Prose before hos

Do you ever just feel like along with all your devices, you should be able to charge yourself against the wall before your next usage? 

I've been feeling that way. One vacation was wicked; wicked as hell. Now I've got the taste of what's it like when you're disconnected and in paradise and now I want more. 

I've been taking these little menty-b walks to fill my chest with air outside the stress I'm inhaling during working hours. I've had the strongest urge to restart smoking and quit Diet Coke for good. Among other notable realisations, I've come to the following conclusions—

The greatest brainstorming session I have in the day is not in front of the gaming console or TV (truth be told, I'm not spending as much time as I'd like against either). It is on the track. 

I'm inching very, very close to hating on my day job so we are headed towards 2017-2018 self. The focus will be on physical health and will have to fuck the mental health at work now as a personality. I'm going to be making terrible decisions and heading towards a big ass breakdown in the next three quarters. Excited for my growth!!!!!! (unless the work circumstances change radically or I miraculously land a new job in a different country—both of which are highly unlikely). 

The more glamorous your work profile, the more cunty your day gets. I refuse to elaborate on this. 

I'm living through the fondest memories from this year through fragrances. Actually, strike that, for the last four years. I'm down to the last few drops of this Cherry Blossom perfume I carried with me to Europe and every time I spray that during work, I'm transported to the Shard, having the time of my life. 

Much to my dismay, I've become a football girlie. Is it Taylor or is it me or is it Ted Lasso? The devil's in the details but I can confidently say it's not a man. 

Three words that put the fear of god in me aren't "I Love You." They're something even scarier, a question full of hope.

If you can't feign a guess let me give that one right up (because it's 12:50 am on a Friday and I am feeling sick after all the Pork Bulgogi I'm not used to eating anymore).

Let's schedule meeting?





No. Never. 

Incase you didn't get that, I hate meetings. More than I hate Coldplay and F.R.I.E.N.D.S or Butter Chicken. I still think a band like Coldplay offers something. A meeting, on the other hand, doesn't offer crap. It is a construct to eat into your time and make you feel real silly by the end of it. A meeting is as useless as eating bad momos, or using toilet paper over health faucet. Nobody cares about toilet paper. It hurts, okay?

Attendance in meetings is just as painful as living with a butthole after exposing it to the coarse texture of the toilet paper. Meetings that go on anything more than twenty minutes hurt more than toilet paper on arse, after three days, if you have used water all your life.

Toilet papers are the worst. I digress but I hate the idea of meetings just as much as I hate using toilet paper.

Meetings are the curse of mankind. In a hierarchy pyramid of the worst kind of urban torture imposed on healthy, sane adults, meetings are parallel to the idea of self actualization. The parties involved in the success of a meeting know everything, the case, its symptoms and the diagnosis but yet are reticent. They will insist upon wasting your time and their time on company's time and take you through some real banal shit while you dream on about the cruise vacation you could afford if you picked up a shit, mindless writing job in some obnoxious corner of Delhi NCR. Sure, you'd lose your clients and your residence's proximity to work, but you'd gain in money and money can buy you a trip to Lake Como.

Wait, we are still at the meeting.

Successful meetings have a thing in common. The parties involved never digress. They come together, find solutions and keep the negative away (haha, suck it Maya Angelou). However, most meetings like real people have flaws and they always fucking digress. Nice dress, where's it from to Haha can you please not use images of kids, maybe it will prevent a known sexual predator from Croatia to not show up in India to find that kid to sexually molest, everything comes in together, in betwene work and camaraderie.

All in good spirit. Just as how meetings are.

Off late, I realized I considered the attendance of meeting as highly successful adults brainstorming to change the world and make it a better place.

However, as someone who gets regular emails from people to have a meeting, let me break your bubble and say no. Meetings are the biggest professional lie that HR initiated for people to feel welcome and loved in the organizational setup. Nobody cares for you and certainly wants you, especially the youngest employee forced to be sitting there, who could really be online shopping feverishly, just as much as her neighbour on probation does.

Where was I? Meetings, yes.

Meetings are also painful when they're set without your consent and you're just expected to be there.

You can't be kidding me Srishti? You'd like me to meet your clients and your hotel and your boyfriend all on the same day which happens to be the weekend? Who are you and why should I even do this for you? 

In my limited tenure of professional bullshit, there's not been a single meeting where we discussed stuff which came in handy. Sure, I have initiated meetings and yes, hypocrite of me to request to be a part of some of them. However, they made up since there was emotional compensation such as food involved or there's some person whose presence made up for it- a boss who was supportive, a colleague who scribbled on my notebook, "you've lost weight. You look skinnier than ever" or even facts that made me say, "HA! IN YOUR FACE ASSHOLE".

Largely, it's been the last point.

Meetings are vindictive in nature. Since there's no font for Sarcasm yet, we have meetings to make up for being snarky.

I think that's more than enough rant and a mental preparation for me prepare myself for a Meh-ting Monday which involves two back to back meetings. No amount of good/bad weather walk or Tequila shots can help ease the pain. Talking about the problem, however, does a lot of good.

Me-ting me soon, are you?

If it can be counted as a past-time, then my favourite would be listening to my grandfather discuss his professional work life with me. 

If there's anything I hate more than being "Hmm"-ed at, it's being acknowledged for kindness. Especially when there's no way out but to be kind and being a fucking human for once.

You could say, I (I being Snobster) hate humanizing myself. You could also say, "There, there. It's okay to be a human once." But let me tell you, it's not.

To be human, is to be fucking weak. Put on a show where you wear your heart and take it out and display it to everyone. Look ma, I got a heart that works just as good as anyone else's. It's brand new, shiny and definitely in mint condition.

That's where the problem begins. When you're kind and show your heart on regular basis, it's prone to wear and tear. When you're me (by that I mean, heartless slab of stone), displaying signs of being human can be a setback to oneself.

The opposite of corporate clients are NGOs. My new, favourite topic, that I'm beginning to realize is literally poles apart from working for a corporate ho. These NGOs are the new bone of contention in my life, they are responsible for my employers paying for my weekend special white bread slice slathered with salted butter. I've been working on a new project which involves me liasing with these organizations and quite literally, touching the radioactive material ie emotions, kindness, reality and grassroot level problems that people deal with, to make lives better for those who are less than #blessed.

Imagine this, you're sitting at work. Hating everyone and everyone hating you back, while you dabble sending cold email after the other.

"Please send the content."

"Please send the content." x25870

Until the moment the phone next you to rings, a man very politely requests for you. Once you claim that it's indeed you, he proceeds in the most empathetic manner to request for an extension of two hours for submission of the said content.

"We haven't had electricity in two days, our devices are not charged. It will be very kind of you if you could please give us the liberty to submit it late by a couple of hours. We would be more than grateful."

"Please take 48 hours, my kidney and liver and all the stuff I bought from Thailand."

I shouldn't cut onions when I'm at work, or infront of my Mac, or even when I'm planning to write.

The 48 hour deadline came to an end this evening, and even before I could react (and believe me, I'm on acid when it comes to chasing deadlines), the man shared three emails with content. The landline rang for the 67th time today and it was him again,

"Hello Ma'am, I wanted to thank you for giving us two extra days. It was very kind of you. You see because of Diwali, our village gets less supply of electricity than usual and we do not have ample time to charge our devices and finish our chores that require electricity. This extension helped us immensely. I wanted to thank you again for this, and also I hope you've received the content. We shared it 10 minutes back."

Drat, onion chopping again.

Here's pretending that I'm unaffected by emotions, that Twitter is dead (according to a colleague who was popular on Twitter when Twitter was popular) and that I'm spending my weekend far away from emotions at a virgin beach with a Piña Colada and a plate of curly fries.

Dear Photographers,

Why must you insist on making everyone's lives miserable around you? I see you with gaudily dressed couples who insist on crossing the road in front of my car when I am heading towards Kasturba Gandhi Marg from India Gate. I judge you, and not the couple, for the road opposite KG Marg doesn't even have the best view for pre-wedding photography. Yet, you insist on taking the poor couple at there at the crack of the dawn. Who even wants to see a couple canoodle at India Gate? Can we let that be for when they have children and run out of options to entertain them? Do you have no respect for the martyrs? Hashtag soldiers are dying at the border and you're minting money.

What is this attitude of calling people to ask for work/payment at 18:51 pm? Some of us poor sods who were not confident enough to call ourselves photographers ended up getting a desk job. You know what's a desk job? It's a verb (I think) or should I ask Kasturi Roy for clarification. The kind where you sit and work for eight hours straight (yes, I will continue to make Instagram stories and be more productive than you and your ugly partner combined). The same kind of desk job that commissions you and pays for your "lunch" bill at the deceptively named Bombay Canteen. I seriously begin to question the existence of my honorary ball sack each time I encounter people like you. I am too terrified to even take Nathu's Sweets bill for redeeming at work. Here you are with your 12% VAT and 10% service tax on Truffle Oil laden side of Fries with Keema Chorizo Pav and Spinach Asparagus cooked with Hand Crafted Egg Noodles' cheque for clearance for one shoot.
I don't know whether to laugh or to cry at the fact that my salary can't pay for a meal like that and your skills can't save you in an organization where art truly matters, but we can't always be ungrateful now, can we?

I digress, but after a long, pathetic day of work (where my colleague and I were, in all likelihood, passive aggressive towards each other over some banality in our ways of working) you expect me to take your call and motherfucking brief you on my projects and ask you about your life. (No, I am sorry. I am not the authority on releasing payments. You know who does that? The person whose ass you insist on licking. Please follow it up with them). 

I wish I had the balls to pull such stunts as you do. And get away with them. I can only wish.

In my mind, these are akin to the stunts that trained professionals perform at on your television screen at home. That advertisements you proceed to skip on your Tata Sky? Those produced by some person at an agency who gets bare minimum to live by conceives that idea and makes sure it's paid for by the company. Those stunts can be comparable to yours. The kind where you ignore the brief, stomp your foot at me by shouting in all caps, "I AM THE PHOTOGRAPHER. I AM THE AUTHORITY. I AM THE KING OF THE UNIVERSE. I AM LOKI, MOTHERFUCKERS." You get my point?

One of the greatest reasons why I absolutely hate my school with added fervour is when I see professionals with the attitude such as this and I wonder, why did Sr Ivy nip me in the bud when I tried behaving like a deviant in grade XII? Did you really have to live up to your name Sister?

Too personal?

How about, why am I being a motherfucking professional and smiling through it all?
I don't know. There are things I don't know. Much like you, who's the photographer and yet calls me up to ideate the photograph for you, draw a mood board, send you the products, click a reference shot and even send that across.

I really didn't think I'd be drawing storyboards in a publishing house. One of the reasons for not pursuing filmmaking was to walk away from it. Yet, here we are and here I am, doing 90% of your work and taking all 200% of your bullshit and getting paid .23% of what you're making in this.

Do you think I'm going to sympathize with you and your kind?

As someone who was taught "hustling", "being observant" and "jumping" to take that aim at the film school, I look down upon morons like you. Call yourself a "visual thinker", an "artiste", a "photographer" or custodian of art, your confidence is that of a person who's written a mathematics exam very well knowing that you can't pass that, no matter what. I say this because I very well know where you're coming from. I may have even been the same person myself. Cover up the lack of your art and skill in the guise of being too good at it. I did it for years in academia until someone showed me my place. Self-awareness comes complimentary with an MPhil degree.

What would I like for you to do?

I would sincerely request you to shove it up your ass and suck your pride. It would be great if people could be taught skills, humility and professionalism at schools instead of "Prairie is a grassland" and "Zaire has amazing crops".

Just take a moment and look at what shit you're sending out. Ask yourself before taking a motherfucking photograph- is this good enough? Will it serve any purpose? Is it what my client asked? Is the Pope Catholic? Do bears lurk in the woods?

Ask whatever it takes for you to understand you are a speck of dust in the larger scheme of things. In the universe. The art you make, the pictures you take might out live you (I can't say for sure in case of digital). However, here we are and here's your work. If you truly take pride in something which 20 people deem shit, maybe it's time you look again and see. If you are 100% sure about your work then maybe it's time you're dealing with the wrong people. Maybe you're a Van Gogh of this generation. Maybe we are all fools.

However, in all likelihood we are right.

You should consider going to a film school/photography equivalent. Go back, learn the basics. There's nothing wrong in doing that. You'll only get better.

Also, would be great if you could keep that attitude that home. It would save harried professionals like me our writing time and we can focus on a game of Ludo instead.

Definitely, not looking forward to seeing more of your work and hi-res images at that.

All crap,
S

Everyone has a dark secret, that usually never sees the light of the day. I have my fair share too. But the only one I'm willing to admit publically concerns my work.

I fucking love formal emails.

I absolutely love how cold and brutal you could be with a single, helpless "Hi". Used in isolation, it can be anything- a precursor to "I'm drunk and in the mood to eat with you." or accompanying introductions that can last a lifelong impression on your mind. You would not imagine but one of my "Hi" once preceded this sentence, "I was like a peacock in college. Really out there, you know?"

Needless to say, I never heard again from the person.

(It's a miracle he didn't file a restraining order against me after that.)

When you take that "Hi" and place it in a formal email, so much can change. Don't get me wrong but a "Hello" simply doesn't cut it. Neither in seniority nor in the tone. A "Hi" is a shapeshifting, classless, gender neutral way of wanting to show yourself to someone. Do you hate someone but want to be nice for like 2 seconds? "Hi". You almost, always read with in a tone that isn't reserved for someone you hate, yet, the content following that could be injurious to health. Please do not use tobacco.

Formal emails turn me on. The more curt and formal they are, the better their purpose is. You know the emails which are all about negotiation for money? They're my absolute favourite. You negotiating with a future employer, a client, an agency, a cuntlet- anyone- you start with a tone curt "Hi" and you know you fucking mean business.

One of my favourite former colleagues gave me this rule of thumb- never address people as "Dear" so and so. She literally peered into my eye and told me, "Hey, we don't do this here? Okay? It's good to learn it at this stage."

I don't usually take no for an answer, especially if that comes from a colleague I've known for less than a week. There I was, a proud motherfucker who made it to that job purely by my talent and here I was, listening to her.

It's a miracle but SrishG and I are friends, despite that conversation. It's simple. Nobody deserves anything more than a "Hi". It's the right measure of fun, formal and fearless and at the same time, just about good for anything- a meal, wedding proposal, hooking up, work, awkward drunk texting which is asexual but oh so fun. You get the drift?

It's not just the "Hi" though, that does it. It's also the power dynamics that play out. If there's one thing, I LOVE about a formal desk job, it's got to be writing emails. I'm as obsessed with them, as I am with playing Ludo at the moment. For a reference, I end up playing online Ludo from 7 pm - 4 am and back from 7 am - 9 am- in essence, all the hours I spend outside of work. The ones spent at work- are all about my second vice- emails.

When I started the current job I'm at, I used to call a senior colleague and she would make me re-write the whole bloody text thing in my emails. I know not what bothered her more, my urge to ask multiple questions and uncomfortable things or just the sheer language. She takes about an hour draft every mail she sends out, annoyingly clicks on the mouse a million times, making sure my patience depletes if I am working with her. Today when I look back, I wonder where's that person who could tolerate that shit for an hour and still be smiling.

I also believe, writing emails is severely underrated work of art. It's something that should be taught as compulsory curriculum in school, as a part of a subject titled "Work Etiquettes". Say what you may, my convent education leads me to believe this shit is critical for people., This one time recently, Meggy told me about someone from our class who asked her for some contacts. "She doesn't have the manners to say "Hi". I'm not sharing anything with her!", something I completely subscribe to. There are too few people in the world who know how this is done and how to respond. My dad obviously isn't a writer but he too had a feedback to share, "You should always write one line emails. Never commit to anything more."

Well, that's the first you'll hear of my father. For one, he's not a writer and for the second, he belongs to the school of "Dear", where if one writes "Hi" or "Hey", his corporate etiquettes tell him the person is being rude.

Later in the course of my work, I was given a simple lesson on the "voice" of the work mails. In one of the smartest things (and probably the only one) my employer taught me during a meeting was how to frame work mails. He suggested I channelizing the voice of the employer itself. While that individual is usually calm, I'm angry. I'm livid. I'm also in shock at the sheer incumbency of people and their attitude to work.

To one of our clients, I'd written an acidic, almost an equivalent of a hate mail. The client in question wanted some changes in the file, which had been done a month ago. Clients being clients were living with the image of the stereotypical tarts- an absolute cunt. My employer laughed (something which I think was so sweet now) at my written responses. He told me to calm my tits and write as a sane, level headed person would (both of which, I think he believes I'm not). If all goes well, we'll close the project soon. I may not have agreed to his idea then, but a fortnight later, I think his strategy really worked. An outtake for life, most definitely.

Whether you're a corporate ho or a college rookie or even just drunk and getting back home on this Friday evening, one thing is for sure. Your shining degrees, your slam poetry, your property papers have got nothing whatsoever on my swagger of sending formal emails.

There's nothing quite like a person who can send you a crisp, curt and formal email to turn you on. Nothing else beats a "Hi" and all that it can possibly lead to.

What do you do when you wake up on the wrong side of luck?

I always believed that Midas was a dumb muthafucka. That man gave away his power for his inability to control it. He was literally daft not actually employing people to do all the 'touching' on his behalf. I mean, the man had the resources to hire two people (with legit four hands) to do all the 'touching' for him. For Pete's sake, he could touch turd and make it into solid gold. I hope it was all 22 carat and that he paid his employees in his gold turd (remains of gold biscuits turn to the gold turd, geddit?).

Yet, he chose to exit that wonderful blessing (or whatever power) he was granted exclusive access to. I've heard many a version of that man cursing his luck for being blessed (hashtag blessed like all Delhi teenagers) to turn everything into gold, yet, he cribbed so much that someone wrote a whole fucking fable about him.

Where was I? My luck.

I'm the opposite of Midas. Whatever I touch, it turns to turd. Throw a gold biscuit my way for sample. Address on request.

You throw a project proposal, complete with everything in order and favourable conditions and I will give you back a mess, which can neither be evaded nor destroyed. I've a great example but I'd like to believe people from work are reading this and I'm on tenterhooks (I've been informed). Right now won't be the best time.

If I believe I've found love, it often always turns out to be a gastritis attack. You know, in my head, which clears as I proceed to tell the second of my three friends about it. The man literally becomes one with the ether, leaving sulphuric after effects of his presence. Or, as the doctors refer to it in science, farts.

If I think, there's no better negotiator than me, an agency will show me my place by ignoring my phone calls, messages, sweet nothings, angry everything, only to respond in the first instance a senior colleague writes to them. So much for me being the loyal client and insisting on going back to the damn agency.

Just when I think, I'm gold with not consuming carbs and processed food and refined sugar, I get pissed drunk and stoned and book a ticket to Pune. I eat crap for three solid meals for over three days and come back to eat at McDonald's because shit it's shutting down. WHATTODO?

First, I don't drop any inches or kilos for two fucking months and just when I feel that starts to happen, I start to binge eat again.

"How's the peanut chocolate? I didn't like the milk coated in rice crispies one. Oh, you don't want yours?" Fuck people distributing food in offices. That shit should have gotten over with celebrating birthdays in school and having pineapple cakes at birthdays. Those two things are legitimately stuff of past.

On a different note, I don't get people who bring back goodies from their vacation, to work. First, you get the privilege to fuck off for a while (lucky cow), then you return to rub it in everyone's face by distributing chocolate or some such to the entire fucking office because you had a gala time, while some of us were stuck in the office with people who believe are finding the cure to cancer.

That's HR's idea of no appraisal, but how about refined sugar and cocoa as vacation leftovers? You get something for being a good girl and sticking around all Summer. Did you see their pictures from Cancun? Oh, how stunning!

There's also not getting beef samosas, beef steak burger and patrani macchi, but I think a Facebook status was more than enough rant about turning my life into turd. I literally booked a return ticket to eat those things and got none of that. Instead, I drank calories in the form of a Thumps Up (which I could have done at home, thank you very much), battled body odour, and cringed at the idea of unclean bedsheets, a pet peeve I never let go since I found this friend's sibling and her boyfriend were having sex on the mattress they had lend me during a trip.

There's also my words here. I write about people and their behaviour towards me turns turd-like.

Instead of people being grateful that I'm immortalising their ridonkulously boring asses on my blog, there are those insufferable, arrogant bastards who look at me like I've infected them with AIDS. Well, if you think you're better, then make yourself better. You are literally a lot more pathetic than my words make you sound like. And, to be honest, writing about you is like doing charity. My right hand does not approve of what my left hand makes you sound like but a girl's gotta live. And write.

It's Friday and it's my writing night tonight. Time to burn bridges and turn gold into turd.

This has nothing whatsoever to do with my blog entry. I just wanted to brag that one out of my three friends think this qualifies as 'literature'.

When I think about Summer, I'm taken back to playing in the park opposite Sehgal market. If you're raising an eyebrow, wondering what sort of royalty am I, then please know that I've nothing to do with the name of that park. Although, I may have been responsible for naming a park with rocky terrain and running field, "Dingdong Park". Yeah, I was twisted even as a child. 

1) Come over right now.

2) Oh you can't come over right now? Come at 2 then.

3) No, not 2:30 pm. At 2.

4) If you can't come at 2 then I won't meet you.

5) Hells ji.

6) Why did you use this picture? Couldn't you find a better one?

7) Acha, come by 7:30 pm.

8) I actually came to your office because I really like it.

9) Have you tried Sanadige? You must try Sanadige. It's amazing.

10) Why don't you burn my work instead of wood for a bonfire?

Bonus entry- Your voice is so sweet.


(Originally uttered by our clients. To us.)