A life without jokes would be boring. We can joke around a little, then.
Mandeep, a pecunious colleague, used to rise to the occasion using comedy as a norm of light-hearted and pleasant banter to relieve the GG-triggered heat off us all. He liked a friendly conversation with everyone at the cubicle and made it a point to turn around and greet a 'hello' or a 'bye.'
A man of substance and means, he is interested, competent, trustworthy, and understanding, with a penchant for telling Sardarji or Santa-banta jokes or Hyderabadi slang: a boundless treasure trove of funny one-liners, if you like. One had to hear them and laugh out loud.
Besides being a straightforward, uncomplicated man with infectious clarity, purpose, and intention that lent itself to his comedic bent of mind and the seriousness of purpose in life, Mandeep was a man of clear conscience.
Ecstatic, exuding passionate confidence combined with city-bred metropolitan sophistication, relying solely on his inner goodness of being, his ruthless wit, and strong camaraderie with friends around were all his high standards. In every way, he was the man of anything and everything, a world unto himself, having not a single unfunny bone in him.
(If he suspects someone disrespecting him, he has a rough-shod stock phrase, "Shut up, baap!" he doesn't mind using it on anyone at any time, making frequent use of it, and that too without much ado.)
Here are some Sardarji jokes he shared with us: (I have found that these are publicly accessible online.)
- The Sardarni asked Santa Singh, "Santa darling if we get engaged, will you give me a ring?" Santa replied, "Sure. Why not?" "What's your phone number?"
- Sardar asked a girl to marry him. “But I'm one year older than you," the girl said. “Oye! No Problem Soniye, I'll marry you NEXT YEAR,” declared Sardar happily.
- Once a Sardar ordered a pizza, the pizza order taker asked if he should cut it into six or twelve pieces. The Sardar replied, "Six, please. I could never eat twelve pieces."
“Bhai baraf thanda nahin hai !!"
----
Ismail bhai: Haan laatu, kya hona bolo.
Guy, perplexed: Mocha?
Ismail bhai: Mauka to sabku milta saab, aapku kya hona bolo.
Guy, exasperated: Cappuccino?
Ismail bhai: Arre haulay cuppa kaiku chhinu main, terku kya hona bol re.
Guy runs away!”
----
“Uno Cycle chalate chalate pairaan dard hore bol ke bike liye,Bike chalane se kammar me dard hora bol ke car liye,
Car chalane se pet nikal gaya bol ke gym join kara,
Ab gym me Cycle icch chalaraa !!”
----
“This is the most Hyderabadi thing ever:Goes to a restaurant
Grabs the menu
Scrutinizes it
Page by page
From soups to desserts
Till the end
Back and forth
Just to order “Bhai, Ek Biryani !!”
Grabs the menu
Scrutinizes it
Page by page
From soups to desserts
Till the end
Back and forth
Just to order “Bhai, Ek Biryani !!”
+*+*+*+
One last word on camaraderie: Entering into the orbital ring of Mandeep’s contagious camaraderie, Suresh and Devi would dig out a few of their witticisms. They shared them with such an uncanny flair that it was a welcome surprise to all team members, catching them telling jokes just as they did. Kavitha would roll her eyes and say, “Off foh... Deviii...!” Revathy and Rafi, our go-to support analyst duo, would smile away pleasantly, finding us in good Satyam spirits.
Whenever we shared humorous stories, our co-associate Kavitha, who hailed from the city's eastern corner and rode a peppy scooty, would be the first to giggle. Her laughter would gradually escalate into a full-blown amusement carnival. This quick-tongued laadli girl liked satirical caricatures rife with irony and sarcasm.
When Kavitha was in the 'afternoon shift,' and I in 'general,' Mandeep would be in his elemental best. He would create an amusement park of clever wisecracks exclusively for our ears, just for fun, making her laugh heartily and so hard that Revathy and Rafi would come running to our cubicle and inquire, “What happened...? What happened…?” Kavitha would often gleefully concede that, unlike Mandeep, she was not particularly adept at crafting or cracking jokes. Maybe a pun or two would pass muster, but she loved hearing them and having a great time, regardless of her own comedic abilities. Sometimes, our enlarged cabin became our little comedy club, which we fondly called the — 'Jimmings Club.' Jimmings — a pun term coined by Mandeep for 'eating with relish' at the Satyam cafeteria on the 6th floor.
Where can you find friends like that these days? Our life at the Satyam of the Raj Bhavan Road branch was an incredibly immersive and captivating experience, filled with fascinating moments and unique encounters.
Kavitha thought about how she could pursue her goal of travelling to America as soon as feasible. Something had to give; she couldn't wait much longer, and why should she? She believed that nothing in this dump would ever get better. Our boss, GG, was a gone case, hopeless to the point of no return. Nothing ever good comes out of such an unreasonable delinquent of a person, so drop everything and move on. Goodbye, Satyam. Her plan had been a long time in the making, and perhaps she should be preparing her exit plans and quitting right now before GG throws a spanner in the works by denying quick separation from the company. Be gone before the old, forgotten things catch up and erode your focus from achieving your goal. Kavitha carried on laughing all the way to the bank, eventually.
From the beginning, she had every advantage. She saw her ideas through to completion and even gave back when needed, like paying it forward. But with our bad manager, GG, she couldn't afford to be overbold and make it worse for herself. Aside from the advice of her US friends and relatives, whom she knew she could depend on, she tried keeping herself informed about the most recent travel schedules or visa regulations: technical requirements that make a convincing case for it. Come hell or high water, she was well-prepared to make it to the United States. She was loving it.
So, to enter the United States, you need to spruce up your indigenous habits and customs and learn what you think you can do to fulfil your objectives and other things in unfamiliar terrain, a foreign country. When it comes to other matters, you have the self-confidence to do the talking for you. For that motivation, her straight-backed, flowy hair was often sequined, either left hanging in a ponytail or contriving to look like a live Boa Constrictor or just left languishing like a prehensile tail, snaky in shape and lustrous black. Her tufty hairdo must be employed in tactical TAEKWONDO-ish self-defence, coming into use to asphyxiate anyone at any time or knocking out of their senses. Correspondingly, her height lends her a personality most Satyam ladies could only dream of, never achieving even an iota of her knock-out self-possession. So everybody, kindly back off, don't even think about it.
Occasionally, she found enough motivation to tame her frizzy tangle of hair, cutting it short enough to leave it cascading down her shoulders like a lush valley in the Amazon rainforest. At first glance, her sleek hairstyle looked quite hip and happening. But upon closer inspection, as you adjust your already so gung-ho pupils on her trendy hairdo existing just meters away, you might discern a distinct stray hair or two swirling around her temples like smoky incense sticks escaping a trail of jet-black smoke upwards in glamorous curls. Regardless of what you want to flaunt, her thick, kinky hair was spick and span, hands down. When you have a fetching mane like that, you get around and even effortlessly navigate your way to the United States of America. Easy-peasy.
In the insistent march of time, I never thought that I'd leave Satyam or that Satyam would leave me. The first three years of my life there were so memorable that it never occurred to me to quit and look elsewhere for a 'better job,' a higher income, or anything else that would suit my interest as a young IT professional. The truth is, nothing was better than Satyam. Not even close. Hardly were there any other IT firms that could match the one I was working for; there was no point in looking around. None of our team members wanted to go beyond Satyam, except Kavitha, whose passion was to make it to the US and not look back once she was there. She did just that: scrapping all GG-explicit dump yards of drudgery at Satyam in favour of a good life overseas. American paychecks were generously better than GG's beggarly handouts at the end of the month. To each his own. However, for us folks, looking out was a sacrilegious deed no one wanted to commit, least of all me. Because working at Satyam was a dream come true, Mandeep, Devi, and even Suresh had no interest in looking out. Bizarrely (or not so much of that), we became so happy despite the 'almond' (contrary to 'peanuts') payscale never coming our way! Either continue to work for Satyam as a poverty-stricken church mouse or relocate to the US of A as a hopeful alien, as Kavitha did. The choice is yours to make. Hence, in pursuit of happiness and the meaning of life, Kavitha fled to America, and whatever came after was hers to count (the dollars), and whatever followed had to follow (even if there may not have been much of a friendship, it was lost to the world forever).
(To be continued…)
By Arindam Moulick
To read the first part of this series, click -> Memory Crossing
Whenever we shared humorous stories, our co-associate Kavitha, who hailed from the city's eastern corner and rode a peppy scooty, would be the first to giggle. Her laughter would gradually escalate into a full-blown amusement carnival. This quick-tongued laadli girl liked satirical caricatures rife with irony and sarcasm.
When Kavitha was in the 'afternoon shift,' and I in 'general,' Mandeep would be in his elemental best. He would create an amusement park of clever wisecracks exclusively for our ears, just for fun, making her laugh heartily and so hard that Revathy and Rafi would come running to our cubicle and inquire, “What happened...? What happened…?” Kavitha would often gleefully concede that, unlike Mandeep, she was not particularly adept at crafting or cracking jokes. Maybe a pun or two would pass muster, but she loved hearing them and having a great time, regardless of her own comedic abilities. Sometimes, our enlarged cabin became our little comedy club, which we fondly called the — 'Jimmings Club.' Jimmings — a pun term coined by Mandeep for 'eating with relish' at the Satyam cafeteria on the 6th floor.
At around 12:50 pm, when it's my 'general shift' for the day, Mandeep would suddenly burst out in hunger pangs, mockingly craving for lunch and jokingly bellow, "Yaar Arindam, chal 'jimmings' karte hai, mujhe bhayankar bhook lagi hai." — "Hey Arindam, let's go 'jimmings,' I'm really hungry." Kavitha would be bemused, but all three of us seldom went for a coffee break in the company's large, self-service cafeteria, with open counter displays and buffet line, Cadbury chocolates, ice creams, soft drink beverages, etc.
Sometimes, when we needed a break from work to grab a coffee from the excellent Nescafe espresso machine in the corner of the 5th-floor hallway, he would playfully call out, "Chal peeke aate hain!" — "Come on, let's go grab a drink!" And then, looking at me, he would laugh while I pretended to be astonished by his impromptu suggestion for a... what…? A 'drink’...? Oh my God...! Even though I thought I had heard it right: "peeke aate hain!" in plain English means "Let’s have a drink!" The first time he said that I wondered why he said it. The next moment, he would add playfully: “Coffee re!" — "For coffee, man!" grinning as he felt he had caught me unawares. He sure did.
Where can you find friends like that these days? Our life at the Satyam of the Raj Bhavan Road branch was an incredibly immersive and captivating experience, filled with fascinating moments and unique encounters.
+*+*+*+
Kavitha thought about how she could pursue her goal of travelling to America as soon as feasible. Something had to give; she couldn't wait much longer, and why should she? She believed that nothing in this dump would ever get better. Our boss, GG, was a gone case, hopeless to the point of no return. Nothing ever good comes out of such an unreasonable delinquent of a person, so drop everything and move on. Goodbye, Satyam. Her plan had been a long time in the making, and perhaps she should be preparing her exit plans and quitting right now before GG throws a spanner in the works by denying quick separation from the company. Be gone before the old, forgotten things catch up and erode your focus from achieving your goal. Kavitha carried on laughing all the way to the bank, eventually.
From the beginning, she had every advantage. She saw her ideas through to completion and even gave back when needed, like paying it forward. But with our bad manager, GG, she couldn't afford to be overbold and make it worse for herself. Aside from the advice of her US friends and relatives, whom she knew she could depend on, she tried keeping herself informed about the most recent travel schedules or visa regulations: technical requirements that make a convincing case for it. Come hell or high water, she was well-prepared to make it to the United States. She was loving it.
So, to enter the United States, you need to spruce up your indigenous habits and customs and learn what you think you can do to fulfil your objectives and other things in unfamiliar terrain, a foreign country. When it comes to other matters, you have the self-confidence to do the talking for you. For that motivation, her straight-backed, flowy hair was often sequined, either left hanging in a ponytail or contriving to look like a live Boa Constrictor or just left languishing like a prehensile tail, snaky in shape and lustrous black. Her tufty hairdo must be employed in tactical TAEKWONDO-ish self-defence, coming into use to asphyxiate anyone at any time or knocking out of their senses. Correspondingly, her height lends her a personality most Satyam ladies could only dream of, never achieving even an iota of her knock-out self-possession. So everybody, kindly back off, don't even think about it.
Occasionally, she found enough motivation to tame her frizzy tangle of hair, cutting it short enough to leave it cascading down her shoulders like a lush valley in the Amazon rainforest. At first glance, her sleek hairstyle looked quite hip and happening. But upon closer inspection, as you adjust your already so gung-ho pupils on her trendy hairdo existing just meters away, you might discern a distinct stray hair or two swirling around her temples like smoky incense sticks escaping a trail of jet-black smoke upwards in glamorous curls. Regardless of what you want to flaunt, her thick, kinky hair was spick and span, hands down. When you have a fetching mane like that, you get around and even effortlessly navigate your way to the United States of America. Easy-peasy.
+*+*+*+
In the insistent march of time, I never thought that I'd leave Satyam or that Satyam would leave me. The first three years of my life there were so memorable that it never occurred to me to quit and look elsewhere for a 'better job,' a higher income, or anything else that would suit my interest as a young IT professional. The truth is, nothing was better than Satyam. Not even close. Hardly were there any other IT firms that could match the one I was working for; there was no point in looking around. None of our team members wanted to go beyond Satyam, except Kavitha, whose passion was to make it to the US and not look back once she was there. She did just that: scrapping all GG-explicit dump yards of drudgery at Satyam in favour of a good life overseas. American paychecks were generously better than GG's beggarly handouts at the end of the month. To each his own. However, for us folks, looking out was a sacrilegious deed no one wanted to commit, least of all me. Because working at Satyam was a dream come true, Mandeep, Devi, and even Suresh had no interest in looking out. Bizarrely (or not so much of that), we became so happy despite the 'almond' (contrary to 'peanuts') payscale never coming our way! Either continue to work for Satyam as a poverty-stricken church mouse or relocate to the US of A as a hopeful alien, as Kavitha did. The choice is yours to make. Hence, in pursuit of happiness and the meaning of life, Kavitha fled to America, and whatever came after was hers to count (the dollars), and whatever followed had to follow (even if there may not have been much of a friendship, it was lost to the world forever).
That's how it was. Nothing ever changes unless you let it.
(To be continued…)
By Arindam Moulick
To read the first part of this series, click -> Memory Crossing