tender bender

Mr. Yadav hinted at the staircase and started moving his long legs, wearing a casual jeans and a shirt (for a senior government employee above 55, it seemed cool) and a swarm of people followed, some in their best formal attire, with clean shaves, hairdo and polished leather shoes. The others, though not much in quantity (like me) were just wearing some-clothes to do us good. With a big beard on the face, i must have looked sick in front of these people. Anyways, i followed, too. We were moving down from the 4th floor to the ground to sit in a conference room

Todays scenes were flashing in my memory, the Pizza lunch, me in the same place submitting the quotation (and before that running up and down 3 times to find the exact location of the department). The classes that never took place and some discussions about the quotation for the tender (a lot of them actually). well, i was assisting someone for tender of lights to be installed in some department in chandigarh. and here i was back again, in the conference room, with a secret in my mind. the price which no one in the room knew, (but same applied to them). in a few minutes, quotations were to be opened in front of us and we would be witness to a game, similar to casino, a game of numbers, a game of having the best bet and a game of probability. seeing everyone's faces, the swanky businessmen around, i was sure about their lack of technical expertise in the field the tender was. further, this class smelled of greed, the sealed envelopes must have high prices in it, my belief. i had got a seat now n i was analysing the people around. people were asking questions from Mr Yadav, one person even mocked at the specifications mentioned in the sheet. "thats old technology". A curt response to finish him off and some more questions followed.

People which are most likely to give-away are the insecure ones. Their minds know about the possibility of losing and they've already experienced it before, though dreaded it, but still have given it their shot. with more questions, more of their insecurity and personality kept coming clearer and when the envelopes started opening, all businessmen were reduced to some 9th grade children wanting to keep on scribbling to know more about their 3 competitors.

1) 9.48 Lacs
.... some pause, some scribbling, some details asked for and told about etc etc. people were just being so bumbly dumb n i was sitting there, expressionless, with the secret in my mind.

2) 9.75 Lacs
a suppressed sigh of relief from the party no. 1, of which 2 people stood up, in their late 20's and another colleague, a 35+ chap scribbling down as fast and illegibly he could.
The team sitting in front of me had bee scribbling down and a sense of queer arrogance in the face of the sardarjee (whose tender was just opened, took my mention)

3) 7.15 Lacs for some bullshit and 6.95 Lacs for another ..
ooooooo .. the difference ! this guy must be the real one, the supplier of the products who's quoting the correct price for the job. the rest clearly have to be middlemen. clearly, there clothes did mention that only.
2 to go... myself still emotionless, but the thought making me consider a possibility that its decreasing in a spiral manner, we dont want to go lesser than this .. ...
this was ours.

2)(the reason why i sat there) .. 6.37 Lacs .. hmmmmm .. my secret was in front of everyone, just read out by Mr Yadav, who was now signing the pages he'd just read. people were just seeing the backbenchers now, the people who quoted this must be sitting in the backseat cause the ones asking the questions and have used up all their emotions are the frontbenchers... who me ? nooo .. not me someone else's it must be.. still n straight was the way to go .

1) 10.something .. n i just didnt want to hear more .. plus he wanted 1 more( for his wife i guess).
the game was over n battle won.

Going out, a person saw and just said, "from whom you'll get the stuff ? china ? but its impossible to get at this rate. you have links there ? "
"I am making them myself"
" your experience? "
" 3 years"
" we've spent 10 years and swear its not possible to make it in india !" .. some curses n i had decided to step in.
"i guess your technical knowledge was a little lesser and mine a little more then.. "
muted by words, agreeing now, it turned out that people were really not that red-taped as they looked to be.
N i was just left with the thought" O people .. why cant indian brains make things which the bloddy chinese can ?
is it necessary they have to be cheaper ? "
god bless

the lotus eater ..

yes . opeth's new album shares the name with what has happened in indian politics .. shall i also say it was a 3rd front eater ??
i am no hard fan of any party or any person, but its too obvious why congress outperformed .. .as told by the inlighted people, this is the first time the young generation (40% of population) is going to vote . this young generation is however different from the previous young ones. . they are grown up after 1991 liberation of india ... that is actually a big turning point.. we know that the next generation would be learning all about the 1991 reforms, but though we're unaware of the importance of it, we've grown up in it and have just taken up stand against many things ..

firstly the religional divides. no guy supports it and it wont work. next comes development. we are pretty much aware of inclusive growth and think ideologically that with our increase in income, the poor should benefit as well. the days of lack of information are over . all the information is at a touch of a button. we are intelligent and thats why we decide after thinking. anyways, the major reason of the 'lotus eating' was rahul gandhi. the girls swoon over him while the guys consider him an intelligent guy after listening his conversation.

anyways, i am not a fan of his but there is just one thing the congress can boast of and that is the young brigade, with jyoti scindhya, sachin pilot etc . the point is that all the BJP leaders were due to emergency in 1971 and after that, no leader has come from its wings .. they have just grown older. even lalu, nitish were offsprings of 1971 emergency. anyways, the rahul factor has helped newer faces come into an imperialist party and helped its cause . thats why he got the praise which he deserves. coming to congress, it means business and it should, too . it should focus on inclusive growth, have a left inside it (to prevent any wrong action, which would make india suffer, cause though they are fools, they helped the last regime big time by stopping certain decisions on disinvestment and policy making. ) an example is the trouble chinese govt. is in and indian govt. hardly has a problem with US now, after its collapse is that left guys prevented indian PSU banks to buy fraudulent securities (of the AAA companies at that time) and it helped when we they crashed . had congress been alone, we'd have been in a bigger mess that we are in right now .

so, you've eaten the lotus, now you must open your minds policy makers ... think and think hard ! cause indians are good at it and we have that foresight to get us to greater heights than never before.

one, two unbuckle your shoe...

are you a journalist ?? A hindi one ?? the one which speaks speaks with regular pause of 700 ms between each word and with sound loudness greater than 60 db ? read on ....
if not,then read on.. (as if you'll agree with what i instruct)

Well, it all starts with west. since the (in)famous attempt at shoe-throwing on Mr. Bush, its caught up quite fast to be the the coolest fashion among the journalists. Chinese PM got it in UK but our developing india aint far behind the west. as elucidated in the past, India's great at adopting western bad habits quickly, as seen in first-hand by mr. chidambaram and naveen jindal.

First, wear old shoes from home. Then plan out the attack. it should be within the important parts of the speech of the victim, so that all the cameras are rolling, otherwise its an attempt gone in vain. Dont hurry, cause other journalists would miss the opportunity to interview but dont wait too much cause the person may be gone by the time your guts have come out. Having a seat near the right-centre is preferable (for right handers) because of ease in throwing action. dont be too angular too, cause it would give the nearby people time to stop. The MOST IMPORTANT thing is to be careful that the shoe does NOT hit the target because thats the trend brother ........... thats the hidden victoria's secret (what bullshit i write)

well, lets not go into the nitty-gritty discussing the obvious facts like things to gain by this- publicity, money (the sikh guy who threw at chidambaram got 2 lakh in cash from akali's) , opportunity to make a 'sansani-khez' story on jail behavior (remember you're a journalist) and immortalization and probably a reference in children's history books, too (if you're lucky). More importantly, its the fame your family gets. your mom is seen on the TV bragging about your good history and your wife seen supporting you (despite of the last night fight). Your job increments increase because they're afraid you'll join politics.

Another thing is the aftermath. Dont forget to give a dumb explanation for the act. some prior research may help. what else, dont forget the victoria's secret brother ..

and for the victims, dont forget to forgive the thrower cause that would help you show your kind heart. Btw, what else can you do ? u got humiliated in front of national TV. you want to cry like rakhi sawant and tell everyone that they'll have to pay for what they did ??? Am sure you wont want that..... would you ?