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The What Ho! Guide to Meetings

History of Meetings

In 323BC, a mighty king named Ashoka invaded the kingdom of Kalinga. In the battle that Ashoka won, hundreds of thousands died. Upon witnessing the calamity, Ashoka is said to have wondered, “Is there a middle path that allows humans to peacefully air grievances and accomplish nothing, while strictly prohibiting participants from inflicting deadly, physical injuries on each other?”

Thus was born the concept of a meeting.

So, what are good reasons to hold a meeting?

There are many good reasons to hold a meeting. Most of them disappeared when a tidal wave engulfed the famed city of Atlantis. However, two have survived till modern day through word of mouth.

Reason 1: To serve as wormholes in the space-time continuum.

It becomes important to observe that 99.999% (five nines) of all meetings ever have been and are weekly review meetings. The purpose of a weekly review meetings is to provide a solitary, tenuous link connecting legions of attendees from various points on the space-time continuum. It is not unusual to find that a review meeting may have originated several decades prior to your first attendance, and that both the original convenor and the purpose of that meeting may long be deceased. The meetings serve as the only connections between generations, dead, alive and those yet to come. Think of them as the Tasseract, the four dimensional world you saw in the Interstellar.

Ideally, review meetings must be convened by a Powerful Person. There’s a good reason for this. It is to encourage attendance. However, the meetings will, in reality, by conducted by the Minion of the Powerful Person (also known as the Convenor). The Minion is appointed as a Stand-In Meeting Coordinator by the Convenor, and harbors aspirations of someday becoming a Convenor himself. It is unlikely that the Convenor will attend the meetings convened by him. The Convenor usually has much longer Youtube playlists than mere mortals and thus needs more time with them. Instead, he will make sudden and erratic appearances in these meetings from time to time, and then proceed to try to digest centuries worth of information in thirty minutes or less. The reason that attendance at review meetings is normally high is that people have no way of predicting if the All Powerful Convenor will be present or not in any given meeting. Most people are not interested in finding out what happens when the Convenor shows up and they don’t. Consequently, thousands of ordinary employees attend hundreds of review meetings without ever encountering the Convenor even once.

By now, it must have become self evident that your immediate objective must be to somehow become part of the Minion Talent Pool and hone your skills towards becoming an accomplished Stand-In. An often overlooked perk of being a Minion Stand-In is that it immediately absolves you of any responsibilities to provide any information or answer any questions during meetings. Rather, you are now pleasantly transformed into the exalted and detached state of a Seeker Of Information. Minion-ship is highly prized, and the benefits boundless. You must prepare yourself to win bloody battles so you can become one.

A typical Monday morning weekly review meeting might proceed in the following fashion.

You: All righty folks. Let’s hear from Moses on the Promised Land Project.

Moses: Umm.. let’s see. I don’t have much to add this week. As I have been saying every week over the last twelve years, I have parted the Red Sea. I’ve completed taking delivery of the Ten Commandments on the mountain. The Project, I hope you are aware, has run into unexpected delays. The Chosen People, thanks to their drunken revelry around a golden calf, have been cursed by God to wander around in the desert. I’ve flagged this as a problem, and color coded it red in my weekly emails. I have no idea as to when they will reach the Promised Land. Is any one listening? God, do you want to jump in here and add some color to this?

God: Yawn. Sorry.. I wasn’t listening. Could you repeat that?

Moses: What’s the ETA on the Promised Land?

God: Umm.. I need to look into a couple of things. Can we take this offline?

You: Sorry guys. I wasn’t paying attention, but it sounds like we’re making progress. Moses, could you put that in an email and send it to me? I’ll need that for my update to the Convenor.

Reason 2: It’s the only way to know if a person exists.

The second reason for which meetings are held is that, often it becomes the only way to know who is on the payroll at a company. As you are aware, every so often companies go through troubled times and are forced to “right size” themselves. It’s a little known secret that decisions around who stays and who gets let go is largely based on physical recognition of individuals alone, and nothing else. Rene Descartes once speculated, “I think therefore I am.” That’s the kind of attitude that doesn’t carry a bloke too far in today’s corporate world. Descartes would have been given the pink slip, two weeks of severance and a firm handshake before he could utter “existential.” People don’t exist unless they are in front of you, tweeting from their laptops.

Important Executive With Powers to Fire People (IEWPTFP): “Who is this Karan chap? Is he that tall, impeccably well dressed marketing bloke who shows up right on time every time for our Monday weeklies?”

Minion: “Yep, that’s him.”

IEWPTFP: “We can’t let him go. Karan is a keeper. He’s a jewel. When he speaks, he doesn’t ruffle feathers. What would we do without him? By the way, who is this Arjun fellow? I’ve never seen him ever.”

Minion: “He doesn’t attend our weeklies.”

IEWPFTP: “Let him go.”

Minion: “Hang on. I’ve heard rumors that he’s the engineer who does all the work.”

IEWPFTP: “Hmm.. I don’t know. That doesn’t sound like a convincing reason to keep him around.”

The moral of the story is that even as you try and free yourself up from worldly acts such as meetings to immerse in the more ethereal Youtube, you must be careful to not let your meeting attendance drop to dangerously low levels. A corporate career, much like life, is about striking that happy balance between the yin and the yang of existence and non-existence.

The What Ho! Guide to Meetings

Keep calm, children. Sit in a squatting, meditative pose, close your eyes and listen carefully to the pearls that I’m now about to cast loosely in your direction.

There are insights as ancient as the universe itself, which have led to the development of black arts, which you must apply in a vaguely detached, zen manner in meetings.

The purpose of meetings, repeat after me, is not to find answers or to solve problems. It is to facilitate as peaceful a gathering of as large a number of people as possible. If you fail to grasp this mystical truth that underlies meetings, I see neither Minionship nor Convenorship in your future. When called upon to share things which may alternatively referred to as ‘statuses,’ or ‘updates,’ or ‘debriefs,’ it is critical to restrict yourself to the state of things, and never get into why they are the way they are. Observations must be limited to pithy phrases like ‘We’re making good progress.,’ or ‘Things are on track,’ or the rare and adventurous, ‘We’re getting there.’ As the Buddhist philosopher Nagarjuna once said, “The nature of things is to have no nature; it is their non-nature that is their nature. For they have only one nature: no-nature.” You can use this quote in meetings for variety.

Delving into the true nature of reality is unwise in large groups of humans. It’s the quickest route to the death of a martyr. Studies show that attending meetings is one of the most stressful activities a human engages in. You have to remember that you are dealing with humans, who in spite of having gone through millions of years of stress of being chased around by sabre toothed tigers, withstanding the harshest of conditions in the tundra and enduring challenges of reading Chetan Bhagat novels, are more stressed about meetings than most other things. You must assuage them. You must comfort them. You must not upset them. They don’t need the truth. They are not looking for the truth. They don’t need the warm and the fuzzies. They just want to be done and over with it, and to be left alone with Buzzfeed and Youtube. Is that too much to ask for? This is not Facebook. No one wants to know what’s on your mind. Avoid sharing anything that can be interpreted as anything. Empathy for the human condition may just be the single most powerful weapon in your quest for corporate dominance.

What if a meeting breaks out into a conversation?

As it transpires, a meeting that has stayed true to the path of prophylactic statuses and updates, will occasionally veer dangerously towards conversation. These are unchartered waters for meetings. It’s sort of like being on a raft on a peaceful river, only to look a little further ahead to find that you’re about to go over the edge of the Niagara.

Stay calm and do as follows.

You must identify the source(s) of such strife first. Often, they tend to be engineers who have a congenital predisposition towards facts, numbers and precision. They will make unseeemly efforts to bring such things to everyone’s attention. If possible, you must avoid the presence of engineers at meetings. The best tactic is to never tell them about existence of meetings, ask them for email updates and read carefully censored portions of their updates at meetings. But, if for some unfathomable reason, the presence of an engineer becomes unavoidable, then you must do what is humanly possible within your means to make sure that he does not pay close attention to the proceedings. This may be achieved by bringing a large box of doughnuts and placing it tantalizingly within reach of said engineer, who will then spend most of his time pondering if he should reach out for the fourth doughnut or not. Or, you can locate him right next to an attractive colleague. The sight of bare feminine legs has been known to place engineers into trances for lengthy periods.

Like Kim Jong Un, you must mercilessly squash sources of facts, data and informed opinions, wherever you may find them. They must not be allowed to rise to the fore. As Nagarjuna’s (there he is, again) Catuskoti principle insists, “There are four possibilities regarding any statement: It might be true (and true only), false (and false only), both true and false, or neither true nor false.” You must never speak in a manner as to make it evident to the audience which one of the possibilities they are dealing with.

Dear Dr. What Ho!, I’ve heard of something called Strategy Meetings. What are they? How are they different?

Life is funny. Every so often, it will throw you a curve ball. You will discover, at some unfortunate point in your career as you rise, that some meetings are held for the sole purpose of sharing facts, data and informed opinions. These often go by the names of ‘strategy meetings,’ ‘planning sessions,’ or ‘off sites,’ and tend to be rather tense affairs. In such meetings, a bloke who has spent the last 72 hours in some sort of a paradoxically frenzied yet comatose state completing a massive powerpoint presentation, also known as “The Deck,” is placed in front of you and several others in the audience who you will not recognize. Many in the audience do not care about The Deck. They are anxious to get, as expeditiously as possible, back to their Youtube playlists. The primary purpose of such meetings is to evaluate the levels of mental deterioration that an organization has achieved so those who have completely fallen apart can be humanely filtered out. It is vitally important to display mental acuity and presence at such gatherings. The good news is that this is not hard to do.

There are many ways to do this. Nearly all of them draw their inspiration from the Thomson’s gazelle, found in the African savannah. “Tommies,” as our hooved friends are called, are known for their bounding leaps, which, although draw attention to themselves, are meant as a show of strength to predators. There is much to learn from Tommies when it comes to meetings.

One of the things you must do, at some point during strategy meetings, is to suddenly get up from your chair and wander about aimlessly in the room, as though pondering a fundamentally deep thought. This, even as it invites scrutiny of your presence in the room, is an unmistakable show of strength. The Very Important People in the room, gnashing their teeth and looking for a prey to tear apart, will respect and fear the awe inspiring purposelessness of your act, leave you alone and turn their attention towards the weaker of the species.

Natural selection is one of the most fascinating mechanisms of nature. You must use it to your advantage.

Another method involves asking the hapless presenter to go back two slides at some arbitrary point in his presentation, and then staring deeply and just long enough at it to make people wonder if you’re on the verge of a massive break through, and following it up with a casual, “This is interesting. We need to talk. Let’s catch up offline.” That last part, a promise on which you have no intention of following up, will make those higher up on the totem pole speculate as to the nature of your seemingly impressive cognitive powers while subtly signaling that you’re a team player and chose to not humiliate a colleague in public.

That’s not all. Resourceful Darwinian creatures attending meetings have been known to draw random venn diagrams and 4×4 boxes, conduct arbitrary SWOT analyses, connect unconnected dots looking backwards and forwards, and even have gone to the extent of taking imaginary important phone calls during meetings, all with the express purpose of signaling the vitality of their beings to would-be predators. Be careful however. Not everything in the manual works. Objects in the rear view mirror can sometimes be much, much closer than you think. Venn diagrams must be drawn using circles. Drawing them using quadrilaterals can have serious, negative consequences. Remember that the public can take only so much. Take care to not exceed certain thresholds. I once heard a guy proclaim loudly, “This is never going to scale in China,” before being escorted out by armed security.

The Seventh Mandala of Meeting Wisdom

A lesser known and harder to execute technique is the art of usurping another man’s evolutionary advantage. If mastered, it will essentially guarantee that you will rise to become the youngest CEO in the annals of the company. This requires knowledge of the meanings of 1,000 most common English words, basic counting skills and impeccable timing.

Listen carefully. We’re about to enter the Seventh Mandala of Meeting Wisdom.

This is how it works. There will be always be one person in the room who knows the answers. 99 out of 100 times, the Person Who Knows Everything will be an Engineer. This is very good news for you because the Engineer, while in possession of the truth, is completely devoid of any skills when it comes to imparting such truth to large groups of people, who in turn couldn’t tell the Truth if it walked up and slapped them in their faces. This is where you come in. Look around the room. See if you can spot a slightly overweight, wearing-a-shirt-one-size-too-small, unkempt, unshaven individual wearing a wild eyed, skeptical look on his face. He’s the Engineer. Keep a close eye on him because it is just a matter of time before he begins to uncontrollably and spontaneously emit factual, relevant and actionable information. This is neither the time nor the place to ponder as to why engineers do what they do. No one knows. They are the selfish genes of the corporate pool, whose sole intent is to ensure that facts and other important things make it into the next generation of humans. Out of the Engineer’s mouth will, all of a sudden, emanate words of unspeakable wisdom. Ideally, you should seat yourself right next to him. When the Engineer’s brilliance bursts forth, it will leave people dazed and blinded. In fact, many will not be able to recall memories of hearing the Engineer speak. Your job is to listen very carefully to the Engineer, decode the facts and translate to a dumbfounded audience in plain English, using as small numbers as possible. If you do this well, the Engineer’s wisdom thus effortlessly becomes associated with you, and seventy two virgins will garland and receive you in Heaven upon your arrival.

Go forth and conquer splendidly, you Natural Born Minions and Convenors. Those Youtube playlists await.

India – Cut and Dried

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India – Cut and Dried takes artistic liberty in chronicling real experiences during my life in India between 2002 and 2014.

The Indians invented zero, built the Taj Mahal, threw the towel in and called it a day. Historians were told to take the next several hundred years off. Deep within the Indian psyche once lay an adventurous spirit which sought to understand the best of things. Now it asks, “‘What’s the worst that can happen?”

A couple of years back, I went to see a doctor in Bangalore. As luck would have it, he was one of those wizened, cynical men who have seen it all. The man waved me to a chair as he fiddled with a phone. He made no attempt to establish eye contact. As he fiddled, his sub-conscious voice rang out, “I’ve been in this profession for 40 years. I’ve seen it all. The Hippocratic Oath be damned. It’s not worth saving you people. You can wait until this app finishes downloading on my pathetic 2G connection. Feel free to leave anytime. What’s the worst that can happen?”

I took in the windowless room. The man had shut himself out from the rest of the world. And here I was, an unwelcome intrusion.

I’ve been to doctors in America. The startling thing about them is that they communicate. Rather fluently as a matter of fact. They use sentences with more than two words. They wear clean shirts. And shoes.

“You think I’ll make it, doc? The faint rash on the lower thigh looks fatal, doesn’t it?”

The doctor always resisted the temptation to slap me across the face. Instead he’d put his notepad down, look me in the eyeballs and explain why I wasn’t about to tragically die young.

As my thoughts wandered, the doctor in Bangalore continued to fiddle. After five minutes, he looked up and made fleeting eye contact through a mirror on the wall as though I was Medusa and he was Perseus.

Then I heard him speak. Hallelujah!

“So what’s your problem?”

“Umm.. we met last week.. ”

This caused him to lose any interest he might have had in me at this point. His eyes lowered and he reverted to Neroesque fiddling as I sat likely dying of an incurable ailment.

I waited in uncertainty. Sensing a rapidly losing cause, I spoke again.

“I have a ringing noise in my ears. You told me to get hearing tests done. I have brought the results.”

He looked up.

“Yes, I remember you. Why is it not ringing?”

I stared, wondering which of us had a hearing problem.

“I said that MY ears are ringing.”

“I know. I meant my phone.”

Foxed by his cryptic words, I stayed tuned in for further updates.

“I just bought a new phone. It’s not ringing. What could be wrong?”

He handed me a brand new Samsung Galaxy 2.

“Maybe if my phone rang and your ears didn’t, we could call it a win-win, no?”

He laughed. It was a good one. But it failed to move me. Resentful, I turned the volume of the phone up.

“Here you go.”

I handed the phone to him. His facial expression continued to indicate that interest in my welfare had not made an appearance yet.

“How about I give you my phone number and you call me?”

I like to think of myself as a Zen kind of guy, with an inner Buddha chanting Tat Tvam Asi and the works. I believe that anger resides only in the bosom of fools. I have let go. And I’ve been happy ever since. I even wrote a book on all of this. Yet I felt a rising tide of anger.

“You want me to leave now and call you later?”

He looked at me, his eyes crinkling as though they were staring at the sun.

“No, not like that. Can you call me so I can hear the phone ring?”

My inner Buddha struggled to process this request. Glumly I acceded. It made him distinctly happier.

“Let’s see your results.”

He opened the envelope and began reading. His next question was a wicked doosra.

“Have you ever stood in front of a large speaker?”

“No. Why?”

“Because you have lost 50% of your hearing at higher frequencies.”

I waited for more. I was pleasantly surprised to hear him continue.

“Your hearing is normal enough to hear humans speak. Isn’t that good enough?”

My inner Buddha fought valiantly to contain my inner Hercules from slaying the man with a machete in one fluid motion. Outwardly calm, I responded.

“You said that I’ve lost half my hearing at a higher frequency. Is this normal? How did this happen?”

“I told you already. You must have stood in front of a large speaker.”

“But I have not stood in front of a large speaker. I once watched Nitin Gadkari speak on TV. That doesn’t count, does it?,” I protested.

“You must have. Unless you are 60 years old. Anyway, how does it matter?”

His inner Buddha had stumped mine. I resorted to another line of attack.

“Can you make the ringing noise go away?”

“Depends.”

“Depends on what?”

“Are you willing to wear a hearing aid? Some people think they look weird.”

“If you put it that way, no.”

“Then I can’t make the ringing noise go away.”

“But I got your phone to ring. That was our deal.”

My plea fell on deaf ears. Pun intended.

“Sorry. There is nothing I can do.”

“Wait. Is this a symptom of something else which could be serious?”

“Like what?”

“You are the doctor. You tell me. Please.”

“Probably not. I don’t think so. Unlikely.”

“Probably? You don’t think so? You are not sure? Don’t you want to look inside my ears or something?”

“No.”

“Come on, doc. I say we check for something.”

“Like what?”

I was licked. I let go.

“Fine. Let me understand what happened just now. I fixed your phone. And then you told me that you can’t fix my hearing. That I have to live with a ringing noise in my ears. That we should not bother because I am PROBABLY not dying of something serious right now. Is that correct?”

“Correct. Look at it another way. What’s the worst that can happen? You’ll just lose all your hearing in another 10 or 20 years. Speaking of bad things, do you think I should get a screen protector for my phone?”

At this juncture, I did as any normal Indian would. I threw in the towel and called it a day.

God denies answering prayers

2 Replies

Yesterday, What Ho! received this letter from God which I feel obliged to share.

Dear Dr. What Ho!,

It has come to my attention that there is a falsehood circulating and an impression being created that I have been answering human prayers. I’d be grateful if you could publicize this letter far and wide as I’m anxious to dispel such a patent lie.

First, let me start by explaining how [what you call] the ‘system’ works. There are many systems. They are filled with things I had not even fathomed when I embarked on this journey. Speaking about this system of yours, there are black holes, galaxies, stars, planets and moons to name a few. And then there is the Earth. Based on what I am hearing from you guys, your system is 13.8 billion years old and you’ve been around for the last few million, give or take. There have been other things which have been around long before you came along. Like volcanos, mountains, oceans, fishes, dinosaurs and birds, to name a few. I find it intriguing that none of them prayed. Indeed, the volume of pleas from Earth has spiked from near zero to a ginormous number only after you guys showed up.

I like to think of your system as having an amorphous and invisible ‘central brain’ which regulates itself and constantly attempts to re-establish equilibrium within itself and with other systems. What is fascinating to me is that you guys appear to have developed some sort of a sixth sense as you call it. A “local human brain” if you will, which is incessantly attempting to disrupt the global equilibrium with its self-centered attempts to establish local equilibrium. In other words, your pleas, while they are an area of curious interest for me, are unlikely to be met with either prompt or favorable responses. I’m disappointed that you would even think of me, a Supreme Being, as a puppet to be wielded by your strings of prayers.

Second, I feel that I must explain my job responsibilities. My job title, which I’m convinced has to be made more self-explanatory, is God. It is weird to be called something which means nothing to anyone but you humans. My surveys have established that quarks, leptons, gluons and the Higgs Boson have not heard of or ‘experienced’ God before. I suspect that’s true for galaxies, stars and planets and everything else but you. And I haven’t even broached this with all those multiverses out there. I suggest we you look into an alternative nomenclature for my job title. Possibilities are “A Higher Order,” “The Observer” or “The Spirit.” The last is a nod to the Indians from both the eastern and western hemispheres of Earth. I like it the best.

As for my job responsibilities, I have none. I understand that you regard me as the Original Cause. But that does not automatically impose any moral or other responsibilities on me. I bear no obligation to anything that has arisen and will arise as the arrow of Time speeds forward. I owe you nothing. In fact, no one owes anyone anything. Such is the nature of things.

This leads me to the question of ‘What the heck do I do every day?’

I spend my time observing things. It’s like watching television. You may have your opinions on what goes on out there. You get the sinking feeling that you may have contributed to the problem. Every so often, you feel the urge to tweet about it. And on occasion, you want to wreck the TV screen with a baseball bat. I resist the temptation to do any of the above.

A lot of things fascinate me. They are usually at levels which are a couple of notches and degrees higher and separated from where you are. For example, the question, ‘why are you guys even there in the first place?’ fascinates me. Why is anything there at all? Why am I not alone here by myself? Have you ever seen a massive star collapse into a giant black hole? That never gets old. I could go on. I hope that you understand that your lives are not in an immediate zone of my consideration. I don’t concern myself with earthquakes in Haiti. I don’t pay attention to Kim Kardashian’s wardrobe or lack of it. I wouldn’t know what to do if two futbol fans, one Brazilian and another German, prayed and asked for their teams to win. I haven’t read the Pope’s tweets yet. I smile when Stephen Hawking denies my existence. I could go on.

There is a massive misunderstanding that surrounds my existence and responsibilities. You guys have made a rather fantastic assumption that I have to prove my existence in order to exist. There was a government in India which existed for ten years and did absolutely nothing. And yet no one disputed its existence. Think of me the same way. Think of me as an impassioned observer, curious but unwilling to play a role in your unimaginative and dreary lives as your universe marches to its yet unfulfilled destiny. Would you gaze upon a new born child with an agenda? No. You simply see the beauty in her, marvel at her existence and accept that she will grow up to be whoever she wants to be. Such is the nature of things.

There are those who believe that I don’t exist because they don’t have a role for me. There are those who believe in me so they can create a role for me. Why are we always trying to change others to be more like ourselves? Why can’t we all just get along? I’m here. I speak nothing. I do nothing. Hey, that’s me. If someone has a problem with this, I suggest they have a short chat with Dr. Manmohan Singh. He knows what I’m talking about.

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t mean to be negative. If praying provides solace, I don’t see the harm in it. There are no false beliefs. There are only beliefs which have advantages and beliefs which are costly. I’d rather have you pick your own poison. I’d rather have you simply try to connect with me without an agenda. I’d rather have you meet me as an equal, as a fellow traveler who’s willing to share his beer with me as we marvel at the vistas together.

I am sorry. I know that you need to see me as the ultimate go-to guy in a world filled with pain, injustice, violence and disappointment. The easiest life is one of deluded ignorance. But it is one which alternates between intoxicating pleasure and incomprehensible pain. So, the curious and the disillusioned among you go in search of the truth. I’ve been gazing on universes for a long time. All I’ve learnt so far is that the only truth is that there are no eternal truths which hold across space, distance and time. So I suggest a little circumspection and a lot of preparation when you go in search because truth is the last thing you will want to encounter if you have not prepared yourself for it.

I am sorry. I know that someday you will die. And that, deep within you lurks a fear of death and oblivion. Of being nothing and irrelevant. There is nothing I can do about it. That is the beauty of this design; that things go on. Beauty lies in a cycle of creation and destruction of things and not in this in-between state called living, which you must look upon merely as an opportunity to behold this beauty. Life is no more and no less than a set of experiences. The larger this set is, the easier it becomes to understand this description of life. Everything moves on. I wish I could tell you that you’re special. The thing is you’re just a tiny lump of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen on an obscure planet in a limitless set of universes. When you die, everyone and everything else will move on. So, clearly this is not about you. This is not even about the things which are dearest to you like your family and friends and objects of desire. I once saw a man who had devoted his whole life to making himself a better person. What a waste of a life it is when it’s all about yourself. There is something much larger at play. Respect it and we’ll all be fine, I assure you. Don’t be depressed. When you get depressed, do what I do. Gaze at the stars. They have borne mute witness to the best and the worst of all things.

I know that this will leave you feeling lonely. I’ve traveled the lonely road for eons. I’m afraid so must you. There is really no other way. But I do wish upon you my kind of bliss. The one you can find in solitude. Go forth and do what you must do. Just in case you’re interested in joining me, I have a seat right next to me with your name on it, which has the best view in town.

The Spirit.

Dhoom 3

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Yash Raj Films didn’t set out to win an Oscar when they started the Dhoom franchise. After viewing Dhoom 3, I can attest that they remain firmly committed to that non-objective. I believe it was Werner Heisenberg, the German physicist, who once postulated as part of his Uncertainty Principle that one can have either Katrina Kaif or a script in a Bollywood film but never both. I’m happy to inform you that Dhoom 3 has Ms. Kaif in it.

A Tale of Revenge, a Circus which is really a Magic Show, Hindi Stuff Written on Walls, etc.

Dhoom 3 is a tale of revenge. Iqbal Khan (a bleary eyed Jackie Shroff) applies for a loan to an evil Darth-Vader-meets-Ku-Klux-Klan style banker with a cowboy accent. What makes this loan application interesting are 2 things: 1. Iqbal claims to run a circus, but in fact it’s really a magic show with one massive treasure chest like thingy. 2. Iqbal has not repaid loans to this banker in the past. Hence Evil Banker connects dots between 1 & 2 and refuses loan. A distraught Iqbal embraces the dark arms of Hades (via single bullet to the temple) and thus triggers a cataclysmic series of events which include aforesaid bank being robbed in broad daylight 25 years later by a mysterious thief who writes some stuff in Hindi on the walls WHICH LEADS TO (sit down, you’re not going to believe this) Mumbai police being summoned to help Chicago Police solve crimes WHICH IN TURN LEADS TO mysterious thief offering to help Mumbai Police to solve crimes WHICH IN TURN LEADS TO Mumbai Police inadvertently helping mysterious thief rob more banks and getting fired. Wait, there’s good news. At some point, the bank shares take a beating in the stock market and aforesaid EVIL BANKER is forced to resign his job. Take that, you evil Voldemort banker, you! Hope you learnt your lesson to never mess with Indian circus people.

Dhoom 3 is Aamir Khan’s gig and everyone else just happens to be it. Mr. Khan is said to be a perfectionist when it comes to film making. Well, he seems to have put aside such ideals for this movie. Mr. Khan is first introduced to viewers as he climbs out of bed in a sparsely furnished apartment in a Chicago skyscraper and walks towards the window to gaze down ominously upon the windy city. The apartment is never seen again. Perhaps the apartment is a metaphor for the script. One can only wonder.

Let’s talk about Uday, Katrina and Junior B.

Uday Chopra apparently announced his retirement from acting in the weeks leading up to the release of this film. Didn’t that train leave the station in Dhoom 1? The announcement was quite unnecessary as most people were unable to recall Mr. Chopra being in possession of acting skills in the first place. Mr. Chopra is a laboratory based, experimental version of Salman Khan in which things have just gone horribly, horribly wrong. His comic interludes are neither comic nor are they interludes.

It is said that Robert De Niro prepared for a role as Jake LaMotta in The Raging Bull by gaining sixty pounds to his frame and learning to box. Likewise Ms. Katrina Kaif appears to have prepared for her role in Dhoom 3 by taking pole dancing lessons. She enters the movie half way through it. And her first full line of dialogue makes its appearance 30 minutes after that. There’s none better than Ms. Kaif when it comes to portraying the multi-layered complexities of a modern Indian woman. She deftly demonstrates how although Indian lasses might dress in overalls and appear to be demure at first, they are in fact simmering cauldrons of sexuality and willing to shed all clothing and perform complex calisthenics, all for a mere job in the circus.

Someone, please send prune juice to Abhishek B urgently. The lad seems to be backed up.

The Whole Bank Robbery Situation Sucks

We’re not talking Shakespearean drama here. That’s hardly the expectation. In fact, it’s not fair to judge D3 by such standards. Having said that, I feel like I ought to talk at length about the whole bank robbery situation in this movie which sucks. We live in a world filled with James Bonds and Jason Bournes and Spy Kids and Incredibles and Danny Ocean’s 13. So, we the people know a thing or two when it comes to pulling off heists or robbing banks or retrieving USB drives from ruthless saboteurs. And as anyone will attest, what makes a bank robbery interesting is how you pull it off – getting past the multi-factor authentication systems by faking finger prints and performing yoga and tai chi to avoid coming in contact with red laser beams and then gaining access to vaults with 2-feet thick steel walls. I mean, people go through a lot of trouble to rob banks and casinos. We the people have never before seen movies before in which banks have robbed upon mere access to blue prints of building which we presume have already been posted on Facebook by bank employees anyway. We the people have never seen movies in which police hand over blue prints of bank building to complete strangers within 24 hours of meeting them. We the people ought to be surprised that more banks are not getting robbed in Mumbai, given this is how Mumbai Police seems to operate.

The Verdict

Anyway, things thankfully get sorted out by the end. I got the feeling that the actual movie was only about an hour long but was stretched to three hours thanks to slow motion technology. There’s a twist somewhere in the middle. The songs are downright spectacular. In true Indian spirit, I’d recommend watching the movie for “Malang..” alone. Dhoom 3 is paisa vasool. So go see it. And if you live in Mumbai, I’d recommend taking your money out of your bank and stashing it in your pillow.

The What Ho! Guide to Winning Arguments

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Let’s face it. We humans are an argumentative lot. We argue on social media. We argue on television. We argue in the YouTube comments section. In fact, studies show that in every passing second, 412,335 people are “wrong” about something, and that for each person who is considered wrong, there are 14 others who will feel inexorably compelled to point it out.

For all the arguing we do, we just don’t seem to be good at it. Arguing has been misunderstood over the centuries as something anyone with lots of time and a Twitter account can do. What’s not appreciated is that it’s an art form, the sort which requires great passion and lots of practice to excel.

Here are a few tips to help you excel.

The What Ho! Guide to Winning Arguments.

Draw upon your deep well of emotions.

A common fallacy is to assume that logic works. Another is to assume that an argument is about issues. Winners are those who understand the power of uncontrolled emotions and that the sole purpose of an argument is to stray as far as humanly possible from issues and to stay laser focused on belittling your rival with the choicest of pejoratives.

This leads me to the merits of alcohol.

Drink.

To win an argument, it is important to create the perception of knowing things. But how do you create such a perception when, in fact, you know nothing? Rest easy, I have a solution for you.

Imagine you’re at the company party, watching a whiz kid intellectual with a fancy MBA spouting forth with nauseating fluency on the complex linkages between temperature fluctuations on the mountains of Kenya and coffee prices in India.

Ask yourself this: What is more likely to help in this situation? Tomato juice or vodka on the rocks?

I’m sure that it will come as no surprise to hear that tomato juice drinkers tend to go weak-kneed and fade silently away into the dark of the night when confronted with a troll. On the other hand, downing several shots of Old Monk or Director’s Special will not only magically endow you with unparalleled knowledge of the Kenyan economy but also cause you to eloquently hold forth your hitherto latent opinions of Kenyan culture and dazzle everyone with your keen observations on the Kenyan way of life.

Winners drink often. And they drink early.

Lie.

Truth is overrated by losers, which is why losers tend to lose. Let’s say that the argument has strayed towards the vexing issue of malnutrition among Kenyan children. And let us pretend that you have been mindlessly and passionately arguing in favour of the position that Kenyan children are surprisingly well-fed and well nourished. Instead of stating, “Kenyan children are well fed and well nourished” which is likely to be met with scorn and laughter, you must say “According to the 2004-05 UNESCO report published on Aug 12, 2012, Kenyan children were found to have consumed on average of 432.5 calories per day in summer and 453.2 calories per day in winter, both of which are considered well above national averages of all but 13 countries in the world which do not follow the British constitutional model of government. ”

For lying to work, precision and accuracy are paramount. Numbers with decimal points are excellent. Statistically complex sounding terms such as ’30 day moving average’ or ’24 year longitudinal median’ are genius. Always quote your false sources proactively. If you’re smart, you will quote your own widely unread blog post.

Use Latin.

Following are examples of terms you must find and commit to memory before venturing into an argument.

Ad hominem

QED

In so far as to say

Holistic

Hoi Polloi

A priori

Ceteris paribus

Latin and Greek phrases are pure gold. They indicate that you’re not to be trifled with. Random use of these languages will bludgeon all but the fiercest into submission. Use them as you would a stun gun with as little advance warning as possible for maximum effect.

Instead of “Kenyans have always had problems with democracy” you must say “Ceteris paribus, it has been shown in various studies that any a priori assumptions about holistic governance systems involving free will of hoi polloi have proven, in so far as to say, to be unjustified ad hominem attacks on the aforesaid systems themselves. QED.”

No sane person can possibly withstand such an assault on the senses.

Evade.

It is possible, due to some unfortunate quirk of Fate, that you may find yourself to be the spokesperson for the Congress party. You will likely encounter questions for which you are absolutely certain that no truthful answers can be given. As winners are aware, it has been well established as a historical fact that honesty is the best policy for losers. Evasion, on the other hand, is the way of winners.

Rule no. 1 of evasion is to create the convincing illusion that you are not evading. Start your responses with “I am glad you asked me that question..” and proceed to confidently make any unconnected statement that pops into your cranium at that point in time. A large majority of the public does not listen beyond the first 8 words. Use “I’m glad that we’re talking about this..” with no obligation to shed any further light on the topic at hand.

renuka c

Keep mum.

The highest form of evasion is to manmohan your way through slippery slopes by maintaining what must appear externally to be a thoughtful and intellectual silence. Silence accompanied by an air of carefully cultivated superiority evokes images of a zen master who has graciously descended into the petty world of humans and who shall not be subject to such petty questions as “Dude, what do you mean you misplaced the Coalgate files?”

Deflect.

During the course of an argument, it’s possible that you may find your position weakening. You may find your back in close proximity to the proverbial wall. It is important to train in the dark arts of deflection so you can wriggle out unscathed from the trickiest of situations.

The following phrases were modelled after deflection techniques used by Shaolin monks and designed to blunt the most cogent of arguments. It is important that you master them in your quest for world domination.

That’s like comparing apples and oranges.

Everything is relative.

Why are you being defensive?

That’s such a typical fascist view of the world.

What are the core assumptions in your model?

For example, you might insist “Gandhiji died on Feb 10, 2010 at 430am” and your opponent might respond “No, you fool, he died on Jan 30, 1948.” You must immediately counter with “That is such a typical fascist view of the world.” If you say, “the economy grew by 8.5% according to the NCERT-AICTE study” and your opponent counters “No you fool, it grew by just 2.3% according to the RBI governor,” you must counter with “Duh, that’s like comparing apples and oranges.”

Abuse.

As unlikely as it sounds, there will come a time when all has failed and you find yourself on the mat, hopelessly pinned and in dire need of copious amounts of oxygen. This is when you must pull out the big guns, and resort to sick, vile and tasteless name calling.

Comparisons with odious historical characters, innuendos about your opponent’s paternity, crassness about your rival’s gender, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, height and weight are perfectly acceptable. A time tested phrase is “You remind me of Hitler. You make me sick, you fascist dwarf!” Since no one likes Hitler or fascists and very few actually have seen or care about dwarves, you will pull victory out from the jaws of defeat.

Well, that’s all there is to it. What are you waiting for? Go confidently forth and win that do-or-die battle, upon which may hinge the fate of this universe itself.

Comment away and share your winning practices too!

**inspired by the one and only Dave Barry.

Welcome to the world’s largest religion

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BIG NEWS, folks. I have started a new religion.

Is there a need for a new religion, you ask? And I say no, but have gone ahead with it anyway. In any case, I’ve already updated my Twitter bio with this announcement. So, this whole thing is kind of irreversible at this point. The die has been cast. The diem has been carpe’d. The Rubicon has been crossed. Yada Yada Yada.

The world’s largest religion..

I’ve named the religion, to which we all now belong, as Tacoism. We? Yes. We. You have all been automatically enrolled into Tacoism. If you wish to opt out of the Taco of Life, please send the following via registered post, acknowledgement due.

12 passport sized photos
PAN number
Income tax returns for the last three years.
An opt-out application letter in triplicate. [ NOTE: You must send only one original and two duplicates. If you send three originals, your opt-out application will be rejected ]

Note: Once you have received the acknowledgement for registered post, you will need to send a scanned copy of the same via email.

Alternatively, you can take the “EASY OPT OUT” option by simply mailing me a check for any sum above one million US dollars.

If you’re a keen observer of things in general, you will have noticed that I have just become the undisputed leader of the world’s largest religion.

About Tacoism

Although founded as recently as August 1 2013, Tacoism is an ancient religion based on the Taco of Life and is as old as the universe itself.

As the 5^th century BC Tacoist Laco Tze once astutely pointed out, “Tacoism is in no way responsible for any happiness that you may experience from being a Tacoist. All happiness (or lack of it) is entirely in your hands.”

If you didn’t know, there is an long and undocumented history of Tacoists living (but mostly dying) by its timeless motto: Let go. Be happy.

Tacoism FAQ

I’ve been working furiously to clear questions which are pouring in (from mostly non practicing) newly aware Tacoists. Here is a mini FAQ below.

What holidays does Tacoism observe? And what are the rituals to be followed?

You’ll be pleased to know that the first Friday of every month is a religious holiday. In addition, there are two floating Thursdays a year. Those of you following the Mahayana version of Tacoism can opt for Mondays instead of Fridays and Tuesdays instead of Thursdays. You may wish to work with the HR departments in your companies to have the Tacoist holidays incorporated into the company calendar.

The faithful are requested to observe their faith by watching YouTube for a minimum of four hours on company bandwidth on Tacoist holidays.

[ Note: There has been some confusion in this regard. Although Tacoism does not require you to watch YouTube on non holidays, it does not specifically bar you from watching YouTube on non holidays. Let’s make it simple and say that you can basically do whatever your Tacoist awareness permits. ]

Is Tacoism an open source religion?

After much deliberation, I’ve decided to open source Tacoism. In other words, you can add your own rules, diktats and commandments as long as no one else is required to follow them. Any rules, diktats and commandments that you make up will apply only to you. Other than the rules I may impose upon you from time to time.

What do we call ourselves on our business cards?

There was a small dilemma over whether to call ourselves “Virat Tacoists” or “Taco Nationalists.” I am happy to say that good sense has prevailed and we’re going to call ourselves “Taco-ularists.” In a divided and polarized universe, I strongly believe that Taco-ularism is the need of the hour although I could be very wrong about this.

Please note: You can be a Taco-ularist and believe in Tacotva at the same time. Also, I have no idea what that means.

What God or Gods do we worship?

This is yet to be finalized. Truth be told, this was the seventh item on my Tacoism to-do list and I was hoping to get to this shortly after I ensured Tacoists are guaranteed 100 percent quota in education and public sector jobs. Unfortunately, Tacoists have been piling steady pressure for this to be answered quickly. Here’s my position:

At the moment, I’m leaning towards appropriating any and all Gods worshiped by any humans or extra terrestrials at any point in time and at any place in the galaxy. Based on last count, we may end up having approximately 332 million and fourteen Gods. One of the issues is with having Gods is that we may not be able to keep the atheists within the fold. So I plan to address atheist sentiments by converting following groups of humans into Tacoist Gods.

Anyone who has won a Nobel Prize
Anyone who’s discovered an element in the Periodic Table
Anyone who has a scientific law named after her/him
Anyone who finds the Higgs-Boson particle
Anyone with over 1 million followers on Twitter

I request patience as I sort through this delicate matter before publishing the final list.

What is the Mahayana version of Tacoism?

Other than differences in religious holidays, Mahayana Tacoists will get enjoy a detached sense of superiority as they gaze upon the world at large. That’s all I have at this point.

What’s the Holy Book called?

I haven’t decided on a name yet. “The Tacoist’s Guide to the Galaxy” sounds fetching. Another option is “Who moved my Taco?” I am not sure what will be in the Holy Book. But I’m sure that there will be one rule that will apply to it. The holy book of Tacoism will be compulsorily erased and rewritten every 20 years.

Are there Tacoist mythologies?

At the moment, there are none. Soon there will be many. I will plant them discreetly all over the internet so you can quote them in your religious debates on Facebook. Tacoist mythologies will contain characters who are ambivalently righteous, filled with existential angst and often known to ask themselves, “Dude, what’s going on?” I assure you that there will soon be a plethora of mythical tales filled with the deeds of tortured Tacoists waging epic battles against unknown and uncertain fates.

How can I evangelize Tacoism?

There is no need to convert anyone to Tacoism. Every one is already part of it. Please let people know that they are Tacoists whether they like it or not.

Anything else?

The following topics will be covered in the Holy Book.

What happens to Tacoists when they die? Do they go to heaven or hell? Are they reborn? Or do the lights just go out?
What is good and bad in the Taco Way of Life?
Who created Tacoists? Was it God? Or ..what else can it really be, right?
Why are reality shows popular? What is the Tacoist view on Bigg Boss and Jhalak Dhikla Jaa?

Stay tuned for more Tacoism updates to come here on What Ho! In the meanwhile, do let me know your questions and comments below.

Stay strong and stay true to the Taco of Life. As Yoda, a Tacosattva from a faraway galaxy once put it, “The Taco with you may be.”

Man alleges elderly relative reneged on promise to “cut a long story short”

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CHENNAI. JULY 17, 2013. Describing it as a “nightmarish experience,” Avinash Iyer, 24, claimed that an elderly relative who engaged him in conversation at a cousin’s wedding went back on a promise to “cut a long story short,” and alleged that he was coerced into listening to the full version which lasted well over an hour.

“It was kind of a rough ordeal and I’m still hazy about the details of how the whole thing got started. I was seated next to my uncle at my cousin’s wedding. The exchange started off innocently enough but before long, I realized that I had been slowly drawn into a hellish web of deceit and fraud. When he first began recounting his frustration with the newspaper arriving late in the mornings, I nodded politely, naively believing it to be the easiest way out of a tricky situation. In retrospect, that may have been the fatal move which sealed my fate. As he began to relentlessly delve into completely unnecessary details of his altercations with the newspaper delivery boy (who, I was told, also delivered milk and equally erratically), I developed a vague foreboding of doom and began fidgeting nervously in my seat. Sensing my impatience, (I swear) he made a clear and unequivocal promise to cut a long story short, an undertaking that was not honored at any point in the conversation. In any case, how an innocent conversation around newspaper delivery turned into a mind numbing discourse on the deteriorating state of journalism in the country boggles my mind, which continues to recover from the unanticipated ruthless assault on it. I was told later that I was observed to be in a state of uncomprehending daze for well over an hour by various passers-by and onlookers, before being rescued by my elder brother at lunch time,” said an emotional Avinash who seemed clearly shaken by the incident.

What Ho! has subsequently received confirmation from reliable insiders that the offender, identified as Sri. Sitaraman Iyer, 58, has been sequestered and isolated from contact with younger family members to avoid further untoward incidents during the wedding.