Towards the end of a decade, when the ‘flower power’ generation were swinging towards what the rest of society considered normal, a set of parents were eagerly awaiting the birth of their first baby… the flower power seemed to have rubbed off on the baby, coz in later years, it wished it had been born at least a couple of decades earlier… the baby’s maternal grandmother was also eagerly awaiting its birth, since the baby’s mother was the only girl child and so, the granny’s favourite…. the baby was very inconsiderate as it chose a late hour to be born.. but he(yup, was a boy) was quite inclined to come out, and didnt cause much trouble…
a few hours later, he was brought into the room, where he would spend the next few days.. and that was where he was supposed to lie, with little cries in between that were indicators of entry or exit of materials…. but quite apparently, he was an attention freak, for within 24 hours of his birth, he decided to test his destiny and the nerves of his granny…
while his mother slept because of the sedation and his dad was at home for some well deserved sleep, and granny was dreaming of her newborn grandson’s future, he decided to question whether he had a future at all…he just stopped breathing, and within a few seconds, turned blue, scaring his granny out of her wits.. but she wasn’t one to give up without a fight…
in the dead of the night, she ran up three floors, carrying him, searching each floor for a duty doctor/ nurse… she finally found one, and got the equally frightened nurse to force the breath back into him… and was rewarded with a happy gurgle from him, as though a question had been answered…
years later, he still has the blues, albeit of a different kind, and writes about them in his blog… today is his 27th birthday…

until next time, what are you waiting for? wish me…

He was a young man from a small town… born and living in the small town that was his home… his parents had sent him to a good school, and then to a good college in the hope that he would get a good job, marry, give them grandchildren and generally achieve the ‘purpose of his life’… and things were going according to plan till the time he started actively following bollywood, its heroines and the general glitz and glamour… in his final year in college, it started affecting him in a major way..from a shy, unassuming lad, he morphed into a cocky youth who assumed a lot of things, including the love that his beautiful neighbour should feel for him…. and thus began the nights of serenading, bolstered by the fact that he had a good voice and when that didnt give any results, he knew that his studies wouldnt help him anyway, and to realise his dreams, he had to make it big, somewhere, he knew he had to unleash the entertainer within!!
She (not the neighbour above) was a studious young girl, her parents had pinned a lot of hopes on her.. they were very liberal parents, and wanted her to live her life, her way.. and she had her head firmly screwed on to her shoulders…. that was until she heard a certain bollywood singer. she began hero-worshipping him to the point of obsession, and made up her mind that she somehow had to meet him, whatever be the cost.. her interest in her studies dropped, and she was forever listening to him, and making plans to meet him…
and thus it is.. for people like him and her, and others quite similar from them or different from them, they made this (er, something like this)….judged by a forever ‘inspired’ music director, a choreographer turned director, and a singer who’s not sure if he is a singer, an actor or a rockstar, they want their moments in the sun…
billions would watch them..one will win, ten will get offers, hundred will know they have taken a step in the direction, ten thousand will be shattered and may not be able to pick up the pieces… for them, was it worth it??
until next time, is idol worship in??

He was watching her, in fact, he had been watching her for quite sometime now… a week… like with every other ‘contract’ he had in the past, he studied his victim… but this one was not just another victim, this one was the retirement plan.. he was suddenly reminded of the character made famous by Forsyth, in fact, that character had been one of his inspirations to get into this trade… the sheer excitement of having control over someone’s future, and the someone not even having a clue about it… but he quickly pulled his thoughts back, for Forsyth’s character had messed up his own retirement plan..
the person he was watching…. a pretty middle aged woman, who balanced a successful professional life and a stable personal life… her husband was also an extremely successful professional in his chosen field… and the kids were doing very well in college…if his line of work hadnt made him so cold and unemotional, he would have really not wanted to harm this family in any way…but it had…
and so it was , that after intense scrutiny for a week, he had finally spotted the chink in her schedule which would help him make the clean hit, without anyone knowing it, until it was too late… as he waited in the small dark room opposite the building she would be entering in a short while, he thought about success… her success was exactly what was working against her now… she was the key decision maker in a multi billion contract, and the people who had paid him didnt exactly like the way her decisions were going… so they had paid him to make sure that she was removed from her position, forever..
she entered the building, without as much as a glance around, and as he knew she would, went straight to the fourth floor, first apartment on the left… her lover was waiting for her, and they went straight to the master bedroom… again, he knew that and was waiting with his sights fixed on the window.. he wondered how they could be so stupid as to not close the windows.. strange, but that was not his business, and besides, it made things easier for him…
the first shot happened while the last bit of undressing was going on.. and was followed by around 20 shots…… he wanted to make sure…no one saw the tiny sparks of light during each shot… and blissfully unaware of all this, they were on a roll, in more ways than one…
his paymasters were happy with the results.. the woman resigned from her job because she couldnt allow photos of her affair going out in public…and therefore she couldnt take any decisions on the billion dollar contract…the lover was a high profile guy himself and was silent on the whole issue..
and he was happy, he could retire in style… as the best’ contract killer’ in the corporate world…..
until next time, who says shots in the dark dont work??

P.S: happy birthday, wifey…

absolutely an out of the world experience, he thought, that was what he was having here.. peace was the first word that came to mind when he thought of his current lifestyle…he was comfortable with the routine and the rules..and the food, they didnt give you pizzas or chopsuey, they gave you what they thought, and you knew, was good for you… and there was freedom all around, so long as you didnt harm others- in word or deed.
but he wouldnt have thought, even in his wildest of dreams that he would be landing up here, at the zenith of his professional life… all the targets, launches, conferences, hirings and firings, wild parties, wilder women.. all seemed such a long time ago..that was the professional life…
on another front, there was a loving wife, who understood him.. though in their final days together, their communication was nil…. he somehow felt that it had something to do with her affair with their common friend, the doc…all those secret meetings and phone conversations and the secret glances (even when he was around) seemed to suggest that.. hell, towards the end, he even felt that she was trying to flush him out of her life, like the shit she considered him to be…
sometimes he felt that his friends and relatives knew long before him that he would be giving up his ‘wild’ life and coming here.. they hadnt mentioned it to him… but they all seemed to agree with his wife when she suggested it to them..thats what one of his friends had told him, when he also landed up here… he had known she was behind it, but he had played along, even when the place didnt turn out to be what she claimed it to be ..
she was happy now, well, so was he, for he was far from the madding crowd…. he wouldnt change a thing, but somewhere deep inside, , he knew there was some little thing that had gone wrong somewhere, because he had brief patches of missing moments, and yeah, he hated those shock treatments, he wondered what they did that for…
until next time, dont get mad, get odd…

The talk in the cafateria had scared him slightly… everyone was wondering how long this would last.. here they were, just out of college, earning at the start of their careers, more than what their parents did at the end of theirs, enjoying a lifestyle that their parents couldnt have dreamed of, and generally living life to the fullest…
those were the good bits…but the flip side of it was you became a nocturnal creature ( well, depending on the country the client’s audience resided in, the hours varied).. he had heard there were even some local outfits that worked during the day, who dealt with an indian audience, but the pay was pretty bad and besides, they didn’t get free language training, which was a perk he enjoyed… and in case he decided to go there, he would have to unlearn …uhuh, no way, he thought!! besides, he would never get to play the characters he got here… wasnt that what he did everyday, assuming a character who matched the expectations of the audience he was talking to… maintaining a conversation with people he hadn’t seen and would perhaps never see.. pretending to look outside the window and seeing the snow falling( hell, he had never seen snow) or autumn leaves or the colors of the spring.. and generally being someone he wasnt, and would perhaps, never be…he knew most of the people who he dealt with realised all this, but so long as he put up a good front, they were cool with it….
but he wondered how soon all this would start reflecting on his persona.. his language was already a problem with his friends and parents…sometimes he felt frustrated, writing about stuff he had no interest in, replying to comments made by the clients’ audience… maintaining conversations in shoutboxes and tagboards…
he wondered whether the second wave of BPOs would have happened at all – if blogging hadnt become a craze, and once people started, it hadn’t become so addicitive, and after sometime there wasnt a burnout, and in spite of the burnout, people didnt want their blogs to go on.. but all this, did happen, thats why he had a job…
Blogs & Posts Outsourcing, he wondered if this had a future at all!!
until next time, ride the wave….