Memories

Roll me a weed, light me a candle, strum me a guitar, coo me a Floyd and let my world go to cinders all around me.

Where am I!

Hey People!

Apologies about my absence but I have been very busy recently with lots of things happening here in my life. For starters I got myself a new job, had to buy another car and am also moving house!

I promise to be back very soon!

Keep checking!

A Perfect Evening

An evening perched precariously on the edge of sanity swaying intoxicatingly between the realms of soberness and freedom, a cube of ice melting its essence in the warm embrace of single malt scotch, a laptop cooing songs that drape a veil on vision, a tear dancing on the verge of lips crooked with sarcastic smile whispering their silent prayers to the heavens above and their darkest desires to the Satan below , some random images of a past life fluttering all around as beautiful butterflies enlightened with the joys felt and a half sober mind helplessly and hopelessly striving to catch them and put them together to make a coherent picture, few broken fingers trying to capture this mixed torrent of thoughts, experiences, memories and emotions while they dance their broken dance on this keypad and caught between these interdependent elements of my existence my dwindling self........

A perfect evening

Awesome!

This is so awesome!

This is one of the videos in a campaign by the UK government to promote road safety in the UK. Please see the video and leave us a comment telling us if you did it or not!


Enjoy!

Yesterday

Time
Don't let it slip away
Raise yo' drinkin' glass
Here's to yesterday
In Time
We're all gonna trip away
Don't piss Heaven off
We got Hell to pay
Come full circle

(Song "Full Circle". Band "Aerosmith")

Times change a man.

Yes they do.


From over the top of his three work monitors he gazes vacantly up at the flat screen monitor on the wall right in front of him running endless CNBC Europe with all manners and shapes of charts, bar graphs with numbers scrolling up and down and left and right all endlessly hammering his mind with incessant information. He stares at the screen watching all "Breaking News" headlines as they jump around pretty faces of business women with a "I mean business don’t fuck with me" written all over their forehead and middle aged pot bellied men offering endless opinions on stock prices, company actuals, EPS numbers, EPSREP numbers, EBG numbers...XYZ numbers.


He simply stares.


He averts his gaze which inadvertently falls on his three work monitors. These smart handsome boys scream another tale of the same world that he now lives in. Emails from Reuters, Bloomberg, traders, stock analysts, Quants, techies, stock prices not coming in, numbers bungled, sedols wrong, issuers fucked up...oh damn!


He was a Delhi boy through and through. The kinds that roam endlessly, freely over NOIDA toll bridge at 2 in the night with a plastic bucket full of melting big ice slabs and 12 bottles of Fosters chilling in them. The mission - to ravage these 12 bottles during the journey from west Delhi toll bridge to Gurgaon where more booze awaits. The kinds that would dance bhangra and break dance routines all mangled into one limb jerking madness of an orgy which would take place over cheap cello taped dance floors used commonly in weddings, throwing his stole up in the air as he yells on the top of his voice the lyrics of any song he could remember. Never mind if the so called DJ was playing a different number altogether. The kinds who would catch every movie featuring Bipasha the day it was released and towards the end get insanely jealous of John, and then work out in the gym diligently after every Bips movie only to give it up after a month till the next Bips movie kicks the entire cycle again.


The kind for whom every girl was a pursuit, a challenge, a conquest he had to have and had to win, the kinds that would be brilliant, geniuses at college, at school but would always be hunting for books one night before the exam and be miserably drunk on the evening of the last one. The kinds who would be always missing from classes, intimidating, cajoling some geek in the college for his/her notes and who would always run up the most massive bill at the college photo copier before their exams and would promptly forget about the bill as soon as the exams were over.


The kind who would always be least bothered of whatever he is wearing, the kind who would lazily drag himself to the afternoon class in torn chappals and jeans having just woken up from a bad hangover of the night before, only to realize he hates the guts of this prof and would promptly turn back on his heels to head back to hostel again where in a room without any kind of air cooling system with a lone fan that wont work because there would be no electricity his royal wooden bed without any mattress would await him on which he would sleep the most glorious relaxing sleep in the hot Delhi July afternoon.


Yes he was a Delhi boy through and through.


Now he wears a suit every morning. His shirts are all designers with cuff links, his trousers all pressed crisp. His shoes shine; he wears horn rimmed designer glasses and lives in a world of numbers. Working in the heart of old money's financial capital, the city of London, for a reputed big hedge fund he gets up at 6 every morning and is at work by 8. He doesn’t shout, doesn’t scream with delight anymore, and doesn’t delve into the limb jerking madness while he is on a brilliantly finished posh dance floor in one of his organization's events dancing with pretty ladies around him. He doesn’t drive wild in the nights doesn’t go roaming over motorways with chilled beer in the back of his car and definitely is not up till 4 am. He sleeps on comfortable beds in temperature controlled room and yet has difficulty falling to sleep. He hates but takes sleeping pills.


His “friends” are all PhDs, learned fellows who can simulate trading patterns in their heads and rattle off the earning numbers for FTSE 100 companies while they nibble over their chicken skewers and sip their droughts. No more the neighborhood guys from the street who barely cleared 10+2 but for whom life meant this moment, this very moment that they breath in, nothing beyond this moment mattered, the moment that just passed never existed and the next moment would never come. Those who lived their lives right now, right here even if they are slumped on the floor of a hostel room piled on by 5 guys each side, all passed out after a session of good old hostel party and didn’t have a scooby about what class is at 9 tomorrow morning.


Gone are the roadside dhabas with 4 am Aloo ke Paronthe and their ultimate adrak waali chai coupled with a Fan that he used to relish dunking in. Now it’s Lavazza black Americano with a tad of cold skimmed milk on the side please and an occasional donut from Krispy Kreme or maybe just a fruit and nut bar hmmm?


Gone are the days of Royal Challenge when Blender’s Pride used to be a gourmet treat. Now it’s all Scapa and Jameson and Jack Daniels with occasional Remy Martins and Hennessey for our boy. No more drinking straight shots from plastic Pepsi glasses while stuffed into a dark hot and cramped room at the back of a small local cyber cafe hiding from parents, neighbors, other friends who didn’t share the cost of the whiskey or Kurkure. Now he sniffs his wine while slumped in comfortable leather bean bags, swooshes his crystal glass and gurgles it in his mouth before he spits it out for sommelier pretending to make up some cock and bull story about the flavor while frankly he couldnt give shit about the wine's "particularly woody tinge".

The boy has come a long way. A long long way rather. He acquired all that he wanted to and is on the path that would lead him to more of his desires. Things that he always wanted to achieve ever since he was a teenager living in a single room with his parents and siblings. Luxuries he could only dream of, life he could only imagine living. Now he has it all and soon would have all that is remaining.


Why then is he sitting on his desk, middle of a business day, staring at his monitors and asking himself – I achieved all I wanted to, want to, but is this really worth what I gave up?

Time
Don't let it slip away
Raise yo' drinkin' glass
Here's to yesterday
In Time
We're all gonna trip away
Don't piss Heaven off
We got Hell to pay
Come full circle

Slave!

That’s what I have become. It’s sad and pathetic and disgusting and frankly I am fed up of myself but to be honest with you, I have become one! My master is my new employer who is actually now dictating my life for me. And you know what I hate about this? I like it!

Oh fuck I am fed up of myself but I like this job. The official working hours are 8am to 6pm which even though might actually make my American readers say “that’s it, really” and make my friends from India shrug their shoulders and say “so what”, it is really something that was unheard of in the UK. In my last job I used to leave my house at about 8:55-9:00 am in the morning and used to take a leisurely stroll to my work. I would smile at others on the way, would stop to read new signs, would notice the change on the streets, houses etc etc and would eventually enter the office at about 09:15-09:20.

I would go through my emails, hop over to some guys and have some chat, come back onto my desk, do some work, raise my head from my monitors and make a comment on something someone said just now and get back to work.

I would take a lunch break about 12:30, come back by 2 and work/play some more. Often and I don’t care if my ex boss is now reading this because I don’t give a shit really :D, often I used to go for a quick movie in the afternoons ;). I would then leave the office at about 5:15, go to the gym, sweat out, leave the gym about 7 and take my walk back to the home.

Perfect!

Now I get up at 5:45 am, and zoom through the process of shit, shower and shave. I put on extreme business formal clothes (read suites) and am out of the house by 6:30. I sprint to the nearest train station, dash through the barriers and hop onto the next train to London Waterloo. Trust me I wouldn’t notice a stripping Pam Anderson if here satins were to hit me in the face while I am sprinting to the station. On my journey on train I would use my PDA to check my emails, reply back to family and friends to give them the impression that somehow I am still involved in their lives and before I know it I would hit London Waterloo. Jump out of the train, dash to the other platform to take the next train and push and shove and often trip people who get in the way. I would squeeze myself into the tube (the London underground trains) and hold my breath till I get off at the bank station because if I were to breathe I would

a) be taking more space while inhaling exhaling and space my dear friend is at its premium in rush hours in London tubes.

b) be inhaling some very very unpleasant smells from the mass of humanity around me that would promptly make me choke and eventually, retch.

I would run to the office and slide into the elvators. Here I am, clock ticking 7:55 am, inside the office and what do I see?

Most of the people actually come in at 7:30!

Oh fock me now Lord!

The day is crazy always. No access to outside emails, phones, messengers nothing. People hardly talk to each other. Everyone is this highly cultured sophisticated buttoned up well paid uptight snobbish jackass (okay include me too but mind you, I have just joined this week and hence I am still in the process of being moulded here!). The evenings are nothing but the same morning pattern of sprinting and shoving and running and pushing and tripping this time back to the home. By the time I get down at my station I am so exhausted that I cant even think about hitting the gym. While on my way back to the house from the station trust me I would still not notice that naked Pam Anderson if she were to come upto me and thrust her “endowments” into my face to make sure I am really not blind.

I didn’t join this place; I sold out for the money. It is a financial institution and yes the money is good, too good really. Hefty bonuses, marvellous perks (last xmas everyone in the office got either an iphone or ipod touch or a peronsal laptop depending on choice) and usual comforts that money can buy. I am on a slightly senior position, a very important role for the business and soon I would be managing a small division.

But that innocence from the life is missing. I feel as if I have killed a part of me, left it for dead in my last job. I don’t walk leisurely anymore, I don’t notice change on my town streets, I don’t recognize faces I see on my way.

Is this what is called called career progression? I would be honest with you completely and admit this is what I always wanted. I had worked with Morgan Stanley before and I had loved the finance domain. Ever since that job I wanted to get back in there with the traders on the trading floor and live in that high paced, fast moving, extremely electric money charged atmosphere.

I guess Oscar Wilde was very right when he said

“There are only two tragedies in life. One is not getting what one wants, the other is getting it.”

Ihave been here only for a while let's see how I fair. Stay in touch guys!

JFK - Just for Kicks!

LOL! I got these sent out today in an email and I so loved the idea. definitely am going for something like this when I finally go away