Hello

It's just another day in the mundane life of Gajodhar Pandey. And just so you know, neither the first name nor the last name, or for that matter, the middle name (which happens to be Ramnarayan) intended to bear any significance to this story whatsoever, but then, things seldom go exactly as intended. Of course, the man who was forced upon these names is significant, in the way that he happens to be our protagonist, one of our protagonists, to be precise.
Gajodhar Ramnarayan Pandey doesn't like his name. Whenever someone calls his name, he feels like he/she is desperately calling GOD for some serious help. He always envied the characters in the fantasy world of Ekta Kapoor, for they had, if nothing else, fancy, modern, futuristic, artistic names. But nevermind, the damage had been inflicted upon him by his Grandma 31 years ago. Once, by mistake( he claims), he talked about legally changing his name and the next thing he knew was that his Grandma had to undergo double bypass surgery. The topic was buried, then and there, in some hospital trash can.
Anyhow, this story is about a day in the life of Gajodhar Ramnarayan Pandey, and not his name. Though Gajodhar loved his work and took good care of the clients, his heart was severely hurt when a female client exclaimed, " Wow, you look young !!" the first time they met. "Thanks Miss Sharma. Just one question though. Why did you expect me to be old?"
"Well...... err...... umm.............. it's just that.... i don't know....."
No wonder the deal didn't materialize.
He dies a little death everytime he has to introduce himself to a female client. 'Mrs. Gajodhar Ramnarayan Pandey' !!!! He knew even he wouldn't have married himself.
He wrapped his work for today and took his seat in the office-cab, frustrated, tired, sick of himself as usual, when his phone rang.
Private number...... he he he
"What the **** is this?"
He looked around. No one. He looked at his phone again.
Pick up.. you suspicious moron.
The phone almost slipped off his hand.
"Hello??"
"Hello Gajodhar, this is GOD"
This time the phone slipped but held on tothe neckstrap.
"Who???"
"You heard me fine. I am GOD."
"Listen buddy, this is not the right time. I am not in a mood of silly jokes. So either come to the point or hang up."
"Ok, hang up if you don't want to talk. But do one thing. Turn the phone handsfree and put on the earphones."
He did so and hung up. There was silence but for 2 seconds only.
"Does it work??"
"Holy crap!!! Who the hell are you ? Leave me alone."
"I can force you to listen to me but that'll make you look a lot more paranoid. So be a good boy and talk. It won't harm you and definitely won't cost you."
[silence]
"So, you are GOD!!! Why should I believe that?"
"Gajodhar Ramnarayan Pandey. Son of Ramnarayan Batukeshwar Pandey. Born in Munger, Bihar, India on 20th September, 1966 at 7:14 am."
"Office database."
"Once suspended from school while pouring chalk dust on your teacher's back."
"School records."
"Have one major and three minor crushes on female colleagues."
"Common sense. Why are you wasting your time??"
"10th February, 1999. Sumedha Maitra tells you about her boyfriend and the next thing you thought was to run a truck over both of them."
"Well.... I...err.... I didn't mean to. Are you here to punish me for that .... (after a slight hesitation) GOD??"
"I didn't want to bring this up but you left me with no other choice."
"So why exactly are you here? Don't you have a world to protect?"
"Well.. I am planning to put up a Catastrophe later this century, and while my team is working on the blueprint, I took some time off.... you know... to relax..... have some fun."
"And I am your idea of having 'fun !!!"
"Well... not exactly. Anyways... I know it sounds cliched but.... Ask me, What do you want?"
"Really !!! Ok. For starters, Please change my name."
"And by calling yourself Tom Cruise, you expect girls to go berserk by just looking at you !! Why can't you be okay with your name? What's in a name anyway?"
"How would you know. Your name is not a haunting kind."
"That's my identity. Believe me, you don't want to know my name."
"OK. Give me a good wife. Nobody wants to be Mrs. Gajodhar Ramnarayan Pandey."
"So to you marriage is all about nameplates.. right? You just assume things won't work instead of actually trying to make them work. If you are so sure that changing your name will change everything, why didn't you change it yourself?"
"Ha ha ha. Very funny. As if you don't know."
"Ok, I accept. But isn't it fair to keep my share of sense of humor before distributing it to mankind?"
"Yes. Laugh. Laugh at me all you want. You don't know how it feels being laughed at. You don't know how it feels when your colleagues don't take you seriously. You don't know how it feels when the colony kids throw a ball in my house just to call my name. You haven't seen the supressed smiles of the ladies when I introduce myself to them. You have made me for fun, didn't you. I am a clown for you and this damn world of yours. I am the comic relief. I am the Joker. Laugh at me all you want."
"Done? Typical Gajodhar Ramnarayan Pandey. Why are you such a bitter man? This world is a nice place to live, provided you want to. Look at the positives dear. You are cribbing about something absolutely silly and worthless as compared to some of the serious troubles the world is going through."
"Look who speaks. Weren't we taught that all this has been created by you? And you have made me a part of this crap of yours."
"So, you think you are a part of those homeless children in Africa. You think you are a part of the slum-dwellers in Mumbai who sleep, not knowing whether they'll ever wake up again. You think you are a part of innocent victims of terrorism. You think you are a part of the lives of those unfortunate soldiers who either died or got disabled during the war inflicted upon them by a bunch of egoistic politicians. You think you are a part of the innocent children forced to beg for survival. You think you are a part of the world where girls are sold for money.
I accept that the world didn't turn out to be the way it was supposed to be, but then people like you are not helping either. The next time you crib about your life and your so-called stupid name, just remember one thing.... There are millions of people who would be much more than happy to trade lives with you. The question is: Are you willing to trade lives with any of them?"

"No. I won't"

"Why not? This is your house. You have to get down so that the rest of us can go home." Shekhar, his colleague and office-cab-mate was already getting late.

Words-Worth

Of the infinite amount of crap we are forced to hear 24X7, few words/phrases stick with us. Here are some of my favorites:

The Show must go on.
Entirely self-explanatory. The show MUST go on. We just can't stop, for anything. If something goes wrong, we tend to stop and crib and whine. But the best thing to do is to learn and move on. Life doesn't stop, so shouldn't we.

Life is a Drama.
Shakespeare defined LIFE in the shortest and probably the best possible way. We have our entry, we play our part and we exit. LIFE continues. The only difference is that LIFE is a play of infinite length and infinite characters. We don't have a choice of our entry, but we can surely decide how to exit.

Sweetheart.
Though I have never had a chance to really use it, the lucky ones would know how much does this one word convey. I find this word extremely romantic.

Just do it.
The Nike tagline inspired a US President( i think he was Nixon) to get married !! This tells it all. If you want to do something, then forget about this world, don't care, follow your instincts, and JUST DO IT.

Fight on.
The slogan of USC, conveying the true sportsman spirit. You may be down and out. You may be overpowered. You may be on the verge of defeat. Never give up. Always FIGHT ON.

aaj main upar, aasman neeche.
Ecstasy expressed in the best possible way. I am very lucky to have actually felt this feeling on two different days:
20th June,2003--- The day when I got through into IIT.
25th February,2007---- The day when I got Fellowship offer from USC.
These words completely express my state of mind on these two days.

Coming back to life.
Though the lyrics of this masterpiece by Pink Floyd is itself extremely good, I like the title more. We all have our moments when we feel down and out. Everything seems to come to an end. We are just about to give up when LIFE drags us back into its mainstream and forces us to stay in there. Slowly and gradually we get engulfed by the rigors of Life. We all have our instances of Coming back to Life.

Underdog.
I really love this word. Underdog. No one expects you to win. No one bets on you. You are free to do what you want. You are not burdened. You don't have to answer. You go unnoticed. And when you actually win, it is Unbelievable. You take the world by surprise. And You love it.

Gray matter

Nothing's pure black or pure white. Of course, one would say there are colors but then every color can be transformed into gray-scale and then all you get is different shades of gray. Not Black, not White, but Gray.
The point is.... no one is Good or Evil. Each one of us is a shade of Gray. As they say, nothing is 100%. So, if you think straight and conclude that I am a bad guy, you probably have erred somewhere. Also, if somehow you have managed to convince yourself that I am a good guy, you are in for a big surprise. The good me and the evil me are obviously at loggerheads to each other and the good me manages to keep the evil me under wraps, but not always. And when the evil me surfaces, he surprises even himself. I recalled one such instance.

Class X(A)
TATA DAV School, Sijua; Dhanbad
Jharkhand, India
Sometime in mid-1999

It may seem a silly, totally not worth mentioning after 8 years thing to you but then it is important to me. School days can be extremely silly at times. You have your groups of guys and girls, there are crushes, flowers, all kinds of stupid games, flirting, the guy-talk, the girl-talk, the gifts, the cards, the free periods and of course, that delicate age. I also had a small group. The entire class looked at us skewedly. The teachers turned hostile. The brothers and sisters were asked questions. But who cared. We used to do what we liked to and "to hell with them".
There was a girl in my group. Being known to us for about 2 years then, she was relatively new given that the rest of us had studied together since 1988. And she was different. With respect to those times and situations, one can safely say.. she was a rebel. I had not met such a lively and fun-loving girl in my life. And we really hit it off from day 2. There was an easyness associated with her. She and me shared some hilarious, unforgettable incidents and quotes. She was, and will remain very special to me.

Fast forward to the day of the incident.
I don't remember the reason now. But one day there was heated argument and a scuffle between us. I remember she had pulled my sweater but I don't remember anything else. What happened after that, disturbs me to this day. My 'other' friends took it worse than me and then there was a heavy dose of "tit for tat", "be a man", "revenge" and the likes. The evil me was pulled out. I went to her and had a quick, hard go at her ponytail. (I told you it will seem silly.)I thought we were even. But few minutes later, when the teacher entered the class, he asked her if she was all right. And then I saw her, with eyes full of tears. She was hurt, not physically. Believe me or not, those tears make me very uncomfortable to this day.
After that, there are again blank patches in my memory. I remember giving my book to her when she asked for another guy's book, to initiate the damage-control. And the next thing I remember is her last day in school. She left the school after a month or so. I don't remember how things worked out between us. And I certainly don't remember apologizing.
All I remember is that of all people, I had hurt her. And I, hereby, apologize to her.

I AM EXTREMELY SORRY for that day. I never meant to hurt you, in any which way.

Ad-ded

Had my first mid-sems outside India, and though I managed to convince myself to believe that they went well, after getting the marks of one of the papers, I seriously doubt that now. But nevermind, I have a habit of screwing up exams. So this is another feather in my i-know-how-to-screw-exams hat.
Average scores did matter in India also, but continuous occurrence of this not-so-auspicious event may lead to me getting kicked back from US, which I definitely NOT want. So, I better increase the performance efficiency of my grey cells. My grey cells, By the way, have a tedency to play hide-n-seek with me and they somehow manage to excel in the 'hide' aspect during the exams. Anyways, it is between me and them. You don't need to worry.
What you do need to do is ...... watch this.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nhwIFbB5iuo

I just had one word for it: BRILLIANT.
I have tremendous respect for the (good) ad-makers. They manage to convey so much in so less time that one has to simply say... HATS OFF. And though I haven't watched many American, or for that matter many non-Indian, commercials, I have a feeling that when it comes to making ads, no one can beat Indian ads. Not that every Indian ad is good, but when an Indian ad is good, it is the BEST. The western ads can at best be whacky, corny, and the likes but I don't think they match the humor of our ads.
Talking of ads, did you know:

• The man behind the exceptionally briliant ads of 'Happydent White chewing gum' is none other than the lyricist of Rang De Basanti, Mr. Prasoon Joshi. Take a look:
  

http://youtube.com/watch?v=HdesIbwOYAA
http://youtube.com/watch?v=SgEzCfePrlY

• The singer in the Pepsi ad with Sachin Tendulkar and a bunch of kids in a desert, with lines going somewhat as:
  

Umad ghumad kar jiyara garje,
Dil ye bole, jhoom ke dole, taare choo le.
Arre pyaas badhi hai aaj to bhar le
Khol ke bandhan, tod ke taale ,
Ye dil maange mooooooore.

is the one and only ... apna Mungeri laal, Raghuvir Yadav.

• The man who says "Fevicol aisa jod lagaye, acche se accha na tod paaye" in the famous Fevicol ad with an elephant and people doing tug-of-war to break a piece glued by Fevicol (the one with Zor laga ke haisha) is Rajkumar Hirani... yes .. the man who gave us Munnabhai.

• The sardarji pilot who is seen at the end of the 1999 World Cup Cricket Pepsi ad with Sachin Tendulkar, Shane Warne and Brian Lara is Prahlad Kakkar, the creator of the ad and the greatest adman in India.

Jai Ho all the great Ad-makers.
c ya