People May Not Like You At The Same Moment That You Like Them!!!

The setting this time was a new watering hole at Andheri East. (Appoo, we found that CT serves adulterated IB). And we were talking about how we wasted the week. And during such discussion, Abhijit, out of the blue, makes a statement “People May Not Like You At The Same Moment That You Like Them”. This statement hit me like a ton of bricks, the high I was in, changed into a realization. Till now I had thought that either people liked you or they didn't, I had not taken this possibility into account. Suddenly for me, a lot of things started to make sense. Why people behave the way they do? (I forgot to ask Abs what he had for breakfast yesterday) I do not know, or rather don’t remember, the context in which this statement was made, but roughly, we were discussing as to why a person does not like us even though we like him/her, and are we right in giving up that relationship and move on? And Abs comes up with a statement like this!!!. We were there a minimum of 3 hours yesterday, but this statement was the only thing I remembered when I woke up, after a drinking binge.

And as the meaning slowly sunk in I realized, this statement is not limited to “like” or “love”, it can be applied to all emotions, even hate (People may not hate you the same moment that you hate them) or respect (people may not respect you at the same moment that you respect them). We always assume that a person has to like/love/hate/respect us the same instant that we like/love/hate/respect him/her & if we do not see that emotion or reaction we believe that the person will never like / hate / love you. I realized, that deep down we wish we could control other people’s emotions consequently we wish other people to think like us, to become like us. And yes Abs, you were right when you said people being unique in themselves, each has a different “emotional reaction time”. That it requires co-incidence (or both being drunk) to have a same “emotional reaction time. I have come to believe that the best way to not being hurt & not hurting is to memorize this statement that Abhijit, while connected to the cosmic consciousness made.

And to conclude, when we feel frustrated by people not understanding us, the only thing to remember is that “People may not understand you at the same moment that you understand them”, but it is wrong to give up on it and move on. You have to give time to people whom you care about, they will come to understand you.

Great statement Abs.

And Appoo, we even tried to SMS you, didn’t connect unfortunately.

Salary Account Crib

Had 2 bad days in a row. As in, I had to deal with some stupid stuff, which wasn’t my responsibility in the first place, yet opened my eyes to a new reality. The problem was simple: Open Employees Salary Accounts. It was my job to liaise with our bankers while the Admin.Dept. would collect information from the staff.

It turned out to be a nightmare. I found out nearly half of my staff did not have proper documents. The Engineers, MBA’s etc. born & brought up in India did not have documents to prove either their identity or their residential address. On the other hand our peons who are immigrant labour from Nepal have both ration cards to prove their residential status & passport/driving licenses to prove their identity. If the government were to raid our premises to find out immigrant labour I am pretty sure my Nepali peons will remain while half of my staff will be branded as Nepali/Bangladeshis whatever & deported.(Although I will be mighty happy to get rid of the junk).

There were even cases where 2 government documents had 2 different residential addresses. How can people like such be kept alive? They don’t need me to open their accounts they need to hire lawyers for that. They need to hire constitutional experts to find out what their citizenship status is. My brain & knowledge falls way too short for the complexities brought about by the economic prosperity of India, the subsequent middle class prosperity & the need for owning multiple houses, thereby having their ration card’s address where they were born, passport address of the place they went to school & driving license address of some village where their family made the unfortunate decision of participating in the civilized world.

I have even met a person who, when I asked for his cellphone bill (hoping that at least it would show the address mentioned on his passport) told me that he had put his girlfriends address while registering for the cellphone!!! Why??? Why would anyone put their girlfriends residential address when registering their cellphone? I have since begun the “Best of 3” policy, where in any 2 documents that match become the attachments. Of course this is where the bank gave me a new challenge.

Our bank offers various standard amenities to salary accounts free of cost. We have e-banking, phone alerts etc.etc. Some people would want that, some wouldn’t. Those who wish for the amenities need to fill up a section in the form & sign the verification. It so happened that our bankers asked people at random to sign that damn verification. It did not matter whether you required e-banking or not, if the day you were born had mars in the ascending house, you would be the chosen one to have your forms sent back as incomplete. Then the staff would, and rightly so, refuse to sign on verification because they did not want an e-banking option. Also there were cases where people had not signed the verification for e-banking & yet got their forms passed.

All this has made me believe in destiny, dark forces, angels etc. I even have a photograph of Goddess Lakshmi posted on my desk now; I show every bank form to the Goddess & then submit it. Have opened most of the accounts, couple of complex cases remain, they are awaiting a Special Supreme Court Constitutional Bench to give decision on their citizenship status & then they need to verify their horoscopes to find out which planets were in the ascending house when they were born. Till then I keep their money.

The Rush Of "Madnesh"

The following is an incident, which happened a couple of weeks back. This is the sort of thing that I sit & wait for at Bandra Stn. to happen, all the while not knowing my office buddy would be involved in such an incident. I really hate to ruin someone’s reputation by talking about his or her embarrassing moments, but then what are friends for?

(I owe it to my office buddy to reveal his name on the Internet, though people used to call him Yadnesh until the time this mail was sent to everyone in the office, people have somehow liked the new name, even I believe it fits him. All in all it was a fun incident that no one got hurt in, except for 2 buttons which are missing in action & presumed dead somewhere on Andheri Platform)

Date: 25^th April 2005
Time: 7:56 PM
Place: Reay Road Stn.
Cast: Myself, Madnesh (name changed to protect identity), Paras (in
supporting role).

The three of us, i.e. the phenomenon called Madnesh & I are supposed to meet Paras at Andheri station at 8 - 8:15 PM. The only problem being, Paras had already reached Andheri by the time we ran up to Reay Road Stn. just to see the 7:56 PM Andheri Local leave (thanks to the phenomenon called Madnesh,as he sat in the workshop trying to make an electronic equipment work, which by the looks of it was winning the stubbornness competition between the two). There was not going to be another Andheri Local till 8:24 PM.

We wait on the Reay Road Station planning to catch the next best thing, the 8:09 PM Bandra. Madnesh knowing that going in the Bandra Local means 30 mins.delay & in a rush of madness declares that we will change trains at Bandra & catch a Borivli Fast. Despite all my protests which were met by certain training instructions on boarding & alighting. I have to mention here that I really don’t like traveling in a fast train, it’s kind of this complex that I have. I have, not under hypnotic regression but under the influence of alcohol & a cheap cigarette found the reason to be a traumatic experience I underwent when in college. That time I had innocently hopped onto a Virar Fast during peak hours. The incident left a permanent scar on my psyche not to mention the permanent bump on my head. I do not know if there is any word to describe the fear of traveling by a fast train but if it exists it should, I demand, have Virar in it.

Halfway, that’s at Vadala, Paras calls me on my cellphone & knowing what will be coming I let Madnesh handle the call. (A person who is that confident of traveling in a fast train can handle anything, least of all Paras). I do not know what the conversation was about but it did involve death threats which increased the level of madness already existing & out of this madness, Madnesh claimed to be at Bandra instead of Vadala where we were (Now, not only did we have to rush from Bandra till Andheri but also make up time from Vadala to Bandra). Alighting at Bandra Madnesh scared that Paras just might make true his threats, pitched again for us to travel by Borivli Fast. All are aware at how athletic both of us, Madnesh & myself are plus we carry 20 kg bags (the bags are supposedly for carrying our Tiffin weighing 84 gms, the rest of the weight is of the rocks that couldn’t fit in our cranial cavity). Our athletic physique & the weight that we carry made the enterprise of boarding & alighting a fast train even more risky.

Eventually after much arguments & "Mad"-nesh logic (I also wanted to overcome my fear, I guess), I decided to give it a shot. We boarded a Borivli fast but in the rush of madness or Madnesh we end up in the luggage compartment. I have heard that, people, in stressful/life threatening situations connect with the cosmic consciousness & have visions of the future (it also happens when people are stone drunk & get locked on the terrace at 3 in the morning). I remember telling Madnesh "tujhe Andheri pe nangaa karke utarenge". I never guessed it would be so true. Anyways, we stand at the door enjoying the breeze & making good time, so much so that we approached Andheri in the time we would still be standing at Bandra Station for the Andheri Harbour Local. I started to think that maybe I was wrong in doubting Madnesh that I should do this everyday so I could reach home earlier, that all my opposition to traveling by fast train was a phobia (This is where I learnt that when a person loses connection with the cosmic consciousness they, for the next 30 mins. generally behave in an erratic fashion, coming up with nonsensical conclusions). But as Andheri approached I could see the crowd on the platform to board the train & the thirst of blood in their eyes. So as soon as I thought the train had slowed down enough to be safe to jump out I used my martial arts knowledge (learned from very relevant & informative Mithun films, namely “Cheetah”) to jump over people’s head (something like Matrix along with my bag et al). As soon as I land (that is as soon as I trip, stumble, jog, bump into a signboard), I turn around to congratulate Madnesh for a mission accomplished. But Madnesh is nowhere to be seen, there are only a couple of bhaiyyas trying to get into the luggage compartment with these huge jute sacks (I’d say 5’ by 3’ jute sacks), but no Madnesh. I silently prayed for Madnesh, thinking of all the excuses to say to my boss for having lost a 120 Kg. stubborn service engineer to those 50 Kg. (cumulative weight) bhaiyyas. Just as I am about to turn around to get on to the foot over bridge, I catch a glimpse of a head coming out from near the bhaiyyas knees, I see a red face peeping out from in-between the soiled dhotis. It’s one of those incidents, which Ripley’s will be proud to telecast on their show. Madnesh resurfaces around 2 feet off the ground, to achieve this feat, he has to either lie down in the train or have his legs picked up by someone standing behind him (& knowing that he has got a slip disc, it should be excruciatingly painful). Soon there’s more of him than his head, slowly he’s coming out from between the bhaiyyas (although here I wanted to use the words “appeared from in-between bhaiyya’s legs”, it sounded too obscene). The whole thing reminded me of the scene from Ace Ventura, where Jim Carrey comes out of the mechanized rhino. Madnesh is now out of the train upto his waist, he has lost 2 buttons & I can see the part, where most of the 120 kgs. of his total body mass is concentrated. He is almost nude waist up as the bhaiyyas have him pinned between that huge sack & their legs. After a lot of struggling Madnesh does manage to extricate himself and there is a happy re-union of me & Madnesh on the Andheri platform. Where Madnesh lost his buttons & the belt of his new, gifted-by-his-fiancé bag (not too mention his confidence, he is now content to sit out at the Bandra Station looking at people indulging in madness, across the platform).

There on the platform of Andheri station I learnt an important lesson "Never give in to Madnesh, doesn’t matter how convincing he/it sounds".

Also a new phrase was born "Dar ke maare buttons phat ke haath mein aa gaye"

There’s just so much that is possible to write about a nice person, who is probably somewhere on a nudist beach in Goa right now, trying to flash unsuspecting foreigners. If only they knew about this incident they would have one more thing to laugh about.

Yadnesh if you are reading this, remeber how i had promised to make you famous? Atleast 2 people somehwhere in the world know you messed up. Cheers!!!