Firang

Today She-Boss is wearing maroon lipstick not pink and she is suited booted with heels so high I always feel she is standing on a ladder when I look at her from my cubicle.
So I know she is meeting with some firang lawyer. She is walking fast, and actually reviewing what we have draft. She is also smiling at us, so now I think it is like those test-teachers (B. Ed.) ones who would be really nice to the class coz they knew the examiner could walk in any time.
[PS I don't mean to be mean but I think for formal meetings some women are best wearing a heavy-sari like Banarsi or something. Otherwise they run the risk of looking bit like hinjraas. I mean not like we go to some law firm in California and Angelina Froster is there wearing a sari, all smiling. It is too much.]

A Serious Post

Every two minutes I realize how important my work is. Deals are sealed on the basis of our work. Like a vigilant vigrin, we can't afford to nurture the foetus of a litigation in any document we sign. That is why we are good lawyers.
We sell perfection.
That is why I want to clarify that if you see any typos or para misalignments on my blog, please do not take it as an index of my professional skills. I did start a law blog once but noone visited it, like the cubicle of an unpopular guy.
I feel that we all work hard (atleast in our respective opinions) and we deserve a healthy break to smile and laugh.
Especially when in front of our computers so people around us see us happy and think we are getting all the best assignments, and all the credit too.

HR Initiative

Visit the Blogger Zoo in New Delhi on the weekend! Find out who'll be there by rapid Googling and hyperlink clicking and/or on Shareaplan.

Con call

Issue:

A conference call is on in the next hour. I have to bare myself for an orgy of egos. One will say something. The other voice will repeat the same point in different words. This other voice will begin the sentence with a BUT to confuse us into believing that he is making a fresh point.
The third voice will then try to stake ownership of this same tired point (and also prove to himself that he is not needlessly compliant like a nayee bahu): "That is what I was saying na, that is what I have been saying from that day only."

After 9 OKs (each will say OK three times, as if it's rude to say it once), the decision is now made about when the next con call will be.



Analysis:
I think these Group Discussions as entrance requirements to B-schools should be banned. The culture for scissoring thin air starts from there for our banker clients, and never leaves like an STD and that's why we lawyers also get infected and the orgy is always on.


Opinion:
Choots

I am at TC today, trying to compensate youth with riches

I've been invited to hang out at T.C.'s on Shareaplan by a friend. Atleast I have one friend.
Anyway, if you are someone I may know or may want to know (not in the Maine Pray Kiya way with a black cap emboridered Friend) then leave a comment with your email.
It's true that on this site events are listed anyway but it's much nicer to invite and be invited, right? You have a life, right? I mean, who will randomly sign on to an event and say Hi, I am -, My hobbies are- .
Unless it's like a coffee meet, a book reading, something. Not a night club/"disc."

Today someone told me a word that I felt scared about.
Asexual.
Not homo, no thank you, I do not flap my fingers when I talk.
Asexual is when you don't need a man or a woman.

"How can you not need a girlfriend," a friend at some vague law firm tells me at a bar, a hookah stuffed in his mouth.
I did not tell him the waiter had carried the hookah straight from the mouth of some giggling Punjabi aunty on the next table, who was slapping the thighs of some other aunty. The hookah is jootha.

Aunties were still laughing, holding their blouses as if their breasts would pop out if they laughed any harder.

"Hooka hee to hai," she was saying, implying Aunty No 2 was behaving like it was a dick or something.

Anyway, so after 2-3 "listen to me, dude" and 1 full-white, full-cold Chardonay later, he said I was asexual.

"No, my Hero," I wanted to say, "I am having a threesome with your girlfriend and sister." I wanted to say. In fact I was so drunk, I think I did say it. In fact I even told him my salary though he had been trying to get it out of me for many months, since March I think. Coz he knows if he knows my salary he knows the salary of 30 others. I know about confidentiality etc. but I wonder if inebriation is a defence. Perhaps it is an offence of itself. Fuck.

Anyway, Karan is not the kind of guy I want to be seen with. He's too curious and not working hard to afford the things he wants such as a fridge full of foreign chocolates, foreign booze, foreign degrees, foreign gobi like brocolli.
He isn't even mailing his resumes. He expects a personal invitation by our Super-Boss for an interview coz "everyone is leaving in your firm." Idiot.

He calls himself a Bombay-boy, rides a bike that looks ike a ladies' moped (he says thin is in, please have you seen a Harley? I like thin only for women's bodies and cell phones. And iPods. Nothing else. Not even legal opinions.]

AND he lives outside of south Delhi, and says "shaane" often which I am told cool people from south Bombay never use.

And he dares to say someone who works hard at a top law firm is asexual.

Debentures

Dance-dance, drink-dance, drink-drink

At this dance-club, I didn't know what to do. Young crowd of boys, all with shirts half-tucked out, wearing all their sisters' dowry jeweley, unshaved, looking like someone has slapped them thirty times.
I could not move my head at the music beat because that also felt odd. To make it worse, I got burnt by a thin girl's cigarette stub and screamed Ow! like she had pinched my body part.
Some 19 year old with dyed hair stared at me, thinking he was Jonny Depp.
Anyway, all this is a big hassle.

It is like that old Amul ad
I am too old
To wear a necklace
Too young to
Have a paunch
But I think I'm just right
For an expensive beer.

Stuff

Coffee and Conversation, a few good-looking single women (lawyers, journalists, tax-people) and a few men in relationships. Which is always a good deal. I will be on Shareaplan more, maybe even organize a small tea-party. Fuck, that sounds gay. Like a "let's meet for drinks at K." and send it to 6 people who can bring along their friends.
The possibilites are endless. Oh, and the networking isn't bad too- which is the official justification.

Anyhow none of them know I have a URL so I'm writing. So we had a great chat, the kind that makes you think, OK now I know a person better, and like him, and not feel all weird around him etc. After we left the women (who knew each other only mildly before) left together.

I don't understand this habit of women leaving together. For the bathroom, all stuffed in a car or auto. I hear many professional women share beds with roomates and it's all cute and fine, throw in nine teddy bears.
I can't imagine sharing a bed with a man, I wouldn't be able to sleep all night in oddness.

Chooha is sedated today, was walking alone in the morning on the street. Very slowly, like one does in an office corridor. He looked self-conscious. Maybe he has come to know I look at his white face from the verandah.
Tujhe chaand ke bahaane deekhon
To chaat pe aaja kudiye rang meriye
I look a little like Dilip Kumar but Chooha doesn't look like Waheeda.

A Model Employee

Almost-Partner teased me in front of a pretty intern, about my tie. How it was yellow, as if I was Elvis. Like your teeth which you are showing me, I wanted to say, and spill coffee on his face like how women in Bold and Beautiful splashed wine on faces when they were angry.

I don't remember Elvis in a tie, leave alone a yellow tie but I guess his brains thought to say Elvis would mean someone loud and idiotic. Some MTV avtaar of Elvis he must have seen. I wish Chooha was here.

To make up for the insults over machine-made coffee, I am thinking of sending the intern a mail to show how posh my mind really is. It is something I would say even to my son, before he steps into the workforce. Nothing cute or saracstic, ironical or anything bad.

Dear [Intern],
Good work on the [reasearch.] Here is an extract of one of my all-time favorurite poems. It's about a model employee.

" Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,

Deferential, glad to be of use,

Politic, cautious, and meticulous;

Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;

At times, indeed, almost ridiculous—

Almost, at times, the Fool."

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T.S. Eliot
***
Nice, na? And the "all-time favourite" implies I know atleast three more poems. This one isn't even from ICSE, it's from the Net.

Blockage

Chooha's tail is on fire today. I sawe him from my balcony every morning.
Running here, running there, back and forth, back and forth, with his two-dimensional kutta. Always carrying a bottle of water, drinking, drinking.
He asked me yesterday about "bans" and if things will get hostile for firangs. So he knows about blogs, saalaa chooha.
Anyway, so I said they may, especially if Yahoo and Gmail and all are blocked. Even Hotmail.
The idea then is, to move terrorism offline I said, massaging his back. He shifted positions, and laughed, more like a bark, as if he had picked it up from his kutta. Haha.
Since then things are a little odd between us and I caught him avoiding eye-contact.

Chooha's Dog

Chooha has a kutta. I don't know from where he bought it but it looks like a foreign dog. Yeah, yeah, I know the breeds. I know that the Airtel dog is a pug for example.
But this dog is something unique. It looks two dimensional, so thin. Sometimes I think he is pulling along a cardboard cutting with a string.
Don't ask me how I know. Some commenters are so suspicious. How are you reading this blog? I am also suspicious.
Anyway, turns out Chooha in my neighbour, and I can see him going for a walk in the morning with this kutta.
And in Chooha's cubicle, there are photos of this kutta taken from all angles, like the dog is Nutan or Madhubala or something. Really, these people overdo things.
He and this odd-looking dog in one apartment, it must be so strange for the maid-servant.

Conversation

I went to Cafe Turtle yesterday and drank some coffee with refreshing conversation.I like the colors of that cafe-deep blue. It makes you feel peaceful.
It felt cool to talk to people about things outside of work, and some were known faces some new. One or two good-looking girls, but one asked me if I was gay. Anyway, atleast she is straight-forward. I said no, and she smiled like an "it's OK" and then talked to the other guys and girls at the table but kept giving me sly smiles.
What a strange lady-lawyer. Anyway, she was nice and I know her email, blog and all. We will stay in touch, maybe meet again in a similar event next event.
The place is full of firangs, man. Firangs with babies. What happened to the hippies we used to see when we were young innocent kids? These firangs seem to have proper jobs, proper wives, and proper prams. That too in India.

Chooha- The Foreign Exchange Associate

Chooha (Joshua) smiles all day. What he does, God only knows. What is this exchange program I don't know, fucking swingers.
I said FEMA, check FEMA and he smiled in a way that said- actually I want to laugh at you but I am only smiling. You know, sucking his stomach and mouth pursed a bit too much.
These firangs only think about sex, I hope he doesn't think Fema is some female contra...
Another mistake I made was asking him for a pencil and rubber. Fucking firangs are so perverted: one-track mind. Again Chooha smiled his eyes half-closed like he was dying to breathe or laugh. Then I remembered in some Star TV serial I had seen the fellow say rubber for condom.
These choots can't think of anything else. Even I can act smart, next time he asks "Pen?" with his threaded eyebrows raised I will say "Pen is... pen is..." and start tapping the table, the area close to his elbow.
Stuipd fellow, can't keep to himself, that is his problem.

Blondie

A blonde lawyer is in the office, and the girl-associates are walking slower, hoping he catches them on their corridor stroll. He's a good-looking fellow (from a girl's point of view ofcourse), curly black hair, squae jaw and gym-body. Tall smiley fellow. Feel like slapping him. I asked his name hoping it would be Dick, that would be funny, but it was Joshua something. Rhymes with chooha.

I Return (Wearing my underwear inside, unlike SM.)

I'm back. Sue me. But a more muted version, like a nayee bahu.
Any of you in Delhi, and want to meet a few random lawyer and media people for coffee at Turtle Cafe? It's at 6 pm, this Sunday.

Last Post

This is my last post as Happy Associate in Mumbai.
I am scared it will erode my credibility as a lawyer. I am also scared people will misinterpret this.
I am a lawyer and want to continue to be one.
I spoke to a few friends, and yeah, it's a Bad Idea, this blog.

My First Handshake (Nothing Romantic, Please)

A new Almost-Partner has joined the firm. He wears shiny shoes, and I imagine him in a tutu, impressing, entertaining, the perfect moves, an audience, working.
Tatata turratata tatata turrarata
Then Almost-Partner extended his hand to me. I don't know what I was expected to do. It wasn't lusty, like Semi-Senior's lusty grab, it was more like how village grandmothers press hands of first grandsons.
But when my skin touched his, his fucking hand was so slithery, it slipped away.
My first reaction was to say arre filsal gaya, pakro then I was like fuck what shit I am thinking. Mid-air his hang hung (post-slipping), and I didn'y know whether to reconnect our fingers or to just talk about some office poilitcs and pretend the hand-shaking had never started.
But Almost-Partner's hard remained at that awkward place, like an old woman falling on a street legs up, waiting to be picked.
Just when I thought OK whatever let me complete the handshake, She-Boss walked by. Now she would thinks I was doing funny things with this Almost-Partner, trying to hold hands and what not, then the next stage would be beer-drinking after work.
So in the next three minutes, I had to think of a clever joke about him to quickly say behind his back. "If Almost-Partner knew as much law as he knows politics, he would be a real lawyer," I told She-Boss, and she dug a jootha fork into her tiffin-box and offered me a brown apple.

Love

I love female lawyers who blog.
I love female lawyers.
I love females.

Speaking of love, I've seen some hate mail sent by my client to Semi-Senior. When Semi-Senior was away at lunch I climbed onto his Outlook, and typed a nasty reply back to her, and deleted the Sent folder. It said, "Go vent somewhere else and talk to me properly- saalee battameeze."

Wax

Semi-Senior asked me if I waxed my chest. I said, "Like in everything else, you should know the answer better."
No, just joking, give me a break. I WISH I had had that but I have more political sense.
And he asked me this in a group of giggling (male) i-bankers. Just imagine.
Or a better answer can be," I don't know but everyone knows YOU do, Semi-Senior because breasts looks nicer when shaven."
I hope he says it again in another meeting, and I will say this exact line. Fucking dicklet. It's time to imagine him in a sari again, heaving his chest like an extra in a Govinda song.

?

I posted on VentCafe, and in the comment some dick decided to woo another woman. I had thought I can use blogs to get laid, if not this one (it is unpopular with a few women who read it anyway) then on blogs where I can show myself as a miserable, money-hating person who could be man, woman or child, he's just a soul with a penis fastened securely.

She-Boss

"E you es-stupid!" This new She-Boss said to a secretary. "Why did you dial the Super-Boss' number when I told you to dial for peeza? You wanted to ask him also or what?"
"Sorry madam, number got mixed," the secretary said, bending like a walking stick. "Very sorry."
If she DARES to es-stupid me, I steal her phones and send cheap sms messages to the same secretary. "Aaj bahot acche lag rahe ho: picture chalo ge?"