Yeah, that’s true

My theory of dealing with new joinees is simple. It is – Don't tell them the truth, let them discover it. When I am introduced to a new joinee I put on a smile as big as that of the Joker in Batman and say - Welcome to the organization. The truth is I always want to say - Welcome to hell. When new joinees ask me for help I tell them I am busy right now. Okay. That's not a lie. I am always busy in office. I tweet a lot. So what I am not working. I am busy.

Last Monday a new joinee joined my team. Since the team leader was absent I had to spend few minutes telling him about the awesome work we do and the not so awesome he will be doing for us. I showed the new joinee our products which he appreciated and told him we do such great work because we are dedicated, hard working employees and expect him to become one. Okay. That's a lie. We are not model employees but I was just following my theory of not telling the truth to the new joinees. Also it won't be nice for the new joinee to discover on day one of his new job that the job sucks.

After I had given the orientation to the new joinee I gave him the path where various company manuals were saved and told him to read them thoroughly. As the writer of few manuals for the company I know how dense they are and the only thing a fresher can do with them is to read them till he gets bored and then tweet – First day of the job and it has already started to suck. #FML

Lunch time came and I asked the new joinee to join my group for lunch. My lunch group is like mini India. There is too much diversity but there is one thing that unites us all. The great thought that unites us is that we all think our work sucks.

My lunch group consists of people from the Marketing to the IT support dept. We have nothing in common and still like each other. There is also minority representation i.e. their is one guy from production dept which is me. I think the reason I like the people in my lunch group is because I don't work with them. Once we will start working together on a project, we will start exchanging emails and then I will start hating them and they will start hating me. The email theory of the more work emails you exchange with a person, the more you think that person does nothing all day except forwarding you emails with the addition FYI from his/her side.

We had lunch and most of the people in my lunch group left. Only four people were still sitting. One from the IT support, one from marketing and me and the new joinee from production. The marketing guy was finishing his dabba and he asked me, "Oh….I heard you have quit."

There was silence for a moment. The new joinee was sitting next to me. I couldn't have said the reasons I resigned in front of him. There are some things which are better if the new joinees discover them by their own reasoning instead of someone telling them in advance for example cubicle blues. So I said, "Yeah, that's true" and left the table.

To sum up

I have quit. I won't say I don't have any regrets because I have one. I should have done it much earlier.

Mind vs Heart

I don't hate Mondays. I only hate working on Mondays. I spend every Sunday watching movies, drinking beer and every Monday morning my mind spends few minutes convincing my heart that I am not sick and must attend office.

One of the biggest tragedies of my life is that every Monday morning I wake up and find myself not sick. I believe I have fever, common cold, body pain or any possible disease that will allow me take a sick leave and will disappear as soon as I call my boss and say, "I am not feeling well, Can't come, have a nice Monday. Bye Bye." 


Unfortunately, my mind knows that my heart is a coward and can easily be conquered with fear. The fear that my boss will catch my lie just because he too might have done the same on few Mondays when he was not a boss is good enough to make my heart surrender to my mind and take me to office. I know it is a long, stupid and grammatically  incorrect argument but it always works.

Every Monday my mind conquers my heart and takes me to the place which I hate the most, my office. Okay that's not true. The place I hate the most is Pakistan but my office is also full of terrorists. A Pakistani terrorist's job is to drop explosive bombs whereas an office terrorist's job is to drop email bombs. Bombs of Pakistani terrorists kill you whereas bombs of office terrorists make you wish that you were dead. Murder or encouragement for suicide. End result is the same. You die.

Today when I woke up my heart said don't go to office and my mind said go. Before my mind could use its dirty trick of terrorizing my heart, my heart said to my mind, "You know what the cricket score is? Sachin is going to score his 50th test century today. Instead of watching it you want to read this historical moment on cricinfo. I feel so sad to be part of a body that has a brain like you."

My brain was totally dumbfounded. He just didn't know what to say. The heart had just pawned my brain with its awesome argument. My brain remained silent for few minutes and then replied, "STFU heart. Abhishek, get the beep out of bed before the beep heart beeps your beeping life." My heart asked doesn't beep means fuck and my mind replied, "Yes and you are the one who is to be blamed for all the beeping. It is you who instead of downloaded pirated movies made Abhishek watch Big Boss 4. Now suffer. Beep you heart and you lazy beep ass still in the bed, start getting ready for office. Beep Beep Beep. We are going to get a late mark today."

This was a complete role reversal situation for me. My heart was using logic to convince my mind and my mind was beeping to make my heart shut up. I knew my heart was right. I also knew my mind was asking me to do the right thing. Mind vs Heart. Cricket vs Work. It was simple decision. Cricket is what I love and work is what pays my bills. Money cannot buy happiness but……..as part of the great young Indian generation driven by consumerism I know one thing – No money, no happiness. So I got out of bed and reached office hoping Sachin won't mind one less fan cheering him today.

To sum up

Heart vs Mind = Cricket vs Work = Story of every Indian = Cricket rules my heart and work my mind.

One blog for the MBAs

One of my colleagues had coolest life ever. Since he graduated from a decent college, he got a decent job with a good pay. Not only that he also had a girlfriend. Decent job, good pay and a girlfriend, this guy was practically living my dream life. However, this guy thought, “Fuck…who needs all this…..I don’t want people to be jealous of me living their dream life so I must get married.”

I am not a misogamist which means I don’t hate marriages. In fact, I would like to put on record that I like marriages. I have spent a good deal of my life in hostel and I know the importance of good food. I love marriages for all the free good food they bring in my life.

Unfortunately for my colleague his marriage didn’t turn out as he had planned and he was still happy. So he decided to do the worst thing one could do to his life. He got himself enrolled for a part-time MBA course. Since he couldn’t become unhappy he decided to make others unhappy by becoming an MBA (Mean. Bastard. Arrogant).

Today during the tea-break I came to know his exams for the first sem of MBA had started. He told us that he appeared for a paper of MBA and was stunned to find people were filling supplements. I too was stunned. MBA means you must be able to speak crap at length without knowing a single thing about the topic and this future MBA couldn’t even write crap. I am scared to think one of my favorite colleagues is going to become an MBA which cannot talk crap. God knows who will hire such an MBA.

While talking about his exams he told us that something very stupid happened during the exam. The invigilator told the class that mobile phones are not allowed. I would say it was a smart move by the invigilator to stop cheating. You don’t think so. Go and watch Rajni Sir’s Robot now.

My colleague followed the invigilators instructions, switched off his mobile and kept it in his sack in a corner of the room. With fifteen minutes to go the mobile started ringing. My colleague full of embarrassment immediately submitted his paper and ran out of the classroom with his sack.  

I was relieved to hear this story. My colleague (who by the way is an engineer) by the end of first semester of MBA had become incompetent enough that he couldn’t even switch off his own mobile. I am sure by the end of his MBA course he would be competent enough to talk crap as if he was born to do so. This will ensure that as soon as he completes his MBA, he will be flooded with job offers. By the way I have one wish to make…….God help the engineers who will be working under a Team Leader that cannot switch off his own mobile phone.

To sum up

MBAs are the James Bonds of India. They have license to kill people with crappy talks.

FML

I think the reason deadlines are called deadlines is because they turn the people working on deadlines into Zombies. People working on deadlines have no social life. They don’t log in to facebook, don't read newspaper and come to office with a mood to kill their boss. The only thing on the mind of the people working on a deadline is work. This turns the employees working on a deadline temporarily into workaholics which is a good thing for the company and bad for the people interacting with the Zombies in office.

It is a well known rule of management that for better management people must work in teams and for a cheerful atmosphere in office some people who are expert in giving unwanted, irrelevant and stupid comments must be hired and allowed to interact with other employees. The expert commentators being hired to reduce tension in office try to be funny by enlightening the Zombies with their expert comments. This leads to the situation where you will find someone laughing on his own jokes and the other person in the conversation with a look on his face that he wants to jump on the expert, bite him and turn the expert into a Zombie like himself. Don’t blame management for it. It is a well known problem associated with Zombies. They have no sense of humor.

I told you that working on deadlines is a bad thing. However, there is something which is worse that than working on a deadline. It is working on a deadline that doesn’t belong to your team.

For the last two days I am working on a deadline that doesn’t belong to my team. The deadline belongs to a team that is headed by a Very Senior Manager (VSM). The VSM being a Very Senior Manager is working on more than one project and has asked me to do some work that she is supposed to do. Since it is a request from a VSM I cannot say your deadline is not my problem and have to work on the deadline.

Today I received an email from VSM that she has been checking the work done by me. The email started with Hello Abhishek and told me that she is extremely impressed by my work. The quality of my work is awesome and I have done few things which she might have overlooked. I read the email, then read it again, decided that I am taking the print out of this email to my next appraisal meeting and then instead of replying to the email went back to work.

After lunch time I received an email from our COO.  The email was a reply to the email send by the VSM to me. The email didn’t start with Hello Abhishek. In fact, it didn’t even have a single line. It had just one word. The word was ‘Great’. I read the email by the COO and immediately checked the CC field. I found out that the email send by VSM to me was marked to few people in senior management.

If I had read the CC field before I would have replied to the email with a thanks you note, a smiley or just few lines like - it is is my pleasure to work with you and I am always ready to work on deadlines because I am a dedicated employee and also I love being a Zombie. However, now I am an arrogant employee who doesn't have the common courtesy of saying thanks when someone appreciates his work. Don’t blame it me. I am working on a deadline and hence turned into a Zombie and as you would have learnt by watching several Hollywood zombie movies, Zombies don’t reply to emails.

To sum up

Every dog has its day. I had my day and totally ruined it because I was not a dog on that day but a Zombie. Also that, I love the element of surprise in my life. Just when I think things cannot get any worse, I find out they can.

The two Abhisheks

I learnt about Dissociative personality disorder from movies. It is a situation where a guy has two personalities. Hyde and Jekyll type. One guy is like your colleague next cubicle and another is a killer. In the end the bad guy takes over, there is some maar-dhad and we all know what happens next. We all have been there. We all have walked into a cinema hall with a Pepsi and popcorn and came out with a splitting headache.

The two parts of my personality are visible at work and home. At work I am the good guy. I do my work, I give pravachan to people that this work sucks but you need to do it because it pays money with which after work you can buy cigarettes, beer and pizza. I also keep myself pretty nicely organized. I have maintained my MS Outlook in such a way that I once opened it front of one of my colleagues to show her an email and she said , “Abhishek, you are a genius. I have never seen such a well organized Outlook in the whole office.” Sometimes I feel so disappointed that my company doesn’t have a best organized inbox award.

At home the other Abhishek i.e. the awesome one takes over. There are clothes that are unclean and I intentionally keep them on floor so that I won’t wear to them to office by mistake. There are wrappers of biscuits and Maggie on floor which must be in dustbin but are not there because I stay miles away from my parents and hence not afraid of a surprise cleanliness inspection by my mom. The best part of Abhishek at home is the way he handles email.

At office when I receive an email I always mark it according to its importance, give a prompt reply and move it to the relevant folder. At home when I receive an email, I read it and then forget about it. I am always sure that the sender would have asked the same info from few more friends and some sucker would definitely reply. My philosophy about emails at work is don’t allow anyone to complain and at home is don’t reply until they complain.

To sum up

The biggest difference between office and home is that in office you do what you are supposed to do and at home you do what you want to do.

Comics

I grew up in a town. A place where the medium of instruction in English medium schools is Hindi. During my childhood there was no Cartoon Network in India. The only TV channel we had during those days was Doordarshan and the only cartoon show I got to watch was the one after the morning mythological TV serial. Today when I see children watching several cartoon channels in high definition TV, I feel jealous but still somehow I feel all these super cool cartoons are no match to the time I had reading Hindi comics.

When I was a child, Hindi comics were a very big industry. Today as far as I know only Diamond comics and Raj Comics are the two active Hindi comics publisher. I was fortunate enough to read comics by Manoj and Tulsi publications. Unlike today’s children who get to watch only funny cartoons, I got to read a whole genre of comics ranging from comedy to action to horror (Raj Comics once upon a time published few comics under the series Thrill-Action-Horror or sometime like that.)

Today when I walk into a bookstore I find all the big comics. From Calvin, Asterix, Tintin to Superman, Spiderman etc etc and I buy them. Unfortunately, all the big bookstores located in the big malls have no space for my beloved Hindi comics. The only reliable space where I find them is the railway station and there also I have been unable to get the latest set of Raj Comics (If also like me you grew up reading Hindi Comics then you know the meaning of set and the eagerness with which we waited for it every month of summer holidays.)

The library I have joined in Pune doesn’t store Hindi comics. It has got dedicated shelf space for English comics that must cost more than Rs 200 per copy but you won’t find a single Hindi comics that costs less Rs 50. I once asked my librarywala, ”Uncle why don’t you keep Hindi comics” and he replied ,”Bcoz there is no demand for them”. I wanted to tell him that is not true because I spend the summers of my childhood reading if not tons than kilos of Hindi comics but then as far as I know none of the children in my family know much about Nagraj, Dhruv, Parmanu or Doga. Their day starts with school, after that tuition and ends with doing homework. Forget reading comics it is wonder that they even get time to watch Cartoon Network. Unfortunately they know nothing about the great Indian comic book superheroes and since I do, I will end this blog by writing few lines in the memory of those I remember.

Chacha Chowdry: It will be wrong to call that the man more intelligent than supercomputer is the only hero of this series. It's not only him but his sidekicks Sabu, his wife and their dog Rocket are equal fun to read. The best comics of this series are those where Raka, the villain who couldn’t die appeared. Believe me even if you are not a comic enthusiast still buy those comics that have Raka. You will not regret that the money that you earned by slogging into an AC office got wasted.

Billo: His hairs were long enough to always cover his eyes. As a child I thought he had the coolest hairstyle and I still believe so.

Raman: I don’t think anyone remembers him. He was a middle-class middle-age guy with a family. His problems were the problems of our daily life. If there has ever been any character that could portrait the true life of an Indian then it was him. Another comics I remember like this was Shrimatij in which a housewife was the central character.  

Tosi: An action hero. He was actually an Ichadhair Nag. As far as content goes he was most genuine action hero I have ever read. This could be because it was written by Ved Prakash Sharma, Hindi’s bestselling author of thriller novels.

Nagraj: Hssss…..the Snakeman. He started off as a globetrotting warrior against terror but nowadays resides in Rajnagar and has a dual identity like Marvel comics characters. The transition from the traveler to one city man had destroyed the charm of Nagraj.

Super Commando Dhruv: My personal favorite. Dhruv’s initial comics were good enough to make hardcore sci-fi fans appreciate it. Personally I believe the stories of his first few comics such as Pratishodh ki jawla, Roman Hatara, Mahamanav are good enough to beat the western comics. Dhruv doesn’t have any superpower except being able to talk with animals but beats villains who are vicious, intelligent and loaded with superpowers with his common sense and athletic ability. Unfortunately all his new comics I have read during the last few years lack common sense and are complete crap.   

Parmanu: Mr. Superhero. Always fun to read.

Doga: If you want to read an action comics then read his. He is only the genuine action hero Indian comics have right now.

Angara: He was created by a scientist who gave him the strengths of several animals like skin that bullets cannot penetrate. He commanded a loyal army of wild animals. The antagonist of this action hero was a dwarf robot who got his energy from Sun.

Krukbond: James Bond ka chela. He and his sidekick Motu not only solved mystery but also made you laugh. He was the best comic action hero I have ever read.

Halwadar Bahadur: His comics were written in the language I spoke with my friends. Funny enough to make you sometimes stop reading the comics so that you catch a break from laughing.

Bakelal: Hehehehe…………….. even the mention of his name makes me laugh. Shivji has cursed him that all his schemes to do bad of someone will turn out to be good for that person. He works as a minister of Raja Vikram Singh and wants to become the King but due to the curse his every scheme to kill the King solves the problems faced by the King. His comics end with him explaining the King that what he did was pre-planned by him to help the King and the King with big moustache kissing him which he hates.

Fighter Tods: Very funny but I have always felt they are rip-off of Teenage Ninja Turtles

Gamraj: Son of Yumraj, the God of death. Munna Bhai of Indian comics. Reading the adventures of Gamraj, his bull Yamunda and his sidekick Shankalu who always made wrong predictions always made me laugh.

Yay!!! We won

I am an average Indian cricket fan. By average I mean I am not one of those guys whom you meet and they start talking non-stop about the latest Indian victory but if I ever meet such a guy I don’t ask him to shut up. Today I reached office with the determination that I will not type cricinfo.com in the address bar of my browser. I knew the score, I knew the score day before and thought a draw is bad for test cricket and after reading 55/4 felt a draw which is bad for test cricket is much better than India losing the match.

I reached office. Checked mails and went to cricinfo. Call me a person with weak willpower but I grew up in 1990s and for me as long as God is on the crease, there is hope. The God got out and my colleagues asked me would I like to join them for a cup of tea. The conversion during tea didn’t revolve around cricket, no one wanted to discuss it because we all had pretty much resigned to the fate that Australia were one-up in the series.

I came back, checked score, got the information that we were indeed going to lose and went back to work. After working for some time I logged onto to twitter. Twitter told me that Sachin is God but against Australia Laxman is the real devil. He always sinks the Australian ship and this time it was not gonna be any different.

I started tracking the match again on cricinfo and was happy to get ball by ball updates of what­ all the tomorrow’s edition of every Indian newspaper are going to call as the one of the best innings of Laxman and Ishant’s careers. India was on track to register a victory which every average Indian fan is going to remember for a long time and I was happy because thanks to my weak willpower I was watching history being made.

As the match progressed some more average Indian fans in my office opened cricinfo and then Ishant got out. Most of my colleagues considered it as the end of the Indian innings and went for lunch. Few asked me do I wish to join them and I wanted to throw paperweight at them but unfortunately the admin dept never issued me one. Lucky for my die-hard pessimist colleagues.

As India reached near victory cricinfo died. It was one of the moments in life when you wish you had plan B ready and I had one. I shifted to cricbuzz and it due to the heavy traffic from several average Indian cricket fans who crashed the cricinfo servers also died. This was the moment I wished I had a plan C ready but unfortunately I didn’t, so googled for cricket score, found few websites and settled for Yahoo cricket because it was still alive. 

At the end of the match there was some drama but it was nothing compared to what was happening at my desk. Me and one of my colleagues were refreshing the yahoo page again and again trying to get the latest score but even after refreshing it two to three times we were seeing the same number of balls being bowled. Either Australia was blowing in slow motion due to which each ball took 2 minutes to deliver or the commentary on yahoo was slow. 30 years back my father used to beat his radio to get the score and I felt I too needed to so the same. Unfortunately, my father owned the radio and I don’t own the office PC so I decided to check the score at cricinfo, cricbuzz, yahoo, rediff, indiatimes etc etc simultaneously only to hear a colleague shout Yaaaaaayyyyyyyyyyy, WE WON.

To sum up

Every Indian loves cricket and loves it even more when India wins and for our love of the game cricinfo needs to buy few more servers. 

Oops

I work in Production dept. Yesterday I received few emails that were sent to my departmental group discussing few productions issues. The email thread was started by the Chairman by sending a mail to the COO and the COO replying to the Chairman with CC to my departmental id saying it will be better if we have a meeting on these issues. The Chairman said 2:30 tomorrow will be fine and someone send request through Outlook to everyone in the department for a meeting with the Chairman and the COO at 2:30 pm.

Today morning I received a message on the company's internal chat messenger from the person scheduling the meeting at 2:30 whether I had accepted her request for the meeting. I closed the message because I had accepted the meeting request and she should have received the message of my acceptance in her inbox. The senior manager sitting next to me shouted what is the need to confirm we will attend the meeting when our accept or reject decision would have been lying in her inbox.

After lunch the person scheduling the meeting came to the production floor and asked the senior manager had she accepted the meeting request. The senior manager said of course, I have and the person left. After the person scheduling the meeting left, the senior manager told me something really bad is going to happen in the meeting. I told the issues in the mail were not serious and she asked me then why is the person scheduling the meeting asking us again and again are we going to attend the meeting. Her comment made me nervous and till 2:30 all I did was to track the India v Sri Lanka watch on cricinfo.

We reached the conference room at 2:30 only to find it was occupied by the COO and few marketing people. As we waited for the meeting to finish, the person scheduling the meeting asked the COO for how much more time the current meeting is going to continue and the COO said 5 more minutes. We stood in front of the conference room for 15 more minutes discussing why the Chairman had called meeting of my whole department and were relieved when we got to know the Chairman yesterday had asked the person scheduling the meeting what was the need of sending meeting invitation to so many people.

After waiting for 15 minutes in front of the conference room we all came back to our desks and after 10 minutes got the message the Chairman and the COO were waiting for us in the conference room. We reached the conference room and the first thing the COO said before we could sit was, “Sorry. We need inputs only from senior managers.”

Happily we all left the senior manager sitting next to me in the line of fire and went back to our workstations. Few hours later the senior manager came back to the production floor and gave me a piece of paper. The paper contained few issues that my department was facing and after reading one after the another issue I started suggesting the solutions. I stopped while reading the second last issue and told the senior manager I don’t know what does this means. I really can’t fathom what they want to do with an internal software that we are using. The senior manager said the VP(Production) will send a formal mail regarding the issues raised in the meeting and by the time we received the mail she had left for the day.

I read the word again, scratched my head and realized the person who had developed the internal software was still working with us. I reached to his desk and found he had left for the day. I went to his assistant showed him the word and asked him what does this means. The assistant smiled, told me give me 2 mins and reached to the mouse of his computer. I told him you are not allowed to google in such a tone that people working near him stopped working and started looking at us. I was feeling like a jackass when the assistant touched his mouse because I had forgotten google has all the answers and for the answers it doesn’t have, the management will never ask you to work.

The Assistant told me then I must contact his Sir and I went back to my desk and called his boss. The boss said he was driving and will call me back soon. He called me back and asked me what the problem was. I said I want to know the meaning of this word and he replied, “Huh!!! Abhishek, really, can we talk about it tomorrow?” I said ok and the call was disconnected.

Now my only hope was google. As I said before Google devta knows all the answers and so I googled the word. Google told me this word belongs to the field of pure mathematics that deals with shapes, also known as geometry. As I was trying to understand how geometry will fit into our internal software a colleague passing by my desk asked me what you are doing.

I told her I am unable to understand how geometry can improve our internal software and she replied, “Abhishek, don’t worry. Even I don’t understand this word. You know, I am sure tomorrow the VP(Production) will send a mail clarifying the confusion that this word has caused and it will say – Sorry for the typo. The correct word is ………”

To sum up

Thanks to everyone that is making mistakes at my office. Without you this blog post wouldn’t have been possible.

Caught in office reading cricinfo

I am an Indian. This means I am in love with the game of cricket. Whenever India plays and I am in office, I open cricinfo and track the whole match. Today India was playing against Sri Lanka. It is one of those test matches after watching it children say I don’t want to become a bowler. I was tracking the match since morning and forget all the work when Sehwag reached 99.

Sehwag got out at 99. I had already forgotten work and reading Sehwag got out forget that I was in office and shouted Oh nooooooo………..Damn it. Most of the people working around me have got used to me talking to myself whenever India plays and ignore my every high pitch cry thinking this guy is just overreacting.

Unfortunately this time a very senior manager was talking with a senior manager that sits next to me. Being a very senior manager he immediately came to my desk and asked what happened. Before I could reply, “Nothing Sir….just a small problem. No worries” he was looking at my computer's screen.

I froze thinking the very senior manager will now ask me do you come to office to read cricinfo. I was planning to say - No sir….I just opened it and Sehwag got out….and I am really sorry…To ensure that India doesn’t lose any more wickets today, I will not open cricinfo again.

However, instead of that question the very senior manager asked me is that cricinfo. I response I nodded like a child who after being caught cheating in the exam has been asked don’t you know it’s wrong. He asked me did someone just got out and I realized the very senior manager is also a cricket fan and with all the seriousness I could muster in voice said,”Sehwag got out.” This was now the turn of the very senior manager to say, ”Oh nooooooo…..”

The senior without taking my permission read the bowl that dismissed Sehwag and said,”Did he got out on 99?” I wanted to tell the very senior manager that Sirji check the url. Its cricinfo and not fakingnews but the senior manager had just caught me reading cricket score and ignoring work so I said,”Yes Sir.”

The senior manager again looked at my screen and said,”What is the name of the bowler? I have not even heard it. He got out to such a bowler. This is bad, very bad.” I wanted to say to the manager you don’t play international cricket if you are bad bowler but then the senior manager would have proved me wrong by saying the names of the Indian bowlers playing the India v Sri Lanka test. So I said, “Yes Sir. Bad, very bad.”

The very senior manager said, “This really reduces our chances of a draw” and I said, “Yes Sir, this reduces our chances of a draw”. The very senior manager said, “I don’t understand it. What was the need to play such a shot at 99? and I replied, “Yes Sir, I also don’t also understand it. There was no need to play such a shot at 99”.

I think the very senior manager understood that he is not going to have an intelligent cricket discussion with me. All I was going to do was to say Yes Sir and then paraphrase whatever he had said. So the very senior manager smiled and left leaving me happy as a child who after being caught cheating during the exam has been told by the invigilator, “Beta, be careful. Enjoy this time and don’t do it ever again.”

To sum up

In India, everybody loves cricket. Irrespective of whether India wins or loses the match, cricinfo always does brisk business.