of mine. You can see
, I showed him the SMS I sent to Leela that morning
Happy Diwali :-)
and Leela's reply to it
Stop bothering me :-(

Sharma very reluctantly gave me a confirmation. Two female foreign (British) students walked in. One of them said, I need to check my email. Sharma didnt understand a thing and said ya ya.
She went into the computer room. Sharma longingly looked at her. See, videshi vanita she is, she is been living here from three months. What dedictation? What dedication? He looked at me and asked. What do you think?
I looked at her and said
Yeah, nice butt.

I shook Sharma's hands and said, Thanks for letting me in, you will be proud of yourself in very few days. Sharma looked a little nervous and a lot worried.

P.S: What do you think? If Sweetie Lee can do it, I cant do it-aa?
My course starts from Nov 15 and ends at Nov 26th.
May the smiling buddha emerge. :-)
May you all live in peace.

Wednesday, November 10, 2004

Patrixy

I am feeling a little Patrixy today.
First, let me lampoon Patrix and his kind..



Hyderabad Shoe Shine

A proposed Outer Ring Road for Hyderabad (Part of V 2020) is finally approved. The land grabbing has already started. This ring road is supposed to usher a new era of western style sub urbs life style. Thumbs up.

A mega 'Central' mall by the name Hyderabad Central was opened last week and has already got rave reviews. (By teenage love making lovers).

To support the outer ring road HUDA is coming up with 22 (twenty two) satellite towns around the ring.

A super flyover with a mini flyover over that super flyover is coming up to digest the congestion between Begumpet and Banjara Hills. Now, take the ramp at Grand Kakatiya and exit at Banjara. No stops. :-)

India Super Shine

The grand Infy ADS is an indicator of whats going to be the next wave of corporate India. If I am right (which I always am) there will be a major (exponential) influx of foreign fund flow into India. Not just because of the FDI but also because of external borrowings by corporate India.

The moment RBI regulated the overly regulated external borrowing (dollar funds) channel to protect the volatile rupee, every CA and CFO charted out plans to borrow the low interest and cash rich west funds. What we are seeing is a realization of that implementation. Next quarter, we should see an all time high rate of external borrowings. It is good for the corporate India. Ironically, RBI will have to step in, and reregulate the unregulated, again in another two to three years to prevent a crumble down like that of the paper East Tigers (that happened during the end of the Clinton era) and the domination of external factors.

Nehruvian Urban Secular Socialists

Some schools are teaching their kids the negative effects of 'Celebrating Diwali'. It causes sound pollution, air pollution, wastes lot of paper etc. So, the convent going, english speaking, urban hip kids pledged not to 'celebrate' diwali. Not only that, they want to spead this 'awareness' to the rest of the India. So they are painting the perils of Diwali. Fuck them all. I have just ordered a shit load of diwali crackers. I told my office boy to pick the loudest, smokest and litterest possible damaka stuff. If you see a guy distributing these crackers to the slum kids in Madhapur on the night of diwali, its me. (Thats what I have been doing from the past two years).

Tuesday, November 09, 2004

What a day :-)

At the breakfast table..
Smiley: It went super smooth. I kind of touched that 'sweet spot'.
One little nudge and it was over. All I had to do was just shake off at the end.
Eddie:Yeah. Yeah. Mine too. By the time I read Garfield, it was over.
I wish every day starts like this.
Gello:What are you two talking about?
Smiley&Eddie:About how we shat this morning.


Sunday, November 07, 2004

Good morning :)

It wasnt a planned management policy. It actually started pretty innocently on a fine lazy sunday morning. I sent an SMS to my cousin Vinny. The SMS simply read

Good morning :)

Vinny immediately called me and said,'Dude, how are you doing? Yeah I am doing good. Thank you and you have a wonderful day'. I was surprised by the warmth in his tone. So the next day morning I sent him another SMS the moment I woke up.

Good morning :)

Vinny called me again. We wished each other a great day. Then Vinny forwarded that SMS to all of his staff and clients. Neither of us expected the kind of response we would get. Almost all the people who received the SMS either sent a reply or called Vinny back.

The next day Vinny sent me that message even before I did. It lasted for couple of weeks. It became a kind of game between the two of us. Who would get up first and send that SMS. During that week Vinny discussed with me the kind of new enthusiasm this SMS is building in his sales and administrative staff. Everyone was getting up a little early and the moment they saw him they were throwing this huge smile. It kind of became an announcement among the staff. Look I got up at 6:00 AM today. On an average he was receiving not less than a dozen Good Morning :) SMS every morning, with in two weeks.

So, I extended this to my staff too. The response was the same. Warm and welcoming. The next day I sent that SMS to everyone in my phonebook. To say that this simple SMS literally rejuvenated all of my contacts would be an understatement. I sent this SMS to the Company MDs to Office boys. The response was always the same. No matter how the previous day ended, my staff would get up anticipating this message. Many a differences were settled. Many of my clients beamed. Many new contacts turned into new business. (I am not exaggerating). Some SMS lazy guys, when met in person, mentioned that they were receiving these SMS.

Like all the new fads I thought this one would be dead in a week too. Even though I stopped sending those SMS (I send that SMS to very special few), I still receive atleast half a dozen of them in the morning.

Two days back my accountant walked into my room and was rattling on cutting costs. He informed me that we consumed 4.7 cups of tea per day per head last month. We agreed to cut it down to 3 cups per day. Entertainment cost per head for sales people came around 750. We agreed to cut down it to 400 per head. He then held the H-Bomb and told me in a dramatic tone, You wont believe this, last month, our staff sent SMS worth Rs.6543. We can easily take out 5000 off that.
No, I said, take off all limits on that. Thats the best investment we ever made on our HR.