A present

Remember the episode where Ali says “Gift” for his attendance and goes on to explain to Mr. Brown that he is learning new words in English and that gift is another word for present. To the ignorant lot the scene is from one of the episodes of Mind Your Language, a silly BBC show that still manages to make me laugh despite its biases and flawed views.

Anyway the topic on hand is gift or present if you please, the kind that is given to other people every time they call invite you for food. Staying on the topic I remember a story in Archie where Mr. Lodge is worried about the Christmas gift list because he has to ensure that 1) he gifts the same value to those who had gifted him so that he does not embarrass them 2) he does not gift lower in value to those who gifted him so that he does not appear cheap. The biggest worry is to gift a business prospect who would give him a large business order. Betty tears up his list saying that the Christmas spirit is not measured in money and explains the real spirit of Christmas. The story ends with Mr. Lodge sending a box of home made fudge to that client who despite getting big gifts from others valued the fudge and gives the contract to Mr. Lodge because he understood the real spirit of Christmas.

Now I may have bored you with these two stories but they sum up my activities recently. Owing to tight budgets, office sanctioned us a very small amount to gift our business contacts for Deepavali. Now the festival is characterized with excessive gifting and many clients actually expect to be gifted. So after much jugglery we ended up giving chocolates to the clients and despite our best efforts we ended up exceeding the budget and paying from our own pockets as the list kept growing. One take away was that there are principled people who declined these gifts and said that they would appreciate these gifts being given to those really in need. Then there are others who add the gift to their growing collection and just go about their work. Often our small gift got lost in the heaps.

The problem is more acute when it comes to friends and relatives, when I find that around me everyone has the same problem as Mr. Lodge. You cannot gift more or less than what you are gifted. I think this is silly and defeats the purpose of gifting. Thoughtless gifts are as problematic as gifts that take up so much mind space. If some body gives me something worth X and I give back something valued X, then it is simply a barter transaction and nothing more. I don’t think we can ever give back what we get, and we only manage to play out this farce with people whom we should care for. Aunt A gives you a chain for your wedding, so you give daughter of Aunt A a chain of same grammage for her wedding. If that is the case then lets do away with gifts completely, I admire those who take this stand. I have missed two opportunities, I think next time I will also do this.

A gift is a symbol of our love, if the symbol is going to be measured by the amount given by the other then we have a real problem on our hand and maybe is a reason why this world is so love less. As mentioned before we can never always give back the same value to those who gift us, especially those who really matter to us, and for those who do not matter so much why bother. The list of people who matter God, parents, family…

This and that

You may know that attempted suicide is a punishable offence in India with a prison term of a year. Funny as it may sound I think that the one year behind bars may actually give some time for the person to plan better to die or to live.


On the topic of suicides, I am fed up with the many suicidal cases on the road who choose different vehicles to end their miseries, I almost ran into one such today. She was a pregnant young woman who ignored the zebra crossing and tried to dash across the road, I missed hitting her by inches and in the confusion she fell down. As usual the bunch of good Samaritans jumped to the damsel in distress and gave me lecture on how I should apologize. My short fuse blew and I gave a blast to all, the cops included who wanted me to be “humanitarian”. I ask you, will you blame the noose if a suicide attempt fails? I felt sorry for the woman, but it was replaced by anger, how can anyone be so careless with their life and more so when there is one more life to consider.

The floods are ravaging AP and Karnataka, however we are relatively safe. Time people realized that the river linking is really something that cannot be procrastinated on any longer. And water wars become a thing of the past.

Whatever happened to the swine flu? It has now been reduced to a small column article in the newspaper and I wonder if any of the news channels still spend time on it. I remember last month at this time when the railway platforms in Hyderabad were filled with masked people and there was panic everywhere, now things are back to normal and any new death that is reported has become just another statistic.

Back from a break...

Hi! It’s been a long exile from this space and the reasons are a few:

* We shifted residence and the settling down took some time

* Airtel took a fortnight to transfer my net connection

* The net connection in office has for some reason gone slow, so slow that it makes snail mail more attractive than Gmail

* I’m still not very comfortable with mobile posting at least not with the Xpress music handset

* And yes, I am now the proud dad of a little girl!!!


So bear with me as I settle down and things get back to normal again and before I sign off I have had two big successes at work, this coming after more than two years of work, the taste of success became just that bit sweeter.




Ms. T. Clement
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

Happy Madras Day!!!

Look closely and you will see a part of the history of Madras. For those of you still scratching your heads this is a sun dial. And when I last checked it was still remarkably accurate. If I want to check the time in the sun and if I am near the Basilica of the National Shrine of St. Thomas a genuine wonder of the city, I will just go behind the church and check the time. So what do I do if I am some where else?
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.









On a serious note, wishing you all a very happy Madras day! And if you are wondering what to do over the weekend try this...

Shopping...

Remember Will Smith in Enemy of the state? He went shopping for lingerie which was a big mistake because afterwards he became THE enemy of the state. Thankfully such things don’t happen here, and more importantly I don’t need to ask someone for the size because I ensure the wearer comes along.

I was very uncomfortable when D said that I accompany her the first time. Now I have an issue with D’s shopping that I may have mentioned before. I do not mind shop hopping and pulling out the entire rack to search for that one item we intended to buy, but I do not approve walking away empty handed after ransacking an entire shop and finding nothing. I believe a good sales person should be appreciated and the best appreciation is a sale. So I don’t approve of the routine of running from shop to shop and buying nothing. Crazy you may say, but after so many years in sales, I empathize with every good salesperson.

All the above mentioned, shop hopping, raiding the racks are avoided when we go lingerie shopping because you do not have that many shops and the available shops seem to be spaced out. So you invariably end up shopping in one place which is a good thing, considering the hassles of finding a parking slot. So coming back to our shopping expeditions, it was quite funny walking into a store for the first time and find that you are probably the only male around, surrounded by inner wear, sleep wear etc. You must watch the movie because it is not a big deal when you are just doing the payment bit and you do not have to worry about the opinion poll after visits to trial rooms. However I must admit I have never ever wandered in alone and I don’t plan to do so.

Nowadays I have got quite used to the entire process, that I don’t bother to make unnecessary phone calls to appear busy and just manage to sit around and wait for the sales process to end. It helps also if there are some old mags lying around for obvious reasons. To sign off after many visits I am actually glad that the stores of today are what they are and provide adequate depth and breadth of offerings with sufficient displays to make informed choices. Just wish they may offer better seats and some other entertainment for the most important people who pay the bills.

PS read entertainment as maybe a TV or some more magazines