Disclaimer: I do not intend any harm against any public figure/celebrity mentioned in the below piece as this is some fiction oriented personal story for fun read. Also, I have nothing against IIMs or UPSC (god forbid !); I am just another pissed off soul trying to get through them..
Finally, This is based on a true story, this is beyond any mess/disaster ever written on this page. This is it! Presenting to you, the failure of two Men from one of those Men himself!! I AM one of those Men, But this is not me who has failed. Perhaps, it’s the failure of the Gods in defining the term "failure", which actually fails to comprehend the current misery of the Man!
Back in 2008!
The Man...Myself!
This is a world where one has a name, a surname and a long list of add ons too. It’s the cast, the region, the religion, the blah and the BIG Blah. But one is still unknown unless one has realized itself facing the true material (not immaterial, that's not our material) mirror of life reflecting the real persona.(Fashionable, Ambitious, Crook etc etc) , So it was somewhere at the end of my college life that I realized myself. It was like catching hold of my own spirit.(Not how the modern day baba’s or the enlightened claim, But for the first time It was ME) It wasn't me with a name but it was me the character and who apparently wanted to do a lot of characters at this drama stage called planet earth.(That is reserved for Gods, though) Once I became aware of my own existence, I began to find myself everywhere including the dreams: in this imagined landscape I was in the every possible magazine, the news papers and the bloody India tv too. Practically I was a star... To be a little more blatant, I was the senior Foreign services guy (unlike the much maligned Mr Tharoor), my childhood dream. If not that, I was the every imagination an adult child could dream.
The Dude...Kunal!
Back in the glory days, He was my only friend. One could relate the very similar attributes of mine to him. Though the “add ons” were nothing similar as here we have an absolute extra terrestrial from an exo planet! Just could not imagine what he was doing here among us. For him the material was the immaterial and he claimed quite bombastically to be an enlightened by birth and a hell of a genius. So unlike me he did not have to find himself in a DREAM, the dude is a champion of a “day dreamer”.
Both friends had big plans for life and the future. Seemingly, the success of the enlightened was all set on a platter! I was going to the UPSC and the dude was all set for IIMs. *(IIM my ass and UPSC suck any given day)
Present times some 2011 weekend!
The Aston Martin (It’s an Alto) was parked at Netaji Subash Metro to take off for some another random weekend ride. We are use to arbitrate for an arbitrary location for our weekend, every weekend. 'So, Where are we heading?' dude said, 'cut my head off, asshole' The Man replied. We hit the road and the drama continues..
Dude-'So, did you fix up the time with the KPMG chick? Man, I wanna see her bad'
Man- 'Did you fix up with that journo guy, Sanjeev?'
Dude- 'Yeah, It was a real pain in the arse you know, So you better tell me that chick is coming or we heading back, Clear?"
Man- 'I was there selling her some damned software solution, not "selling myself" you retard, besides they know each other, so we are some lucky.’
Dude 'Come on you jerk, I need help with the Big 4 thing'
Man- 'What's BIG4, you BIG Brother asshole?'
Dude- 'Grow up; I am an MBA from Ignou, not some UPSC street beggar'
Man- 'FYI, your Mba is the only light shining on the tables tonight. All of a sudden, BIG 4 is now gonna go BIG 5, as Big4 can’t accommodate the veteran from Ignou!'
Dude- 'Sanjeev can help you; he has connections you see, Chill!!'
Man- 'Its doomsday, BIG Chill Damn it!'
We arrived at Gurgaon, JMD tower with utmost vigour and enthusiasm in store. Frankly, it was going to be some meeting we had planned in a fairly unplanned fashion, which is our trademark! We finally met at the Moet's, a “Lebanese Restro-Bar”..nice place..the music was good. IN the background we had some David Guetta stuff on!
I saw Anupama and waived ‘Hi’, “sexy bitch” was the number in the background. Well, I was dizzy as usual. The man to be noticed was Sanjeev. He was in his 30s, a dark man with a bushy/glossy (confused I am) moustache and glasses, his raffish 1970s air complemented by a bright yellow shirt and a black/white tie patterned like zebra stuff. He was some freak and a journalist who worked at one of the magazines published by some blue chip western agency. Of course then there was Anupama, some nice manager at KPMG and finally they were getting some good company from my relatively newbie friend Tushar. That man is a wildlife photographer and is practically devoid of all the wild imaginations we have got. To be fair, A very spiritual and a clean guy unlike that filthy dude Sanjeev. Although they couldn’t have been there long, their table held two packs of Navy Cut cigarettes, 3 partly empty bottles of Kingfisher, and a battered Smartphone that thrummed insistently throughout our conversation. My guess was the evil Sanjeev. I had the sleazy dude marked right from moment # 1.
‘I’ve spoken to the boss about you,’ Anupama said. “He said, ‘Why does he want to meet me?’” ‘The boss is a great man, and sure, this would be some honour for me.’ Kunal said. “The question is whether he’ll talk to you.” I interrupted. And the focus changes...
“I have heard about you, Piyush” Sanjeev said. “I think you can do the job".
“There’s also some new stuff coming up at abc magazine, and I want you to take care of it, that is honestly our innovation.” He said.
“It was meant to be an innovation,” Anupama said quietly. “But it is already there in the market.”“Yeah, yeah, no big deal,” Sanjeev said. “He’s creative. He’s a man of ideas, He will make it sound innovative.” He lit a cigarette and waved it around, the rings on his hand flashing. “What he’s been doing does not reflect his real intellectual capacity." There was a moment of silence as we contemplated on the word intellectual. “I don’t ask these things of other people I have hired,” Sanjeev said. (He could not hire me anyways..”Loser”)
We ate hot-and-sour soup and drank some beer (some bacardi breezer for me, well am used to all the stares and the glares I get), our conversation widening out to include our pretty pathetic personal lives,(just for the man and the dude) and the unforgiving city of Delhi. Sanjeev told us a story about covering some historic Khomeini stuff in Iran and being arrested by the country’s Guard while crossing over the border from Iraq. ‘So, one hell to another hell Journey?’ I interjected. ‘How was it?’
‘Saddam is dead, my friend, so it was neither lively nor deadly’ Sanjeev said. ‘So is Khomeini’ I said, and we all shared a chuckle...(I bet the asshole was cooking up well)
I began to feel cold in my awfully short sleeved T and the cotton made Trousers. The damn AC was chilling out and I was freezing. The crowd these days is very diverse even for a bar sort of this place. There were a couple of Gurgaon MNC pigs sitting nearby who had their Apple lap and palm-top on and were busy scribbling. Couple of hot chicks also entered the bar and all of a sudden there was some sunshine on Kunal’s face. By this time they were playing “Last Friday night”....Dude was day dreaming. Meanwhile the agenda of talk on the table had taken a sharp turn and it was towards Enlightenment. Off course the start ups were bought to us by Sanjeev. He continued prattling on ‘I took advantage of being the Enlightener’s son,’ He had nothing to sell except himself. ‘In 1997, I published my first article on Enlightenment, It was a touching story, so what do you guys know about enlightenment?’ He sounded boyish and vulnerable, and I found myself wanting to respond kindly, as if speaking to a child I didn’t want to embarrass about an insignificant lie. Though, I kept my mouth shut as I mostly do and realistically I was not experienced enough to take on some childish journo head on..You see, he is a Journo never the less.
There was a long pause until. ‘That’s a good question,’ Tushar said. ‘But where is it, where is enlightenment?’
‘It’s hard to keep track of the spirituality one has; we don’t know I guess’ Anupama suggested.
‘That’s right, We just don’t know but that doesn’t mean we can’t find it’ Tushar retorted. ‘I believe my parents f**ked and dumped me here’, everyone was grinning with an eye fixated on Tushar until he cleared the air, ‘that’s what my Guru believes’ Listening to this, the nearby Lap’s and palm’s fell off their respective tops and the pigs started giving the expression, “What the hell is going on here?”.
Tushar showed us some pics and the man got in to that lecture mode. We loved the discussion and in the end it came down to the Aura we see in the pictures depicting Gods. Tushar showed some other realistic pic and Anupama said “That is aura! Wow!”
By this time they were playing “I kissed a girl” and one of those chicks was seemingly pissed from Kunal’s persistent perverted gaze. It must have sounded to him, "I Pissed a girl, I liked it”
Well the dude can’t give up on his inhibitions. Enlightened by birth. LOL!
When I asked for the bill, the waiter said that it had been taken care of by Anapama.,’I am a regular guys, Don’t worry I have nice connections here’ She said. “That’s really too bad, because I was hoping to treat you.” Kunal always trying to impress, bringing out his non sensical chivalry. Frankly, Dude was a broke that night.
We finally left after some serious intellectual affair and were thinking on the same old story on how our lives had gone bad or how we had failed on the goals we set out for. Kunal started ‘Dude, you would have made a better KPMG manager’ And I replied back ‘And yes you would have been a top Administrator, you spoilt brat of Khomeini’ and we both laughed out loud after another one of those rare weekends when we managed to make some interesting outing.
At the end I accept that may be we have not failed and we are not failures coz God did not define it and on the contrary what God has defined are the morals, Ethics and the virtue of a Man to acquire/pursue Success.
We shall continue on the path defined by the Gods...
Hope you liked it....Stay tuned!
जय श्री कृष्णा!
