No country for young men

”Yaar Mehte, yeh kaisi jagah hai yaar …”

- NN, on a long office day when he missed his love,and maybe his datacard too.

Disclaimer: Abhay Sen, it is terribly unfair that your name does not find mention here, alas you were in a different department. But do know, you are 'our baby' and there will be a post on you much before I move into another job.Nod.

Preface: Somewhere in the outskirts of the city of Ahmedabad, lies an eerie jungle. Abundant in Nilgai, a beautiful wide eyed animal belonging to the antelope family, the forest has also courted fame and tourism for being home to a primitive specie known as the Prehistoricus GBicus or GB– very lovable with its long mane and body but best known for adopting a baritone and accent whenever a female of its specie is in proximity. Rumour has it that this strange land is the capital of Gujarat, but of course we don’t believe everything, do we? We call our home - Gandhinagar.

On the 19th of Jan, the Government of Gujarat recruited six people from the class of 2011 and since I was not present on campus then, let me now appraise the chosen few of what they have gotten themselves into. The rest of you can emote expressions as per the rollercoaster nature this riveting read embarks upon and I will give you marks for, skill and another wonderful trait called loyalty.

The Juna Sachiwala campus, a stone’s throw from the Vidhan Sabha, is a series of dilapidated old buildings in pink and brown. On your first few visits, it feels like you have been thrown into a different civilization, a country of old men and older women. Stunned, you turn on your toes like a dog chasing its tail, but nothing changes. It is as if all the oldest people in the country have been thrown into one campus, a thousand A.K.Hangals in one piece of land. There are dinosaur fossils in Cambodia that are younger than the brunt of GoG’s populace.

And then, they ask us to make print ads on ‘Vibrant’ Gujarat. Aaah, the irony.

The office in itself is not like any place you ever interned or worked in before. It is a world of tea served in aluminum kettles and peons waiting on every command of the commissioner. Rooms are large, piles of folders sitting on dusty desks and jokes and laughter being thrown across from all corners. Cubicles are a notion, and privacy unheard of. You tend to not care too much about being aloof or secretive when you spend twenty to thirty years of your life with the same people, day in and day out. All over the world, camaraderie breeds in such environs.

However, ‘in a stroke of luck’, Mican recruits have an air conditioned cabin to themselves. So, when you do enter here as you will the first day, do feel free to greet Nitasha and Mihir. When your eyes move upon the empty chairs at the other end of the table, hopefully you will nod your heads in reverence of the three swashbuckling buccaneers who once gave honour to those seats - Monsieurs Mehta, Banerjee and Narayanan.

There is a certain code of conduct that we inculcated in the cabin. Gaurav does not like to be disturbed when he is watching a movie, come crucial time-bound assignment or enraged, ballistic commissioner. And nothing enrages Abhay Mehta more than an important question related to work when he is in the midst of typing an eloquent comment on Facebook. Of course, once he has typed out the ‘hehe’ or ‘aww’, he becomes his cheery self and will listen carefully to your doubt, right till the moment he finds another status update where he can put the same comment. And me? I have to necessarily move a berserk chest or a vulgar hip every time I play ‘Woofer tu meri meri, mai tera amplifaaya faaya’ so you need to find the little breaks when I don’t, if you really want to converse with me.

Jokes (?) apart, we, the Communication Consultants to the Government of Gujarat are in the business of promoting and developing the brand that is the government of Gujarat and the man who sits on the highest diwan. Print ads, speeches, news letters, magazines, content, website, advertorials are our daily companions. In the lakhs of crores of investments and MOUs signed in the Vibrant Summit, hidden somewhere is the hard work and contribution of the Information Department of the Govt of Gujarat. It is a decent profile that may not drill in you the best practices of advertising, but rest assured you will touch more aspects of communication than your peers in the same year. Also, hopefully, when you sit in the press office some late night and eat dinner with a deputy director, a designer and a chauffeur on the same table and see them laughing and backslapping each other, you will understand that there does exist an India that sometimes frees itself of the forces of inequality and allows itself to laugh gaily. You won’t see much of that in a Proctor & Gamble, but yes do make the switch if you get a chance!

If only that bloke sitting on the big chair did not make us redo pages only because his skin was not appearing the snowiest of whites in the accompanying snap… In this last one year, I have stared at his features with more concern than the fulsome admiration with which I gazed at Pamela Anderson’s womanhood throughout my teens. As GB, Mehta and I stand near a signboard that reads ‘Dreams’, we wish you all the best in your new journey and selection of ‘fair’ photographs. Enjoy!

p.s Long before you enter the den, Gaurav and I used to daily enter it … err late. Please. Mother always told me that I should have my eight hours of sleep. Anyway, as we’d rush to the big man’s chamber, late as usual, the old peon standing outside his room would smile at us. In the last thirty years, the man had never seen anyone so unmindful of the boss’ aura or authority. As we would run past him we would know that he had tried to save us again and we’d smile back, half out of gratefulness half out of habit, before rushing in to face the music.

He’ll cover up for you. But do make sure that there are amongst you some who are even less punctual than us. You see, I would like to be remembered as a good example.


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Living on the edge with Gom Gom!

For all Gb lovers and that includes me,
I should have known everything was not right when I opened a blurry eye and saw Gaurav Banerjee or Geebka (as he is known to a few affectionate sources) sitting cross legged near my bed, looking all gung ho and full of beans. The man had never woken up for office before ten thirty, so to see him at my side at seven a.m was quite disconcerting to the eye.

“Choozay, chal driving sikhane”

The name’s Bond, not choozay phoozay.

I sighed and asked him if Neha had left her bike at our place. Earlier, she had been gracious enough to permit him to learn the art on her Activa and as we hopped down the steps and walked to it for the first time, the mauve thingie stared back at us bashfully.

Now before I launch into the most scalding of tirades any man has ever penned down, let me get this straight for I would not want to tarnish the reputation of a man if I am wrong. Do tell me, how many things do you have to remember while driving a non geared scooter besides increasing and decreasing the raise? That is all, right?

Apparently, this piece of information proved to be too complex for our man to assimilate. As we took the initial hesitant , also building block wala steps towards his ideal dream of driving an Avenger one day through the mountains, wind in his tresses et al, there were a number of issues that literally stared us in the face.

First of all, we were forced to contend with his shorts that flapped so gracefully that we were convinced it was in reality a divided skirt, yessir! Also, the skirt’s skittish movements exposed major chunks of his thighs and rendered me blind for several seconds.

We proceeded at a top speed of a couple of metres per hour, and soon cyclists, pedestrians and stationary objects were over taking us with consummate ease. I have a firm opinion that even if he had chosen to alight from the Activa and push it with only his chubby left thumb, it would have still moved with much greater velocity. “I think I can drive a chopper now, man” he voiced just before an eighty year old lady overtook us walking.

With Gom Gom (that’s what the Bengali world called him even when he was 16, hehe!) at the helm, the scooter seemed to have a mind of its own. I fail to understand why a bike would not move in a straight line when it is on a completely empty road, but the Activa just wouldn’t do so. It kept jerking its head left and right, swerving, halting - just like a dog on a walk.

The story of the turns needs another post to do justice to it. Although I have always thought of myself as a courageous and brave man, it is with the highest integrity I confess that today whenever that Bengali specie took a left, right or u-turn, my nerves jangled and rattled like a temple bell gone berserk.

"When Geebie drives the scootys, he gives me the cooties"

“Raise de, bike ghooma.” We were trying u-turns on an empty road flanked by vegetation on its sides. In the wisest move of the day, I got down from the bike citing that I had to check if he was making the cut properly.

He responded by turning the bike eighty four degrees (a U requires 180) and drove savagely into the bushes, stopping only when it was halfway up a tree. The next time he was told to turn right, the bike mysteriously tilted so much to the left that the steering almost met the road. Some times he would apply the correct amount of raise but would forget to turn the steering. Other times he would rotate it stylishly only to not provide any acceleration and see it splutter to a grinding lifeless stop. But mostly, he just drove into the bushes and halfway up the now quite annoyed tree.

I would have felt sorry but every time he crossed me, he would give me that impish smile that so warmed him to all and sundry at MICA. “Think I have got the hang of it, eh?” he’d say before streaking into the trees and scaring the living daylights of all the birds.

The best was saved for the last. After 84 U-Turns, none of which were a perfect semi circle, no not even a semi oval, nor a semi ellipse, we decided to take a few rounds of our colony before depositing the bike at Neha’s. So there we were, two alpha males riding through the wild (how else do you describe G’nagar?) with not a care in the world, in the middle of a mature conversation,

“I really think I should buy a Harley”
“Activa ki to Maarli, ab chahiye isko Harley” {dry wit and poetry at its best, I say}

And that’s when she came out, breezing into the camera frame from seemingly nowhere. Oh no, you oafs, this isn’t a romantic scene and she wasn’t pretty and all that jazz. She was only crossing the road, but then stopped in the middle for no apparent reason. Hardly a reason to panic, because we were over a hundred metres away and could have chosen to follow any of the five hundred options that would avoid an accident – 1) Brake. 2)Turn the steering slightly to the left and cross her. 3)Or to the right and likewise. 4)Blow the horn blah blah

But no, Gb decided to do the one thing that would have ensured an accident. He accelerated the speed and drove the bike right into her. Note, till now we had not crossed the ten kilometer per hour barrier in the entirety of the day, but as soon as Gb saw the girl and the scope for the most ridiculous and avoidable accident, he raised the bar to fifty. In perfect synchronization, the girl remained oblivious to the entire scene, even though everyone around her screamed just like a good audience is supposed to. On our part, Gb eloquently mouthed “Oh shit shit shit” but refused to discontinue gunning the vehicle exactly towards her, while I assuaged myself by digging my hands deep into his collar in an attempt to reign him in, like a rider does his horse.

I always knew I was a prince in my last birth. Must have been an excellent horse rider. These things just don’t leave you, come new birth or a bozo roomy.

We somehow missed her. Gb claims it was his ‘sexy’ legs that altered the bike’s course and I think that she skipped at the last moment; either way we heard a high pitched scream. Maybe we mowed her down. We somehow returned home alive and right now, an hour past midnight, Geebka is sleeping happily, probably dreaming of a leather jacket and hot pillion riders.

Once he snores, I will turn that seven o clock alarm off.