Hottie-culture

Scene1
You are with a friend in a lift. Both of you are waiting to reach the top floor. It is a quiet moment and both of you are not even bothered about each other’s presence. Just then the lift halts, the door slides open and you see a sizzling hot girl enter the lift. The door closes and everything gets quite again, except the fan which of course goes on making this humming noise. But now you realize that everything has changed. You keep on looking at the girl, and then for a brief moment look at your friend to check if both of you are on the same page. He too looks back at you and the mental conversation starts..
‘Dude, check out the girl’
‘Yeah, she is hot!’
‘God is great’
‘Yeah… hope the lift never stops’

Scene 2
It’s a beautiful day. You enter the coffee house for a client meet. You are young, ambitious and focused. You are getting to take big tasks at a very early age. You are enthusiastic and thankful.
‘God, I Love my job’
The client arrives and the conversation starts. Everything is going fine. He is listening to your deliverables. Just then the door opens and the sizzling hot girl enters the coffee house. Suddenly you realize that you cannot kill the eye contact, have a good look at the girl and prove to your client that you are a perv. You start feeling helpless. By now, all he is saying has stopped making sense, or maybe you have stopped listening. Now it is just a bald head and moving lips. You pray to god for a miracle to happen, but she grabs the coffee and leaves. The door closes and it is still the bald head and the moving lips.
‘God, I Hate my job’

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Technically speaking takes around five seconds to check out a girl properly, three with practice. And although the society does not think very highly of this act, but let me tell you it is not that simple. If you are from a decent family, studying in the country’s premier engineering institute, you cannot act like the rogue standing at a local panwari shop and make noises at girls ( which by the way is eveteasing and I am in no way supporting it in this blog) . For him, it is a very easy job and that’s how the entire practice gets labeled as a mal practice. But for us it has to be casual and decent as there is always a risk of getting caught staring. Now although I am sure that none of us think very highly of this act but then it can't be helped. It comes as an instinct. By the time you realize, you have done it and you end up feeling like a pervert.

However, how much lousy this act be, every man does it irrespective of age and status. In fact if somebody doesn’t then he should seriously question his sexuality (or testosterone secretion). Sometimes this 'checking-out' act becomes so challenging that it can give people an adrenalin rush. For example during cultural festivals like Rendezvous when suddenly the whole IIT wasteland gets lighted up with gorgeous women moving in groups of 4-6, you realize that it becomes impossible to check out all of them together. You obviously can’t hold your look on one and then move to another and then the third. That could get you killed. And what if you are walking past this group of women. That practically gives you 5-8 seconds to check them out, which technically speaking is beyond the potential of human scanner.

Let me tell you that like any other educated person who thinks highly of females, I too despise the checking out practice. However on a second thought it might not appear so ‘animal’. Just think, maybe on some level this checking out is a sign of admiration. The ‘Hot’ designation does not come easy. One has to work hard to achieve it, stay away from cravings and spend hours in front of mirror. So checking them out is a way to pay homage to their dedication and sacrifice. In fact would these so called hot girls, who spend hours in gym and a fortune in dresses and make up, like if nobody looks at them. It is guys like us, who are indirectly promoting the fitness, cosmetic and fashion industry and let’s face it, we are their driving force. History gives us evidences that women have ruled the world with their beauty. It is one domain you people own. So in a way ‘checking out’ is like promoting feminism.

Personally, my feelings for these ‘hot girls’ is more of respect than admiration. And the day I would actually get to talk to one of them, I would like to ask her, how she copes with so much pressure of literally having a control on so many things. Just think, in an examination hall, a ‘hot girl’ enters and chooses a front table, which changes everything for the guys who would now like to position themselves in a favorable location, which changes everything for the class dufus who was completely relying on copying from his friends, which changes everything for the class topper as all his favorite front seats have now been occupied , which changes everything for the girl who hates him and wanted to sit nowhere near him and ultimately everybody ends up performing differently.

Maybe one day Marvel and DC comics would realize the 'hot -girl' power and might develop a character out of it. By the way if they do, they better give the 'checking-out' power to the super villian otherwise as things are going, the hot-girl power might become unsurpassable.

The Beggar Blog

No, I am not obsessed with the down trodden and the poor in this country. So, if my previous post was about the 'bais' and this about the beggars, that doesn't mean I have developed some sort of liking towards the backward class. It is just that I am getting to observe some newer sides of the society.

When as a child the first time I would have seen a beggar, the first impression would have been less of annoyance or pity, but more of curiosity, 'Why doesn't he earn it on his own instead of asking for it?' Surprisingly, that's a question for which even today I am finding an answer. Although the beggar community constantly keeps on trying to give me reasons, like I am blind, lame, old etc, but then they are hardly reasons. I have seen disabled people working, selling stuff in trains, polishing shoes or any other small business. So although the reasons might be genuine in some cases; but in a vast majority, they are just fraud marketing.

So let’s face it, begging is a profession. The purchases in this segment are impulse based. Somewhat the same as you spend your money on an alpenliebe or hajmola candy. You have never planned it before hand, it takes a fraction of a second to make a purchasing decision and the satisfaction just lasts for a minute or two and then it’s all forgotten. Now, coming back to my first memory of beggars, I remember my parents telling me to ignore them and that they are just a bunch of lazy people who don't want to work and earn money sitting. At that time it was difficult to digest the orders to ignore a poor man who was looking so pathetic, but with time I evolved and hardened my attitude towards them. But surprisingly they evolved too and changed their sales strategies. By the time I got comfortable with ignoring a lazy man sitting with a cup, they had poor children and women 'touching' you in railway station platforms or traffic light to get the money out of you in annoyance.

As an impulse, it might seem that for a business model that demands just one or two rupees from your pocket, spending that much is worth it to get rid of the sleazy stinking person standing in front of you. But then lately they too realized that this aggressive 'push' strategy was actually a mistake and that you can't fight with your customer's ego. So they changed that too. Now they are using 'pull' strategies, that is we don't want to beg, we are not beggars, we agree with you that it is a profession of lazy burdens on the planet, but what can we do, circumstances have led us to do this. But it is only momentary. The moment we get over it, we will be back in business, working hard to get back on our lives.

Now that sounds more convincing, but how are they doing it? On traffic light a woman approached me with a doctor's prescription saying she needed money for her husband's medicines. I would have given her money, and then I noticed that the date on the receipt was two months old. I asked her, why don't you update this, it would fetch you more money. She said nothing and turned away to the next vehicle! But then I realized it was a good strategy and she could have fooled anyone and many other beggars would be using the same at other traffic lights in other cities. But interestingly there is a clear cultural divide between beggars of metros and beggars of tier 2 cities. The Delhi beggars have evolved to such convincing ways, while beggars in my Bharuch are still relaxing on platforms with a cup in hand.

Whatever may be the case, every time a beggar approaches, I (and I am sure that must be the case with all of you) feel hard to convince myself to ignore that guy. On one hand I might be refusing a person really needing money, and on the other I might be encouraging such a profession. But then how many times have you heard a beggar dying of hunger. It is the hard working man who is too proud to beg that dies out of sickness or hunger. And what convinced me to this was a little incident a friend told me. She believed in 'you give a man a fish and you feed him for once and you teach him how to fish, you feed him forever theory' and hence when a girl approached her for money, gave her an address where she would get work . The girl asked, how much would this pay in a month.

"Two thousand", she replied.

"I make five thousand per month”, and went away.