How I learned to stop hating the TNEB and start loving TNEB inspite of TNEB being a bunch of pricks.

My mother says I cuss people a lot for no reason, it is for this reason that she does not visit my blog for she fears that I would use a lot of expletives in it. Good for me I say, because then our dinner table conversations would revolve around the grammatical errors and the poor sentence constructions that I make. She being a school teacher, it is quite hard for me to get away without being corrected whenever I speak a sentence. Ask my father if you think I am exaggerating, she even lets the MS-Word autocorrect function know that the sentence changes it suggests are incorrect. But going back to the point, yes I cuss people a lot behind their back.

Cricketers, lecturers, math teachers, old schoolmates, friends, politicians, colleagues, that father who drops his daughter to the bus stop, parents(not mine), toddlers, traffic, weather, sky, sun­, junkyard dogs–quite a few have been at the receiving end of my acid tongue. But there are times when the recipients of my expletives have redeemed themselves at some point and have made me take back my words. My math teacher was gracious enough to award me grace marks that helped me pass an exam once, lecturers have pushed back their assignment dates, friends have given back to me what they borrowed etc etc. its instances like these that have made me say “Maybe I was wrong, he is a nice person and I am the asshole”. But I can’t able to say the same about TNEB (did you see that ma? I said “Can’t able to”, ha!)

TNEB or the Tamil Nadu Electricity Board also known as Thiruttu Nai Echakalai Bastards (Loosely translated to “Sly dog spitworthy bastards” in English) is that government body which in their previous birth had probably been working under Hitler, their dedication in making your lives miserable can even make Hitler’s Schutzstaffel (SS) get an inferiority complex. With the state’s electricity board already under a debt of more than 40,000 crore the only way the woman at the helm could think of resolving this situation was by stopping people from using more electricity, in other words causing a power cut. It was not your normal one- hour powercuts, which is considered a very normal daily routine like cleaning your bowels, it was infact your MotherEpic-blast-your-brains-through-wall 10-hour powercut. Not one, not two, but TEN!

Like clockwork and with a mechanical precision the day begins with a powercut that begins at 9 am and goes till 12pm, then they let you enjoy an uninterrupted power supply till 3pm. Just when you feel you need an afternoon siesta the nice folks at TNEB shut it off at 3pm. At that time of the day when Chennai feels as hot as Satan’s anus, the TNEB urges you to bring out all your survival instincts by a 3-hour powercut that goes till 6 pm. Once the power returns you would feel that maybe now you won’t be subjected to anymore torture, but hold on, you are living in Tamil Nadu–“Torture” is its middle name. You return from work hoping to have a nice time at home with your loved ones watching t.v, sipping cold beer or a cup of tea, that is what a normal life means. With a powercut at 7:30 pm you might as well change your definition of a “normal life”. It’s not that bad though, a forty-five minutes powercut it is that’s all. You can spend those forty-five minutes coming up with various expletives using George Carlin’s combination of seven words­– shit, piss, fuck, cunt, cocksucker, motherfucker, and tits. By the time the power is back on at 8:15 pm you would have come up with quite a few permutations and combinations. It’s 10 pm and you might be excused for thinking that you might atleast have a good night’s sleep, but nooooo! That’s not what the state thinks! They let you know by another power cut, this time a half-hour powercut between 10pm and 10:30pm. Very considerate of them.

You know those expletives you had thought up of a while ago, you can practice by putting them to use in a proper sentence now.

TNEB is like that nagging wife whom we have no other option but to live with. Initially it was all hate as I cursed them and their families and thought of the ways in which I would torture them. Maybe I would abduct their mothers, put them in a cell filled with liquid oxygen and tell my trusted aide Rawbert whilst smoking a Cuban cigar:

“Rawbert! Is ko liquid oxygen me daal do. Liquid ise jeene nahi dega, aur oxygen ise marne nahi dega.”

But as days went by I got sick and tired of thinking up of ways to torture them, I finally gave into that routine of sweating through my ass. I felt maybe they had a method in this madness, maybe they were making us ready for something bigger. Maybe the apocalypse. Nevertheless the TNEB has made me appreciate all those things which I had taken for granted, it has also made me differentiate between the things we need and the ones we don’t need.

1.       One of the mottos of TNEB is “Be Prepared!”, they are that drillmaster from “Full Metal Jacket” whom we never had. They let you sweat it out without having to move a muscle, they let you know that life is not all about sitting at your home watching some soap opera, making idlies, or drinking fresh filter coffee whenever you want. What would you do once the world ends? There would be no electricity for sure after that! These guys are making us ready for life after 2012. I have already mastered living my life without TV and computer, they even feel like an unwanted necessity. Next on my training schedule is to make fire without using matchbox and learn to wring a chicken with my bare hands, I am on my way to being a caveman.

2.       Making the rural areas pay for electricity consumed by the industrial sector kind of works in my favor, now when I go to work I insist my bosses to pile me up with more work. My willingness to stay at work for the air condition and the unlimited coffee helps people believe that I am too dedicated towards my work. Give me a pillow and I might spend my nights there, with Youtube videos that never take time to buffer and high speed internet there is no reason why work shouldn’t feel like home.

3.       I was always accused of spending too little time with my family and more time with imaginary characters in the telly. Now with television and computer out of the equation I have been spending some quality time with my parents much to their annoyance. I have come to know a lot about my parents during the conversations we had, I came to know about their nature of work, the amount of money in their banks, the EMIs they are paying, and more importantly the kind of retirement home they prefer.

My city dwelling friends often chide me for living in a rural area that lacks basic amenities and ask me why I have never moved out into the city. Apart from my ineptness in taking care of myself, I also gave them the reason that living in places with people a spitting distance away from you takes away your freedom to break wind loudly and walk around your home in your underwear (a habit I have developed thanks to TNEB).

So, come to Chennai prepare yourself for the apocalypse, forget what electricity is, lose your weight by living in a nature that offers you free sauna, learn more swear words. Live rugged.

Save the Blogger Screw the Tiger

Disclaimer: No tigers were harmed during the making of this post, although my crotch whom I fondly refer to as "tiger" was scratched occasionally while writing.

Tigers for long have been synonymous with terms such as "Bravery", "Fiery", and "Majestic", so much so that at times even the persona of an individual is compared to that of a tiger in situations that exhibit the individual's magnanimity. They have starred in movies and have been mentioned in poetry, the beauty of a tiger has been brilliantly summed up in William Blake's "The Tyger" that begins with the legendary opening lines "Tiger tiger burning bright".

They have also been used in sporting parlance to signify an athelete's grace and stamina.

"He was a tiger on the field" - Ravi Shastri on Viv Richards

"He fought them as brave as a tiger" - Ravi Shastri on Viv Richards.

"I just get the feeling... that he is a tiger in bed !" - Ravi Shastri on Viv Richards.

Tigers hold a fond place in our hearts, we call our loved ones fondly as "tiger" which is pretty much a sobriquet for their valor and large-heartedness, its a nickname that demands respect. We name our dogs as "Tiger" or "Sheru", Jackie Shroff is probably one individual who got confused between his dog and his son and went on to name his son as "Tiger Shroff" instead. It is a given, that anybody named Tiger always has the unfair advantage of scoring with women because people tend to have this wrong perception that your name speaks of your prowess in bed.

Exhibit A: Tiger Woods the man is no Greek god, and he plays one of the yawn-inducing games mankind has ever invented. Ever wondered how he hooked up with that many hookers with nothing to show for except a thick wallet? Its in his name Tiger... and a surname like Woods furthers the cause too. Who wouldn't want to do it with a rich man named Tiger who has a Woodie?

People find the tiger to be a dwindling species, many a campaigns were launched to save the tiger, with celebrities from varying fields throwing in their two cents on why the tiger needs to be saved. But when the word "blogger" is thrown around, you picture a bespectacled guy with freckles on his face who bitches and moans about all that is wrong with his life. His inability to get laid turns him into a poet who finds little joys in the first rays of the sun scything through a wet blade of grass and other pointless things like that which they pretend to show it in a profound way in their blogposts. And all they yearn for is few likes and a few shares and the odd occasional comments. But sadly, the lack of these virtual gestures make them doubt their own ability, and they end up stagnating their blog by taking an indefinite sabbatical and find solace whilst browsing through Youporn or much worse, in search of the real deal get hitched. Nobody names their dog or their son after a blogger, even after they bare their lives open by sharing their minutest of details that makes you feel better about your sorry-ass existence. Damn readers have no gratitude.

Bloggers have never received their due for the services that they provide to the society, from what phone to buy to which movie to watch  to how to keep your illicit affair a secret, a blogger warns and advices you based on the screw ups that s/he has made so that you do the right thing when faced with such situations. Given below are the reasons why a blogger's presence needs to be appreciated.

Reason 1: Bloggers have no sanctuaries, tigers have. There are thirty-nine tiger reserves in India when I last checked in wikipedia, and not one for a blogger.

Reason 2: When you lock two tigers of opposite sex in a room, they would eventually screw each other for the continuation for their species. You put two bloggers of opposite sex in a room, they would only end up arguing over which is better - Blogger or Wordpress. Never put two bloggers in the same room.

Reason 3: There have been movies made on tigers, there is none made on Bloggers. Yeah they made one on Facebook, but that guy was not primarily a blogger.

Reason 4: Nobody cares if a tiger got dumped or was fired from his job.

Reason 5: Tigers can't promote a brand for nuts. When a new product is launched, everyone bows down to the tech bloggers for reviewing their products.

Reason 6: What the hell do tigers know about movie critiquing?

Reason 7: Tigers can't write open letters.

Reason 8: The first thing you check once you log in to work after your Facebook notifications is any interesting blog or meme to share. In a nine-to-five job since you are not allowed to watch porn at work, you depend on blogposts to shake you off of your drudgery. Reading our blogs and having a hearty laugh is the only high-point of your corporate life.

Reaction 9: Be it "Save the earth"  or "Save the democracy" its our inciting posts that shake the society and wakes it up from its slumber.

So if you have a blogger friend who seems to have lost their magic touch lately, go on and wake them up off their reverie. Tell em' how good they are at what they do, tell em' to get back to do what they do best. Hit a "like", click a "share". Let them know you are reading and you care, the tigers can wait.

For Your Reference

It is said that joy when shared doubles in value. And it is true, when you share your happiness with your friends and family you realize that it was worth sharing. There are many such things which one can share with their friends. Joy when shared is doubled, sorrow when shared is halved, love when shared increases manifold. A man can share many things with his friends, except his underwear, his woman and the most important of them all : his job.

We always believe that it is a luxury to have a close friend of ours at our workplace. Many of us have our friends from school and college working with us under the same roof. It brings us a sense of security to have our close confidants within our reach, someone with whom we can bitch about our colleagues and bosses, someone with whom we can rant on the complexities of an MS-Excel ( I am still figuring out on how to use the VLOOKUP function), someone who can give us an introduction or a number, whichever is easier to get, of that pretty girl you have been secretly ogling at who works in his/her team. The organization you work for acknowledges this need of an individual to be working with his/her close friends and have come up with what we know as The Referral Scheme, where you refer a friend to your HR and they after an interview process hire them. Its the case of killing two birds with one stone, or in other words nailing two beautiful women with one.... you get the picture right? At the end of the day, your company gets a "resource" which can be "resourced" upon, and you get a friend in a world which is infested with sharks, foxes and vixens. And also, you get a referral bonus for screwing up your friend's life by suggesting them a job at your workplace and sharing your misery.

I always feel that there ought to be some guidelines for referring a friend at the referral scheme, guidelines which may not be charted out by the HR team because we live in an era where one can get a job if s/he just knows to type. And that is what they are looking for, someone who atleast knows to type if not anything else. Yet, we should not get carried away by this criteria, we need to look a few steps ahead to see if they are suitable for the job. We need to have our own mental assessment of our friends before we refer them to our company.

S/he is suitable for the job if:

a. S/he is not as smart as you, on the contrary it would be even better if s/he is dumber than you. Because after a point of time, you would really not want to work under someone whom you have referred.

b. S/he is willing to forsake their lives by working their asses off and are also willing to put in extra hours at work if and when required.... without complaining.

c. S/he does not whine and moan incessantly about the job they have or the unfairness that is doled out to them, because nobody has got the time to listen to all that. We are too busy meeting our targets. We may hear them out for old time's sake while nodding our heads and saying "Tch tch... that is sad yaar" while actually we are thinking about what to write in the minutes of a meeting where we had no idea what was being discussed because we had spent half our time trying to stifle our yawn all the while acting interested. We can only hear their problems, but do we really listen to them? No we don't.

d. S/he should not expect you to accompany them to the office pantry or the office restroom whenever they feel like drinking a cup of stale coffee or to take a leak as a result of the stale coffee they just had.

A gender exception for the last point.

e. He should not be good looking and wittier than you because you do not want him to be the stud (read: pricks) that gets to hang out with the pretty girl(s) at the office for whom you had been harboring feelings since the last financial quarter.

We have heard of many such stories where friendships have been soured between two friends owing to the pressure and responsibilities experienced at their common workplace. One cannot look forward to the expectations in a relationship that was forged in a world outside the office to be carried out within the walls of the office. In an office you are too busy looking after yourself, a friend falls second in the priority list. There may be cases where you may love your work and may go ga-ga over all the freedom and opportunities it offers, but the same opinion may not be shared by your friend thus causing a difference of opinion. You may have the most honest of intentions while referring them, but then, there may come a time when they feel that they have been given a raw deal wherein what they expected from the job did not match with what they have been presented, thus damaging all your noble intentions of seeing them work alongside you. 

A referral bonus is the amount paid to you as an acknowledgment for having referred your friend to the company. I may feel good that I am making a little extra out of referring my friends and also that I am helping them to eke out a living. But then, when I think of my workplace threatening to sabotage our relationship I feel that I am better off forwarding them mails of opening in other companies rather than the ones in mine. I may not earn that referral bonus, but I'm atleast saving a relationship.