January 27, 2010

Sinking in Quicksand.....

2010 started on a crap note - for 1 thing net connection went haywire, had a ultra major fight with bro, cable guy all of a sudden decided that ESPN and star Sports are too revered a channels to be seen by mortal people and puts a plug in them...and that was just Jan 1...you know how some people have an obsession for collecting stamps, or coins or shoes..well my mum is obsessed with dust... not collecting it obviously..in short she's a neat freak...so in our house birthdays, national holidays are passe' ..we have a cleaning day...its that day when mum wakes up and takes a tour of the house and with her X-ray vision eyes sees dust bunnies in places which we never even knew existed in our house...a sweeping hand here and one there she evaluates the state of the house all the while muttering with disdain about the pathetic condition...while therez a grim look in her eyes therez a horror-struck one in dad, bro and mine...the grim look is then replaced by a determined one and in  a resolute voice mum officially declares war and a vow to get the place spic and span no matter what it takes...Its at this point of time that dad clears his throat and mutters about some important work but well mumz a human lie detector..THATS a bad day..on worse days dad himself gets bitten by the dirt bug and joins mum in her mission to save the house..with the vacuum cleaner in his hand he swears his loyalty to the mission...on the worst days mum and dad rope bro and me and forcibly make us join the 'clean' gang....Jan 2 was the 1 of the worst days...

With a duster in her hand and dad ( vacuum cleaner in hand of course, thats his choice of weapon) as her right hand, mum started making strategies...she was the commander and we her soldiers...If USA followed half the strategies with the same diligence, Iraq and Afghanistan would have been in their pockets by now...Mum started off leaving dad to deal with us and assign us our posts, I got the easy task and was to clean out the clothes cupboard...This is the part I introduce you to one of the most well-used/exercised words in Indian history -DELEGATION. And who else can understand the term better than us Indians, more so my family.

See delegation in 'it-cannot-get-more-simple-than-this' language is the art by which a superior authority person shoves his work on people he has control over to save his ass from the line of fire. Its simple and effective and the best part is that you always have THE excuse that you're ahem 'supervising'. But in our family delegation doesn't really follow a hierarchy. What happened was, I was to clean the cupboard, take out the clothes, line the shelves with newspaper...So I take out the clothes and delegate the job of lining the shelves to dad...Dad lines them and in the process causes a havoc with the pile of newspapers stacked neatly in the store..Dad too tired with work delegates the job of re-arranging the stacks to bro who in turn asks for my help...Moral- you think you can get away but therez no escaping this vicious cycle of delegation....

But the best example of delegation is the one dad told me about - One of the district courts in Delhi is plagued with monkey menace...story goes that there are more monkeys in the area as compared to police pple...So the lawyers have hired a guy to get rid of the problem which supposedly is his area of expertise BUT guess what this guy has ..yes indeed delegated the task to none other than a langoor( in ape language a playground bully who monkeys are supposed to be terrified of) apparently and thats how life goes...I'm telling you we Indians have re-defined this terminology for sure...

P.S - I know writing about new year is waayy tooo late but well things didn't improve later on and net connection busted and oh still no sign of ESPN n Star Sports...with no net or sports channel situation became soo bad I had to scrounge in newspapers for football updates...cudn't watch Pool defeat Tottenham!! 1 good team pool managed to beat and I missed it....yaayy...