Unfriend
It is always a breathtaking moment when you meet someone new. You don’t know anything about that person and you are excited to know more. However, I am not. I have literally reached that level of static frustration where I could care bare less about meeting someone new, let alone the frustration spiking higher and lower. It has happened so many times, when a friend of mine introduces a friend from his college or workplace, and we end up circulating the same questions repeatedly, “Hey, How are You? Where do you work? Oh Fancy, Oh I do that”, THAT IS IT. After this, it is always that awkward nod with fading sigh, and scanning the opposite person from top to bottom. It really seems like the brain has put a tab on the number of friends to be stored. Maybe that is why I do not remember the names even now. I mean strictly, why is that when you meet someone after 23 you ask about the job. Is that the only interesting thing going on in your life? Much worse is when you meet some not-so-close friends from past ergo schools and college, and you don’t find a common point to talk about, and you end up talking about your past. About how wonderful the college was, recollecting the memories. The past talks so much about the past that the present is smirking, just like that old uncle in the family trip who forces you to sing from the one letter (which you can’t) for the antakshari: and the future is the driver that silently drives for you.
It drives me crazy when people know what their goals are and are sincerely working towards it. I mean I appreciate it, honestly. But please don’t repeat it over and over again every time we meet. Oh yeah, you don’t have anything else to speak! (This is only for the new ones) That’s why I have a readied script which I utter out every time I meet a new person-my name, my job, how fake-awesome my job is, thank you and end like a fancy mic drop…but usually that doesn’t happen, most of the times because everybody knows the shit they are doing and I don’t. It reverse-mic drops on me.
Jobs man, jobs. It gets worse when we age more you know. Once two of us and an alien…the guy who has-it-all-in-place were sitting and having a beautiful sautéed corn and pepper and i-don’t-know hell in that sandwich along with the amazing separate mayonnaise and the tasty tomato sauce, and I don’t remember what they were talking. He said, “My future is bright” and looked up. I promise you, for the first time I felt the mayonnaise losing its charm. He continued with a wicked smile, “What a world man, I have a good job, but I will work harder to decide on that job I told you guys and I might be able to crack it.” As flabbergasted I was, I was shocked and tensed, because the only future I thought was the waiter waiting to take my new order of another of favorite sandwiches. He continued to bewilder me and make me literally sweat it out in an AC hangout eating a non-grilled sandwich, “I am also getting married.” I really wanted to climb over the table and for once shout ‘Time, Please Stop.’
Our country is riddled that way, there are only two ways to go, Yes or no. Yes to parents and society, you’re ‘settled’, married, having two beautiful kids, calling them with rhyming names. No to society, you are advised by the largest faction, the advice-only guys. I am not saying that you don’t get good advices. But it overpowers them. Just as the dog-love overpowers the non-veg people to say between their teeth, “Dogs shouldn’t be harmed” and tear away the mass of chicken from its bone and say, “It’s tasty.” Job is that single macroscopic category which people judge loudly upon. It is like God; gives hope that he’s present and makes you happy, but actually is nothing but the absence of light. I have seen people who have continued in the same company for long, changed companies but in the same domain of their learning, studied mechanical but doing software. These guys know what it is do a job of others. Like the paper guy who throws in every morning at your door step and yet is the most obscure man to your whole family: And Nobody cares. But My predicament is different…You can be rest assured it is not so bad…Actually it’s worse. Worse than season 8 of GoT. I am currently working in my 4th job and I still do not understand where I lost all my experience. All the four jobs are mutually exclusive, neither one job is relevant to my degree nor to each other. And when you tell this to people, I have got an unanimous reply, “Get a Job, man.” The job description is something really like a code, you know. You think you understand it, but when you work according to it, that is not how you do the… job? And by the time you try to decode the whole JD, you’re promoted and given a new JD, or the obvious, which is so earnestly trending right now, un-employ them!!
I guess the hoardings and fancy boards sporting a beautiful group of people working for the company are only the curtains for the stage. Parodying and fooling us rat-race prune countrymen is so easy, they are not only applying this in companies, they do it in real life. They call the Puri center as ‘Ambika Bhel Puri Centre’ but we get shev Puri, Paani puri etc…and by the time you wanna decide to choose which to eat, everybody else is finished. Why not simply call it Puri center to avoid confusion? The future is a Pandora’s box really. The past and the present would have already spoken rude to them, ruined its shape, with bludgeoning them even. (Of course, I would have given them the instrument.) But unfortunately it never opens, and we got to wait and wait, and get our head burned over, cooked over, heart hurt over. But I know one thing, I am going to unfriend that guy who has all, his life, set in and is about marry because he ruined my mayonnaise tasting moment. And I don’t want him to be my boss when I join a new job which eventually I will do given my history…see the past never leaves your back. It holds on you forever. It’s part of my Life’s JD (job description) anyhow! (I could really use some therapy, though!)
#OkBye.
P.S. This is only meant to bring in some humor.












