The Eternal Optimist!

There are many unemployed people who have trouble telling everyone that they do not have a job.  My problem starts when I tell people what I do. I work in the mass media.   When you tell people that, your predicament is worse than an unemployed person.  “Oh, so you must be knowing the ministers and all!” people say to you with beaming faces. You smile and give an ambiguous Indian nod. The fact that you hardly leave your desk at the office is best kept to yourself. Someone needs to tell these people that not everyone in the media is a reporter. Sometimes when circumstances force you to reveal that you work as a sub-editor and thus get to decide which events to cover for the news, you become the proverbial goose that gives golden eggs. In your case, fame is the golden egg that everyone is after. Those loving relatives and friends become pirates seeking the treasures of popularity. Everyone suddenly has some talent or another that needs exposure. “My moth...

Ola! My reader friends, The last few months have been really busy and eventful. The best thing of all, I came back home from Pune and got a job as a content writer with a small company that provides a number of web based services.  93% of the people in this company are engineers. They do not take even a fleeting interest in beautiful subjects like history and politics. Instead, they chat excitedly about machines and programming in a language that is certainly not English. We gel pretty well over movies and computer games . On that note, considering their lack of interest in politics and their interest in computer games, I have come up with a suitable nickname for my new place of employment: The Company of Zeros (hereafter referred to as TCZ) Services provided by TCZ include web designing, web booking portals, computer sofware, mobile applications, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Social Media Marketing (SMM).  SEO is a process by which you get your website to...

Guys, It’s coming! All the character sketches on my blog have been turned into a book!  The book is titled ‘Cool but confused: young professionals have all the material wealth but are their minds really at peace?’ I think the theme of the book is pretty clear there.  Still, here is a little excerpt  from the first page of the book! This is not a novel. It is a book about young professionals, their choices, attitudes and issues. Just like the people it is about, this book breaks the rule that a book must always stick to one narrative style-story or essay. Just like a young IT professional who plays with computer during the day, plays violin in the evenings and takes French classes on weekends, this book consists of a mix of stories, essays, letters and even poems! We often hear the old heads complaining about today’s youth. They have problems with our dependence on technology, our impatience, our thinking, dressing and what not. Well, the book is built arou...

"A few more hours to submission.” I reminded myself as I battled with my assignment. I had no patience to read the reference books and irrelevant information on the internet was only compounding my problems.  When governments and intelligence agencies run out of options, they turn to Special Forces.  I was a king fighting to protect his academic empire.  In moments of desperation, I remembered one such man. A man who is shrewd like the British, dour and cunning like the Chinese and insane as an Israeli Commando.  For him, no task is impossible, no challenge unbeatable and that he is unstoppable so his friends say. Hence for all his coldness and insanity, his cunning and his efficiency, I nicknamed him after the legendary killer in a famous novel. The Jackal. “Ah, it has been such a long time brother,” said the Jackal as he ushered me into his flat.  One could see he was happy from his broad smile. his deep black eyes just sho...

Life can sometimes take very funny and weird turns. I had just finished my level 3 German classes. (European reference level B1). The subsidy on my German training ended.  My three month stay in the city should have officially ended.. However, I wanted to stay a little longer in Pune to avoid the terrible Goan monsoon. I called a few friends, pulled a few strings and got a part time job with a small web site as content writer.   My job was to write a newsletter for a small steel company. The newsletter would be centered around pretty general themes like ‘quick exercises at your desk’, ‘tips for peace of mind’ ‘work-life balance’ etc.  They liked my writing but we had differences of principles.  They had a ridiculous complain. “Your English is too good.” The company’s chief editor told me. “Our audience is Indian workers and managers. You write like western authors.”  The  Americans on Twitter must have influenced me a little deeper than I actu...

“only learning is not important. The feeling that you have learnt is more important because that’s what gives you confidence!” said our new teacher as he inaugurated the class. There is one more class who study B2.2. For them learning has become demanding. For us, it is demanding as well as unconventional.   His creative ideas for learning German remind me of the sultan of pop up books who revolutionized book reading. So I just nicknamed our new teacher after that man. Lothar Meggendorfer His intelligence borders somewhere between genius and insanity and he refuses to stick to the teaching structure followed by most teachers.   While others stress on grammar in the passages given in the book, “don’t force yourself to understand grammar” is what our teacher says. “Mark the lines that you think are awesome. Underline beautiful idioms and expressions.” says Meggendorfer.   He teaches us a complicated grammar rule, we analyse in detail how it works, and then h...

I will not hide the fact that I am bored to death with the German classes of B2.1 level.  I miss my peaceful and quiet home.  Even as the voice inside my head screams for home, there is one small problem. I am walking towards a cultural shock. There is every possibility that I might lose my German language. I do not know how many people will understand my Germanized Marathi and Konkani.  My friends in Pune find it absolutely normal to scream ‘Gesundheit’  (good health) when someone sneezes.  ‘Gluckwünche’ (good wishes) echoes everywhere  when it’s someone’s birthday or ‘Alles Gute’ (I wish you all the good ) during exams. When I was home for a brief time in August, my Goan friends were rolling on the floor laughing when I instinctively shouted these words.  My German classmates move seamlessly between English and German, often mixing the two languages mid-sentence. They will casually say “‘That’s so ‘peinlich’” (t...