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Tuesday, August 28, 2018

Krishbombay@1


The first thing I do after getting up is punch my 4 digit password number on my mobile screen

This is different from the 4 digit pin that I need to unlock my sim card

After this, when I try to access my office emails, I need another 4 digit pin to unlock

Failing eyesight, poor light as you get up (usually dark) fingers too big for the onscreen keyboard combine to make at least three wrong entries.

Open your laptop, you have the first of the passwords to kickstart the day.


As it is likely to be the office laptop in most instances, you have to not only remember the current password, you have to change it every three months, and then remember the new password. The first two months usually involve typing the wrong password and then remembering the correct one. By the time you start entering the right password the first time around, it is time to change the password.

And the rules for the new password are straight from a Ripley’s

Your new password should fulfill the following requirements.
  •        Should be different from the last 10
  •        Use combinations of Upper case and Lower case letters
  •        Do not use numerals at a stretch
  •        Avoid personal information
  •        Avoid predictable passwords

Initially I had a foolproof method of one password to all. Then the wise of the world conspired to scare the daylights out of me with “If they hack and find one password, then you are dead meat…”

The unknown “they” was enough for me to drop this habit.

Opening your laptop is not the end. It is just the beginning. Now you enter the world wide web and all its applications.

Each of them ask you for an user name and a password.

I have three bank accounts.

That is three user names and three passwords.

Then I have my private email.

Another password.

I need to travel.

So, I enter airline sites, train reservations, bus reservations, car hire.
Here, there are about five airline pages, three train services, one or two bus services and usually one car hire.

That is a healthy eleven user names and passwords.

When you travel, you need to have accommodation. (carrying your tent would be simpler, where possible)

Makemytrip, Airbnb, tripadvisor and booking.com.

Four more. (at the minimum)

You have a pet. So, one more site to order the food.

You buy books, of course you do.
At least three sites that you frequent.

There is of course AMAZON.

You need entertainment. You must be on the lookout for music concerts and shows.

Few ticketportals.

Consider at least two more sites.

Then there are work related sites – Linkedin, PWC, Secure logins

Consider three more.

Plus you have to remember the pin of the credit card.

At least two!

Their CVV

Two more!

Adding insult to the injury is certain sites loading questions (during the first sign in) as an additional verification.

Who was your first girl friend?

Mother’s maiden name.

What was your first car?

Where was your marriage reception.

Adding a twist here is the reminder that the answers are case sensitive.

You are not a hermit. Yuval Noah Harari can live without a smartphone, we are lesser mortals.

Facebook, Twitter, Tinder, Pinterest, Instagram, Tumblr, Flickr, Reddit, Snapchat, Whatsapp, Viber, Skype……

Twelve!

You have children living away from you, college/school

Of course you are clever. You will never use bank transfer.

They fleece you. (The banks, not the children)

Enter two more money transfer sites – Transferwise Flywire…

Two more.

That makes a grand total of 73!

I have assumed that in quite a few cases the user name will be your email id. 

Else, this number can go even higher.

How am I supposed to remember all these details when I regularly forget my wife’s birthday or our marriage anniversary.

Every time you log in to one of these, the Google Chrome asks you with excellent consideration “Do you want Google to remember the site and password?”

We, of course, always say NEVER.

And then write down all details on a word document and store it on my desktop.
Without password protection.

😊


Friday, August 24, 2018

Then; Now;


Things on my mind when I was young:


Will they take me to a movie?

If they do, will I get some snacks during the interval?

Will I get to play in the evening?

Can I play all through the weekends?

Will there be something other than rice and rasam in the lunchbox?

Is scoring 85% enough?

Will there be equal distribution of crackers during Diwali?

Will I have a shirt that looks different than that of my brother(s) for Diwali?

Will we go someplace other than the temples for our holidays?

Will there be a hotel stop when we travel or will it be the packed food from home?
(for some reasons we never mentioned a restaurant, we always went to a hotel to eat)

Will I ever grow bigger than my brothers to stop the hand-me-down clothes?

Will my mother stop making eggplant / beetroot / bitter gourd?

When will I get my bicycle?

Will India beat Pakistan in Cricket?

Should I become an engineer or a doctor?

Will the Sindbad comic strip ever end? (19686th strip, already a good 53+ years)


When is the next John Grisham novel?

Should I marry before 30 or after?

Things on the minds of the young today


Why the far right is winning the elections?

#MeToo

Trump’s Tariff war

China’s dominance

Immigration policies

Is a choir boy safe inside the Catholic church?

Rise of hardline Hinduism

Plastic bags impact on environment

Ghettoization of the forced immigrants

At what age should I start learning to code

How can my parents NOT react to 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9

When is Yuval Noah Harari’s next book?

Garbage segregation

Recycling

Should I marry, at all?

If I marry, give birth or adopt!

Only common thing

  
       My parents know nothing!









Friday, August 17, 2018

Workplace Humour Part II


The first part can be read here.


A decent time had lapsed to come with part 2. With the characters we had, and the endless anecdotes that bring a smile to my face on reminiscence, this series might run forever. And after.

No documentation of our steel shop days can ever be complete without the mention of the maddest of them all.

Sanjay Sud.

Most of you must be familiar with this classic definition in Catch-22.

There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for one's own safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind. Orr was crazy and could be grounded. All he had to do was ask; and as soon as he did, he would no longer be crazy and would have to fly more missions. Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn't, but if he was sane, he had to fly them. If he flew them, he was crazy and didn't have to; but if he didn't want to, he was sane and had to. Yossarian was moved very deeply by the absolute simplicity of this clause of Catch-22 and let out a respectful whistle.

Thus if the entry requisite to a steel shop was, that one had to be insane, Sud in fact over qualified for the job!

😊

Melt me if you can

There were two furnaces, named Calcutta and Delhi (the readers must be now familiar with the Alice in Wonderland atmosphere of a steel shop) and this was supplied with a common track that carried the scrap basket.

The scrap basket was manipulated by the carne and emptied into the furnace when the furnace was ready.

On those rare moments, when both the furnaces were ready to receive the scrap, the scrap usually went to Calcutta furnace. The reason was simple. It was managed by one gigantic R.V.Kumar, sadly no more with us, who was simply known as Ravan.

No one messed with Ravan and the Delhi furnace usually waited, incurring a delay, which led to some not so pleasing moments the next day with Mr. Ghosh.

This was before Sud became in charge of Delhi furnace.

The moment arrived. The crane driver was looking down from his cabin to the platform where both Ravan and Sud were waving their fists and directing the crane driver to load their furnace. History had enough evidence that the scrap basket would go to Calcutta.

Sud is unaccustomed to losing without a fight.

He jumped on to the scrap basket and sat on top of the scrap in a Buddhist monk’s penance position and dared both the crane driver and Ravan to go ahead.

You will melt me too was his battle cry.

Ravan was strong but was no match for the sheer lunacy of Sud.

The crane driver, in the meantime, had a small heart seizure and vacated his cabin, unwilling to be part of such madness.

The basket went to Delhi, of course.

Shoulder to shoulder

On another occasion, Sud needed a week of holiday. Unplanned holidays were never encouraged in a steel shop. Knowing that his appeal will be turned down, Sud took to the most hilarious book known to human kind, the logbook.

This is what he had written; I have tried to repeat verbatim, but intervening years may have resulted in a slight deviation from the original

“Dalvi-da, Have I ever let you down?
Haven’t I responded to every need of yours?
Haven’t we fought shoulder-to-shoulder the many battles and the calamities?
And am I supposed to believe, that after all this, you would still not sanction my, well deserved, even if unplanned, holidays?”

Next day, Dalvi-da replied on the margin, in handwriting that was so neat that it could have been mistaken for a print.

“Good rhetoric, leave still not sanctioned”

Check the connection

Time to get back to our beloved Subra.

One of the nightmares of repair in a steel shop is when we had to carry out a repair on big motors. There was a risk that on reconnection, the motor would rotate in the opposite direction. Depending on the size of the motor and its location, the consequences of a wrong connection, could range from a quick rewiring to a major interruption.

Out of the three wires to be connected to their respective ports, one was a given, it was the remaining two that was tricky.

Subra had a cast iron solution to this, of course, as usual.

This is how Subra narrated the correct, foolproof procedure.

“Before switching on, you must first confirm with the shift electrician.

On his confirmation, you must proceed to have it double checked by the shift electrical engineer.

Two checks are never enough and you must call the electrical engineer responsible for that specific job and seek his affirmation too.

Finally, as the last point of confirmation, you must call the Deputy General Manager of the electrical department, specialized in motors.

After all of them agree you must reverse the connection.

Will never fail.”

Chimney’s job is to smoke

Dalvi-da had been to Japan. On return he picked up some goodies for friends back in India. And for Subra, the choice was clear. A pack of Marlboro.

Those days, it was common to have people smoking in almost all places. Inside the steel shop, the various control cabins were always covered in a haze of smoke or at least a lingering smell of nicotine.

Dalvi-da found Subra in one of the control rooms, and offered him the pack of Marlboro. Subra had just finished smoking his Gold Flake. Nevertheless, he picked one, lit and started to smoke.

Dalvi-da was waiting anxiously, and after few minutes of no feedback, asked

“So, Subra how is the taste, Isn’t it better than the ones you usually smoke?”

Subra blew out the smoke and replied

“Dalvi Saab, the job of the chimney is to smoke. It does not matter whether you burn dead branch from a tree or sandalwood”

I have a train to catch.

The job of the melters in the night shift was usually the most difficult. On the days, when everything goes right, it was no issues. But such days were few. People familiar with Bombay know about the criticality of a few minutes in the morning rush hours. After the night shift, one usually ended up travelling towards Bombay, by the local trains and the rush in those trains are legendary. You miss your particular train, chances are that you spend better part of an hour in making it to another train with comfort.

On the nights when things went badly in your shift, you had to face the big task of phoning Mr. Ghosh at the end of your shift and answer all the questions he would hurl at you. Non-performance is not acceptable to Mr. Ghosh. What are reasons for the melter, are excuses for Mr. Ghosh. Even God can’t save the poor soul from the inquisition that Mr. Ghosh conducted over the phone.

It was at the end of one such night. The melter in question was one Rao. Fairly new and not yet ingrained into the ways of a steel shop. But he knew, having experienced before, the extent of wrath that Mr. Ghosh could discharge in the morning. He knew that there was no way he would be able to justify what happened.

Someone said offence is the best defense. Rao took the road seldom traveled. 

He realized surrender is the best defense. But he went about in a quirky way.

He rang Mr. Ghosh, after an exceptionally disastrous night shift, and said this.

“Sir, whatever abuses you have to give me, please finish in the next 20 minutes. I have a train to catch at 7.32.”

Save road tax

The Indian organizations were cleverly designed. From the moment a trainee engineer joins the organization, he can look forward to a promotion every three years. The last structure I remember was something like this.

Trainee on probation, Asst Gen Foreman, Gen Forman, Deputy Manager, Asst Manager, Associate Manager, Manager, Senior Manager, Superior manager, Deputy General Manager, Asst Gen Manager Gen Manager, Asst Vice President, Deputy Vice President, Vice President, Senior Vice President, President

A promotion every three year is designed to address a life cycle of 51 years of active service.

At some point in this cycle one is eligible for “petrol allowance” for a car. This was good money in those days. While you are eligible for the said allowance, it was granted only on actual possession of a car. No one insisted that you ever actually used the car.

Many of us, bought a second hand or a third hand car just to be eligible for the allowance. And some never ever actually drove the car.

One such person, on whose car there was even a cobweb running from the front wheel to the rear window, received this pearl of wisdom from Mitra-da.

“Do one thing, please keep your four wheels resting on some bricks, you do not have to pay road tax also”

Diwali Bonus

Mitra-da never showed partiality. He went around messing up with everyone. 

The annual bonus, a meagerly sum, was always paid along with the salary in the month before the grand festival of India, Diwali. Meagre it may have been, we still looked forward to it.

There was a bus service for the members of the colony, to ferry between the colony and the nearest town, Thane.

Mitra-da and Dada were seated behind Savita, wife of S.V. Panse.

Panse is as cool as they come, having a lazy approach to life, never rushing anything and extremely intelligent. Savita is innocence personified. She trusts everything and Mitra-da never tired of pulling her leg.

On this bus trip, Mitra-da told Savita, that for the first time Mukand had decided to give Diwali Bonus in cash, and that afternoon all were handed envelopes consisting of INR 10,000. It was a sizeable sum then.

Savita was surprised as Panse did not tell her anything when he returned home. 

She cut her journey short and rushed home and confronted Panse about the bonus and why she was not informed.

There is a scene in The Good, The Bad and The Ugly in which Elli Wallach says
“When you gotta shoot, shoot! Don’t talk”

Panse’s replay was equally legendary. He took just few microseconds to process the question, and this was his reply.

“Did you meet Mitra on the bus?”

Grammar, rest in peace.

Back to another episode of N.S. Joshi and Mr. Ghosh.

Mr. Ghosh was making his morning rounds (more a tiger on a prowl) and he encountered N.S. Joshi near the scrap yard.

The conversation went thus.

“Who is the scrap yard in charge?”

“I is the scrap yard in charge”

“Oh , you are!”

“Yes, I are”

PVNR assassinated

It was circa 1994.  I stayed back after office hours, due to a trial procedure that was being tried in the steel shop. I had to wait for about 2 hours to see the result. I could have gone home, but the necessity to return, in case something did not proceed right, was enough of a deterrent to hang around.

I had time to kill. A PC in front of me. The writer in me was never at rest. I started to compose a fake newspaper first page.

It was on a A3 page, printed in portrait, with enough bold face and Type 60 fonts etc.

While I do not have a copy of that “masterpiece” I tried to re-create what it looked like, from my memory.

It looked something like this


Having made it, and printed it out, I completed the act by pinning it on to the notice board in the Steel shop office and left.

A writer needs an audience, right?

I went home and as was the norm in those days, slept for a while, before proceeding to shower and dinner.

Around 9 pm in the night, phone calls started coming in from the shop floor. Most wanted me to turn on the TV and check if our Prime Minister was really murdered.

And if the local trains are running or not!

The Bombay people were always practical. They would mourn the death of the Prime Minister surely, but their first priority is reaching home after the shift, and all they wanted to know was whether the local trains were running or not.

The small joke of mine became a Californian wildfire. People called friends in other shops. And most called their bosses. The intercoms all over the colony was ringing nonstop.

I could not tell anyone that it was not true. While I had no intention to hide my authorship from such a masterpiece, the ensuing hullabaloo scared the shit out of me.

The commotion slowly died off and normalcy returned only when people started reporting for the night shift.

Next day, around 11 a.m. Dalvi-da called me to his office.

“Kishan – next time you want to pull a prank like this, show a little more maturity and be a little more sensitive. How many people were disturbed last night because of this!”

I had not confessed on my own. And no one knew I did it. My first reaction was to disown. I started to put up a feeble resistance.

Dalvi-da cut me short.
“No one else in steel shop can write such good English or without spelling mistakes”

Has there ever been a better compliment delivered to the accompaniment of a resounding slap?

I am not sure if there will be a part 3. There could well be, as my colleagues from those years will refresh my memory with fresh stories.

In closing I want to add one thing, as highlighted by another friend from those days. Anand Athalye. The humor was singularly without malice. We never laughed at someone else’s expense. It was simple, pure, clean and often situational fun.







Wednesday, August 15, 2018

Most meaningful advices:


Advices are the easiest things. They come to you unsolicited. Often, they are useless. 
They run along the lines of

“Be good to everyone”

“Taste the words before you spit them out”

“Do unto others what you…”

“Respect everyone”

And yada yada yada. Plus, you have all those self-help books that teaches you how to keep friends, influence them, not give a fuck, keep the home tidy, the garden trim, mind free and virtually every miracle that is conceivable.

And we know, none of them ever help.

So, here are the meaningful, results guaranteed advices that are relevant to and in your life.

Never lend your book

If you are observant, you would always hear people saying “I had a library”

Had. Not have! Past tense.

The library loses weight at a rate that you would love to lose it yourself. A library is an inanimate thing. It does not make its own decisions. You, the moron, do.

Everyone can lend a book. Only a certified idiot expects that it will come back. If you want your book , do not lend it in the first place.

It is not that the lendee of your book is cheap or is making some pleasure/money out of keeping your book away from you.

It is just that those who borrow books, do not usually return.

They start and do not complete.

Or, they start and take so long to finish that they forget where they borrowed it from.

Or, there is a misunderstanding. You think you have loaned it. They think they have taken it.

Or, someone else borrowed it from them.

Possibilities abound, combinations are multitude.

In my life I have bought 3 copies of The Little Prince, 5 copies of Animal farm, 2 copies of Sapiens, 3 copies of Catch-22, 2 copies of The world according to Garp, 3 copies of The old man and the Sea.


And guess what!

Right now, I do not have a single copy of any of them.

On the other hand, I have bought Ulysses only once and NO ONE wants it.

Only one thing is certain. A book lent is like a bullet fired. It does not return.

How to eat groundnuts:

Groundnuts were one of the most popular snacks during our childhood. It continues to be one even today. Boiled, roasted, fried with a coating of breadcrumbs or a paste of lentil. Spiced or salted or plain. Whatever its avatar, there is one thing that is universally binding. It is a cosmic law. Qualifies to become a Murphy’s law, if only Murphy had ever munched as many groundnuts as we did in our childhood. The law is this.

“The last groundnut that you eat will always be the rotten one”

There you are content with the endless travel of hand to mouth, slowly depleting the stock of the groundnuts, eyes trained on the TV or engrossed in the book or simply ogling at pretty young things in the vicinity and

YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEK

The last rotten piece had been bitten into, its sour juicy taste soiling every taste bud in your mouth and there is nothing you can do to get rid of that horrible taste unless you start on the next handful of good groundnuts.

Usually you will not find one. One usually buys only one pack. The next pack is not normally available for a replenishment. The only thing one can usually do is to drink water, assuming that water is available nearby. And trust me, water CAN NOT remove that horrible taste.

ONLY few more good groundnuts can undo the damage.

Therein lies the moral and the guide.

Before you start with any pack of groundnuts, always select and keep aside five or six of the good pieces on visual inspection and then start with the heap.

Never fails.

How to travel by train.

We often need to travel by train. With IRCTC making the train reservation so simple, we must use one of the facilities available to make our journey comfortable.

While we are booking, assuming that it is an overnight journey, we could choose our berth. The most foolish of us all, will end up choosing lower berth.

Unbeatable logic.

It is easy and convenient. You do not need to contort like a Moslem offering  his prayer before entering your middle berth, you do not have to be a trapeze artist to climb to the top berth (and then behave like a Moslem offering his prayer…) and you do not have to curl into a foetal position to accommodate in one of those shorter side berths.

Except in real life it does not play out that way.

The first problem in choosing the lower berth is that you CAN NOT sleep till everyone else has decided to sleep.

The second problem is that you CAN NOT even sit if the middle berth guy decides to sleep. How many mornings have I continued to lie down, even when I wanted to sit and read something, ONLY because the middle berth guy/gal was still deep in his/her sleep.

These are at least consequential inconveniences assuming that you get to sleep in the lower berth.

In 100% of the cases, you will be approached by someone who is travelling with a 70 or 80 year old woman and “would you be so kind to exchange your berth for this old woman?” and “do not worry sir, I will bring your luggage to the new position, oh! You are so kind, thanks” and then you move to berth number 69.

For the uninitiated berth number 69 is the middle berth adjoining the toilet!

The best thing you can do is choose the SUB, the acronym for side upper berth. 

You climb up there and it is your kingdom.

NO ONE disturbs you there. You can sit during the night, sleep during the day, have your meal there and no one passes you by on the way to/from toilet.

Never speak for your children

You know your child well.

Right?

Wrong.

Never ever speak on behalf of your children.

My daughter is not fond of sweets. The sweets made at home are never consumed. We went on a dinner invitation. The food was served. And when it was time for desserts, I told my host that my daughter does not like sweets.

She had three plates of what was offered and asked a fourth portion to be packed for home “if you do not mind please?”

The hostess was of course not minding while casting a look in my direction while I tried to blend into the wallpaper.

Keep your kitten quiet

Those who have had kitten in their home would know what an impossible task it is. They are a bundle of energy. They jump on you when you try to sleep. Pull your hair, shred your finer silks, unspool a yarn, drop fragile things, climb on to impossible places and go Meow till you manage to bring it down, get inside a bottle and act as if it can’t get out, puncture your pillow, scratch a good linoleum top, in general create mayhem.

Unlike dogs, they do not listen to your commands or treats. They take what they want, go where they want, do what they want and finally want YOU to do what they want.

To keep one of those energetic ones, sit in a corner and mind its own business (in its head its business is to trouble you) is unthinkable.

Till my brother came along.

My elder brother was reduced to tears, begging on his knees, seeking few minutes of sleep that he desperately needed. The cat did not bother. It went about with a threatening determination that was bordering on maniacal with a single purpose of trying to get inside his vest and sleep on my brother’s tummy, scratching him with razor sharp claws.

Enter my eldest brother. He took the cat to the kitchen, applied Ghee (clarified butter) on its nose and left him alone.

The transformation was magnificent. The cat lost all its other focus. It had only one purpose. Take the left paw, wipe its nose, lick it clean, wipe its nose, lick it clean, ……….

The lingering smell of the Ghee misled the cat to assume that the nose was not completely clean, and we were witness to this cat at this routine for 12 hours without any stop.

Now whenever anyone in the family wanted freedom from the persistent cat, it was just a dollop of Ghee away!


And I am keeping the best for the last.

Where to sleep when alone:

My cousin, who is no more, gave this most fabulous of all advices when I was 7 year old. Let the impressionable age not steal the inherent grand wisdom embedded in this most original of them all.

“When you are alone in your home, always sleep closer to the front door”

Like all profound wisdom, this one too needed an elaboration.

“Why is that?” I asked in all earnestness that only a 7-year old could summon.

“It is quite possible, that the house could be broken into. A thief targeting a night with no activities during the day is the professional secret amongst break ins. A thief, having monitored the house all day long, will most probably attempt a break in during the night. No thief worth his salt, will ever break in through the front door. He will always make his entry through the tiled roof or through one of the windows”

I was dense. 

Still am, that is immaterial.

“How will that help if I am closer to the front door? How does it equip me to stand against him or hold him back?”

“Are you NUTS? Why will you even nurse such a thought? God forbid!” Here he crossed himself despite being a Brahmin.

“You just open the door and run away – no point in any heroism. Return with help or after the thief had left”

I sleep in the living room with the front door just a jump and run away, even today!

Even when I am not alone