Cult of the Office

There is a dark cult.  A very secret yet widely known one

 

 

It is the cult of the office. And believe me, all of us who are working, are a part of the brother hood of this cult.

Below mentioned are some of the observations made by me since I joined this cult -

 

Never fight over an issue with your boss. You will lose much more than the issue.

Worst thing to receive in your mail is Please Do the Needful. No matter how important things you are doing, if a CC has been sent to someone higher than your boss, then you will have it. Just imagine getting Please Do Then Needful, first thing on Monday morning.

If you try to be a hero by doing everything, you will officially have to do everything.

No matter how much you like what you do. You would always love your Saturdays (Or Fridays for those of you who are luckier).

Never be too honest. Straight trees are cut first. You must not lie. But you must understand when and where you should compartmentalize the information you have.

If you really want to do something, you need to have intentions for the same. Intentions really do shape the reality. And this approach goes much beyond the office life too.

In Sarkaar Raaj, Abhishek Bachchan did say some really smart dialogues like –  

“Mujhe Koshish Nahi, Nateeje Chahiye.”

“Yahaan galti pehli nahi, aakhiri baar hoti hai.”

Boy….he does talk like our boss…isn’t it?

 

No matter, who you are. No matter, where you are. & no matter what your job is – one day, you will, feel really fu**** up.

You should never discuss a raise until you’ve had your review. Never. Or you will definitely end up getting a bad review.

When there is a large assignment to be handled by your department and your boss tells you that “We are going to handle this”; then beware…it is you who is going to handle it.

“You have done a great job” – whenever you hear this…more work is about to come your way…run!!

When your boss says that “Let’s call a meeting and discuss” means “I have no time now and shall force my decisions on you later.”

Now one thing is really very important. A lot depends on your reputation. And you should really guard it with everything. Your reputation is everything. People have expectations in accordance with the reputation you have. So if you want to survive and move up the ladder, never associate with a losing cause and build yourself a solid reputation.

To show your power, you should try and make other people come to you and whenever you take some decisions, try to take them on your territory. This is one of the most commonly used tactics of people who know how to display their power.

There are times when you are not at your workplace. You should try to use this absence to increase your respect and honor. How to do this? …try being a bit evil

Never appear too perfect. Or people will try their level best to make you appear less perfect.

Make your victims feel smarter than you are. Keep building pressure on them and simultaneously show them a way out. That ways you will act like a shepherd and still get things done. [I seem to be turning into a devil]

Think as you like, behave as others like.

[Disclaimer : Please understand, that this post in no way, reflects the way I operate at my workplace. I am seriously not a person like my post make me seem. But these are some of the very practical real life lessons, which I have learnt while working with a variety of people at my workplace.]

Things I wish I could stop doing a bit

I was actually planning to write a post titled Things I wish I could start doing. But then I realized that, I have already, done a similar list of things I wish to do. Also, under normal circumstances, we all wish to do a lot of things which we haven’t done. It can be anything. Anything as simple as eating something delicious and long not eaten or extreme stuffs like sky diving. But more importantly, there are certain things, that should not be done on a regular basis. These are the things that have actually become a part of our routine existence and are difficult to break away from. We all are different, so we can have a different list of things to avoid doing. I start here with mine.

Procrastination

Now, this is not unique. Almost all of us have this problem. But what matters to me is that, this is a part of me. Although, I don’t procrastinate big time; I do it enough to annoy myself.  I have tried a lot and I must say that I won’t be boasting if I was to say that I have been successful in reducing this horrible habit of mine to a great extent.

 

Hero Worship

There are 2 people in this world, who are like God to me. I use God here for the lack of a more apt word. I very diligently try to follow these people, in every way I can. One of them is Howard Roark. A man as a man should be. I swear that after reading Fountainhead, I have changed. Roark, although a fictional character has an impact on me, that even the real life characters could not have on me. I started reading Fountainhead during a long train journey when I was 19 years old. And I won’t be wrong, if I say that, It took me 19 years and a long train journey to find myself. (Remember Lakshya’s tagline J ). The other person is a real person. He is not a character from the books but he is now definitely a part of the folklore. I am talking about Warren Buffet. You should make a note here that I am not a follower of this man because of his money making capabilities or for his knack of being right almost everytime. I worship this person because of his simplicity. For his uncomplex and water like uncomplicated life. So what is wrong with worshipping heroes? Nothing I would say. But only as long as you don’t forget what you yourself are. There is really no point in trying to do each and everything as the person you admire. I remember that when I first finished reading Fountainhead, I tried to assume that I was the real life version of Roark and actually used to make genuine efforts to take decisions in ways that Mr. Roark would have taken in his ‘objectivism’ ways.

 

Declining Enthusiasm

Following graph is an apt representation of my enthusiasm levels from start till the end of a project. Now, a project can be anything – a relationship, some office work, some assignments, some new and innovative ideas, or just about anything.

 

As you can see in the graph, just after an idea is born at t=0, the enthusiasm shoots above 100%. But after that, it slowly starts to fizzle out and then abruptly comes to a negligible percentage during the half way mark. And then again the downtrend continues just as if some Universal Law of Declining Intent is making it happen. Ill effects of declining enthusiasm are, I suppose, universally known.

 

Being too frank

The mere fact that I am writing a post of this nature tells you how frank I am.

 

Reading too much

Librarian. That would have been a perfect job for me. I just love reading. There are times when I can read 3-4 books simultaneously! There are times, when if I can’t find some good reading material, I start feeling uneasy. This is not a comfortable habit to have. I agree that reading is a good habit. But excess of anything is bad. I can very well utilize my reading time in something more (or rather less) brain taxing. But no. My habit of reading on and on, will never allow me to do so. When I was a kid, I used to make beautiful drawings and sketches. But then one day, I don’t know from where, just like swine flu, I caught Reading Flu. And under current circumstances, it seems incurable.

 

Taking Risks

I have a habit of taking risks. Some of these are huge ones and some are not. I have taken a lot of life threatening risks too. Some which I have already shared on my blog. I won’t say that what I do is wrong. After all, life is about doing the things that are interesting and difficult. And to do difficult things, we need to take risks.

So, these were some of the things that I wish I could top doing a bit. I won’t say completely, because then I won’t have much to make life exciting.  ;-)

How can I not read?

Why shouldn’t I take risks?

Why shouldn’t I look at my heroes with awe?

Why shouldn’t I be as I am and be frank?

Isn’t it.

My journey to nowhere & the story of how your spit can save your life

All the above pictures are a snapshot of where I was and all were taken with an ancient mobile phone’s camera and each one of them is 90 degrees apart. All the pictures give a 360 degree view of where I was.

First of all, let me put some facts on the table.

I was not air dropped for the shooting of India’s very own version of Man Vs Wild.

I was there for some official purpose (Read There as barren, water & life starved wasteland!!). You must be thinking that there is, in fact, no office to be seen in the vicinity (in all the pictures), so how does the question of something official pops up? Being in the energy sector, my organization regularly sends officers for patrolling purposes in remote areas. And this was the very reason for me being where I was. And just to gain some more points portraying myself as someone heroic, I would like to tell you, that I was 15 Kms away from the nearest road / highway & 8 Kms away from nearest living thing (Don’t count trees here). J

With a cap on my head, a cloth to cover my face, full sleeved shirt and jeans on, safety shoes in legs and a water bottle and some documents, I was ready to start my journey. Here I need to mention the time of starting my journey. The time was 11 am. I am emphasizing on time because it is going to play major role later on. Temperature, I am not sure, but it must have been in late 40s!! …just imagine!

So, what I had to do was to cover my stretch of 6 Kms and meet other officers at a predecided location, around 7 Kms from my starting point.

And please do make a note of the fact that I had to walk it all!! No vehicles or any other means of transport. Just my 2 legs. Reason – Rubber tires would be useless in such a rocky, barren land full of cactus and the other creepy stuffs.

I had to follow certain markers or sort of milestones in the area. Now each of these was around 250 meters apart. To cut the long story short, I completed the first 1.5 Kms with ease. I was actually having fun. And it must have been because I have always been game for testing my limits and doing interesting and sometimes silly things. But all was not fine. At the place, where I should have found a marker of 1.75 Kms, there was nothing. I thought that may be it must have been stolen away or been buried under the soil. I kept moving. Now came the point, where I should have found the 2 Km marker. Again it was absent. At this point I started feeling the heat. And I am sure that temperature at that point must have gone to around 50!! And just to make the matters worse, I decided to take snaps of the barren wastelands I was in. And in doing so, I moved around a bit. I turned back and took snaps; then again some on the left and right and so on.

The result was that I completely lost my sense of direction I came from, with no markers in any direction, I was in a state of shock!! Though I knew that I was mere 5 Kms away from my colleagues, what I did not know was the right direction. And unluckily, there were no telecommunication signals. I could no longer make any calls. And that is not all. At 12 in the noon, even my shadow ditched me. I couldn’t even get the sense of direction using my shadow as a compass.

With no mobile signals, extreme heat, without directions and with a ditching shadow, I was really at the mercy of the nature. I could really feel what Power of Nature exactly meant.

Now one of the greatest questions that I have ever faced had to be answered then and there.

In which direction should I head?

At that point I remembered something. Just before reaching the very spot I was stranded on, I had spitted some water while drinking. That was the only mark I could have found. It was indeed my last hope of finding the direction from which I came from. But I had to find that spitted water fast. Or the heat would have evaporated it. So I put a mark at the point at which I was standing and with a radius of about 20 meters, I searched the entire area of the resultant circle. And with god’s grace, I found it. I found my spit. I had never imagined that, one day I will be so happy to see my spit. I had never known that, my spit; my very own spit will save me one day.

Having got my sense of direction, I started moving ahead. And finally after walking for about 300-400 meters, I found the marker. I was finally on the right track.

Lesson for life : Anything. Absolutely anything can save your life one day. Even your spit.

Though I was on right path, I still had to walk around 3 more kilometers. Only thing that was missing from my ‘hot’ adventure was dehydration. And that was the very thing that started catching me wrong footed. I just had half a liter of water left with me for the next 3 kilometers. But I had no option, I couldn’t stop and relax as there were no trees in the wasteland to relax under. If I drank all the available water, I might dehydrate even before reaching the end of my journey. I had to keep walking. And that was the very thing that I kept doing.

I could literally feel my blood boiling. I even came across a small wet pond of sorts. But couldn’t even have drop of water from there because a dead animal’s body was lying in that water patch, smelling like hell.

Time went on and I walked on. And finally, after some time and a few bruises, I did make it to the end. Met my colleagues there, who themselves had quite a torrid time in the field. So, finally, I had survived. I never knew that a walk of 6 odd kilometers could be such an effort.

But this official trip of mine did teach me a lot of things –

Nature is supremely powerful. If it doesn’t want, we can never win from it.

Keep a compass, if you plan getting lost around noon time, in the middle of nowhere.

Anything. Absolutely anything can save your life one day. Even your spit.

Becoming friend of a bird

Being befriended by a bird

After not thinking about it so much, I have finally decided to work for Twitter. No, I am not joining the company. I am just increasing their user count by 1.

When Twitter started making news, I just thought it to be another Waste Your Time type of stuff. I won’t judge it now. I have just started using it. Let’s see how it works out.

So if you have nothing much to do, you can have a glance at my tweets here. Or better, save your clicks and become a follower.

I have died a bit

A part of me has died. My friend died recently in a road accident, in which a bus from Infosys was involved and 5 employees of the company died.

In life, there comes a time when the events happening around us, just don’t leave us shattered. They fracture our very soul.

But I also believed that, there are things that are just not supposed to happen. I could have never imagined that he is going to leave us all so soon. I still am not able to believe that I won’t be talking to him ever again.

When I got a call about this sad news from a friend, saying that my friend was in an accident and didn’t make it through it, I was, for a lack of better word, destroyed. I was in my office and I literally broke down and did not know what had just hit my life. How could it ever happen?? I just had a talk with him 2 days back and we had even decided to meet in Delhi. How the hell could this happen? I was really not able to control myself. I took a leave and went back home. I just did not know what to do. Just consider this: one minute, I have a friend, without talking to whom, my life doesn’t seem to be complete. Another moment he is not there. He is nowhere around. He has just become a memory. And when I think about his family, I get shivers. A happy family of four is reduced to a family of three. The entire trajectory of life has changed. Everything I knew to be true no longer holds. God, without even consulting us, has taken a decision that has rudely jolted us from a happy life into a terrifyingly sad one.

He was one person who had an enormous effect on me. I feel afraid to imagine my life without him. In college life too, he was the one, who was always the first person to come to our rescue. But just after the accident, there was literally no one to rescue him. Makes me feel that it is no use being good. Why should someone help others when even God can betray you? And whosoever said that ‘Jo hota hai achche ke liye hota hai’, was not right.

Death ends life. But it can’t end a relationship. Rachit, now you are not there. But our relationship will continue as long as I am alive. And I promise you, that I will continue to live in the way you wanted me to. Where ever you are, I know you must be at peace. I know, that you will always remain my guiding force.

Bastard whose ’surname’ I don’t know. First one can be any other abuse you plan hurling at him

One of my colleagues is from the state of Bihar (This post is not about him). He just came back from his home there, and was narrating an incident to me. The incident was an example of a very common activity that happens there, during the funeral procession.

Read it and you will understand the aptness of the title of this post.

When a person dies there, a funeral procession is carried out. A lot of people gather and take the body for cremation. Now this procession travels through roads of the villages which have got some shops. Some of these shops belong to the typical Munims and Zamindaars. What these people do is that they send there people to these processions to gather all the information about the deceased person like his financial status, ownerships of land, cows and his problems and other pity details..

[Now comes the terrible part]
Now after a few days, these people send their men to the family of the deceased and tell them that the person who has just died had taken money from them (!) (Although he never had!!), which needs to be returned, and that too with unimaginable rates of interest.  And to make themselves sound authentic, they have ready reference of all the information that they had collected in funeral procession. The family members, being uneducated and ill-informed, have no choice but to believe these bastards. And they call this process as “Murde is paise banana” (Making money from the dead).

I have nothing else to say.

My experiment with juices – Juice Day 1.0

Caution : This post may be monotonously boring and exagerattedely sweet.

Fasting is tough. And when I say tough, I mean real tough (atleast for someone like me). But this in no way should mean that I have never fasted. Once on a religious occasion, I did keep what is known as ‘Niraajal Vrat‘ (Fasting without water) – I was without water and food for about 18 hours (!) that day . And I swear – It was really very tough. Makes me realise how much pain our mothers take when they keep uncountable number of fasts in a year.

So, on Saturday, just out of nowhere, a thought came to my mind. Would it not be exciting to live a day where I dont eat anything? Just drink loads and loads of juices and water. Why not celebrate a sort of JUICE DAY? I even tried convincing one of my friends to do the same. But he was ready to celebrate the day on a condition. He would have juice of a bit different kind the entire day. So I dumped my friend for this plan and decided to do it alone.

So, Saturday night, I finally decided to do it.
The next day, that’s Sunday, would be a Juice Day 1.0.

[I am writing this post in real time. I drink juice and write down the experience. Its not one of those write at the end of it all posts.]

[Sunday Morning]
Its 0530 Hrs in the morning. O.K. I am exaggerating. Actually, it is 0600 Hrs and I am ready to start my Juice Day 1.0. Yes…its strange, but I do wake up early on Sundays to cycle around the areas I live. Its interesting to see how the world looks when no one is seeing you. Or rather, you see more when you are not seen by others. Oops…Sorry for being philosophical so early in the morning. Will write more about my cycling nirvana some other time.

I had brought myself a litre of Tropicana Orange on Saturday night itself, as it would not have been possible to get it in the morning. So after doing the doing word (read: verb) called cycling, I am tasting the Juice first time on the Juice Day 1.0

By the way, I have a solid reason to refer this juice day as version 1.0. If I fail in my endeavour today, atleast I can track my way and make another attempt 1.1 or 1.2 or 1.3  till I succeed.

So how does the juice taste first thing in the morning. I have a word for it. Divine. And this time, I am not exaggerating. Its really awesome. Somehow I get the feeling of being cleansed. Seems like juice is pushing out all the toxics out of my body as it flows down.So till now I have had half a liter of juice. And also about a litre of water.
[Juice Meter : Juice - 0.5 Lts ; Water : 1.0 Lts]

[Sunday Afternoon 1300 Hrs]
Let me tell you, its not easy. It is 44 Degrees Celcius outside. (Did I hear OMG from all of you? ) And here I am drinking Orange Juice. 2 Glasses of it. I had really started feeling hungry a while ago. And just imagine that I have not eaten anything since Saturday Night. The juice is filling…but only for the stomach. I am actually ‘feeling’ hungry!! My stomach is full but my heart is hungry. Hungry for food. Hungry to EAT something. And it has only been around 13 hours of the Juice Day. Oh Man…11 hours remain.
[Juice Meter : Juice - 1.0 Lts ; Water : 1.5 Lts]

I have bought a tetra pack of Real PineApple juice right now. A litre of it. I hope it will make a tasty dinner.

I have also bought some chips to celebrate the end of juice day at night.

[Sunday Evening 2030 Hrs]
Just about 2 hours back, I had a glass of Pineapple juice. My god…now the ’sweetness’ of the juices is really turning me bitter.

And I also went to the market with a friend (not the same as the one earlier mentioned) and you know what…he wanted to have juice!! (Un)Lucky me…
Even God wants me to drink loads and loads of juices.
So what happens in the market?
What else…another round of juice. This time it was huge glass of Orange juice.
Wow man…I just cant wait for dinner (read : full of pineapple juice) to arrive
Check out the juice meter below now…(its really gaining size now)
[Juice Meter : Juice - 2.0 Lts ; Water : 2.5 Lts]

[Dinner Time : Sunday Night : 2145 Hrs]
So finally, the time has come. It has been 24 hours since I last had anything to ‘eat’.
So here I am, waiting for the dinner to come on the table. Mind you…I am sitting in my company’s guest house’s dining area with my colleagues having a lots of stuff to EAT.
And here it comes…
A 3/4th pack of Real PineApple Juice.
Interesting. Interestingly sweet…
[Juice Meter : Juice - 2.75 Lts ; Water : 3.0 Lts]

[Monday 0030 Hrs]
So finally, Juice Day 1.0 has ended. And it has been a grand success. Though I knew that it is much easier than going on a total fast with nothing to eat or drink, it was not that easy. The main problem with this entire exercise was the hate for the sweet taste developed by my taste buds. During the day, a time did come when I just felt like quitting. Quitting not because it was tough, but because I started feeling too sweet in my mouth after the juices. I really had the crave to just eat something sour or bitter or anything that is not sweet. But somehow the powers above pushed me a lot. I did, eventually complete a day full of juices.

Statistically speaking, I drank 2.75 Lts of juice (all kinds, but only of fruits ) and 3.0 Lts of water. I am in no mood to disclose the number of times I went to the loo (The only drawback)

Though it will make me sound too idealistic, but what I felt is that during the entire day, each gulp of juice had a salutary effect on my will power. This was beacuse I feel that I was continously subverting the pressing desire to ‘eat and not drink’ something. Wasn’t that a bit too idealistic? I bet it was. There is one more thing that I would like to add to this idealism – drinking juices all day makes me realise the importance of the ‘monotonous’ food that we eat. I really missed the normal and boring food. Really.

Its already 0100 Hrs on Monday and…
 
Ladies and gentlemen, I would take this opportunity to conratulate myself on the successful completion of Juice Day 1.0 with flying colors........

Now I would not like to force anyone to do things like I do, but yes…drinking juices a whole day is much more better and interesting than it sounds. Do give it a try.

But I have some suggestions -

Firstly, try to make your own juices as packaged ones are not the best things to have if you want to really have a natural juicy day out. (I will definitley make my own juices the next time around)
 
Secondly, some quantities of fruits would have really helped. Our body summarily does need stuff to EAT also. So why not fruits?

Thirdly, a chewing gum would have really helped me. The sad part is that I realized this pretty late.

As far as I am concerned, I will try Juice Day 2.0 on the 2nd Sunday of the next month. Hopefully I shall be able to make it a part of my monthly routine (if I can have one).

Cheers!!!

[Note : I am having chips now...OMG....bitter things never tasted so sweet]