The 3 Stooges in My Life!

Don't worry, I'm not going to attempt a long drawn out comparison of how each stooge resembles a close friend of mine simply coz that would be very tiring and boring. So why the title you ask, well simply because its 3 friends that I'm going to talk about......yes its as simple as that!

Stooge 1:

Initially thought of as the original man of steel, a gift to (wo)man kind, the original greek god, mainly because it was widely perceived that this man was emotionless, nothing could faze him and in terms of capability across a multitude of fields, he was par excellence. Be it playing cricket, being a marketeer, being a sales man, being a hit with the ladies you name it, this guy had it all. And his knowledge was unbelievably profound too, again on any subject, but movies and songs in particular from present day going back to your grandma's grandma days (wait a minute, did they have movies back then.....??) was exemplary. Anyways, stories of this guy's ego made Dubai's skyscrapers look like foot stools in comparison, and rightly so. A multi-talented and good looking individual, this guy was your modern day superman. Working at a multinational by day, writing movie reviews by night, teaching at a university in the weekends and hanging out with the boys every chance he gets....you don't get it better than this. By the way did I mention he's a father of 3 and quite happily married (though the last part might be contested by his wife but for sake of happy reading, let's leave it in there).

Seeds  of him becoming bitter and emotion less had been sown long before. Being cheated out of becoming Pakistan's next wicket keeper by Kamran Akmal, carrying around a scorecard from a match he played for Nestle eons ago as proof of his once spoken of invincibility, these were the events that turned him sour. Once he started working, his well known impatience for mediocrity and incompetence on the part of his co-workers was a constant source of frustration for him and reduced him to a whinging old hag. Yet he somehow got through this phase of his life with his pride intact and then he met "The Group".

"The Group" consisted of 3 other guys and the impact of meeting them was, well akin to hitting the proverbial wall! They went at him so bad, so bad that today you see this guy rarely opening his mouth when in their company. He still retains the ability to multi task, but he's lost the zing, the edge, the ego has eroded and every now and then when he tries to get up again mustering up confidence from here and there, he's slammed back to reality by this group of 3. And so it goes on like this like a broken record for Stooge 1.

Stooge 2:

Oh my God!!!!!! is how you describe this one. No way can you categorize this guy coz he has so many faces. Again, initially thought of in a very revered manner due to his long and illustrious yet misleading CV. Don't believe me, well lets go through it together. The guy grows up in Hong Kong, so he gets international exposure and experience straight away. He goes to school at Lahore Grammar when he moves back to Pakistan, which may not be as prestigious as KGS but for a simple guy like me from Karachi, I was already impressed. He makes his way through uni at....wait for it....L......S......E, yes, my dream university, where I wanted to go and learn economics and become the best economist the world had ever seen and devote my life to bettering Pakistan's conditions, but ok wait a minute returning to Stooge 2, you would think that if someone had gone to the London School of Economics, he wouldn't keep ruing the fact that he didn't get into LUMS, I mean fine LUMS is great too, but LSE over LUMS any day man. It was then that we understood the misleading part about the CV because on further probing, you find out that it was actually the LAHORE School of Economics that the gentlemen attended and not the LONDON one. In any case, he then started attending classes in the real LUMS by sneaking in just so that he could one day say he's been inside those rooms. After uni, the guy went through a whole host of odd jobs like working for JAWs, (no not the movie, an event organizing company), his next job was as a tutor and then he found his true calling, he became an RJ at City FM 89, and his call sign was "Jelly Man" (don't ask, that's another long story). Despite all of that he somehow got a job offer from Unliever which he gleefully accepted and moved to Karachi.

Now they say better late than never, but by this time this guy was doing quite well. I mean he was brand manager at one of the biggest MNCs in the world by day, RJ by morning and running his own t-shirt designing business by night. Somewhere along the line he even met his better half and got lucky that she said yes to his proposal so he was even married now. So where's the hitch you say??? Well, one of the biggest qualities this guy had was not knowing when to shut up. This quality alone got him into the worst shit when he met "The Group" that Stooge 1 met. Even if he was not the target of abuse being dished out, he would say or do something that would attract the attention to himself and make him the butt of all jokes. The other 3 realized the importance of having such a guy around and so he became an integral part of the gang. The fall back guy........you can't think of anything, you pick on him and it'll be 100% guaranteed funny.

It is said that these days he's trying out other friends, guys like Y2Q and Hammy the drummer in order to spend less and less time with the original gang as he yearns for that day when he shall be revered again. He tries his hand at photography, FIFA on Xbox and whatever will get him new friends, yet his old habits haunt him. His propensity for food and halwa puri in particular along with the fact that he'll start dancing just about anywhere just about anytime still make him an easy target. And so he trudges through the days constantly asking for a break which up till now I thought was from working but it couldn't be because he never worked that much, but now I get it, its from being himself....

Stooge 3:
The most confused individual you will ever meet. He's the baby of the group simply because he's the youngest, yet he looks like a 34 year old Saeed Ajmal and talks like Albert Einstein's grandson, so yeah he's old. A self proclaimed master of numbers and excel, the man with the photographic memory, a great footballer in the past, a supreme athlete once upon a time and his greatest claim to fame: the girls football team coach at LUMS. I left out self proclaimed human behavior psychologist as well, but I thought you wouldn't be able to digest such a magnificently varied spectrum of talents. On the face of it he's like an ordinary pathan who might be a laborer or taxi driver, but don't be deceived, underneath that boyish exterior, lies a mastermind.

This guy's entry to the group was about 6 months later than the other 2 and he gelled in fairly quickly. However his judgmental ways didn't go down well with the wives and so for a long time he kept oscillating between being part of the family or not. Also, up to this point for some strange reason (although his dad had not given him a car in college) he thought the world of himself and obviously this bloated sense of self worth didn't go down with the rest of the boys. He did have a achilles heel though and once discovered, was exploited to the fullest to cut him down to size as well.

The turning point came one fateful night on the festival of lights in Sharjah, where this poor unassuming chap accompanied "The Group" and that was that. That night is still celebrated in some of "The Group's" homes as that was when the facade fell and Stooge 3 was brought down. Up until then he basked in the glory of his quick wit and numerous victories over the other 3, but now they had their turn under the sun (or rather sun roof as we were in Stooge 2's car). This was the night when the achilles heel was discovered and one particular mannerism, most popularly represented by the words "waisay to" with an accompanied gesture of the hands, became almost like kryptonite for this stooge. Till today all it takes is one reference to the heel and this stooge realizes his place in the world and goes back in his shell with a smile.

As it stands today:
Somewhere in between the paragraphs lies the reality but I leave it for you to guess and ponder over. All I know is that even after having spent about 10 hours in office together, we still end up meeting at each others place the same night, and this happens more or less on a daily basis. I've forgotten the phone numbers and in some cases the faces of  my other relatives in Dubai, because I've stopped meeting them, just don't feel the need as the 3 of these and their families have more than filled the void.

Here's to hoping that it stays like this for a long time to come yet....

Later,
Adil

Save PAKISTAN!

This is what needs to be done and what WE can do:

1. Like Ammar said, the responsibility is with us so we need to straighten up our act and start living by the rules that were set for us by our beloved Prophet (PBUH). That means praying on time, planning our day around the prayers, being truthful, not paying or receiving bribes, not dealing in interest, not trying to save the zakat we owe and taking the time out to pay it to the rightfully needy and so on, you get the drift. This may be easier than it sounds or it might sound like rhetoric but until we truly start doing this in letter and spirit, it won't mean a thing, it won't change a thing. Start with yourself, your wife, your parents, your siblings one family, one neighborhood, one town, one city and eventually a country!


2. For god's sake VOTE. Register your vote and your family's vote. The person who works at your home and his/her family, everyone you can get your hands on. If all else fails, people like you and me need to come out on the streets and protest but till we have hope that change can happen within the system, we should try for it. So please let go of what your fathers and grand fathers and families have believed in for the past 60 years as far as political affiliations go and break the mold. Basically vote for Imran Khan. We can debate all day long but all of us know he's the last real hope we have at a glorious Pakistan. Don't get caught up in "the system won't let him change a thing" let him try for once...... I'm not one fro creating messiahs but history is witness that in bleak times, hope is what gets man through.


3. On a personal front, do as much charity as you can and spread messages of peace, patience and hope to everyone you meet or talk to. Project the positives of Pakistan for once and forget the negatives, you'll be amazed at the energy positive thinking and speaking can bring to you and imagine what it can do to a nation if adopted collectively.


4. What the mullahs need to do. I'm not speaking about the terrorists but your everyday maulvis, imams of mosques, ameers of our different factions. Since the onslaught of bad times, basically since the lal masjid fiasco, these mullahs had a collective responsibility of spreading messages of peace and reminding people to mend their ways. Every Friday sermon should be used as an opportunity to do a collective tauba and people in general need to be reminded of repenting continuously both individually and collectively. They should do more than spread hate messages or anti America messages or coming on Alim online and addressing personal, specific masail. Come on TV and hold collective tauba sessions, if we can have donation telethons, we can have tauba telethons. They should be educating people on the minutest details of how to live according to the Prophet's (PBUH) ways. The first step to revival is acceptance of one's fault and asking of forgiveness from the supreme being.


5.The rest will fall in place, the police, the education, the health, the judiciary etc etc. You ask how, well firstly if everyone will have adopted the ways of the Prophet (PBUH) then there really shouldn't be a problem. Secondly, if you have an honest man leading you trying to get your institutions corruption free, then you shouldn't have a problem. Once you create a positive environment, creativity, investments and brains follow. Our institutions are victims of politics and the age old system of associations and loyalties to kinfolk being stronger than loyalties to religion or the state. In order for you to get elected you make promises to your people of jobs and economic security. Once you get elected if you don't follow through, you lose face and/or you lose support of your people hence you have to hand out jobs to the undeserving. now multiply that problem at the national scale and you have Pakistan.

I have more where that came from, so lets stop talking and start DOING.

They say "Pakistan needs to regain its glory days". I say what glory days, we never had those. Zawal uss cheez ka hota hai jo kabhi bulandi par gayee ho, we've never reached the top yaar..... we're still fighting amongst ourselves. So the question should be: "How high is high for Pakistan"

It's all my fault!

This one's been a long time coming hasn't it?? Truth is I just couldn't find the inspiration to write about something that was important to me.....well maybe I did, atleast on 2 occasions. On the first one, my editor (read wife) didn't allow publishing rights, and on the other I was too lazy to put pen to paper, or is it fingers to keyboard nowadays.....

Anyways, to cut a long story short, these days there's a general theme doing the rounds, somehow, I find myself at the center of the universe and funnily enough its not due to me becoming an egotistic megalomaniac overnight. 

I'll quote 2 small incidents in my defense and I would like you as the readers to be the judge and jury, and help me reinforce the theme I've stated above or negate it. 

Incident 1:

A friend has a flight back home in the morning, earlyish, so I humbly offer my services to drop him to the airport, knowing full well that I will not be sleeping most of that night due to prior commitments, still I offer, coz I'm such a swell guy, always willing to help out. The friend readily agrees. The flight is at 9:25am, so we decide on a time of around 7:30am for me to be at his place and for us to be at the airport around 8ish to be on the safe side. Now mind you, this friend has also informed me the night before that he has checked in online, which usually helps and means that you can show up a little later, drop off your baggage and proceed to passport control no questions asked. Now I go to sleep at around 4:30 after the morning prayers, having set all my alarms, but shit happens, so I oversleep by ONE snooze and wake up at 7:40, precisely when the friend decides its now a little late so I better see where Adil is. Ideally I should've been at his place at 7:30 or 7:45 at the latest, as it turns out I reach at around 8 and we reach the airport around 8:25. By the time he reaches the counter to drop off his baggage, the guy at the counter informs him that its too late and that they've closed the counter. So my good friend calls me to tell me to turn back as I'm on my way home as he might have to give me back the luggage as he could still go on with carry on baggage. 

As it happens, he catches a lucky break and somehow gets on the plane with all the luggage, but in the aftermath of the incident, who gets blamed for almost making my friend miss his flight or at best leave his luggage behind. Now all i'll say before leaving the case to your capable judgement is why counldn't he have called earlier? wasn't it his flight to miss? his luggage to check in? but no guess who's fault it is???

Incident 2:

The following day is eid so the prayers are early in the morning. Another friend sends me a message asking what time are the prayers, and I reply saying 6:15, I get a reply saying "Done", thats it, thats all it says. However, I'm supposed to understand from this one all encompassing word, that I'm supposed to wake up this friend well before the prayers and pick him up to go to the mosque together. So when I some how wake up and go to the prayers after only an hour's sleep because, you guessed it, prior commitments, I barely make it through them let alone the sermon that follows. I come home at around ten minutes to 7 and I get a call from the same friend who has now woken up and brazenly accuses me of being the sole reason for him having missed his first eid prayers here in dubai, albeit not in so many words, to be fair to him. Obviously that makes me feel a bit guilty, but because I'm so god damn sleepy, I just hit the pillow and doze off. 

You tell me, ho does one word mean so much?????

Now, I know that based on 2 small incidents, I may be exaggerating a bit by saying that everything that happens good or bad (mostly bad) is my fault, but believe me when I say that a married man already carries the burden of being blamed for everything so when his friends start doing the same, the world does start to crumble. I mean isn't it enough to be carrying the burden of being late for every dawat, forgetting the eggs, mixing up the dhania with the podina, not noticing the minutest change to the hair, not being able to answer spontaneously to the eternal question: "Why do you love me"?, or for the gas running out at the wrong time, for the microwave to stop working at the wrong time, for asking for tea at the, you got it, wrong time; if all that wasn't enough, I'm now responsible for letting my friends down....I'm going to break into a sob now.....

oh wait, it just got worse, there's another power failure in New Delhi, guess who's fault it is?

later.....

Horrible Bosses!

There's a common saying in the corporate world, "people don't leave companies, they leave bosses". Why is it that this particular breed is the same? how can it be? all humans are different, every one has a unique DNA, different fingerprints even, yet when someone graduates to becoming that dreaded being called a "BOSS", everyone becomes exactly the same, how?

My first prolonged and proper interaction with this ajeeb aur ghareeb kaum was when I started to work at  a multinational back in April 2003. I had gone through a couple of internships and a couple of one month stints before landing up there, but this is when I really found out what a "BOSS"can be like.
My first day, and I found out that I was to have a female boss, I had heard even weirder stuff about this gender of the species, and when I finally got to my desk she was waiting. She seemed pleasant enough, didn't have any devilish horns, or a spike tail, and if I remember correctly actually smiled. She handed me my project list straight away and so began our journey, one never to be forgotten by me and one that I would profit from remarkably.

When you're at this MNC, you have to understand that even the receptionist and the tea boy are challenged to be their best day in, day out. Even they have to follow the "success drivers" and play their part in being a member of the High Performing Organization (HPO). So the fact that this trickles down (or up, depending on how you look at it) to the ABMs really isn't a surprise. We were a bright bunch if I do say so myself, fresh out of university with dreams in our eyes of being successful (however each one of us defined it) but all of us were violently brought down to earth by our respective bosses. In those first days, every bit of self confidence was ground out of us to the point that you thought whether you were good enough at all, whether you even had it in you to be successful. Terms like "batti sessions"and "äaloo aagaya" were commonplace. Whenever you saw an ABM with his/her boss in a huddle room, the prevailing rumour would be of a batti session in progress under the guise of a "öne to one".

In my time there, I had been taken to the cleaners on numerous occasions. I often wondered how important was that comma or full stop that I had to be called back from half way home and complete the document. That I was kept in office till 2 AM in order to prepare for a meeting the next day. That I was given a dressing down for the promoters not knowing my name which meant that I wasn't involved in the project enough, and the funniest of all, being asked to go through a piece of A4 sized paper without tearing or cutting it, oh and in the same session I was also asked to stand on top of the table, I forget why though. These plus other numerous altercations mainly around me wanting to go home quickly, and my boss wanting  me to put in more hours, led to the embedding of continuous resentment against her and developing a victim mentality.

After 3 long years, I had had enough and decided that this life wasn't for me. Its not that I didn't want to work hard, but I didn't want to be consumed by my job. For me the job was going to be the means to an end which was a more fulfilled life after work, however, I may chose to spend it. I took the first job that came my way and made the first mistake of my career. Anyways, the stars were smiling on me and I quickly got out of that predicament and landed a job at my current place of employment, another MNC, where I've been now for the past 5 and a half years.

The start here wasn't very rosy as well. Here, I walked into another Pakistani belonging to the old school of autocratic management, believing in might is right and really maintaining a control on every little thing I did. Once again I found my wings being clipped and the style being cramped. Since this was a start up in this region, the office was very small, not more than a big room which at its full capacity seated 5 people. In this environment all phone calls were overheard and promptly disturbed, every meeting was followed up on with detailed feedback and minutes being sought even on weekends. Eventually, I was reduced to being a paper pusher with a fancy title and responsibility portfolio, my creativity was being blunted and initiative had been beaten out of me completely. I had become what I had tried to avoid all along, a work horse. I hated going to office everyday, and each day took special will power, prayers and my personal predicament back home to get me through it. One and a half years of this and I had reached a nervous break down. Once this man was rotated and left the scene, the others and myself were left completely drained, both emotionally and physically, totally devoid of any energy to get anything done. I spent the next 3 months doing nothing, just getting by and god bless the man who replaced my first boss, as he not only put up with me at this time but actually took measures to correct the situation. If it wasn't for him, my faith in such a thing as a good Boss would've been lost forever.

Every breed has an odd one out, every family has a black sheep and so in walked the black sheep of bosses. This person bucked the trend and changed the whole mindset. His approach to being a boss was so different and refreshing that finally we found the room to breathe again. slowly but surely, the positive attitude, the constant encouragement and the completely collaborative style got me up and running again. I enjoyed the 2 most fruitful years of my professional career and quickly went up the ladder from a SBM to heading the marketing department. Since then the first guy has come back and he's been my boss now again for almost 2 years. I still remember when I found out that he was coming back, I had palpitations and tried to do everything in my power to jump ship. For some reason that wasn't to be my escape and I stayed on. In the beginning there was ample evidence that the same old ways were to be employed and it didn't matter what I had become or developed into, for him, I was going to be the same old boy he could bark at and get his work done.

Things have turned out differently, both of us are still here, I have found my voice, he has changed some, due to feedback from me and others like me and we're surviving. I was thrown a line atleast on a couple of occasions to ply my trade elsewhere, but both times I turned it down and stuck at it. Having spent more than 8 years working under different bosses, I can safely say that I have learnt from all of them and that I wouldn't have it any differently than it was since each and every experience has shaped me and made me what I am today. Having a team of 8 now of my own, I would also like to think that I handle my team completely differently and actually apply my belief that keeping a happy and congenial atmosphere actually gets more work done rather than keeping a tense atmosphere. That people should be motivated by an inner desire to do their best and an aspiration to be the best rather than being beaten into submission. Let them fly, let them make mistakes so that they learn from them, don't hold them back and most importantly smile while going about it. The only qualifier is that everyone is sincere and is willing to learn, once those qualities are confirmed, there's no limit to the fun everyone can have.

So here's to all the bosses I've worked with, thank you for all the time you put in with me, however misguided, I have definitely learnt a lot from all of you, whether its what to do or what not to do, but my advice to the first 2 in my career would be to still take it easy, take a deep breath and slow down. Take stock of your lives and really decide whether this is the most important thing in your lives, that this is the legacy you want to leave behind. This is how you want to be remembered? I'm sure the answers to all those questions will be a resounding "no", so then why do it? why behave in this manner? Just so that you can get that next pay raise or that next promotion, and then what? I am a big believer in everyone getting what has already been set for them by Allah. Yes we need to work hard for that and be sincere in what we do, but we don't need to turn into monsters. Just think about it!

Later,
Shaku

P.S. I expect my team to post only positive comments about me should they read this :-)