God was Murdered

After working with Fortune 500 firms that employ 10,000-odd people [or ‘resources’ as they prefer calling humans], I’m now with a firm that employs 10-odd people [implied ‘naukars’]. Here, everyone addresses the ‘director & owner’ of the firm as ‘Sir.’ I blasphemously break the norm by addressing him by first name. Whenever I’ve asked anyone why don’t they call him by his real name. They unanimously answer: We call him Sir to show Respect.

Let’s go all the way back to the origins of the word Respect [in my life] My earliest recollection is at age 5. My mother gently told me off when I pounced on Coke [Coca Cola not Cocaine] instead of pouncing on my maternal grandfather’s feet for customary aashirwad when I entered his house. Touching my grandfather’s feet or calling someone ‘Sir’ has nothing to do with respect. The same way a girl’s love for ‘breaking the bed during intimacy’ has nothing to do with the burqa or skimpy dress she chooses to wear. But I was five, and I belie

1981. I was born. I’m part of a generation, who saw too much. When I began my teenage years [1994], no one had heard of the internet; by the time I finished my teens [2000], internet had become as common as americans smoking hash in rishikesh. Turn of the millennium wasn’t merely symbolic, it was revolutionary as pre-marital coitus. A word that took birth in the dainty, cold-as-Miss Havisham, Finland, became the word that was engraved on a plastic device we all started carrying in our pockets & purses. Nokia. For seven back-to-back years, Nokia was the word of the year alongside Mum & Eminem. In 2007, a fruit was reborn in an alternative avatar. Apple that calls. A month ago {12 Sept ’17}, it gave birth to its first ever twins -  iPlague 8 & X Since 1994, we, humans, have progressed at the speed of light on cocaine. We no longer burn our precious time standing in queues to pay bills or buy flowers; we shop online & order in; we

When I worked as a casual employee at the mammoth hospitality firm - MECC in Melbourne, we all got paid a set hourly rate regardless of our ability, gender, intellect, age, or passport. It’d have taken a rather complex algorithm to formulate to pay fairly to all the employees - paying equally made life easier. It avoided discrimination lawsuits by the turds [that’s most of us] who wouldn’t know the difference between a caramel donut & medu vada even when they were eating one. At MECC in 2003, I was getting paid a ridiculous $35 [Australia has the highest minimum worldwide] per hour [on Sundays] to fold & move furniture on trolleys. In case you’re thinking it must have been a difficult, specialised task - it wasn’t. It was an outright unskilled job; even a tipsy, semi-retired, slacker-for-life monkey would’ve done a better job of it than me. Yet, I pocketed a solid $280 after an 8-hour shift - exactly the same amount as Benjamin, who moved 155 pieces of furniture. I m

One day, while standing roadside next to - a whey-abusing gym-monkey throwing banana peels everywhere with gay abandon and a 14-year-old spitting chewed gum & wrappers straight onto the road joyously - I watched the cars, that floated by, spit out empty water bottles & red bull cans; I serendipitously witnessed a car, whose driver was Instagraming, bang into another car. Smash! The bumper came undone & it quickly blended with the gum, peels, bottles, cans, wrappers. In a civilized country, the Instagramming-dude would’ve come out furiously apologizing followed by immediately sharing his third-party insurer’s details for the repairs [I’ve even seen 19-year-old teenaged Indians do that in Melbourne]. He [the instagramming dolt] came out of his car - all red & stunned - & quickly began accusing the victim that he was driving too slow & not letting him overtake. You know the rest of the story. In that glorious moment, I had an epiphany & I swiftly jotted