Scene# 2:

Venue: Centre of the office floor, waiting in the small cubicle housing the photocopier and the printer.

Time: 3 pm

Plot: I am standing in front of the printer waiting for my print commands to take shape. There’s another soul standing hardly 1 feet away from me so lost in taking photocopies that he misses me coming in.

As soon as the printer starts working, he turns back in astonishment, looks at me, then looks at the printer doing its job and shouts back at me - What are you taking out? (In Bengali)

I looked at him for a second and thought-

Birbal died ages ago, but his blindmen with eyes still roam across freely and terrorise people with their dumb questions.


So I just gave him a blank look and replied- Printouts!

The futility of actions and dumbness of thought

Scene#1

Time- 9:20 am

Venue: Waiting in the queue in front of the elevator of my office building. There are a couple of elevators and the queues for getting in, generally run parallel. So there are about 30 people waiting in total.


Plot: after standing in there for about 10 minutes finally I come at the starting of the queue.

Generally in such a situation, most people keep concentrating on the electronic display by the side of the elevator door, trying to influence its speed by exerting their mental control over it, others, especially of a particular insurance company whose office is just below mine, and those who come with their female/male counterparts, happily use this time in flirting and bitching around.

So as I was waiting there in front of the queue with my heavy laptop bag panting on my shoulders, it was quite a normal scene, until a middle aged woman standing in the same queue as mine walks forward, pushes me and keeps pressing the elevator switch in frustration, probably she got fed up of using psychokinesis!

Seeing this my counterpart in the next queue, a well dressed young executive also starts pressing the elevator switch next to him.


I thought for a second of telling these two geniuses, that these elevators are manned by operators and they know very well that this is prime usage time, infact they have just 1 minute back seen the long queue waiting when the elevator last came down, and they under no circumstances are going to halt the elevator in its way out of no reason, neither is the speed of the elevator going to go up by pressing this switch repeatedly. So the entire act of pressing this switch is futile.

But then something occurred to me- one of the earliest lessons of a subject in B School which at that time I didn’t like much, called organizational behavior. And it said- average intelligence in a group environment tends to come down to the level of the least intelligent member.

Well those fat books weren’t so useless after all!!

The Revenge of the Nerds !

If I finish this post in one go, I’ll treat myself an ice cream.

Hmmmm..ummmmm..Okay dismiss that.

Take two -

‘If I finish this post, I’ll treat myself an ice cream!’

Now that’s neither an exaggeration, nor an easily achievable task by two counts.

First, you should have a look at the number of half finished posts in this little word doc which I so religiously save on my comp, to have a passing idea of the number of imaginary topics I have conceived, started writing but somehow lost steam, since the last couple of months.

Second, the temptation of having an ice cream is really big for me right now. With an acute cough, blocked nose and body temperature which shadows the NSE index it’s a big deal for me to somehow sneak in a cig, leave aside the prospect of going out and treating myself an ice cream in this condition.

So..coming back to the nerds and their revenge!

Question number one: What was I doing for the last couple of months?

Answer:

Well…I discovered the gory truth about someone, took some days to digest that, lost all interest in writing, finished my first project, partied around my last week in bangalore, came back to cal, saw durga puja after three years, met some old pals and foes, kept running around the city meeting fat, bald marwaris, bidi smoking bongs, story telling uncles…..befriended a lot of fat women and finally caught a bad cold.

Question number two: How have I been doing?

Answer: Well I have been doing great. I have successfully guarded my frustration and dangerous intentions quite well in the past few weeks. Guess I am riding up the learning curve on that.

And I have kept my calm, kept my calm against the dance of the mediocre all around me.
I have kept my calm at the sight of ring/pin studded, long haired, doped teenagers around me in pubs and discs. I have kept my calm at the sound of aunties bitching when I was neck deep in work.

I have kept my calm at the sight of gorgeous young women flirting around with firangs.

I have kept my calm at the realization that the same old buggers, who used to get on to my nerves back in college, still have their old abilities.

And finally I have kept myself from hitting a doc who showed me the doomsday scenario that I’ll be an asthmatic patient when I reach 50..if I don’t quit smoking.
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Well that’s it for now. See you next time.

Over and Out!

[And before you really start to believe that I am a nerd, lemme tell you, the idea of this post name is not mine, its my bro avinav’s, a self proclaimed nerd of not much repute]