Sid Shoulda Said - Part 2 - Kruger Ganley, Then and Now

I’m feeling positive about an impending promotion. Last Friday, my boss asked me out to lunch. Well, to go together and pick up lunch from Sarvana Bhawan, to be precise, but that’s almost as good, definitely a signal. Then he got an important call so I had to go pick it up for us both. But why must I worry about a free lunch gone expensive, since what mattered was the signal, and that, as you’d agree, remains intact. I know that because he also complimented me yesterday on my work migrating the trading books to the new platform. “That was helpful”, he’d said. I’m actually a statistician working with market and macro data, so this was not, in the strict sense, a part of my responsibilities, falling clearly as you can tell in the domain of IT professionals, but it wasn’t terribly difficult and the whole exercise gained swiftness by orders of magnitude if I collaborated with the IT guys, so I figured why not. I can’t see how this isn’t exceeding expectations, unless the expectation is that I set up technology, do accounting, trade billions and serve chai and butter-toast to everyone while they play Oprah in the comments sections of Humans of New York.

So, yeah, it’s all looking good. Bonus and promotion announcements are still a month away, and my match dot com profile is already half-ready. In fact, what’s pending is just putting up my pictures, but, of course, that is the all important part. I do have a couple of nice pictures of mine from 2009 and 2010, and with just a little retouching, I should be all set. Uncle Baburam’s daughter Madhuri was very gracious about offering to “do amazing things with these pictures” at no cost, and although I’m quite tempted to take her up on the offer, I think I’ll hire a digital makeover expert from U2RHot for eight hundred bucks. What can I say, I’m not fooling around this time. And Madhuri should be focussing on her studies, Kindergarten is a crucial class.

You wouldn’t guess it from looking at me now, but my first six months at Kruger Ganley were a dream. I started at this job on the 23rd of June 2009, about two weeks after the graduation ceremony, and exactly four months from the day I’d started dating Swati. It was a phenomenal year, 2009. Everything about that year was perfect. If I left a problem in an exam because I’d have no clue how to solve it, I would later discover that the problem itself had being scrapped for some trivial linguistic ambiguity in the way it was written. This ball I hit out towards the hostel windows on the second floor, while playing cricket on the narrow alley next to the building this one time, went straight to the singular window without a pane, thus saving me the huge fine I was going red with dread about as the ball made its way up the projectile. Nothing could go wrong. Nothing could go wrong in the crazy unbelievable way that I now regret why I never dabbled in gambling or sports betting while it lasted. If I were ninety years at the time and left for a morning walk in a fit of rebelliousness and trembled on a rock, cursing everyone I ever knew in my head in the microsecond I imagined I had left with me on this planet before I hit the ground, a hot, top-naked girl would have come running from the woods, stopped me from falling, and kissed me passionately for no discernible reason. God was that kind of kind. 

The day I got the job, I got myself five Park Avenue shirts, one for each weekday. I would show up at work early, and smiled at everyone as they came in, just as uncle Baburam had advised. People seemed to like me, I stayed late and got everything done faster, taking workload off other people on my team who had been here a little longer, and have since all bought yachts and mansions and left the firm. My boss was supportive and treated us often, but I have to say under a different boss I might have learned a wee bit more. Most of his mentoring revolved around giving me such illuminating pearls of wisdom as “It is what it is”, “You’ve got to do what you’ve got to do”, and “That’s what it should do, you’re right, but the reality is it does whatever it is it does”. He could spend an awful lot of words explaining things which were explained just as well in zero. During meetings was always on display his unique ability to talk for an hour about nothing except what he’ll be talking about for the rest of the hour, until the hour was over, and we exchanged pleasantries and left. Was this the secret to multiple Brooks Brother suits while paying for your kids’ piano classes at the same time, I always used to wonder. I only stopped when he was fired a couple of years ago. The new boss, let's call him Aurangzeb, has proved to be very hard to impress. In the last two years, he has only taken me out for lunch once. That was two months ago, at Suburban Tadka. At the restaurant, when the waiter turned towards me after taking his order and I was putting on my greedy smile, about to blurt out the most expensive dish on the menu, he butted in and ordered something for me entirely on his own discretion. “Just what I’d wanted”, I remarked heartily. The waiter gave me a look I will not go ahead and describe, before turning back to him, clearly aware of his only customer that mattered, “So how spicy would you like it, high, medium, low? Medium, I suppose?”
“Yes, medium.” said Aurangzeb.
“Ok, sir”, said the waiter and began to leave, when he was stopped again.
“Wait, wait, wait. Actually, do very medium. Infact, very, very medium.”

That is not the sign of a man who doles out promotions easily.

Sid Shoulda Said - Part 1 - The Short Term Goals of Sid Chat

We broke up three years ago, Swati and I, but I have to confess I have been thinking about her a lot lately. Being a man of indubitable character that I am, however, I won't call her. I strongly believe that it is very cheap to constantly call and text your ex-girlfriends, especially when, as in this case, they categorically cut your calls upon feeling the faintest shadow of your number upon their phone screens the fifteenth time they see it in a day.

My ex-girlfriend, the one who, some would say, I obsess excessively about, was the proverbial woman of substance, intelligent and driven, and I the typical man of substance abuse. She was also conventionally good-looking, had curls, big eyes, exquisitely shaped, soft lips, and a slim, affable personality. I knew other guys wanted her. I have no idea why she ever decided to date me with my flowing nose and fluffy arms, even though I admit my hair were the stuff of many a man's envy when shampooed. But that was rare, and besides, my teeth are a shade of color between yellow and green for which there is no name yet, as no other specimen of said color has ever been found in recorded history. She, on the other hand, brushed and flossed twice a day, and visited the dentist often. Her nose was pointed yet smooth, very much like a carefully sculpted nose made by a meritorious master's degree student of nose sculptures. In contrast, my own was made by an underpaid fast-food worker, who, when given this unexpected, unseemly task of making a nose, said what the fuck and made another samosa.

So I can only guess that she misconstrued my ugliness for my nerdiness, and gave in to her sapiosexual tendencies. I forget what the modern expression is, way out of my league, I suppose? But it wasn't the fact that she was physically attractive that drew me to her initially. It was that she was a girl, who would talk to me. That really was all. To really understand my obsession these hundreds of years later, you have to consider what had been happening with me in the years before.

I was precocious. As a toddler, I was already challenging the stereotype the whole world had been cooking up for ages about how all kids were cute. I do not remember a great deal of those days, but I do remember being constantly passed from one eager pair of arms to another reluctant one, before the latter would begin a frenetic search for the next victim. I am often told by my parents that I was the miracle kid who never peed his pants. Little do they know it was because I was so embarrassed already, I couldn't afford it. When I grew a little bit and reached the age when children start thinking they know shit, I realized that I was, after all, at least, a real funny dude. That was a big respite, I have to say. Every morning when I walked into the class, my classmates burst into instant laughter. I never quite understood, though, why they would hide my tiffin-box and leave chewing gum and pins on my chair and fail to tell me. To tell you a little secret, I never enjoyed that part as much as they thought.

But enough about me. I have to do something about this obsession with Swati if I am to have any hope of getting promoted. I have been slaving away for 4 years as a Junior Analyst at this bank, and each passing year that I find out I did not make Senior Analyst, the guilt of being a total failure gnaws at my chest hair. Before uncle Baburam, who was then a Senior VP also at Kruger Ganley, set me up for this job interview with an effusive recommendation, I had been looking for a year already. For a long time before that I had struggled with the question of what to do with my life. Everything I tried always felt either too easy or too difficult. Nothing was just the right level of challenging, except probably getting naked, but I've got to admit I could never have monetized that. Anyhow, as soon as I started working here, I knew it was for me. Plus I was over the roof that I had money to spend on my dates with Swati. Here I go again! No more talking of Swati, that bloodsucking bitch.

I have to get promoted this year. I promised myself I will only send out matrimonial ads when I can mention I’m a Senior Analyst. My brother thinks I’m a moron for wanting to mention Senior Analyst, which, he says, is an oxymoron of a title. Yes, he says things like that ever since he interned at this literary magazine, Intellectuelle, that sells exactly as many copies as it has employees, because there are only as many people in the world as pretentious. “What are you trying to tell girls, that you are the senior-most junior-most person in the bank?” he goes. What does he know about online matrimonial MO with his average build and his face that is not remotely annoying, and who the hell awarded him the pedestal to consider himself qualified to pontificate his literary hogwash over me. Besides, isn’t Junior Analyst a pleonasm, smartass?

By the way, I’m Chaturvedi, Siddharth Chaturvedi. Get used to the name, you will be hearing a lot of me. If there is one thing about me everybody strongly agrees with, it's that once I start coming, I keep coming.

Indeterminate

Last year X had his quarter life crisis
This year he is struggling with the midlife.
And you're wrong, genius, that he'd die at four
Because I'm already twenty five.

Observation 0588

Beauty lies in the eye of the beholder. Only beauty, mind you. Ugliness is actually there.

Sight

Sight.
In my sight a pretty face.
At first tantalizingly small,
it gets bigger in my eyes.
And then it gets still bigger.
So big only it could be seen.
The very next moment
it disappears,
like it never was there.
But, momentarily.
The very next moment,
from next to my same restless eyes,
it whizzes away like a bullet
away from me.
Farther, farther.
Out of bounds,
no matter how much I try.
Now the rear view mirror
has instead of her
a police bike, and
I am fined for overspeeding.

कल और आज

क्या कल सैलाब आया था या मौसम में मोहब्बत थी
कोई मुझको बता दीजे कि कल क्या मेरी हालत थी

मुझे अब याद ना आए, मेरी बद-हवासी का मंज़र
क्या मेरी जुस्तुजू में कोई जुर्रत, कुछ ज़लालत थी

के घंटो से टंगा हूँ फ़ोन की तारों पे मैं लेकिन
सुबह सिर्फ़ घंटियाँ, अब उसकी मम्मी की वकालत थी