Wednesday, April 19, 2006

Statutory Warning

Preface:

Although I believe blog posts should not be personal messages written for a select group of people, this is a post that I’ve been planning to write for quite some time now. I hope it will serve 3 purposes:

  1. Silence the people who say “Ganguly can’t play on the leg side” kind of stuff about my writing. Not that somebody has actually said that, but why take chances?
  2. Prove to a certain person (I’ve been threatened with dire consequences by another individual if I divulge the name of the person) that writing styles can be changed or imitated. To extend the parallel drawn in point 1, I can say that if Ganguly wants, he can in fact play in a style that is very different from his own and similar to another player, say Rahul Dravid for example.
  3. Remove some misconceptions from the minds of people with whom I have to interact daily. Lately I’ve been told that I haven’t come up to their expectations. I can’t bear to disappoint them and so must make sure that they reduce their expectations accordingly.

Hence this post.


It's my life
It's now or never
I ain't gonna live forever
I just want to live while I'm alive
(It's my life)

~Song by Bon Jovi


Beware of me. I’m selfish, dictatorial and rude. Don’t try to be my friend; I’ll hurt you beyond repair.

I’m an egoist if there ever was one, or an “I specialist” as my flatmate puts it. How else can you explain the fact that I have my own photo in my wallet instead of my girlfriend’s? Ok, I don’t have a girlfriend, but I could put somebody else’s photo there other than mine, right? What’s worse, I have put my photo in my website, my blogger profile, my Orkut profile, Orkut album and even my cell phone. What’s wrong with relatives, cricket players, movie stars, cartoon characters, gods and goddesses, cute unknown babies, flowers or even or even toffees? But I won’t use their photos, simply because I feel that I’m the only person in the whole wide world whose face is worth looking at. It is of course an entirely different matter that when I go to some new place or a party with the camera there are hardly any photographs showing me. That’s because I don’t give the camera to others (for taking my photo) due to two reasons: firstly I don’t think anyone else has enough brains to use a camera, and secondly I don’t want to share the credit of taking all the photographs.

I’m a perfect tyrant when it comes to taking decisions. I can go to any length to enforce my decisions to those around me. Anybody can verify this fact by asking my companions. It is true that I have often ended up following their wrong decisions (like coming out of Salar Jung after half day because they wanted to eat out and see a movie, which they eventually didn’t see), but that is only when I felt like experimenting. The worst part is, I like to act, to leap and then look. Thus when I see a long and fast growing serpentine queue for meals at the office cafeteria, I stand in the queue first and then think whether to eat there or not. Not like my colleagues, who think about whether to join the queue until it’s too long, and then they go and take hamburgers or pizzas from a shorter queue. Being an autocrat, I always try to convince the others that my approach is better. Now consider this: the time I take to eventually get the meal is actually shorter than or equal to the time they take to think, act and get the hamburger. And the food I get is healthy whereas theirs is… See, I’ve started enforcing my decision on the readers as well. But then, my point of view is the right one, isn’t it? I have proved it in so many arguments, yet they say I argue only to prove myself right even when I’m wrong.

Coming to rudeness, I’m impertinence personified. I often embarrass my co-workers by arguing with them in public, or calling them names. So what if they do the same to me? I ought not to do it. According to some, it is an unforgivable offence (Ms. Rowling, if you are reading this, please forgive me for using that adjective) on my part, and they have stopped all communication with me due to this bad habit. But I’m incorrigible. I prefer to call a spade a spade, and if necessary, in public.

I’ve never helped anybody in my life, other than “helping myself” at the buffet. From time to time I try to show off a little helpful behaviour, of course, but my acquaintances are so familiar with my character that they see through my ploy at once. So when I sit up till nine in the office to write somebody else’s program, they can tell at once that I did it only because I wanted to prove myself good at programming. When I explain a concept to someone, it’s only to improve my own understanding. When I wake up early and cook something and take it for my colleagues in office, it’s just to show off my culinary abilities. At this rate, it is becoming more and more difficult every day to find new and innovative ways to appear helpful while nurturing a hidden motive behind it.

No wonder I don’t have any friend at work. I have a lot of colleagues, co-workers and companions, but no friends. And I prefer not to have any. Friends are a lot of trouble… they borrow money, want help with work and studies and expect me to accompany them to tea and lunch, to teach them Origami, to call them when they get bored on weekends. Moreover, they get hurt if I say something wrong, and I get hurt when they retaliate. It has happened in the past, and if I’m not careful, it may happen in the future too. So I avoid making friends (except on Orkut). Don’t try to become my friend unless you are ready to run away cut and bleeding soon. As some of my previous ‘friends’ put it, “I have so many friends, but you are the worst one that I have ever met.” One even went on to add that “Looking at your face in the morning spoils my whole day!”

Of course, if you are a former Miss India or something, you can be my friend without any worries. I think the only kind of girls that are worth being friendly with are the beautiful ones. I stay away from all girls that are not good looking (by my definition). After all, if a girl does not have looks, why should I care about her mind? It is true that I have befriended several girls in the past who were not exactly breathtakingly beautiful, but to err is human… I was young and foolish then. I did not consider looks before making friends (though I must confess that all my female friends used to look beautiful in their own way in those days). Not any more. I have learnt from my mistakes now. I’ll not make those again.

I hope this post has made it clear to the readers and especially those around me what kind of a person I am and what to expect from me. This should reduce the number of misunderstandings in the future. After all, though I pretend to be a tough guy, those misunderstandings hurt me as much as, and sometimes even more than, the other person. Better not to have them at all.

Now, coming to the end of this post, I suddenly realize that I have failed to achieve objective 2: the style of this post, though unlike mine, is not a bit like that of the person whose style I set out to copy in the first place. I don’t care. In any case, mine is the only style that is worth copying.

A friend in need is a great nuisance.
Help a person when he is in trouble and he will never forget you, especially the next time he is in trouble.

10 comments:

  1. Well..... i donn wanna comment on ur purposes 4 this blog n whether they hav been achieved or nt but i'll tell u what happens 2 ur kind of ppl......
    They make very less frenz but the frenz they make last a lifetime. Coz the ppl who really understand u will nvr b able 2 stay away frm u. And itz abt the quality n not the quantity.
    Hopefully ur "colleagues, co-workers and companions" r readin my comment!!

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  2. Well this post was not meant for asking comments I guess. Rather it was FYI kind. :-)
    So I am not answering any of your questions or questioning any statement. It is just what I think.

    Before calling somebody a friend you should clarify with yourself first that are you really his / her friend? So after that if you get answer as YES. Then you have to compromise on some points. No body is alike and nobody is perfect(or as you wish/want him/er to be).So cannot expect that the way you are dealing with one friend may work with all others. Yeah there will be times that you need to prove yourself but there may be some friends even after heated exchange or whatever feud they will be the one who will be with you like shadow.

    One thing I learned from my past experiences that you cannot force your opinions on your friends too and you should not too. But friends will listen to you if you are having some good justification do it or you have earned their faith that you cannot be wrong. Friend is one you need not expect money back from him if borrows. same time he also will not wait till you ask for your money.

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  3. Other way you can also say that you need not compromise your views. I have used compromise word with different meaning. Say you need to be bit submissive at the same time to to listen his/er opinions .

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  4. I just feel like making an addition with due respect to Ganguly........
    Ok. Ganguly can play leg-side (atleast try 2... altho he looks very uncomfortable doin it!!) n he can copy Dravid (atleast in the Ads... or off-the-field) BUT
    Ganguly can never do a Dravid in one respect. He can't keep wickets!! Hopefully u r ndrstnding(wink).

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  5. ah..well..now am in a turmoil..i dont know what to say..one way i go with awry when he says that watever frnz u make would last a lifetime..but i also feel that u r not wat u were tryin to potray here..
    this world's a big place nd it is ob that we come across ppl who share diff views..thoughts..have a diff wavelength..and a true friend would be one who,inspite on these differences,accepts you and makes you u realize that u r special..in some way..
    nd i have to know u better to write anythin else..!!

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  6. hi
    ur post seems like a way to give away your anger on something else that happened. I dont know much abt u so I cannot really know the post is true or not but I think this post is a vent to ur frustrations.....
    It feels like GulshanGrover saying 'I am a bad man :)'.....

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  7. @all: Thanks for your comments. As Abhijit said, this post was not really meant for asking comments, but as Satyapriya said, it was a vent to my frustrations.

    @aurindam: Well, I do have friends like you.

    @kadambari: No need to get into a "turmoil" ! :-)
    This post is just a warning to people like you who have come to know me recently, and would probably consider me a friend...

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  8. There is a difference between friends and acquaintances. There are a select few for whom u would be ready to do anything cuz those are the guys who really care for u. All others, i must say, are mere acquaintances, making their presence felt every now and then, be it asking favors or calling u names. And, u shud not be moved by those acquaintances at all.

    PS: If u think u dont have any friends, u r lying to urself. Think again, u would understand why u wrote that in this post.

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  9. And yeah, everything that we humans do is derived from the eventual purpose that it serves for us, one way or the other. There is a narrow boundary between "doing it for ur friend" and "doing it because he is ur friend"

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  10. @rohit mahajan: I said "I don’t have any friend at work"

    I'm sorry if my post hurt you in any way...

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