To Bonk or Not to Bonk ...

Hmmm.. Before I start, I must request you to put aside any productive work that you might be doing while reading this blog. I am about to discuss highly complex concepts and I need your undivided attention. We cant have silly things like your work getting in the way of this highly evolved knowledge transfer.

Have you closed your Excel spreadsheet/Word document/PDF file on the elasticity of metals at high temperatures/solitaire/minesweeper/pornographic website?

Good. Then we may begin.

Today we discuss bonking. To those of you who are not familiar with the word, it is a less offensive version of the word 'f&*$'. It is a unique, pliable word that can be used in the same contexts as the unmentionable 'f word'. For eg. 'Tendulkar bonked the Aussie bowling' or 'My boss bonked me' or 'Bill Clinton bonked a lot of women'.

Enough and more has been written about examples 1 and 3. I would like to bring your attention to example 2, namely 'My boss bonked me'. Show me a man who can honestly say that his boss has not bonked him, and I will show you God. (God does not have a boss. If He did, He would almost defenitely get bonked. 'Why is it 1 degree warmer this year than last year?? There is no consistency in what you are doing!! And how can you allow Bill Clinton to bonk all those women?'

Thankfully for Him, God does not have a boss, but the rest of us mere mortals do.

Let us put things in perspective. All bosses bonk. With people like me reporting to them even the most saintly, patient man would be driven to the occasionally bonk. For practical purposes, we will refer to the ones who bonk very very rarely as 'non-bonkers'. On the other side of the scale, we will refer to those sadistic bastards who foam at the mouth and bonk everyone in sight compulsively as 'bonking bosses'.

Lets try and understand bonking and how it can be avoided. Bosses can be classified as 'Bonking' and 'Non-Bonking'. They can also be classified as 'Logical' and 'Illogical'. They can also be classified as 'Ass-kissers' and 'Non Ass-kissers'. (Again, everyone kisses ass. The ones who do it very very rarely are 'Non Ass Kissers' and those who do it habitually are 'Ass Kissers'. Let me go to great lengths to point out that when I say a boss is an Ass Kisser I mean that he kisses the ass of his boss, not yours. Nobody kisses your ass. You would not be reading this blog if they did. You would probably be reading something useful like 'Good to Great' or 'Marketing Management'.)

So, your boss (whoever he may be) will fall into one of these categories
1. Logical Bonking Ass Kisser
2. Logical Bonking Non Ass Kisser
3. Illogical Bonking Ass Kisser
4. Illogical Non Bonking Non Ass Kisser
5. Illogical Bonking Non Ass Kisser
6. Illogical Non Bonking Ass Kisser
7. Logical Non Bonking Ass Kisser
8. Logical Non Bonking Non Ass Kisser

Lets deal with them one by one.

1. Logical Bonking Ass Kisser:
Quite a potent combination. Your boss is smart enough to be logical and he knows what you should be doing. Plus he has a sadistic 'X factor' required to become a flunkey's nightmare. If this wasnt enough, he also has a desperate desire to please his boss. So when an intelligent, logical man with sadistic tendencies wants to push you hard enough for him to take the credit for your work to impress his boss, it can be quite troublesome. The only way to survive is by being really good at your job and managing your work perfectly. If you know your job better than your boss does, then you can restrict the pain to manageable proportions. Just about.

2. Logical Bonking Non Ass Kisser
Not quite so scary as No. 1. Your boss will make your life difficult, make no mistake about it. But your pain will be restricted to doing what is right for the organization. You will not be pushed to do such amazing, pathbreaking work that your boss gets recognized by his boss. With this kind of boss, acknowledge that he is better than you and learn from him. He will keep you on your toes. But a reasonable smart and hard-working flunkey will manage and learn in the process.

3. Illogical Bonking Ass Kisser

Easily the worst combination. You cannot do anything right with this kind of boss. He will expect you to do the impossible because he is illogical. He is oozing with the bonking 'X Factor'. And he removes his lips from his boss' ass just long enough to snarl and snap at you. typical conversations will go like this :
Boss: Why are sales down?
You: Sir, there is a war on. The government has declared a state of emergency and the market is closed. No commercial transactions are possible. Bombs are going off like firecrackers in Diwali.
Boss: I dont care. I dont want to listen to stupid excuses. Do you think I got where I am by listening to everything that stupid twits like you tell me? I have promised my boss that war or no war, we will exceed our target by at least 150%.
You: Sir, its a genuine problem.
Boss: I dont care. Negotiate peace with Pakistan right now. I expect business to pick up from tomorrow. Convince Zardari. Get going and dont stare at me like a goldfish.
You: Sir, I will do what I can. But please give me some guidance
Boss: I just did, you stupid sonofabitch!!
You cant do anything. If your boss falls into this category, please repeat after me...
'Our Father, Thou art in Heaven; Hallowed be thy name..'
All you can do is pray. So get down on your knees and pray for your life.

4. Illogical Non Bonking Non Ass Kisser
The dream boss. He will not disturb you for anything. He doesnt care what his boss thinks and is not smart enough to tell you what you should be doing. He is too kind to yell at you.He is a sweet, simple man with no ambitions. Be kind to him. This is the rarest type, an endangered species. Protect him and make sure he stays your boss for as long as possible and your office will turn into the Garden of Eden.

5. Illogical Bonking Non Ass Kisser
A tricky case. The sadism is there and so is the lack of thought process. The only thing that will make this manageable is the fact that there is no direction. Your boss will be unreasonable, but not with the sinister ulterior motive of furthering his own career. He will be unreasonable when he feels like. Keep him in a good mood. Manage your boss; it doesnt really matter how good you are at your work, because he doesnt know any better anyway. Keep him in a good mood because he is imbalanced. He is not an ambitious psychopath with a Napolean Complex. He is just a moody nut-case who foams at the mouth when his coffee tastes bad. Find out his hobby, his favourite food, his brand of booze, etc. Kiss his ass and keep him from getting into the 'angry' zone.

6. Illogical Non Bonking Ass Kisser
If this describes your boss, then you can easily be the real boss. All you have to do is work on the fear factor. He is never going to turn on you and yell at you because he is a non-bonker. He doesnt really know what to do. He is scared about what his boss thinks and wants. So you can do what you want to do provided you scare him into believing that it is the best option and the best way of keeping his boss happy. You have a wonderful opportunity to wield power with a layer of hierarchy above you as insulation if things turn nasty. But beware. With great power comes great responsibility. If your boss gets into too much trouble because of your decisions, you may turn him into a bonking boss. Which none of us want. So have fun but be careful.

7. Logical Non Bonking Ass Kisser
You will have long periods of calm when things are going well. But beware. The occasional storm will brew when you screw up. Your boss is smart enough to know when you have screwed up. It is not in his nature to bonk you, but it is in his nature to cover his own ass as far as his boss is concerned. So he will get you bonked by his boss, a scary thought. He will be sweetness personified, but when you screw up, expect a bonking from his boss. If you dont screw up at work and are reasonable good at your job, you have little to worry about.

8. Logical Non Bonking Non Ass Kisser
The ultimate advisor. The sounding board. A smart man who has a sweet nature and no desperate desire to impress his boss. Take his advice and do your work. If things go wrong, he will insulate you well. If you want to learn and try out new things at work, he will give you excellent guidance and does not overly care about what his boss thinks. However, such bosses are rare to come by.

Thats it for today. Your assignment is to study your boss and fit him into one of the above eight categories. :-)

The Slumdog Bubble

During the two years I spent in Gujarat, my friend Nishant taught me the Golden Rule of movie watching- 'The only way to watch a bad movie is under the influence of alchohol.'

If you are not tanked up sufficiently, your brain will actually try to make sense of the nonsense and the experience will leave you with a feeling of disgust and might even leave you feeling that your intelligence has been insulted by Karan Johar/Suraj Barja-whatsisname/Yash Chopra/any other intelligence insulter.

I watched 'Slumdog Millionaire' a few days ago and to sum it up in one sentence, I really missed my Smirnoff.

The high point of the movie for me was when one of the cops really drags out the word 'ma**&&&&chod'. He really drags it out and makes it sound really mean and nasty. (Note to self: when cussing in Hindi, drag out the words and relish every syllable when you say it. Adds to the effect.) Watch out for this moment in the movie and then get out of the movie-hall/switch off your DVD player/close the window on your computer because after this invaluable little pointer on diction and pronounciation of unmentionable abuses, the movie was all downhill from there.

It was a ghastly masala movie without any real masala. Danny Boyle has loosely cobbled a few scenes together and has made a dreadful hash of telling a fairly predictable, rather boring story.
Boyle could not make up his mind on whether he wanted to tell us a dark, this-is-real-life kind of story, or just a corny, cheesy flick where boy meets girl, loses girl, finds girl again, gets past bad guys and gets girl again. In the end, he tries to achieve both, ends up achieving neither and pisses me off in the process.

That this effort won Golden Globes and Oscar nominations must surely be a travesty of justice because several eminently more enjoyable masala-movies have been sent from India for the Oscars and none of them has come even close to a final award nomination. So obviously, this film was not nominated for the masala quotient.

It is neither insightful or original in its story-line (an underdog winning- what a surprise! When was the last time the 'overdog' won in a movie?). Besides if you really want to see a good masala underdog movie, I would strongly recommend a Rocky marathon - six movies which will numb your brain but leave you with a warm glow and a vague desire to start boxing.

Even Slumdog's depiction of the dirty side of slum life in Mumbai was largely stereotypical. We have seen movies like Nayakan, Company, Salaam Bombay and D to name a few which provide a more insightful and poignant mental picture of the dark side of Mumbai.

I have thought long and hard about it and the only justification for this film being the most over--rated movie since James Cameron thought it might be a good idea to make a movie about a sinking ship is that the jury, press and public who watched the movie paid heed to Nishant's Golden Rule and were comfortably cruising through Happy-Land, sloshing joyously under the influence of Smirnoff when they saw it.

What shocks me is not that a poor effort has been nominated for awards. It happens regularly enough. What shocks me is the fact that people are finding fault with the movie for the wrong reasons. They say that the movie is bad because it 'celebrates Mumbai's poverty'. Thats just ridiculous.

The movie is bad because the script is weak. The movie is bad because the plot is predictable. The movie is bad because it makes you wish you had done something more interesting with your time (like watching paint dry). The movie is bad because it does not have the masti quotient of a good Indian masti movie (like Sivaji - The Boss or Om Shanti Om) nor does it suceed in being dark like Company, Nayakan, D and the rest.

However the one thing you cannot blame Boyle for (and this is probably the only thing) is for 'celebrating poverty'. Poverty exists in Mumbai. Whether you like it or not. Boyle is not trying to say that all Indians live in slums. Boyle does not say that wretchedness and poverty are typically Indian and ingrained in our culture. Boyle's problem is that his movie doesnt really say anything.