True Calling and all that

‘You are someone who can buy a camera of 80k and a cycle of 20k. You are someone so chilled out in life. Guys like you should be in an MBA college and having fun. If not for two years then at least for an year’. Ali was talking to me yesterday. I don’t know what made him assume I wasn’t planning to do an MBA at the first place. Almost all these guys with whom or under whom I work with are MBAs. Like Hanuman for example. He is my boss.

After taking up my job last year, I had first met Hanuman in Bhubaneswar. Hanuman had read a lot of my Shitoons because on the first or second day of my joining I had declared that I blogged in my introductory mail. Hanuman had replied back asking me for the link to the blog. I had sent him the link and that’s how he had read a lot of my Shitoons.

‘Your true calling is something else. What are you doing here in consultancy’? He had asked me. I was glad that he was not present when I was being interviewed in the campus a few months ago for this job. I wouldn’t have known what to reply. Or maybe I would have. I might have blurted out some random shit like what ‘appeared’ to be my true calling was only a goddman good hobby and nothing more than that. Actually, I think I did say some random shit like that to some questions from someone on that interview day. All of us say random shit in interviews for consultancy jobs. One can’t be a consultant if one cannot even come with some random shit that sounds pretty convincing and logical and research backed and all that.

So when I first met Hanuman after taking up the job and he asked me this red-ants-crawling-on-your-butt question about true calling and all that, and as I was contemplating on a shitty answer, I somehow felt that Hanuman didn’t quite look like the kind of guy to whom one really needed to throw random shit at. I decided to be nice with him. I think I just smiled in response. I also think that he smiled back and we understood each other.

If you think about it, consultancy never is a true-fucking-calling anyway for anyone. A consultant is a consultant because he / she likes being paid to offer advice to the payer. Almost always the advice comes in the form of WORD or PPT files. Almost always the advice is backed on few complicated and incomprehensible macro enabled Excel Sheets. Almost always the Excel Sheets are filled with data found from Google. Consultancy is very cool as long as you never bother to think too much about it.

The problem with truth is that you never know if it really is the truth. Same goes for true calling. These days, I feel like becoming a writer. Writing funny exotic touching books feels like the true calling these days. I am talking about the kind of books that make the readers cry, puke and wank off at the same time. The kind of books that inspire the readers to run nude in the middle of the night to chase ugly brown coloured skinny street dogs. It would be nice to write a book that sets the world crazy. Living would be more fun that way. I would feel more at home.

Every time I go to a book-shop and see a copy of STAY HUNGRY STAY FOOLISH, I feel very happy. I feel happy about the fact that my art-work is in public display all the time. I think I feel happier than Rashmi herself. Rashmi wrote the goddman book while I only designed the cover. Many ask me what was there to design in there? It is always difficult to explain. I love them who don’t ask anything. And I don’t try to explain anything to them who ask. Rashmi had called up day before. She was in Bhubaneswar. This was weird because while she was in Bhubanewar, giving some lecture in the INFOSYS campus, I was in Ahmedabad, headed towards no other place but her ex-campus – IIMA. No, not to study there but on an official trip.

Anyway, so yeah, I was fooling around in a Crossword yesterday when I noticed a Gujarati Version of SHSF lying somewhere. The cover looked so funny in Gujarati that I felt like picking up the book and screaming ‘Gandhiji ki jai’ right there in the crowded bookshop. I didn’t do that. I picked up an Ahmedabad road-map and a ‘Learn Gujarati in One Month’ instead. Yay – I would now speak Gujarat in 30 days. LOLy doesn’t think so. LOLy knows Gujarati. She went all LOL when I tried some sentences on her and asked me to trash the book. She said I was speaking all rubbish. I told her – ‘garje gadherane bap kaheva pare’, what cannot be cured must be endured. She said I was hopeless. I told her – ‘jyaan sudhi shwaas tyaan sudhi aash’ – while there is life, there is hope. She gave up. Ha ha. Funny life. But yeah, I am kinda lonely when alone and sometimes wish I there was some romance in my life. Let’s see.

PS: this post was written yesterday