Saturday, October 22, 2011

Taking over an IT company and other bad ideas




I am an honest, god fearing, true to my word, sincere in my work terrorist. I love my wives and children, I help old women cross the road and I spare some change for the beggar on the street. I am telling you all this so that you take my advice seriously and realize that I only have your best interest in my mind.

I have done some stupid things in my life, my third son from my second wife (she was not my wife then) is right on top of the list; I have watched Tashan first day, first show; have bought a Macbook Pro and have tried to race a Haryana Roadways bus (that’s why I limp and my Wagon R is no more). But all these don’t even come close to my biggest blunder in life; taking over an IT company and holding its employees hostage.

It was a Friday afternoon when after months of planning, recruiting people, arranging the weapons, getting an approval from the agency, services and our high command we finally decided that today is the day. I had spent months on researching the potential target and I had realized that Rashtrapati Bhavan was too difficult, no one actually came to the campus of BHU, crowded markets in Bombay and Delhi were done to death, and that it was an IT company that was the perfect target. Being an IT savvy terrorist myself I had done my research on them; tens of thousands of people came to them every day, they were mostly located outside the city, generated a lot of foreign currency so were the darling of the government and were full of meek IT geeks. They had a strenuous security procedure though, people were frisked, the luggage was scanned, and the cars were checked so it had the right mix of ease and difficulty. But most of all I wanted to be different, no one had done it before and I wanted to get noticed and rise up the ranks.

We loaded the guns, bombs, walkie-talkies and ourselves into two Qualis (stolen from some company which provided cabs to that IT company only) and stormed the campus. After firing a few rounds in the air, pushing the employees in the buildings and rounding up the security guards we were all set. The so called security guards were so terrified after seeing guns that they nearly crapped in their pants, only one of had seen a gun before that too in the Indo Pak war after which he had retired, the rest of the boys had only been trained to lookout for missing ID cards and pen drives. In fact all this seemed easier than writing a novel these days (the thin, big font, 100 bucks a piece ones I mean, ‘metro reads’ I read somewhere; they are called).

But then the gloom started setting in. Even after a quick glance I had realized that there were a lot of people un-accounted for, at least 5000 less than our estimate after we counted. “It is Friday and most people have left for their home towns after lunch” said the man in charge of the campus after I slapped him twice and demanded an explanation. Now it was only 2 o’ clock and not even the Sarkari Babus go home this early, this was beginning to look bad. Then came the first distress call of the day from one of my colleague who was sent to manage some hostages in a building. 

He was a newbie and already seemed to be in tears. Over sobs he told me that the people in his building are not terrorized, in fact some of them have not even realized that they were hostages. I quickly rushed to his building, the last thing we needed was somebody playing John McClane. But the situation was something else, I realized, after entering the lobby, people were not rebellious, they were just sleeping and too morose to care for anything else. After shouting terrorist, you are taken over, bomb, I will shoot you, hands up at the top of my voice I finally resorted to firing in the air, after the deafening sound of bullets was through the most it did was one guy opened his one eye, looked at us, then looked at his watch, asked the guy next to him that “do we have a call now?” and went back to sleep. This was embarrassing to say the least. I have successfully blown up buildings, armed force’s jeeps and tortured a traitor to death but this scenario looked very bleak. Admitting defeat I asked my colleague to lock this building and leave them to themselves.

As soon I was exiting the building I heard gun shots coming from the neighboring building. While I am all for teaching people’s manners, shooting a lot of people wasn’t in my to-do list for today. It reduces your ability to negotiate with the police. As I rushed to that building I saw another colleague of mine shooting a mass of people sitting on their chairs, unarmed. After I snatched the gun from his hands and reprimanded him in the harshest words he said, he saw them making some move, as if their trying to draw some weapon. After the screaming and hysteria had subsided I also noticed the same thing, their hands twitched every 5 minutes as if they are trying to draw a knife or something. After frisking and finding nothing on 9 people, I leveled with the 10th guy and asked him what it was. He said it was an involuntary habit of moving the mouse every 5 minutes to stay ‘Green’ on the office communicator and all they are doing is mentally clicking a mouse. I was further alarmed when somebody suggested bringing a cake for their recently dead team-mates. This was looking worse than my village cage where they kept all the crazies locked.

I had finally come back to the main building and was thinking of how to negotiate with the police when one lady approached me and asked for my email id, she said she was an HR manager and wanted to mail me a list of demands from the employees. When I asked them to state them verbally to me she asked one young guy to come with a notepad and asked him to note the minutes of the meeting. Firstly she asked that they few of the employees wanted to be tied to more comfortable chairs. Second one stray bullet had shattered a glass and AC cooling was going to waste, this building was losing points in the ‘go green’ challenge. Thirdly the restroom was running low on liquid soap and wanted that to be refilled. Fourthly if the hostage situation continued till tomorrow they wanted a written approval from their managers for a ‘comp off’. Fifth, the coffee machine was not working so they either wanted to be moved to a floor where it worked or wanted a working coffee machine brought here And lastly and most importantly she thought that employee morale was running low so she should be allowed to send a mail with some quotes and a 'face painting' contest with a chance to win a pack of 8 crayons. I think the last point that kid wrote down was “If you don’t shut up and sit down I am going to shoot you and the guy left to you, just for the heck of it”. This was getting intolerable.

As I just sat down I head another SOS from my colleague. What I witnessed as I hastened to his post was absolute pandemonium. People were running amok; trying to login to their machines, checking their Blackberrys and even the threat of shooting them down was doing nothing. Finally I caught one guy running like crazy and I could get only two words out of him - ‘Client Escalation’. They looked more scared than my suicide bombing instructor who realized we had switched his demo kit with a real explosives belt as an April 1st prank. One engineer came up to me and clearly told me that he would prefer getting shot in the head than risking another client escalation, especially now when the annual appraisal was due. Frantically I searched for his project manager who he mentioned had the name  Sathya and even after going through the name on ID cards of the entire floor I was unable to find him. Finally I mixed my yell with a few bullets in the air and demanded Sathya to come forward. Three people came forward but only one of them looked old enough to be a manager. His name was Sathyadhiran Srinivasulu Mucherla Laxman, no wonder I was not able to find him! I asked him to tell all his sub –ordinates to get off from their computers, go to one corner of the building and be in total silence. He responded by saying that he wanted an requirement document detailing which corner of the building he was supposed to go to, what was the SLA of total silence and number of man hours given to him for the job. I was too flabbergasted to say anything and sheepishly excused myself out of the situation.

I went back to the center building again. The police had come by this time and wanted to negotiate. I said ‘Hello’ in my most terrorizing voice to the inspector. ‘Cheppandi Anna’ came the reply. I repeated in Hindi. ‘Enti ‘ was the reply this time. I tried 3 other languages but no avail. I needed a translator. I caught hold of a Reddy from the crowd and asked him to translate. “Talk-a?” he asked, “to the police-a” while moving his hand with his thumb out which meant ‘fuck’ in my part of the world. He then flat out refused after I said yes; he said it was the onsite people’s job to talk to the client and translate the requirements, he always the got the final document. Also, this was not a part of his current allocation and hence would require the approval of his team lead, Project manager, Development track lead and Offshore Delivery head. When I insisted that this is not required he suggested me to log my demands in a tracker and mail it to the police while keeping my manager in CC, he even volunteered to give me the latest template for the tracker. This was pathetic. Not only was I feeling like a ring master, trying to juggle 5 balls on a unicycle. But I was also not able to tell the police that I wanted my three colleagues freed, 1 Crore rupees and a chopper brought to me. This day was getting worse than when my iPod had crashed, that too before a 10 day hike from Kabul to Waziristan.

But the straw or rather the pillar that broke my back was when I thought I would check in with my team till they mulled the issue over outside. Alpha 1, who was in charge of the recreational center was not replying. Fearing the worst, that Indian government has finally learned its lesson and has sent the cavalry in, I rushed to his post. But what I saw were beyond my wildest dreams. Abdullah the 6’6” Pathan from Kabul was found merrying in the Jacuzzi, his 2nd in command was taking a Sauna, while the rest of his unit was either in the pool or playing foosball. To the people who had seen nothing donkey turds and each other for months at a stretch it seemed like someone had torn open the gates of heaven. One of his guys was even making a deal with an employee, in exchange for referring him he would tell him how to get into US without a H1 – B.

At this point I broke down and started sobbing. I had taken the sandstorms of Afghanistan, the blizzards of Siachen, torture of US Marines and nagging of Kherunissa (my 1st wife) but this was beyond all that. As all my dreams of a promotion, Interpol red corner notice, Al-Jazeera exclusive videos , hot virgins in heaven and finally be able to afford an iPad2 came crashing down as I realized couldn’t go any further and I walked out and surrendered myself. Anything would be better than this.

Now I as pass my days in an Indian prison and enjoy the VIP treatment alongside that new kid Kasab, I have nothing to do but ponder over my past actions and I always reach the same conclusion. Don’t take over an IT company!

Sunday, October 16, 2011

Love and other drugs



Yesterday I felt I was eighteen again. My heart fluttered, I jumped around the bed restlessly, looked at my phone every 5 minutes and to shake my head every 10 minutes to break up the imaginary conversations in my head.

My heart wants this day to be an epoch, my head says it was just good three hours spent. I don't know what It'll be, as I keep as my fingers crossed as a teenager. Now life might play out as usual or it might change but I wanted to write this feeling down. I want to remind myself that I can still feel and despite my growing cynicism I can still connect with another person, with the the romantic in me, and the 18 year happy - go - lucky kid in me, that once was.

Now after reaching for my phone as soon as I woke up, I will listen to the song I have been listening to over 50 times since yesterday morning. I am alcohol free for 15 days and I am still high.

Monday, October 3, 2011

In my dreams




“The best thing about dreams is that fleeting moment, when you are between asleep and awake, when you don't know the difference between reality and fantasy, when for just that one moment you feel with your entire soul that the dream is reality, and it really happened.” - Anonymous


Prologue – 

What follows next is the recollection of the dream I had a few days back. I see no reason why anybody would be interested in my dream and its significance, if any. However this was the most significant dream that I have had in the recent years that I could recollect in my waking life. And therefore I feel compelled to write it on my blog and publish the link everywhere, maybe just for the heck of it or maybe it’s a momentary lapse of season. Following the waking up from the dream my first reaction was to note down the happenings of my dream as good as I could before it fades from my memory, as everything does. I couldn’t sleep that night post this dream, as I lay tossing and turning in my bed, churning this dream in my head thinking of the significance of it. But mostly I just reveled in the beauty of it even with its untimely and tragic ending.

I won’t unload any unnecessary esoteric trivia, like dreaming of being in snow was because I was feeling cold (it is cold in Curepipe this time of the year, especially at night) or what could be the interpretation of the proceedings. I know that it doesn’t make much sense nor has continuity, but then it is not supposed to, it is a dream. However two things I want to clear before I begin. First there is no prelude the events I describe, I was smack in the middle of it as dreams often begin. Also there are no reasons to things I deduced, they were just in my notes. Secondly, I wanted to tell what a lucid dream is, as this was, at least at the end. A lucid dream is a dream in which one is aware that one is dreaming. In a lucid dream, the dreamer can actively participate in and manipulate imaginary experiences in the dream environment. A lucid dream can begin in one of two ways. A dream-initiated lucid dream (DILD) starts as a normal dream, and the dreamer eventually concludes it is a dream, while a wake-initiated lucid dream (WILD) occurs when the dreamer goes from a normal waking state directly into a dream state, with no apparent lapse in consciousness. Mine was the former.

The Dream –

It’s daytime. I am in a car, driving. Most probably it is my car, that I drive in the waking life, as it looks and feels the same from the inside. In the front seat is a girl, beautiful, smiling, chirpy, with hair flowing in the wind. There are other people in the car too, two of my younger cousins and one friend from school. I don’t pay much heed to them, I am engrossed in the driving and perhaps my own thoughts. The girl is warm and friendly but there is sadness in her eyes, she also had her heart broken, but she doesn’t behave that way. Like me I mean, I am quiet, a bit aloof and cynical. We get to her house and she invites me inside. She lives with her family. She is a Christian (I don’t how I figured this out). She leaves me alone with her grandparents, as she goes about the house, dancing, twirling and playing with the curtains. Her grandparents start talking to me, they seem to like me. They tell me it was nice of me to give her a lift. I seem to be a responsible person to them and they tell me it would be good of me drop her back home whenever she gets drunk. I deduce that she is a trouble maker when she gets drunk. After a while I say the pleasantries and take leave from them. When I get back to the car my cousins start teasing me while my friend takes me to the side and asks me to be careful with the girl’s heart. And not to pursue this matter any further if I am not serious.  I shrug it off and get back in the car. Cousins keep teasing me all the way in the car.

Scenery has now changed around me. I am still in a car, but this is not my car, nor am I driving it. It is snow all around me, looks like I am on top of some mountain. Car seems fairly bulky but powerful and secured. We start going down the slope.  Gradually I see riots breaking out and people fighting and rioting around me.

The next scene I see that I broke through the front windscreen of the car, due to some collision. As I am flying out of the glass, time slows down and I feel the darkness coming from the edges. I feel this is some premonition of the things to happen and I can save myself from dying. Then I realize that the only reason I saw this is because in some universe this has already happened and it is inevitable. Then I make peace with it. I see it happening, we are going down fast, trying to lose the rioters, someone has thrown something at the windscreen, the glass cracks and it is not possible to see through. The car crashes into something and I am thrown out of the car by the impact through the windscreen. I feel the darkness coming in again, but this time I do not fear it, if death is just the blackness I came back from then there is no reason to fear death. And then, as they say my life flashes before my eyes. Only that my whole life doesn’t flash before me.

The only and the last thought which goes through my head is of that girl and how I won’t get to be with her. I regret not reciprocating the love and her warmth when I had the chance. As I lay dying I feel my heart beat receding and the feeling that it will come to a halt eventually. But now suddenly I want to live, to be with her, I try to fight it, my failing heart beat that is. My dream has become lucid as this point. But I realize that this is in vain as my heart beat becomes fainter and fainter each time and finally is no more. I realize that this is how probably dying would feel like. The dream stops and I wake up at this point.