Zindagi jeeni hai sahi

Is kadar bhid gaye zindagi ki daud se,

Ke jeene ka matlab bhool gaye,

Kinaare chod diye woh hasi ke,

Aur samundar jitne aasoo bhaaye.

Phool khilne ki khushi ko bhula diye,

Kaanto par hi chalte rahe,

Chod diye shital bhare saaye woh,

Dhoop se jal kar rakh hue.

Bachon ki woh masumiyaat,

Bhulaa kar to aarso beete,

Duniyaadaari ka sabak seekhte seekhte,

Insaan se jaanwar kab ban gaye?

Dil kaunsa aur pathar kaunsa,

Poocho khud ko, Farak hai yaa nahi?

Abhi bhi sawar sakte ho bande,

Zindagi jeeni hai sahi.

-By me (Asking for pardons.....just in some mood for poetics)

Exercising in a 'glassy' gym

Our gym is on the ground floor. It has a glass panel. It offers a nice view of the outside world. Trouble is....we are exposed to the 'outside world' too. Its one thing for us, to look at the beautiful skies from the inside. Quite startling to see people staring at us, while we are working out. In fact, I completely understand how animals in a zoo feel when they are being watched by humans, from outside the cage.

In fact, I can almost imagine people offering bits of crumbs of toast to us through the lower ventilation openings in the glass or lobbing biscuits over the upper louvers !!!

People watch curiously, others point rudely, still others laugh, some others stare with their mouths open staring at the pretty chicks on the treadmills and the stepper-cycle......you'll see all of those and still more outside 'open gyms'

While you might think its a bit absurd, having glass panels for the gym, gym owners think its great advertising. People come to know that there is a 'gym down there'. The 'pretty chicks' are crowd pullers for freaking desperadoes. Quite apart, you generally come to know about the equipment that's there in the gym. I know it sounds quite strange to those hard core weight training fans and body building purists, but the majority of Indians who go to classy gyms....check out the cardio equipment.....and you'll see that against the glass !!! (Of course, no one would keep weights near the glass....for fear of the weights breaking the glass and causing a nasty accident.).

Usernames, passwords, emails and chat IDs

The advent of internet and networking, brought the need to maintain online security and privacy of its users. Experts devised a simple way. The use of 'usernames' and 'passwords'. A username is nothing but an online name.....your intials, your name, first name initials, last name full and various such combinations. Password is a string of characters, which only the user is supposed to know. It could be a number, few alphabets or alphanumeric. Generally, the username becomes your email ID. E.g (username)@website.com. The username used in office is generally more or less fixed by your network administrator. But here I am talking of the one which we create ourselves, the one used on a public website.

I have observed that, at times, these usernames may well be an indication of the people whom they belong to. Middle aged aunties, who've just discovered how the net is used have a very straight forward username, probably followed by the year in which they have created the ID. Most probably, they'll keep the password same as the username, coz they might probably think that it would be better if its the same, so that they wont forget it. Fair enough......however they tend to forget their username as well !!!

At times, the username is same as the chat ID or vice versa. Young guys, who'd love to meet someone online in a chat room would have the typical 'macho' username or chat ID.

handsomehunk or muscleman or imyourman are common chat IDs. People who are willing to reveal their age (or fake it for obvious purposes) keep an 'asl' chat ID (age-sex-location..........the cool chat lingo) . For example, 18maledelhi.......... or a more 'sophisticated' one would be 21handsomemaledilli-6. They'll keep an age which, in their opinion would be the most attractive age to girls, even if they happen to be as old as 28 or as young as 15.

This is not an exception to girls...........sweet16goingon17 is an example of an 'oh-so-sassy' chat ID, guaranteed to pull all the boys of all the chat rooms of a public chat.

Coming back to usernames again, people who have an uncommon name can exercise the best option of a using the username, so that their email address becomes First name.Last name@website.com or firstnamelastname@website.com.

For those who have a common name, would find the above format is not available for them, as their are already people who have that name, and have already kept that email ID.

And so poor souls like my friend irfan, with names common with about a 1000 people in this world, go in for keeping an email ID, which also has their birthdate suffixed.

And for poor soulds like me, with a name common with about 10000 people in this world, go in for an email ID, which has their birthdate, month and maybe even birth year suffixed.

Cant say much about passwords, but a popular password is the name of a person suffixed with something like 123 or maybe their birthdates.

Believe me, its not easy to think up passwords, if your office server keeps asking you to change password on a quarterly basis........after all it cant be xyz123 all the time can it ???!!!

Tumbling like a pack of cards.

They've all been scurrying away, spreading in all directions, tumbling like a pack of cards, falling like dried leaves. Ain't talking about anything else but the people who've resigned from our department in our company in the last two months.

Job shifting is nothing new. People do it all the time. But its one thing for 1-2 people in a single department to go per year and something else when 8 people quit their job (all in a single department) in a space of 2 months.

When recession hit us hard, the people on contract were told to pack up. All others feared for the security of their jobs and even those of the dozy lot were seen working. The older 'so-many-years-in-company-no-one-tells-me-to-walk-off-even-if-I-have-coffee-all-the-time' were finally facing justice. It was'nt long before, people gave better performance for fear of being kicked out. Now that's what's called performance pressure !!

That was a year back. Slowly the market gained. Job availability is better now. And so people have quit !! In need of better jobs, in need of better packages, better work and best of all.....a better boss !!

Now that so many people have resigned, others in the department have started eyeing each other suspiciously. The 'are you quitting?' look has become most familiar. Lot of money is lost for contributions towards farewell gifts, farewell parties etc. And the trend of quitting has grown so exponentially that, I have started wondering whether I'll have to buy myself a farewell gift, if I dont quit soon, myself !!