Voice From A 2.5-World Country

where’s here? Here’s there of course, where else?

If you actually look my last post, you will know that I went back and read some of my old posts, and what I realized is that I need to blog. Not to get laid or to get a book deal, but because the blog actually ends up turning into a little autobiography, one way or another. What was the mood at the time. What was I thinking? (The “what was I thinking” feeling comes up often, especially when I see the woman_who_I_thought_was_my_girlfriend_but_she_did_not-related posts).

So yes, where am I? Well it’s been 2 years, and I am still travelling to Gurgaon to work. Only, I’m working in a building that didn’t exist 2 years ago. I am also travelling on a stretch of road* which used to take me 1.5 hours to cross on a good day (2 years ago), and now only takes 45 minutes. That, my friends, is called progress. I am car-pool-partner-less now, but not alone in the car.

The Colleague

I take a female colleague with me, whom we shall call A. Me and A have an affinity for the song Umbrella by Rihanna. We sing it at the top of our beautiful voices, when we’re driving back sloshed from a night out at Cafe Morrison (erstwhile Gourmet Gallery in South Ex)or Saket Buzz or Vasant Vihar Opus-but-now-the-new-so-called-Turquoise-Cottage.  Now, now folks it’s nothing like that. A is getting married shortly. Yes yes, this situation resembles a mess I got into in Melbourne, which resulted in the Delete Blog button being pressed, but it won’t happen this time assure you. Her fiance is a nice guy, worth marrying by the looks of it.

The Job

I work for a ginormous Multinational company whom I shall not name, but shall call Big Blue. If that rings a bell, don’t give yourself a cookie, because it doesn’t require much effort to figure out who I am talking about. Big Blue is cool. It lets me work from home (although I haven’t fully taken advantage of that). Big Blue let’s you take a day off without having to ask for permission (but if you do this often enough, you and I know both know what would happen). But you see what’s interesting is that to an extent, I was working for Big Blue, even when I wasn’t. HUH?

Well you see, Big Blue got kicked out along with Coke, Common Sense & Prosperity in the 1970s, by our good Christian Hindu Fundamentalist George Fernandes. Now, when Big Blue left, its assets were appropriated by Indian entreprenuers, as were Coca-Cola’s. Thus we ended up with these oh-so-pure Indian brands. Campa Cola, Thums Up - built on the corpse of Coke. Ex-Big Blue employees banded together and created their own firms as well. One of them, called Hindustan Computers Limited (now a US$ 4 billion enterprise, apparently) went on to do quite well. I worked for it from 2002 to 2005. Then I worked there for 2 months in 2007. And then I left it, to work for Big Blue. So I’ve never really left Big Blue you could say.

Wow, what an awful ramble. But I’ll leave it here to remind me of how much my writing has deteriorated.

*ok ok, it’s actually National Highway 8, which will take you Bombay if you let it. And being the Original Delhi-ite, I would never let it do that to me!

Man, I never realised I was good…I actually find my old posts interesting.

So to the few people who accidentally stumbled onto this blog instead of AyatollahKhomeini.com, allow me to introduce myself to you. I am TTG, erstwhile blogger, victim of a sting operation of the Delhi Times (circa 2005), and chaser-after of the now almost famous eM. In that previous life, I was a very prolific blogger. But quantity does not equal quality my friend. Don’t believe me? Well, if you’re a single woman in Delhi, go stand at your nearest street corner, and shout at the top of your voice - “I NEED SEX”. The result will be a substantial quantity, and as for quality… well…

I digress. I was at work today, researching an unlisted company (i.e. not on the stock market, and therefore with no publicly available information) when I stumbled upon a site called The Wayback Machine. Which for some bizarre reason has archived my site. Only some of it. The beautiful obituary I wrote for my grandmother is lost forever, along with her. But there were other posts which are still there. Go and have a look if you’re tired of sending Valentine’s Day cards to yourself. Some of my posts were so good that they engaged even me! Imagine their effect on you! Anyway, let me then announce to the world at large, that I hereby begin the TTG Atlantis Setu Samudhram Recovery project. I need to get the blog posts from The Wayback Machine site, and get them uploaded onto this site. This is a massive task, requiring:

•  7000 slaves,
• a beautiful wife who is played by Aishwarya Rai and who dies after giving birth to my 14th son child
•  and an architect whose hands I will eventually cut off so that he may not repeat the task ever again.

Oh wait. That’s been done before! Damn you ISKCON Temple, always stealing my thunder!*

*If that joke went straight over your head, there’s not much I can do to help you understand it except maybe this might help

Ah the joys of local food. What a crock (of dung)

So the latest fad to save the Earth has to do with eating local. This will be a short post. Why? Because I don’t think I really have to explain why I don’t believe I will be saving the planet by eating carrots growing on the central verge of Khel Gaon marg. Is that local enough for you?

Oh I took it literally. I should look within my region. Ah. So you mean the garden in the front of the DLF Infinity Towers, Gurgaon is better to grow carrots and apples? No? A little further afield? Within 100 km of my city you say? I have the The Great Indian Desert to my south and west. So that limits the ability to grow stuff does it not? Oh I should restrict myself to cactus juice then? Thanks. Could it be that there might be some parts of the world that live in areas not conducive to growing nutritious stuff within their 100 km radius? Oh then we relax the rule. So tell you what. Why don’t we just tell that rule to fuck off?

By the way - once we’ve all decided to eat local and killed off the population of all the world’s islands, who is going to console the farmers around the world, who were shipping their stuff much farther afield than they are now. They will make less money, which means they won’t be able to feed their families. But hey. We saved the planet didn’t we?