Whats in a name???

" My name is Srinath, Srinath Ramachandra..." I always say during any introduction in a James Bondesque way...

But apparently, this seems to be falling on deaf ears!! Just yesterday, one of my colleague(he is a northie btw)who sits in my bay/ bullpen ran into me and said "Vimal was looking for you... He seemed very angry!!!" (At this point let me tell you that I shifted to my cubicle just yesterday). Vimal is the Project Manager, a big-shot and he seemed like a very calm, friendly guy. So I got really scared (shitting in my pants!!)

I started wondering as i was walking to his cubicle thinking "What I have I done to wake this sleeping dragon up??" (A million things ran through my head... I orkut and chat utterly shamelessly... I spend so much time in the cafeteria, that the staff over there start missing me if I am on leave... As soon as i moved in to my cubicle I put up a on my board sayin "Beware of Sri!!"... I sometimes doze off on my desk amidst a pile of magazines and novels scattered on it...) So ,you can see, how the guilty mind kicked into action straight away!!

I walk into Vimal's cubical putting on the straightest face and most 'sub-ordinat'ely tone I could muster... He is staring hard into his monitor which is full of myriad graphs and figures... I stand there patiently... Finally, he lifts his head, glances at me and then ... SMILES!! I am now on unguarded territory... He sees the dazed look on my face and says "Tell me... How can I help you?". I told him that I was told that he was looking for me... He says "Yea??" I am like "Woo Hoo!! Hes forgotten about it!! Mangers memory are indeed short term.. " Then he realizes "Ohh.. I was looking for SRIKANTH... They must have got confused!!"

Relieved yet frustrated I walk out with a wry smile on my face... I mean, cant people realise the difference between SRINATH and SRIKANTH?? And this is not a one-off ocassion... It has happenned over and over again... And unfortunately, the wrong name stays in people mind for longer... I think it is some kind of a dyslexic phenomenon... Why don't people get confused between Aamir Khan and Salman Khan?? they have 4 letters in common!!


For the people I will list the common names that start with SRI-
Srinath
Srikar
Srivats
Srikumar
Srihari
Srivar
Sripad
SRIKANTH!!!
Srikanta
Srikesh
Sriman
Sriprabhu
SRILANKA
SRI SRI SRI SRI SRI SRI.... RAVISHANKAR!!

I'd like to emphasise that SRI is a suffix to a core word!! Please try and remember the core word along with the suffix!! So a small message to the northies... "Let not all SRI's be SRIKANTHS!!" and not all southies are Tams!! :P :P

Respect

A ghost wandering in the hallways of past...

The sun is disappearing in the horizon
Splashing pigmallion all over the head
He is signing away in style
The warmth in my body fades away with him...

I am cold, even as sweat trickles down my brows
I look above and see veins of red and orange stretching across a purple skin
The wind is howling as it runs its cold fingers through my hair
Darkness has covertly taken over, planting its kiss on my forehead

The buzz in my head has faded, and in its place
A melancholic chant, It is calm, It is miasmic...
I walk on, walk on the stones and glass shards
I walk on, on the grass and the dew drops

I perambulate, I hip and skip to all my retreats
The hallways are crowded, crowded with humankind
Wherever I see, I see my friends, my acquaintances, even my enemies,
And right in the middle I see my consort

I cry out, yell, wave my hands
But all I garner is a wry smile, a tilt of the head
And warm droplets of tears down their cheeks
I try to catch it, but it passes right through my hand...

I can’t feel my steps, I am anesthetized
I run, run back to my past
I want my past to haunt me
I don’t want much...

All I want is a bright smile,
A friendly tousle, A morsel of my favourite chow
I want a warm hug from my love
And the blood to flow through me...

I walk along the corridors,
Like the blurry fog, hangs everywhere a deadly calm,
The doors slam shut as I walk across
And the light recedes to its basis

I dream of the fire and the sun,
I dream of the heat of the first shot of vodka,
I dream of love as life runs through my hand,
I dream of memories that had kept me warm in winter...

But I recede to the shadows,

I wallow in darkness,

I am but a ghost wandering through the hallways of the past,

I am the past........

The Expectation Barometer

Old age quote: "Money is the root of all miseries..."
New Age quote: "Expectations are the root of all miseries..."

Right from the time we are born, we are subjected to this hideous pressure... A typical conversation over a new born baby....

Dad: "Hey... Look at his nose, Look at his nose... Just like mine"
Mom: "But his eyes are just like my dads..."
Dad: "He has a wide forehead... I am sure he will turn out to be brainy... " and in a low note adds "... like me.."
Mom: " cho cutey... cutey... cutey.... cho chweety chweety chweety..."

The poor baby is dazed... What if my nose turns out to be something different?? What if the wide forehead is a sign of premature baldness and not of intelligence?? What if I am not brainy and end up being just another software engineer?? What if mom keeps saying chweety chweety in front of my nursery home buddies?? Aahhh... its so much easier to be a grown up...

Then the kid starts growing up... He is sitting in the math class dizzied by the sheer volume of integers and numbers (both real and imaginary... wondering which lunatic came up with these concepts)... He quietly scribbles a line or two of poetry looking at the beautiful scenery through the window... And all of a sudden the math teacher has swooped onto his desk... He is brandishing a cane and picks up the book with panacea as the kid is dumbstruck!!

Teacher: (looking at the book) "The rays of sun touch me... I feel warm... I open my eyes... The sun is such a charm.. "
"The laddie wants to be a poet!! If you cant do your math, you cant eat your pudding... 3 spanks now laddie..."

Spank... Spank... Spank

And then Roger Waters starts playing his enchanted guitar... And all the kids start singing in unison.. "We don't need no education... We don't need no false control... No dark sarcasm in the classromms...... Hey, TEACHER!! leave us kids alone..." (If only real life was so easy)



The kids still growing... He reaches the portals of an engineering college (He chose this stream because he thought he can chill out yet land up with a good job working in an AC office with a fat paycheck. Poor paapa thinks "beta hamaara bada naam karega..."). He is forced to sit in class partly because of the HOD and partly because the girl he has a crush on attends class regularly... As and when the semesters and internals fly by the marks are going down hill not to mention the knowledge gained... But one "golden" lining seems to be the fact the girl has become close to him... He asks her out and Lo!! there they are sitting in a cafe looking at each other while a sip on a cup of coffee...

Girl smiling sheepishly: "I never though you would turn out to be so sweet... I mean, not many guys are like you... Last time when I went to the summer camp, one mean guy called me fat......................."

All the while the thought keeps buzzing in his head... " Hey... How do I tell her that i am not as sweet as she thinks she is... I am just a hypocritical love crazy purvert... How?? How?? Wait a minute... Why should I even tell her that...."

and then ends up saying: "Who says you are fat... You are just pleasantly plump... "

Then life goes... The kid is now a man... He is now working as a kansaltant, giving solicited worthless advice by telling clients the obvious facts in a flowery, data intensive manner... All that the kid is a virtuoso at making power point presentations and using jargon centric language... (He also occasionally writes few lines of poetry in the final slides of presentations that wins lot od nice and wows from the client)... And the protagonist is married now, the the same girl... We'll after all she found out the real "him" but "What the hell!! All men are so.." ... Surprisingly inspite of his busy schedules and night outs they are having their first kid... The father is damn excited.... Rushes into the OT , looks at the baby...

and says... "Hey, he has my nose...."

Life indeed goes a full circle, The Expectation barometer just gets passed from one generation to the other...

Respect

Women's day!!

Its coincidental that I have started blogging on March 8th (Its my brother's birthday also: I wish him the best in his life) . I have always chided him that it is unfortunate that he was born on women's day. When he was young, he used to blush. Now he proudly says"Women will love me more than anyone else..." Pretty true in fact...

Any way, Women's day is a day not only for celebrating women empowerment, women liberation etc. etc but i also think its a day for men to ruminate... All very good ideals... Its indeed such a wonderful feeling to see women being part of lot of businesses, industries that was considered to be closed to them... Personally, I like it too... Otherwise all our work places would be like mechanical engineering departments...

Women are such wonderful beings... They are hard working, dedicated, strong, ethical (more often than not). It is inevitable that they have permeated all walks of life and succeeding too... So much so that as men, I think, we need to fear them... If the previous millennium was a testosterone fuelled world, the next would be an oestrogen guided one...

Look at the American athletic scene... No sooner were the American negros allowed than the basketball, baseball and athletics etc. have been dominated by them. Now the white Americans are struggling to get their foot in... I'm not saying its bad that this is happening... It's great!! The success that American sports has achieved must be attributed to this broad minded philosophy that they had embraced long ago...

The point I am trying to make is "MEN!! wake up... Women will steal your bread and butter from right under your noses...". Polish your manners, brush your shoes, take less coffee/smoke breaks... The Indian woman has arrived... Earlier, she had her way at home. Soon, she will have her way in the offices too...

A day is not far away when we will have "Men's room" on campuses and we start celebrating "Men's Day"... And for all the "metro sexual men", its not all about having long hair or going to parlors or shedding tears once in a while, its much more...

So, let me end by saying "Lets embrace womankind on this day... but let us not be lulled into a sleep..."

Respect

First Blood

Finally, I have succumbed to the temptation...
As Oscar Wilde has put it "I can resist everything, but temptation"

I still don't like the concept of blogging... Its much safer to say things and get away by saying that you misunderstood me... Once you put it down in a written form, it complicates things... Ask the lawyers, they will tell you so...

But having said that, I just couldn't sit and watch as lot of my friends who blog meet interesting people (read women) and hook up... So i thought "What the hell!!" But, seriously I felt that it would help me to argue and sharpen my wits over issues that will never be useful in the real world ;)

I will end this first blog, by thanking my special friend without whose constant rebuke I would never have delved into this art form...

And finally, if you are intrigued by the name of my blogspot... Well I'm a sucker for exotic names... :)

Respect...