10 Applications for Leave to take that holiday you’ve been putting off

Let’s get a few things straight first. While most of these excuses might sound a tad insane, once you package it with a slightly out-of-breath nasally voice that borders on an emotional breakdown, a wide-eyed look with a puzzled frown (akin to reading a 400 page report on a gorilla’s bowel movements) and an unkempt look (superbly managed after a ride in the Mumbai local). Needless to say, your employer will grant you the leave (most likely for his own good).

Now before we get to the juicy creative excuses, let’s get a few cliches out of the way.

“My grandmother died”

In case there’s an important presentation looming up in the vicinity, you would do well to build up your cause. Think of it as your personal ad campaign; for good results you need high TRP. And what gets TRPs? Drama drama drama.

“My sister/brother is getting married”

Mind you, you probably have a sibling or a cousin tying the knot in the near future, and indeed a holiday is in order. Except that’s not the kind of vacay-ing that we are talking about here. Nevertheless, it’s a workable excuse. Moving on to the juicy ones...

“I’m being audited by the IRS”

Holy moly! Now that’s a serious one. In one breath you’ve not only proved yourself a badass, but also one with money and connections. Otherwise which sub-strata twenty-something gets raided by the IRfuckingS.

“I’m taking a study break to learn about the mating rituals of Armenian rhinos in Iceland.”

Boss: Say waa?

Me: You see Armenian rhinos in Iceland have shown unique creative instincts that mimic modern man as we know him in Iceland, who I must say is quite different from the rest of mankind. The rhinos have known to present flowers for courtship and an ice bath to signal fornication. You have got to see first-hand the rhino...

Boss cuts in: Leave granted. No more explanations required.

“I have been called to testify in a murder case. So I’m being put under witness protection for two weeks”

Boss: But you’ll be on the budget meeting on Skype right?

Me: Of course not. They might track me down on the satellite.

Boss: OK. Just submit your ideas from a payphone

Me: They might have tracking dogs to find my scent. So no.

Boss: At least have yourself a peaceful vacation (sniffs and sighs)

Me: You betcha

“I have been called by the army to do a ten day workshop on fighting Cyber droids”

Who made you the expert? I’ve already said too much. It’s a covert op. If I tell you, they might come after you.

Accepted.

“My grandma has just woken up from a 5 year coma and now she has amnesia.”

That grandma who died a peaceful death a while back actually turned out to be in a coma of sorts (medically arguable) and by some stroke of luck or may be the hand of god himself has blessed her into consciousness. But dammit! She now has amnesia.

Leave granted.

“My mother is stranded in a remote island with no cell signal and I must rush to rescue her.”

Boss: And how exactly did this (fictitious) mother manage to contact you?

Me: That’s elementary, my dear Watson

“My husband/wife/boyfriend/girlfriend (take your pick) will be sick today, tomorrow and the next week”

May be you’ve had a sudden vision into the future of your loved one; may be he/she is showing tell-tale signs of falling sick, whatever your case may be, staying home for your better half always (can I repeat always) works. Once you get your tenses a tad bit in order, this one is sure to work like a charm.

“I’m preparing for the Zombie apocalypse”

Some people might laugh at it, but when the nay-sayers are busy being shocked and terrified of an un-dead Hitler hungering for warm blood – I believe I shall be safe in a bomb shelter with food and entertainment to last three lifetimes.

But let’s be realistic! However true this simple fact may be, your boss is NOT going to buy into this one. No chance. Zilch-O. Move on.

While excuses are great to take an impromptu holiday, the point is that – you, me, we... all need holidays. While most organisations will vouch for the countless virtues of taking time off, unwinding, relaxing, blah blah.... there are few who will dish out a time-off as easy as the next job calendar. All I’m saying is that you don’t always need the lemon to have the lemonade. You could just as well have it served on a sun-drenched beach in Timbuktu.

PS: Use the above listed excuses at your own risk (of losing the job).

When Joan Didion said, ‘we tell ourselves stories in order to live’, I think she meant - the stories we delude ourselves with.

I used to think that if I had a hammer, I’d hammer in the morning, I’d hammer through the noon and end it with a Thud! Whack! Clanggg! before I hit the sack. But once I had a hammer, I realised I wasn’t hammering as much I said I would.

A road-tripper’s recipe to beach-hopping: Sri Lanka south coast

Nay-sayers said it couldn’t be done. Well-wishers said it probably shouldn’t be done. The fact that the mercury would rise to its zenith high in the peak summer didn’t stop us from travelling to the southern coast of Sri Lanka last month. After a rickety eight hour bus-ride that saw us descending into the plains from the hill country, we reached the bustling sea-board town of Weligama. If you are travelling along the same route, keeping a day in hand for the Yala National Park would seem like the most obvious choice. However, short of money and time – my fiancé and I headed straight for the holy trinity of sun, sea and sand. It would be safe to say that any road trip involves the road (duh!), a pair of trusty-ish wheels and at least one companion (who you will most likely fall out with at least once a day. But regardless the offense these silly skirmishes that start with ‘let’s stop for a cola’ have a knack to smooth itself out soon enough). Like life, which’s about the journey and n

Rude Awakening Series: You might find it offensive. But so is the world around us.

It has been one year and nine months since my last entry. A lot has happened since. The dude who used to say “You’re fired” on reality television is now the very real President of United States of A, Delhi beat Beijing to become the most polluted city in the world by a chest-thumping margin, the planet regardless of our skeptical opinions has continued to become warmer - putting the birds and bees out of business. On the other hand, some things haven’t changed. North Korea is still batshit ballistic, China ghost towns are at best dead, Japan is LOCO but still zen, fortunes (as usual) have waxed and waned to the changing tides of tax reforms, share prices and demonetisation. If there is a hidden lesson over the months that I have learnt, it is this - nothing changes or gets better in this world unless we act (as opposed to react) upon it. And it is with this foolhardy notion that I once again set about to write; to abuse, to anger, with a direct intent to offend the blogosphere.

Three salad dressings with a side of honesty

Salads. The healthy-and-mighty of all meals. The snooty accompaniment to a glass of rosé. The veritable rainbow on your plate. In Fran Lebowitz’s words, a salad is not a meal – it is a style. Well, as long as ‘style’ includes a fair amount of mud under one’s fingernails – I couldn’t agree more with Fran. Sure, it’s fashionable to eat a salad – but there’s a certain panache to going down on all fours in wet mud, rummaging through fresh lettuce pods every morning and wondering what you’re going to dress them in. While it’s far from the fashion statement that salad has come to symbolise, growing your own food definitely is a style of its own. There are many categories of salad snobs – the ingredient minimalist, the chop-it-right evangelists and the brigade of dressing-goes-first, but the only consensus between the salad factions is that you don’t actually need packaged dressing. A homemade vinaigrette made from basic ingredients lives just as happily on your refrigerator door, not to ment

Other Names #12: Kaamkar Das

The rain pelted incessantly for six years and five months and twenty-two days over the city of Someplace. There were periods of drizzle when people stepped out but soon, they began to realise that the respite was only a forecast for more rain. At first life came to a standstill and then boredom set in. People stopped going out altogether so establishments had no reason to stay open. The public gardens were flooded and turned into veritable marshlands with crocodiles and snakes which put an end to walking. A thick layer of moss covered the asphalt under the waterlogged streets that made cars and motorbikes skid off their paths and often into death. People received their weekly supplies of grains from a government helicopter that came twice a week to drop sealed packets onto the terraces. Time stretched into infinite seconds over Someplace and its people came to be characterised by their glassy eyes, wet yellowish skin and a perennial dry crust around their mouths. Kaamkar Das was one of

Project Other Names #7: Dr. Prarthamesh Potty

Professor Potty scratched these words on the blackboard, punching the period at the end for dramatic effect. He turned to face his class of forty. Forty miserable, clueless schmucks, most of whom didn’t know the difference between a period and an ellipsis. And yet they thought a minor in Creative Writing would be a piece of cake. An easy grade to brighten up their mark sheet. He had overheard on his way to class, some of the students casually joke, “Next class…” proceeding to clutch their tummy and ejecting a fart-like sound from their mouth. The joke lacked half-a-decent punchline but regardless, the junior year would pick it up from their seniors, giving new life to a lame old gag. Professor Potty did not have a sense of humour. At least, none when it came to his name. You would think after years of being tormented by friends, foes, colleagues, relatives, lovers and eventually his own children as well, the professor would at least pretend to smile and take the power out of the old

Other Names #8 and #9: Sahil and Mira

It had been three years since Sahil had last seen Mira. A lot had changed (physically) for Sahil in that time. His jaw had hardened to an angular shape, he had lost that baby beard that everyone made fun of and the unruly curls had been tamed to a neat close crop. He had returned to civilisation - unrecognisable beyond repair, as his friends often remarked. So, it came as a surprise when Sahil found himself looking at Mira, untouched by the passage of time. She still had the look of an alert school girl. Head held high, a neat round chin, wide thin-lipped mouth, snub nose, bright eyes and a forehead that was often flushed with effort or appreciation. She was finishing her thesis in Sanskrit from Xavier’s when they were together. Sahil always marvelled at how much the professors delighted in her – as though they were grateful for anybody who still took up ancient languages, especially for someone so gifted – but they were always worried as well. The problem Mira used to say, was becau

Footnotes from college and my holiday in Istanbul that has nothing to do with the former

The following is best enjoyed with food or beverage that's a tad bit sour, bitter or whatever seasoning that leaves a bad taste in your mouth. Besides teaching me calculus and semi-conductors that have been of no future consequence, the four years at an engineering college furnished me with an elementary knowledge of scientific thinking. I was glad to learn that the minds of people (themselves a product of natural causes) was a function of the brain subject to the laws of cause and effect, like any other part of their body. And that these laws were the same as those that governed the movements of star and atom. I exulted at the thought that the universe was no more than a vast machine in which every event was determined by a preceding event so that nothing could be other than what it was. These conceptions not only appealed to my dramatic instinct; they filled me with a sense of liberation. It gave me such satisfaction to learn that the Earth was a speck of mud whir

Other Names #10: Mrs. Ghosh

She sat on a wooden bench facing an empty communal pool, contemplating its green chlorinated waters, with her hand resting on the silver handle of her cane and thinking about death. The first time Mrs. Ghosh had visited Dolphin Square, she was no more than five herself. Her father, a district magistrate in the Calcutta high court and a skilled swimmer himself had unceremoniously doused her in the pool. It was the first of many days that would become her entire adolescent years. The pool was emptied and cleaned once every year in the winter. There had been numerous deaths at the bottom of the diving board but all of Calcutta’s best swimmers frolicked to the murky green pools to compete with children from nearby slums who inevitably turned out to be stronger and swifter in the district championships. Every second Sunday of the month, young people who couldn’t afford the membership fee of the government run swim club, competed against each other to earn their place by merit. It afforded t

Portrait of a criminal as a young thug

He is five feet and eleven inches tall, hundred and three kgs heavy, with sweaty arms and a glistening moustache, shoulder length black hair oiled and tied into a small ponytail. He has a wild demeanour and suspicious eyes. Beyond that, in his twenty-seven years he has piled up a tall and ugly police record: a multitude of arrests, from petty theft and battery to rape, narcotics offences - and all this without a single felony conviction, being officially guilty of nothing more than what any spirited citizen might commit in some drunken or violent moment of animal weakness. Word of caution: If you happen to get in an argument with our young criminal in the making - your chances of emerging unmaimed depends on the number of heavy-weight allies you can muster in the time it takes to smash a beer bottle. In this league, sportsmanship is for old liberals and naive fools.

MADTROTTER

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