Ze Heart of Darkness

I'm taking this cool (open) tag from Jiby's latest post. This confession will take you folks into the depths of my mind, the darkness of my being......... a journey that would make J-Lo's "descent into hell" from The Cell look like a Disneyland outing.

RSVP. Bring your popcorn, barf-bags and all that jazz.



My Accent

Amrikkan-Hinglish-Mallu mongrel..... but I can pull off a pretty decent Bheshtern accent when I deliver seminars and presentations, when I wanna talk my way out of trouble or go to impress ze lay-dees (a little more, that is. :P ). Always wanted to master exotic accents like British, Jive, Russian, French plus languages like Sanskrit, French, Farsi, Arabic, Chinese Mandarin..... and I am working on Arabic and Farsi now.
May I end this section with a tribute to the master Amir Khusrau and quote a tounge-in-cheek (literally) couplet of his. It's relevant to this particular subject......

My beloved speaks Turkish but I do not,
Oh how I wish her tounge was in my mouth.

Booze

Nope. Nyet. Indulge in lotz of other more unforgivable sins..... thought I should leave this one out for you ordinary mortals. I'm not even into popular beverages like tea, coffee, Coke etc..... but I lavv juice cocktails, Sharjahs n shakes.
BTW, ring me when someone has invented a Biryani shake.... I'll show thee what TRUE INULGENCE is!

Chores I Hate

Cleaning the toilet, scrubbing the tub and waxing the bathroom floor. My prime motivation for getting hitched sometime in the future.

Dog or Cat

I just discovered my love for dogs. Mebbe it's their loyalty..... cats on the other hand are the vain, cocky and flamboyant gangstas of the animal kingdom.

Essential Electronics

Dell Inspiron 9300 Laptop. Myyyyy preciousssssssssssss........
W-88 type 450 kT thermonuclear warhead. Just for a horror!
My Angelina Jolie look alike android from Cyberdene Corporation. Fully functional.

Perfume

Denim Silver for Deodorant. I normally keep off deos but one can't do without them in the tandoor that's Delhi summer.
Nivea Extra Soothing Shaving Balm. Doubles as perfume too. My fave!

Gold or Silver

Silver. Definitly!
Gold's for them gals. Silver looks cool and it keeps off vampires n werewolves. :P

Home

Secret underground lair somewhere in India.
Built by the coven of the Nine Unknown Men in the year 277 BC and upgraded down the ages. Now includes an Olympic size swimming pool, a KSRTC bus stand and a 24/7 KFC outlet.

Insomnia

Hell no!
Devout Kumbhakarna devotee here!

Job Titles

Oberstgruppenfuhrer in the Bavarian Illuminati
Maha Atharvan, Propaganda Department in The Nine.

Living Arrangements

5m by 7m room, modelled on a Tihar Jail cell. Balcony with a majestic view of the surrounding evergrey concrete jungle. 1.5m by 4.5m bathroom.

Most Admirable Traits

400% harmless individual onlee.
My positive outlook. I am at peace with the world and all that is in it.
Sense of humor. I make people laugh with me..... and sometimes laugh at me.
Ceaseless quest for knowledge. Oh well, in other words I'm a bookworm.

Number of Sexual Partners

420 Humans
18 Demons
24 Yakshis
69 Houris (loaned three to Al Zarqawi. They got a virgin crisis over there.... so many Shaheeds coming in nowadays, na?)
7 Apsaras
Baba Yaga
3 Sirens
Xena, Warrior Princess
9 Nymphs
The Ice Queen
The Valkyries
8 Betazeds including Commander Deanna Troi
4 Klingnons
She
1 Wookie
22 Androids

PS: All these are females ( even the androids have Programmed Female Personality)...... in case some smarta$$e$ were thinking otherwise.

Number of Times in Hospital

Hmmm, let's see..... Born in a hospital in the previous millenium :P , high fever when I was 9, bad sprain right before my CEE exam, TB scare in 2001, high fever right before my 6th sem exams in 2002 and this *raging* fever in 2004. That's a total of six times.
Not bad, huh?

Phobias

Commitment-phobia
Claustrophobia
Ophidiophobia

Quote

"A wise warrior carries a second sword".
"Security through Obscurity".

Siblings

One little brotherji...... little by years only. The cat's two inches taller and outweighs me by 30 pounds. He's the nice kid of our little family while I am the certified black sheep and the bekaar beta all rolled into one.

Time I Wake Up

When the sun goes down and my kind can safely venture into the world of mortals....... to feed.

Unusual Talent or Skill

X-ray vision.

Worst Habit

Nail-biting.
Just a little. Only when I am thinking hard.

X-Rays

Thrice a day, after meals. Followed by UV ray irradiation and Strontium-90 capsules.

Yummy Food I Make

Crow Soup.
Ek Dum phirst class quality. For all ze insufferable untermenschen who takez Panga wit ze Anandmeister.

Zodiac Sign

Gemini-Cancer cusp.
But I am a true-blue Geminian by nature.

People I Tag

First of all...... Poooojaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa. Yoooooo Hooooooo.......
You know I take a certain demonic glee in saddling thee with all these tags. Especially after you asked me not to .

And who would the other three unfortunate folks be? Ahhhh..... Pink Berry (first time I'm tagging you), Lord Poison and Herr MC! Perfekt!

Phunctional Phiction: The CET Chronicles, Folio - II

The CGPU

Founded by Prof. Felip Varkhovsky in 1937 as a sister concern of the Ob'edinennoe Gosudarstvennoe Politicheskoe Upravlenie (OGPU, predecessor of the KGB), the Career Guidance and Placement Unit, the CGPU, strives to select the vilest knaves CET has to offer and release them into the shady world of crime and IT… i.e International Terrorism.

What?! The name doesn’t strike fear into your mortal hearts? You know, we borrowed this very useful concept from Orwell’s seminal classic, 1984. Here the most brutal organs of the tyrannical police state are given innocuous or even benevolent sounding portmanteaus or nicknames. For instance, death camps are called JoyCamps, the War Ministry (note, it ain’t *Defense* Ministry) is called MinPeace (from Ministry of Peace), the ministry that fabricates lies, propaganda and obfuscates everything is called MinTruth! The funda is explained by real world terms like Gestapo and Comintern. While the term COMmunist INTERNational evokes obvious images of fear and repression in most people with those thousands of red flags, lusty slogans, demagogy par excellence, goose stepping soldiers, Triumph of the Will vibes…… the contraction term doesn’t do the same. Ditto for Hitler's GEheime STAatsPOlizei, which means “Secret State Police”. Parallels can be drawn to the milquetoast term RAW, Research and Analysis Wing, which sounds like some department of the Planning Commission but the title hides the true nature of the efficient, ruthless and professional spy force.

Oh, here I go rambling AGAIN! But get my drift? :P

Our founding father, former Director Lord Prof. Varkhovsky is blessed with a Sarumanesque talent for selling ANYTHING to even the smartest prey…. the veritable Archsalesman who could sell a shipload of ice to the Eskimos. It was due to his sterling efforts and cultivation of contacts in the InjiNeering and above said IT realms that put CET on the global map, with CETians earning packages from 1.5 lakhs per annum plus two second-hand camels on incarceration to 25 Lakhs plus 72 houris on “termination”. The companies and the organizations and the brotherhoods/sisterhoods started to trickle in at first and then tuned into a torrent by the mid 90s…. the word soon spread into international circles. In the bylanes of Gaza, the gullies of Heera Mandi, the slums of Bradford, the piers of Corsica, the badlands of Bihar and the Ghettos of America, hushed whispers and secret scraps spoke-“There’s a new gun in town!”. So much that the perennial enemies of our shady trade,viz. 007, Inspector Vijay, Gigastar Balayya from Guntur, Vaijayanthi IPS, Padayappa, Captain Prabhakaran, Sunny Paaji and Gunmaster G9 have turned their malevolent gaze towards us. But fear not, our sleeper acolytes toiling endlessly for global domination in entities like Ghengisys, Tamerlane Consultancy Services, Galactic Empire of Emperor Palpatine, General Ecclestic, The Illuminati, Asian Born Bovineannie, Vaallmart, Wipe-Off RAW, Jihadman Suxxx, The Borg Collective, Asathyam, D Company etc cannot fail to bring us to final victory!

To understand and appreciate the recruitment process, let me give a few examples of the no-quarters-given interviews that take place in every season.

Case 1:

Bull Klinten Corporation, Arkansas (K) on the desk.

Ms. Incontinentia Balconi , IQ = 38+24+36, S-7 Civil Engineering (B) in the hot seat.

K: Ms. Balconi, explain with a simple example how recurrence relations simplify algorithms.

B: Urrrmmmmm….. errrrrr….. duhhhhh.
(Idea strikes) Ohhhhh….veree zimble onlee Saar. As the name suggeshts… (drops her pen).. Ooops! (bends down to get it, stops abruptly and looks sheepishly and coyly at the boss.... as his eyes focus and go glazed and beady into that-which-must-not-be-stared-at-by-true-gentlemen.

K: (whispers hoarsely) Monicaaaaaaaaaa! (Regains composure.) By Kenneth Starr! This one's an all-rounder!

B: Shirrr? Shomething wraang shirr?

K: Oh, nothing….. go ahead, go ahead! Do take your time. (Makes big tick mark across this candidates name)

Eight hours later, results are out. She's in.

Bystander 1 (scratching his head): “Aliyo, how the hell did *she* get in?! She’s got 2 supplees (supplimentaries) and just 64% uluva!”

Bystander 2: “Hush, a$$hole! Look ….. she’s bending down to pick up her shoes and her books. Golden chance machan!

(Their eyes focus and go glazed and beady into that-which-must-not-be-stared-at-by-true-gentlemen. The world is true. Cycle of Karma is the ultimate truth. Neti. Neti. )

Case 2:

Half-A$$ Techie(H1) and braindead HR dork(H2) from KlaxonNet on the desk.

A Thampuran (Lord) of Thallu(“Snow technique”/Bullshit) from S-7 Applied Electronics(A) in the hot seat.

H2: So, what are your career objectives in the long run? Where do you see yourself in the system…..

A: Wait, wait, wait! You see, the whole country of the system is juxtapositioned by the haemoglobin in the atmospher because you are a sophisticated rhetorician intoxicated by the exuberance of your own verbosity!

H2 and H1 rise up and applaud: “Wah, Wah, Wah!”

H2 whispers to H1: Such munificent, bodacious, magnacartacious, gnathonic, goobledeegookian effluvia of verbosity! I bet his IQ and EQ must be somewhere in the Troposphere! You know, Troposphere…. the highest layer of the atmosphere?

H1: (Grins sheepishly) Oh yesh, yesh, yesh… but now we got to check his technical knowledge.

H1: Wokay, what is your perspective on the errrr… ummmmm….Viterbi Algorithm.

A: Oh, you mean the Siffredi Algorithm? By the famed mathematician Rocco Siffredi of University of Tuscanny….{Sucker!}

H1 (Looking unsure, speaking to himself): {Hey, wasn’t that the name I read in Outlook? Or was it in The Hindu? Damn, was it Viterbi or Siffredi?}

A (thinking): {Hah hah, I knew I could get away with it! This loser doesn’t watch thundu!}

H2: (Wakes up from dozing) Hey, even I have heard that name somewhere before…… it was sooo long ago. Now where was it….

H1 (looking for a way out): Yes, my mistake. Heh heh. I mean, Siffredi algorithm!

A(thinking): {Heavens! For a moment I thought the HR guy might call my bluff… Anyway, which orifice shall I now pull out a grand new algorithm from?}….

Results out in 24 hrs, A gets into KlaxonNet beating 99 colleagues to a 4 lakh per annum package. Rumor is, he made a HUGE impression on the interview board…

Case 3:

Grizzled veteran from Albert ‘Al’ Zawahri Assosciates (A) on the desk.

Biker Demon from S-7, ME. (B) in the hot seat.

B: ….. and that was the time Tom and I crashed this Enfield into a Paandi Lorry full of cows, and got away with it! The driver had a cow! You get it? He had a cow! He had a cow! NJAHAHAHAHAHAHA…..

A: Interesting. Interesting. {Son of a mangy dog... spawn of a molting vulture, won’t you ever stop yapping?!}

B: You know dude, there was this time I was high on brake-fluid and arrack cocktail and….

A: Wait, wait, wait, my son. Patience is a virtue and heaven awaits those who are patient.

B: You da boss, dawg! Whatever you say!

A: You like SPEEEED? (Voice rising to shrill levels)

B: Does J-Lo have a killer bo*ty?

A: Eh? Oh ok…. I get it. But I would prefer my goat Pakeezah (Zah Zah) though! Anyway. (Husky voice now) You like to CRAAAASSSSHHHH into things?

B: Rev me up, Megadeath on my iPod, juice my ride, lemme crank up the speed and I’ll wreck friggin’ Planet Jupiter and his Aunt Sarah!

A: (Dials a number on his secure satellite phone) Pervez, Osama, Li Peng, We have a winner! Alhamdulillah!

The ones that make it through the gruelling process which seperated the wheat from the chaff, the men from the boys, the FLUTES (subject matter for another folio) from the Mexxx, the women from the Ladies Hostelites and the awkardly feminine from the possibly Civilian (i.e Civil Engineering).........(with due respets to Dodgeball movie), have to pay a Hafta of approx 10000 (Nepal) rupees. Sher's share of this Hafta goes into the bulk orders for Rapidex English speaking course booklets for the teaching staff in charge of the CGPU, always selected for his command over Parassala dialect of Malayalam (think Rajamanickam times 10)...... another chunk into our clandestine bio-weapons program at the Ladies Hostel and the rest into the "relief" fund for the CGPU student representatives from each branch.
In my days, we had Sid, Harry, EP and K..... two guys and two gals(?) respectively from E1 and E2 divisions of my branch. Equal equal for political correctness, "just for a horror" as the wogs say! Grrrrrrrr. (PS: One of these is an on-off blogger of no mean skill). Poor things did a good job, including successfully threatening a globetrotting IT giant to admit students with one supplee, dusting the cobwebs, sweeping the CGPU floor, fix the plumbing, hauling the furniture around, getting 440V shocks from the Edison era equipment...... and at the end of the day gets pummelled by their own classmates for the tiniest shortcomings. You see, we are an organisation that does NOT tolerate the smallest infraction. After the recruitment season, most reps become wrecks of human beings and walk around with a glazed look, dive for cover and yells for fire-support whenever they hear a sudden noise, goes into convulsions if they see anyone in formal wear.... tch, tch. Suchapity. Here's looking at you, brave martyrs for our cause..... you shall always live in our minds! :P

This, my friends, is my brief intro to our eternal, glorious opera that is the CGPU.... and her dramatis personae. May she live a thousand lifetimes!


Footnote: As for my personal experience with CGPU, I invoke the 5th Amendment of the US Constitution- "I refuse to answer on the ground that the answer may tend to incriminate me". Let me just tell you that the techie who had the misfortune to inteview me abandoned all worldly life and now teaches orthodox Shunyavada at a Tibetan monsatery...... the HR guy was last seen "gone junglee" and swinging creeper to creeper a la Tarzan, by a Serbian mercenary in Zaire.
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PS: Civilians and Mexxx and assorted effluvia who have been mentioned here, Dil Pe Mat Le Yaar.....