Biography of a consultant:

- you are a bright kid. You are most likely to top your class.

- you come out of your school with impressive credentials. You are most likely to pursue what your parents, relatives, and society in general have thought about you – an Ivy League college education.

- you come out with flying colors from your undergrad college and market is flourishing. You are most likely going to be a ‘trainee consultant’ with a big consultancy firm.
OR
- you come out with flying colors from your undergrad college and the market is not flourishing. You are most likely going to go to another Ivy league college for an MBA. you come out with flying colors from your grad college and this time the market is flourishing. You are most likely going to be a ‘trainee consultant’ with a big consultancy firmbe a ‘trainee consultant’ with a big consultancy firm.
- you work with clients who have recruited your ‘remaining co-students’. You are most likely the sharpest brain in the meeting room full of clients.
- you make a lot of money from them. You are almost never likely to write an article like the following:  http://tech.mit.edu/v130/N18/dubai.html

- you live happily after. You are most likely to parent “ivy league educated kids who become ‘trainee consultants’”.

Biography of an ex-consultant:

- you write the above article. It is most likely to be read by your non-consultant, ex-co-students. They smirk and say “I knew it. You are a dumb-ass for quitting!”

- you start working on a project to “determine the value of morality in currencies of the world”, and realize the complexity involved, and give up when you realize the futility! You are most likely to think of approaching a big consultancy for a job again.

And what about the project to “determine the value of morality in currencies of the world”? You are most likely to hold a drink in your hand and mumble, “dil ko bahelane ke liye, yeh khayal accha he, Ghalib”!

Happy Valentine’s Day!

As you all know, AntiJT aka Buffoon Blabberwale Jr., started spreading his heavenly (or un-heavenly, based on your view-point) wisdom by this blog Buffoon’s Blabbering exactly two years ago. On this occasion, I was chosen to conduct an interview of the cheap creator. Here are the excerpts:

JT: Sir, it is that time of the year when employer thinks about the salary revision for their employees….
AntiJT: JT, I am very happy today. I give you a 50% hike in your base salary.
JT: But sir, I haven’t received any money for the last two years. I could do without the hike if you give me my dues.
AntiJT: That is a sheer lie. Your base salary has been Rs. 0 per month, and you have been given that regularly. And from the coming month, you will be paid as per the revised package, if you carry on with the interview and proceed asking me exactly those questions that I have approved in advance after preparing their best answers.
JT: Sure, sir. Let’s start. What is there in this name?
AntiJT: I know Shakespeare had said what was there in a name. Go tell him, if he was serious, let me use his name on this blog and convert it in to a pay-per-read page.
JT: Sir, my question actually was in the Genesis of the name…
AntiJT: JT, are you crazy? Why are you brining in mythology and religion here. It is against our established procedures to write anything that is blasphemous. As such, we have enough objectionable content already.
JT: Sir, let me clarify. How did you come up with the name “Buffoon’s Blabbering”
AntiJT: Oh, I remember that as the first question. Since I have already told you the answer, please punch it in when you upload this to the blog.

Here is the reason AntiJT mentioned, and I quote:

One fine afternoon, actually it may not be fine as well, because I was sitting in an air-conditioned place without a view of the outside environment, someone observed, only after putting in considerable effort and reason in choosing the right word that I behave as a Buffoon.

Since I didn’t know the word, nor its meaning, I consulted Gyani Vigyani aka GV on that matter. Only after he confirmed that it was an apt word, I accepted the compliment but my only grudge is that I could never than that person till date, so here is goes, Many Thanks to you!

Soon, through some other twist of fate, I read another word called Blabber, and again GV confirmed that my style of communication could aptly be described as Blabbering. So, I could come up with the phrase.

JT: And sir, the first blog?
AntiJT: Oh, that was a great day! That reminds me to cut the excess hair in my moustache that is threatening to enter my mouth when I speak! (first blog link)

After the break…

JT: How successful is your venture, sir? I could rephrase the question as when will my base salary become a positive integer, sir?
AntiJT: Well, these are two separate questions, and the second one is not on my approval list. So, let’s focus on the first one. This blog was an instant success, receiving first comment of approval on the day of publication. Since that time, there have been many milestones achieved. You would be surprised, my dear readers, to know that I have forced you to come to the blog for more than 1,100 times.
JT: Sir, you call the number of hits as “unsuccessful attempts to laugh”? Is your writing so bad?
AntiJT: Fool, firstly it is not writing, it is only dictation to you. You type it. Secondly, that phrase is the ultimate paradox. It is simultaneously an exaggeration and an understatement.
JT: Let me guess, the number of hits is exaggerated, and the abysmal quality of it is understated. Correct?
AntiJT: Well, on another day, you would have got yourself fired for that well-planned, malicious attempt to tarnish my near dark repute. But you have a job in hand, and my readers need to know this. So just put my previously stated reply.

Here is the response, and I quote:

It is an exaggeration to say that some people made an “unsuccessful attempt to laugh”, some of them actually did laugh, or, well, may be, smiled a little, or to be honest, at least their lips moved in a way which on a two choice question (smile / didn’t smile) would get the first response. But at the same time it is an understatement because my wisdom would have certainly induced something quite contrary to what we know as laughter for few of my readers.

JT: And the most successful post?
AntJT: All these posts are illegal children of my idle mind and devil’s industrious labour. I don’t discriminate between them. But the one that seems to have drawn maximum curiosity was when people rushed on to the site to know who agreed to marry me.(maximum hits post)

JT: And if I am not mistaken, that’s the time you started writing curtly about your wife. Do you want to show that you dominate her?
AntiJT: Domination is equal to demolition for a husband. In our pre-nuptial agreement, we agreed that “I would never speak wrongly about her to others…”. And as soon as it was signed by both of us, I took a slightly different technical interpretation of it and started writing (though you) those things that I could not say to anyone. Isn’t that smart?
JT: Well it could have been termed as smart, hmm, if you were good at it. But anyways, any reactions from your wife, Sakshi?
AntiJT: Well, it turned out that there was another clause that I forgot to read in conjunction with the above mentioned phrase, which had got to do with her commitment to continue to spend her own money after marriage. She interpreted that since I am all hers, all my money was hers, so she could spend either what she earned from her job or from her relationship, it didn’t matter. And, that’s why your salary will grow exponentially but only on the base of zero.
JT: Well, I am kind of getting tired. So do you want quickly tell me about your main source of plagiarism? Or shall I say, inspiration?
AntiJT: Well, I admire all great writers. My all time favourite is Kafka, especially because he predicted my style of thinking and wrote so much in that style, that people started calling it his original style. Well, that’s why I choose to remain close to the so-called-Kafkaesque style, but don’t lift anything directly.
JT: Sir, any special message to your readers?
AntiJT: Well, most of my readers sit close to where I work, some others have a permanent place in my gmail messenger, and I manage to accidentally bump into a few others frequently. So, let’s keep it short –

“THANK YOU ALL FOR READING, AND MY APPRECIATION OF THE PATIENCE OF THOSE WHO CHOSE TO COMMENT ON THE BLOGS, (I know after reading one post, especially my post, it takes guts to come up with something funny), KEEP READING, AND SPREAD IT IF YOU LIKE IT! ELSE, DON’T TELL ANYONE ABOUT IT!!!

JT: Sir, I am getting a feeling that this interview would not turn out to be that great. It’s content seems weak, may be due to my poor interviewing skills. Would you suggest I include any specific Kafka’s writing that is close to your heart?
AntiJT: Well, that your skills are poor, I know. And that you could not come up with more imaginative questions is only because of your inability, but one has to live with such petty constrains of life, especially if one is a Buffoon. So, go ahead, and include the short paragraph called “Before the Law” by the great Kafka.

JT Recommends: “Before The Law”

he tried once again to keep his eyes open, trying to finish the business at hand, a presentation to the management on “flexi timing policy: empowering employees”. ‘empowering? well, i could use some,er, a lot of it…O LOrd! empower me to obliterate those who think of such presentations’, he pleaded.

whatever it may be, but that presentation and many more such tasks were putting the fuel in his car, food in his stomach, and dirty ideas in his mind. he could not help smiling at the last thought: “dirty ideas”, such as keeping a vault next to the seat of all the employees, who are made to work in “flexi timings”. beyond the stipulated 8 hours, the vault would open up, and then….the employee would get sucked up in the vault and reach a wall with 2 gates. one of them would lead to the loo and the second to yet another loo… inside both the toilets, there would be big LCD TVs with remote controls: wouldn’t it be better to just work instead of getting bugged here?”. The remote would have only one button: “I agree to work on my own will, let me go back to my seat.”
but the travesty is that such dirty ideas remain only that – dirty ideas. Because it takes a lot more than dirty imagination to convert dirty ideas to dirtier outcomes.

he got up to get himself the last cup of espresso for the day, hoping to wrap up the presentation without any more dirty diversions….But tragedy had him, as you sow, so you reap and thus……his dirty ideas lead him to the pantry. for the first time in the day, his eyes got locked on the bowl of sugar. sugar, sugar everywhere but not a speck for him. in a flash of a second, he picked up the bowl of sugar, started running towards the main door shouting, “i am a theaf, i am stealing company’s sugar, fire me…”
the next day he was awarded the star employee in the “health improvement week”, for trying to remove fat-building sugar from the premises. before he could realize that he should have shouted in English and not in Gujarati, he was awarded with another presentation assignment… “boosting awareness through symbolic gestures”.

_|_  

It also shuts up people who love to talk about the inferior darker race, by showing that you have all evolved from a single being, definitely not a chameleon like, who would have selectively given them fairer inheritance leaving others with a dark color.

But above all, it hurt Sakshi a lot the other day. She felt very low in the morning the moment she read that unlike her earlier belief, humans have not evolved from the ancestors of a modern day chimpanzee.   It was very difficult for her to find a yet another nickname for me, the latest being “chimpu”, for my chimp like behaviour.

So to divert her mood (very important in the morning, because the food available in the dinner is surely a direct descendant of her mood in the morning when she does most of her cooking), we started talking about how fake all these things are.

“Before you knew that I had come from a monkey, did you not believe that all human beings have come from a wise man Adam and a foolish woman Eve (who ate the fruit)?” I asked her. “Well, I believe that the story was written by another MCP like you to depict women as fools. She may have eaten the fruit, but was a lot smarter than Adam. If you really want to know the story, read the diaries of Adam (Link) and Eve (Link) written by another man, not an MCP, Mark Twain”, she replied.

Seeing no green shoots of  improvement in mood,  I took a big risk: “See evolution is such a slow thing. For example, by the time the dinosaurs started realizing that there was a bug in the backside, the bug had already come in front of their eyes travelling the entire food channel. Then why to bother so much about it? The time you will take to identify another peculiar, animal like habit of mine will be much lesser. For now let’s settle for chimpu. Besides, any words coming from you, except words like shopping, holidaying, etc., are pure pleasure to me.”

And before she could analyze the long sentence I had just blurted out, I said: “If evolution were to run fast, working women like you would have surely developed a third arm to wrap up cooking quickly before rushing to the office for work.”

Sakshi got distracted with the idea of having a third arm, and as expected, carried on cooking thinking about how the third arm would help her. Anyhow, the food in the evening was delicious.

As I stretched in the bed to sleep that night, I had a BB thought (typically my style). If evolution were a fast process, many husbands would have grown either crocodile skins or tortoise shell on their bums as a protection from being beaten by a handheld device called a stick by their beloved wife.

Well, those husbands reading this a million years ago, if you already have some protection there, please don’t forget that we were the ones who made it possible for you.

•  Moral capacity (observing the spirit of law) – If one could go back 30 years in the database of all the returns filed, there was a returned filed by my previous incarnation – Buffoon Blabberwale Sr. I also vaguely remember that 29 years ago, BB Sr. was taken seriously ill, and could not file his return in due time.  He was reported dead on 14th August, 1981 at 23:59:59.
• Physical capacity (filed by Jigruksh Trivedi, A.K.A. Buffoon Blabberwale Jr.) - it’s been four years since I started filing the claims. And my love for filing in AJ (after Jig) can be traced back to my childhood. My first intellectual question to my father was: “Why do we call the process ‘filing the return’? Does it mean Income tax is returned back to us? If so even I would to file ITR and get money.”
• Academically (to pass an exam of taxation in MBA) – I had filled 7 extra pages to show 7 variants of my answer to the question “explain the term IT return in one line”. The teacher passed me rather than checking one more answer sheet from me in the repeater exam.

 But, as always, this post is not about me. It is about my dear friend, while seeking anonymity, who wishes to educate a lot of people like him on “how to file IT return if you have income from bribe”. Here is an extract from his ITR for this year.

 The notes in the brackets are for explanation only. Examples shown are not necessarily my friend’s true source of bribe.

 ===============================================================================

Income from Salary:   

Income Earned: Negligible

(compare to “income from bribes”)

Allowable deductions (HRA, Conveyance allowance, PF, etc.): Nil 

(As they are derived from the “income from salary” which itself is negligible)

Net Chargeable income from Salary: Re. 1

(token amount, proof of employment which is the primary source of bribe collection)

 Income from Bribe:

 1. Bribe from deserving candidates: Rs. 500,000

 (e.g. a motorist driving while using cell phone, etc.)

2. Bribe from non-deserving candidates: Rs. 500,000

(e.g. a motorist holding his cell phone while driving, etc.)

3. Total Bribe income: Rs. 1,000,000

 Less:

 1. Cut of bribe paid to the seniors: Rs. 250,000

2. 30% of bribe form deserving candidates : Rs. 150,000

(to set an example by fear in their mind, and hence reducing its occurrence in future)

3. Bribe used for offsetting against bribe paid to get a job: Rs. 100,000

(1/10th of the amount for first ten years since paying the bribe)

4. Bribe used to pay other bribes: Rs. 200,000

 Net income from Bribe: Rs. 200,000

 Total Taxable Income: Rs. 200,001

Tax payable per IT dept’s current rates: Nil (based on our current rates)

Tax payable in upon honest reflection: Rs. 50,000 (selt-assessed justified 25% tax on income from Bribe)

Actual Tax paid: Rs. 10,000

Amount withheld to be used in contingencies: Rs. 40,000 (e.g. escape scrutiny of my IT return)

Refund claimed: Nil.

 Signed by:  The Honest Bribe Earning Tax Payer.

 ================================================================================

In recession, even if you don’t love your job…

Firstly, don’t try to search for a new job that you may love. Be thankful that you still have one. You never know what would happen to seemingly likeable new job of yours, (and god forbid, if that “what” happens), you will really not work a day in your life (if you don’t find yet another job fast).

Secondly, don’t try to reason whether you love your job or not. Most of the people complain that they don’t like their work, but they keep on doing it. Remember that thing that all of us do in the morning? If we had an option, a lot of us would have claimed exemption from that.

And most importantly, don’t even try out a smart trick of keeping what you love near you when you are doing your unlovable job. It might not work.

Consider a telephone operator who loves to listen to his radio, or a librarian who loves to talk on his cell phone. For that matter, consider bringing a portable TV to work so that you can catch up on Cricket. While these are all the things one loves to do, he can’t do because of certain limitations. So what is the way out? Sometimes there is one and sometimes there is not. Worst of all, what if you love eating cheese sandwich so much that you need to keep a few within your reach all the time and in your current job all you have to do is to convince people to give up their gluttony?

There must be some way out…

While I was ruminating at this obviously unfair characteristics of Life, I completely forgot that Sakshi had nudged me gently twice to get ready for a dinner. While the third reminder was surely not a gentle nudge, it somehow fitted with the unfairness theme, I decided to wait for some other day to improvise on Confucius’s wisdom.

On our way to the restaurant, I gave a brief synopsis of this thought to Sakshi. She had only one comment: “don’t try to think how one would have arrived at the price of the salad, when all you need is a big helping of it.”

Call it my naivety or the enormous complexity of the thought, I took two days to understand that she meant: “if you really want to enjoy your work, recession or not, you may need a job you love.” But at least I did enjoy my Salad enormously that night rather than worrying about its pricing logic.

The other day, when Deccan Chargers were playing their match against Delhi Daredevils, Sakshi had developed an unusually benign mood. (Later on she clarified that she was nervous that the result of the match may affect my mood, and her premeditated shopping plans.) Before I could even faint, she announced that she had been researching for a week to learn “how to do facial”, and that she felt ready to get the radiance back on my face. Leaving the Deccan Chargers on their own, I had to take of my glasses, and put the TV off. For next one hour, many thoughts crossed my mind. If there was a log of thoughts, it would look somewhat like the following:

(Sakshi’s thought) Oh, the smell of the perfumes and creams is very nice. I hope he doesn’t guess that the facial is just an excuse to suppress the smell of my sweat when we go out on our bike in the evening?

(JT’s thought) While I am having this facial, if Deccan Chargers lose, how will I ever forgive myself?

(Sakshi’s thought, as if she read my mind) Fool, even if you watch the match, how would you save them from losing? Don’t you remember watching two of their matches in the previous season live at the cricket stadium, and those were their worst defeats in the season?

(JT’s thought, as Sakshi thought aloud the previous line) At least, I could have cribbed and cursed at the scapegoat. It would provide some vent to my frustration. What if someone accuses me of being Nero-playing-fiddle-when-Rome-was-burning?

Amidst these thoughts, coolness of my room, and relaxing massage on my face, sleep brought me face to face with none other than Nero. Here is the excerpts of my conversation with him:

Nero: JT, don’t think you are doing anything wrong. So what if DC lose? You didn’t do anything for / against them. In fact, you couldn’t have. And let me bet, if you really do well in life, these crazy historians will make a phrase saying “When DC were losing, JT was having a facial”.
JT: What are you talking, Nero? Don’t you feel the guilt of playing the fiddle when your own city, the Rome, was burning? Or let me guess, you were playing “Deepak Rag” and the fire started.
Nero (with a feeling of guilt): Actually, I was celebrating my freedom.
JT: Freedom? You, the King? Isn’t that a dream for Slaves and Husbands, when the master/wife goes for a vacation?
Nero (curtly): Don’t forget that even a King is a husband.
JT: Ok, so do you mean to say, your wife was visiting her parents’ at that time?
Nero: She was on a never ending vacation to her parents’. Going by the chief scientist in my cabinet, she would have reached the Hell few months before the fire started.
JT: I didn’t know that your wife was dead at that time.
Nero: You don’t seem to have taken your history lessons well. These damn historians have accused me of being her Killer. Now you tell me, is it possible that a husband kills his wife?
JT: Don’t think so. If it is indeed true, you should be called the bravest man in the history of humankind.
Nero: No, I am not. I loved her. In fact, if you want to blame someone to make me play the fiddle during the fire, it must be her. Do you know that she was the one who taught me how to play second fiddle? My mother-in-law gifted me two fiddles on my wedding.
JT: Nero, are you alright? Calm down. No sane person will teach you how to play second fiddle. They always teach you how to play the first fiddle if you insist.
Nero: You are a newly wed, aren’t you? You naïve, only a wife can teach you how to play second fiddle. Let me make another guess, you don’t even know the phrase “playing the second fiddle”. It’s first known use was by the Serpent in the Garden of Eden when Adam was forced to eat the Apply by Eve.
JT: Nero, let’s not create controversies, I bet there were no feminist groups at your time. Anyhow, let’s just talk about you. Remember, you have come in my dreams.
Nero: Oh yes. So, after my wife died, I cried a little, and then I realized that I can no more play second fiddle ever again. You see, I was too frightened to marry again, and I was the King. For next two years or so, I kept on thinking how to move on in life.
JT: Ok, so you mean your wife was dead for two years before the fire? What happened? How did you start playing the fiddle again? Tell me that historians were wrong. You were crying when Rome was burning.
Nero: No, I was playing fiddle. Let me tell how how it started. One day, not long before the fire, someone took off the belt from my dog’s neck, and kept it in front of his eyes. The dog didn’t run away. He was terrified by the sight of the belt, but the moment the belt was removed from his sight, he found his freedom.
JT: And…
Nero: The same guy, then came to me, took my second fiddle, and broke it into pieces and threw them out of the window, and offered me the first one. And then, I realized the joy of being free. I started playing. And the rest is history…

I woke up, found that my face was shining in the darkness of the room; heard the commentator announcing the victory of Delhi Daredevils; and thought about the line again…

“When Deccan Chargers were losing, JT was having a facial.”

Considering the fact that Sakshi was not visiting her parents on that day, wouldn’t it be more appropriate to say… “…. JT was having a second facial?”

Any historian out there to opine?

==============

P.S.: Deccan charger’s victory yesterday made me brave enough to put this piece here. DC, you rock!

Dr. MindKrishna Singh, the Man of the moment, is going to assume the highest office in Indian Legislature. For once, he will not have to worry about choosing between the invisible hand or the left hand.

As per some highly placed sources, a certain group that has lost the elections is working to design a new TV show for kids, which will be named as “making of the great PM”. The game is going to be played as follows: on a special chair (The Chair) the strongest boy in the group will sit. All other boys will try to pull the boy from the chair. Immediately after every successful leg-pulling, the conspirators will play musical chair. The winner will sit on the chair and the next round of leg-pulling resumes. If the initial version is successful, the plans are to introduce many other factors in deciding the first PM like caste, ability to bully others, art of negotiating. Sadly before the nomination of boys begin, some important ladies belonging to like-minded parties in the same vertical raised serious protest against the obvious exclusion of girls from the game. As per the latest information coming in, some smart political analysts were consulted to determine the path ahead.

While the analysts are expected to submit their full assessment in coming months, there seems to be consensus building amongst them to launch the game in its beta version in next two years or so for the real politicians first. They might need all the help in five years’ time if the Great Indian Voter is going to be as decisive as she has been in electing the 15th Lok Sabha.

Jay Ho!

Premature murder of an over burdened loofah, the cockroaches who had to survive the flood of soap water, and the hair on my hands. Since these sins are as perplexing as lack of common sense in me, a bit of explanation seems necessary.

My love for water bodies is an open secret to Sakshi. To her credit, Sakshi was thorough with her knowledge of selective geography of area around Hubli by the time we embarked the journey. One line summary of her research was that Goa is just 200 kms away from Hubli. Unable to resist the temptation of some tanning, she prepared a hypothesis that I should love human body as well since more than half of it is only water, and Goa would be a utopia for me, giving me opportunity to have a real water body and many other water-rich bodies on the beach. I agree that I am interested in some human bodies (including mine to an extent), but not because of the water content, but rather for the remaining things that make it complete. And I am not interested in some human bodies exactly because of the same reason, the remaining things, for example my own skin colour. I am yet to meet a dermatologist who would insist that my dark skin colour is due to lack of water, sadly. Anyhow, by the time we reached Hubli, we realized that however hot the Goanese crowd may be, the sun was hotter. At that point in time, Sakshi chose to exercise her veto over our proposed Goa trip, instead opting for a quiet riverside resort at a place called Ramanguli. I was equally happy to go to stay on the banks of river Gangavali , and in process took a vow to take bath in the natural body of water, or in my favourite spa at Hyderabad (which incidentally is referred as the bathroom by Sakshi). When we reached there, they sent a boat to take us to the resort, and during that 5 minute ride, my excitement went few notches lower. The river is beautiful but equally dangerous. There was no possibility of my taking bath there. Being as rigid as I am, I decided not to take bath till we reach Hyderabad 2 days later. Sakshi quickly found out that it was actually my laziness that was wrapped under self-proclaimed uprightness. And she found an alternative fast. From the resort, 15 kms away, Vibhuti waterfalls are located. She took me there, and I finally could get rid of my body odours (which, for sake of unambiguity, were not bothering me at all). In the scorching heat, the water was intoxicating. And like any other toxic fluids, it caused an unmistaken damage to me. When we returned back to Hyderabad, my skin colour moved a shade into “extra dark” category, where as Sakshi moved from fair to wheatish zone. In the next day or so, we did many things, romantic huddle with Sakshi on a bamboo raft, did boating in a round boat, did some canoeing…. http://www.sairiverview.com/

Things happened quickly when I reached Hyderabad. I found a loofah in the bathroom, sitting pretty with a liquid soap, staring at me in the mirror, almost laughing over my darkness. I thought for a minute and decided to rub off the darkness from my hands first. When I came out leaving the loofah on its death soap-dish (yes, I couldn’t even arrange for a death bed for her), the cockroaches were gasping for dirty water (instead of clean soap water contaminated only by small human hair), and my hands almost hairless, and looking even darker. Then the wisdom struck me that my dark brown hair on the hands were actually my friends. But like my bad luck, the tan remains at its rightful place, shinning brighter than ever.

By the time I was dressed up, I could overhear Sakshi talking to someone over phone… “you know when he shaved his moustache last month, I felt like being wife of an boy. It was so exciting and sinful you know but today, I am feeling ashamed. When I looked at his hands today, I almost felt like my lesbian partner just came back after waxing.”

Loofah: http://www.amazon.com/b?ie=UTF8&node=11056551