My name is Bond, James Bond - I

Prologue:

The sound of a gun-shot woke up Davis in the middle of night. For a moment he brushed aside the incident as a mere night-mare, but the noise of birds starting to chirp at the same-time, made him realise that something did happen. He got out of his bed in a haste, and looked out. He tried hard to peek out in the dark skyline of Seattle, seeing nothing. He looked around and it was then that he found his neighbour’s lights were turned on. He stepped out in his balcony, to see something inside the glass windows of his neighbour, which looked messed up, as if it was not cleaned for ages. Something looked splattered all over the glass, and it didn’t take long for him to figure out that it was blood all over. Davis, panicked, and called 911. The police arrived with paramedics and broke open the apartment. A man in his early 30s, with sharp features and clad in a tuxedo lied on the floor. He did not have any pulse and the paramedics pronounced him dead. To his right was a 9mm Beretta, which made the incident appear like a suicide. Davis had never seen this man earlier. The police looked around the apartment and found nothing. On searching the body of the deceased, they found a note in his tuxedo pocket, which read “Codename: 007”.


A MI5 agent, a modern age spy, popularly known as James Bond painted a scary picture in the mind of other spy agencies across the globe. No-one except Jonathan knew what his real name was, even his passport sported his alias name. A student par excellence, Jonathan made a mark in sports too at school. He was a prodigal child, and was awarded best outgoing student in his final year at university. None knew about his where-abouts after his 6 years of stint at the renowned Cambridge. With no immediate family members, Jonathan’s close friends at college couldn’t reach out to him. It was a year later that Jonathan was identified as one of the victims of Air France 324 which crashed in the Atlantic. His body was never found and neither was his memorial ever conducted.

The entire operation to fake Jonathan’s death was approved by senior official at 10 Downing Street. The idea was to conceal his identity. The British intelligence trailed him ever since he cracked an online Psychometric test with exceptional scores. He was hand-picked by Mr. Sheen, who headed the Brit spy induction program. People at the agency said that he has a knack of finding a raw talent and making Jonathan an indispensable agent within a year. Since Jonathan was the 1st recruit of the 7th batch of the agency, he was code named as 007. Mr. Sheen personally gave him the alias name of James Bond for all his covert operations.

It all started with an operation to rescue an asset from a hostile territory, Jonathan had more than 70% success rate in more than 40 operations which he led in less than 5 years. He was looked upon and admired at the agency. It was this unblemished carrier of his, which made him MI5’s prized possession.
Fresh from his success of Operation Ransack, Jonathan was summoned by the head of Specialist Protection branch, the security detail for the British Prime minister and its family members, also popularly known as SO1. He was assigned the job of escorting the 1st lady of UK, on her trip to Seattle, WA to address the alumni meet of Seattle University. Though CIA had issued no threat to the 1st lady’s visit to States, Jonathan was inducted taking into consideration the imminent threat the British 1st family possessed always. Post 9/11, foreign diplomats have stopped considering US as a safe haven. The entire Operation was named as White Rabbit and involved keeping a track of Ms. Clara’s security, and her safe passage back to home and Jonathan was asked the lead the team of 10 agents. It was another Operation for the seasoned field agents. However, 4 hours before the Air Force flight 443’s schedule departure from London Heathrow International airport, a red alert was sounded by MI5. The intelligence was tipped off by their Indian counterparts who claimed that the Islamic activists plan to create a hostage situation, by kidnapping the 1st lady. MI5 knew the information was credible enough, as the Indian agency found maps of Seattle University and also the itinerary of Ms. Clara’s visit, when they decrypted some emails sent from Islamic handlers in Peshwar, Pakistan to Washington, US.

                                                                              -- To be continued ....

A pedestrian is a person traveling on foot, whether walking or running !!

Have you ever noticed that anybody driving slower than you is an idiot, and anyone going faster than you is a maniac?
- George Carlin
Over a decade, I have driven all sorts of vehicle and realized that nothing pisses off a person behind the wheels more than a pedestrian, trying to make his/her way across the road. I donot have anything in particular against these people, because not very long ago, I was one of them. This is a piece of satire and should be taken that way, and anyone getting offended by this, I have just one thing to say, “Yeah, I don’t give a damn just like you do when you walk on the road”.
So, here you go, the 10 classic types of people who walk down the street every other second. See, where you fit the bill :


The Daredevils : This rare sect of people cross the roads as if they were giving auditions for Khatron Ke khiladi. They comprise of all age groups and race against the time.. oops the traffic signal. They patiently wait until the signal turns green and run perpendicular to the incoming vehicles. They are recipient of maximum abuses, which are hurled at them by almost every driver crossing the road at that instant. This rare feat should in all probability make them one of the front-runner in the unique category for World records: One who received maximum gaalis (abuses) at a instance.

I don’t give a fuck types : You would find them often in narrow lanes where they are the self-proclaimed goons. They don’t give a damn weather you are driving a mobike or a bloody Hummer and honking at them. They cross the road at their own pace as when required. I once saw such a creature standing in the middle of a road and digging away his nose in glory. The traffic stood still until he was done with his filth and decided to move on.

The hesitant ones : They are the utmost confused species ever known to human race. They step back and forth waiting for a catastrophe to happen. These habitual offenders are not only confused, they confuse the one behind the wheels too and keep them guessing till the moment of eternity.

The cell phone lovers : Well, well well !!! Women have been a strong contender of this category even since cellphones became a fashion statement. They love their smart devices more than their boyfriends and also more than their lives. Every time, they step onto the road, they have a extreme desire of using this device at their disposal and start talking over it and it happens every time.
P.S : Pardon me for my male biased writing here, but men would have been a contender here, if the classification said asshole drivers who like to talk while they drive.

Roadies : Clad in skin fit tees, bulging biceps and sometimes a protruding belly, irrelevant of the fact that where they are then, they cross the traffic as if they are walking down the aisle in front of Raghu and Rajeev. The most interesting aspect is they origin from any place in and around NCR or Punjab.

Upar waale ke naam pe de : Ahh, the begger and the Eunuchs, who earn their livelihood off the traffic signal. It is an organized business where the painfully old begger(would die even if a vehicle honked a couple of times at him) make sure that every car window is knocked, while the eunuchs give the 2 wheelers a run for their money, the target victim being a male, anywhere between 15-50 .

The drunken ones : Perhaps, the worse section of all, not because they create most nonsense, but because they are the group of daily wage earners, who blow off their day’s income on cheap liquor and venture out on roads, for some adrenaline rush. They are found hovering the roads mostly after mid-night. If one murder was allowed by Indian Penal Code, perhaps this class would have been the ones mostly knocked off by people behind the wheels.

PYT : The pretty young things. They possess immense power and can literally freeze the traffic on their arrival. Trust me , as a driver, we look upto them with extreme respect, switch off the ignition, stop the traffic, just as to ensure their safe passage across the traffic menace. Those 30 seconds are the period, when every person in the traffic lives his fantasy. Invariable of who the PYT is, they possess a smartphone, held tightly to her ear and they don’t give a damn to anyone, be it a person on road or the traffic.

The Aam aadmi : The mango people or the middle class. They are always in whiff, highly impatient and want to be the 1st to cross the road, as if it would lead in sharp decline in inflation and prices of essential goods. Irrespective of their age or gender, they look nonchalant and constipated.

The toddle/Elderly : I was once told that a new born is equivalent to an elderly. They show the same characteristic on road too. A kid who has just started to run, gets a sudden urge to run across the road everytime they see a vehicle pass through.

And at the end :

There are two kinds of pedestrians... the quick and the dead.
-Thomas Dewar

After Lok sabha election results, MNCs freeze campus hiring

Taking a cue from the fresh electoral mandate pouring in from every nook and corner of Indian television like greenhouse gases, the Association of IT Companies decided to shy away from campus recruitments from immediate effect. It was more or less the drubbing of Aam Aadmi Party which has prompted such a step. “The campus hires have absolutely no experience about the industry, they talk a lot of ideologies, want to change the system by making it more streamlined and efficient, something which we don’t really need at this hour” said one of the premier associate member of this elite group on conditions of anonymity.


Over the years, most of IT Conglomerates depended on Tier-2 and Tier-3 Engg. College which provided them enough quota of bench strength. Not only these new hires were recruited for peanuts, but they also led to an increased work force or rather say resources and man power. However, a not so independent survey conducted by AC Nelson Mandela, 40-50% of these new hires either left the company for higher studies or for better packages. The parent companies spent lakhs of rupees on appeasing these new low paid hires by conducting random and occasional events like fashion shows, Independence day celebrations, etc. . The survey proved the market pundits wrong yet again. The severe losses made by the new party AAP in Lok sabha 2014 elections was the final nail in the coffin. “That is it”, said Aziz Shah, CEO of Bata Consultancy Services(BCS). ”We spend a tremendous amount of capital recruiting these new hires, most of our experience managers who donot have any work take only interviews for this purpose and then training(read appeasing) them. And the end result is preposterous. One of campus recruits left us saying she was getting married, the last heard she switched her loyalties to our competitor”, he added later.


The engineering students all over the country, which has been hit hard by this sudden move has joined hands and promised a national movement followed by dharnas. “This whole system is flawed.. Freshers being fickle minded is just a pretext used by the MNCs, instead they have their own interests in it. We(freshers) tend to do better than their experienced lot and that leads to EPs(exp. Professionals) being expelled. They are just being protective about their own jobs and trying to cut down the competition. And the whole idea is illegal and biased. And this is what we are fighting for”, said Anand Kejriwal, popularly known as AK among this batch mates. He continued further saying “This is not my fight, its fight of all the common engineering students who cannot afford to be entrepreneurs, both financially and intellectually”. Our correspondent had to literally pull away his microphone, to stop him from saying any further.


With campus hiring coming to end, there is sense of jubilation among experienced lot. “There has been a sudden surge of more than 30% of people uploading their resumes on our sites”, said the spokesperson from Shine.com, whose only source of traffic otherwise was spasm mails sent to an individual. Narad Moody aka NaMo who worked up his ranks from a software engineer to Delivery Head uploaded his selfie on his official twitter handler showing a victory sign. “These kids(freshers) were never a competition. A lot of hoopla had been created around them. I am happy that finally we have won”, he said with a broad smile on his face. When asked if even he was a fresher at some point of time, he cooked up a story saying how he served tea to professionals early in his career and move up the ranks. We found his story a mere fiction in our internal verifications.


Whatever the intent may be, AK has decided not to sit back and relax. He admits that his batch mates have made mistakes in past and they should have taken their peers in confidence before making a switch. He said that there is a wide spread resentment among his and other college students, and they are ready to take on people like NaMo. However, he never clarified how they planned to do so despite of our correspondent probing about it. “We are engineering students, we never plan this in advance, it would be an impromptu act”, said someone feebly from the crowd, but was hushed up by AK.

It was never about money !!

It was still dark outside. The dawn was yet to begin its short lived journey when she woke up from her sleep. No, it wasn’t the chirping birds nor the wailing children, which made her forgo her slumber. She had planned this for a long time now, but never found the courage to execute it. The anger deep within continued to build up over the 7 long years and it was time, it spilled out. The incidents of last night further fuelled her determination and now she was all up for it.
In a haste she moved across to her 1 year old daughter’s room and clung her to her shoulders, who was still fast asleep. She planted a fond kiss on her daughter’s head as she saw herself in the dressing mirror. She never left this mirror unless she glanced herself in it for a second time, but now the time was running fast. She did not even bother about her unkempt look and the smudged kohl, which certainly made her look awful. Without wasting a second, she tip toed out of the house, and opened the car's rear door. She laid her still asleep daughter on the seat, hopped onto the driver’s seat and ignited the engine. As she moved her car in the 1st gear and was barely 10 meters away from the house, she stopped.
Something was not done, she realized. The trauma she had tryst with for the last long 7 years, she never retaliated to it. She took a long breath, and rolled down the car windows to catch some fresh air. She knew she had to finish off the unfinished business. Without it, she would always repent for the lifetime and would be in spot, when her daughter asked for the reason when she grows old. She opened the door, and ran towards her house.
Without making a noise, she stepped in her husband’s room . He was still asleep and snoring loudly. She knew what she had to do as she moved towards her husband’s wardrobe. She slowly pulled out her husband’s service revolver from his uniform’s holster. She closed the wardrobe with a big thud, with clear intentions to wake him up. She could not kill him without letting him know what it was all about. He woke and stood up in a state of shock from his hangover. “Wh..whaatt the hell are you upto”, he shouted and the smell of whisky spread in the air. She stood mum with the gun pointed at her husband. The anger in her eyes was very much evident and this made him froze in time and space. Realizing the eminent threat, he folded his hands in a gesture to plead for forgiveness. “I was drunk the last night, I will never hit you again”, he said. It was not about the last night, it about the numerous nights, and it was not the physical bruises she bore, she bore the brunt of staying and sleeping with the man, she hated the most for the last 7 years.
“You take all the money you want, you take this house”, he mumbled and cried in unison. The time was up and the day light was about to break. “It was never about the money”, she said for the last time to her husband, as she pulled the trigger. The bullet pierced though the body and hit the wall at the opposite end. The gun-shot did wake the birds who started to chirp all of a sudden. She felt vindicated and exhausted at the sametime. She cleared off her fingerprints from the gun and kept it back in place. She moved out of the house. It was amazing that a city never rises from its sleep, no matter someone is being beaten or killed in their neighbour.
She put a hard foot at the accelerator peddle and sped off the place. As the daylight broke, the first rays of sun fell on her face and she adjusted the rear view mirror to look herself in it. She looked way better and had smile on her face. While still looking in mirror, a small tear rolled out her eyes.

Ek short lived love story - I

A blip on my phone woke me up from my sleep. I sneek-peeked in my smart device from one eye. It was a facebook notification. I was momentarily excited , though wary of the fact that somebody could have dared to send me a Candy crush or Farmville request at this hour. I fumbled around to find my glasses and swiped on the screen to see the notification bar.

“X,X has accepted your friendship request, Write on X’s timeline”. OK, it was a girl who had accepted my friendship request, so that meant I would have sent her the request at some point of time. I tried hard to recollect if I knew her by name and “now visible” profile/cover pictures. No, there was no chance I could have known her. We had no mutual friends either. She did not even belong to my school/college and beyond everything, I did not know someone as pretty and photogenic, as she appeared to be in her profile pictures.

I pressed hard to recall when was the last time, I went on the spree of sending friendship request to any and every random girl I came across on facebook. It was a social thing, trying to connect to as many people as possible, the core idea how the social network came into existence (pun intended !). I nudged my friend to wake him up from his sleep, and asked him if he know anything about the damsel in question. My friend did not disappoint me. His impeccable memory impressed me to an extent that I gave him a hug. It was more than month back, when we were trying to look for my friend’s college crush, that we stumbled across her profile. High on couple of vodka shots, my ego went for a toss, and I sent her the friendship request. One more shot later, I sent it to almost every girl we found thereafter.

“You lucky dog”, my friend said, as we were still glued to her SLR shot photos which had a water mark reading “X,Y’s photography”. “Its bloody photo-shopped”, I re-iterated trying to make a point. “I believe in what I see and I trust God!”, my friend replied, still staring at the pictures and was certainly more fascinated than me. I gave a puzzled look to him and asked him to stop leching at the lady who chose me over probably many others and privileged me by accepting my request. I hopped on to my profile picture and thought “Do I really look like someone who could befriend such a hot chick ?”. I was assertive and perplexed at the same time.

I press-locked my touch phone trying to catch some sleep, which I had completely lost by this time. It really didn’t make sense. Why would a lady of this “genre” even look at my profile, something was asmiss, or worse the profile could be a fake one. Perturbed I got up, switched on my laptop to look at the larger picture, and de-mystify the issue.

The Sherlock Holmes within me came out in full force and we figured the link in a matter of 10 minutes. She happened to be my colleague’s friend’s friend’s friend. “Wow, you drilled down so many levels to find her and send her a friendship request. You would have been drunk like a pig, but hard work pays off you see”, my friend quoted trying to be profound and sarcastic at the same time. I gave him a smirk, pulled over my blanket and crashed off to sleep with a smile on my face.

(To be continued...)

Ek short lived love story - II

I overslept after this incident and woke up alarmingly late for my office the next day. A late start to a day means, you get delayed for everything which happens that day. The mid-day crisis made me forgot the incident till late in the afternoon. Aanother facebook notification stole my attention. “Do I know you?”, said a message from the lady I befriended officially few hours back. “Wow, this is what education and evolution does to you”, I thought. “You accept a friendship request from a random stranger and ask if he knows you, offcourse not”, I mumbled . However, I replied her the opposite. “ Yes I think I do know you. You pose a striking resemblance to someone I met in Rashi’s marriage”, Rashi being one of the newly married friend of hers, which I checked out on her facebook page the other night.

“Oh, did we. Wow, I thought the same. I have a poor memory. How do you know her ?” she probed further. “Shit!”, I thought and quickly opened facebook on my browser to figure out more about Rashi. I hurried up when she tried to do a post mortal analysis by asking “You there ?”.

“I used to work with Tejas(her friend’s fiancée) when he was working with TCS in Bangalore”. This was the best lie I could come up with on such a short notice . “Niceeee!!”, she said. “And now you have moved to Hyderabad and working for XYZ” she continued further. She was smart and certainly looked to have done her homework. I could only muster a “yeah, I like Hyderabad and mostly the people who live here ”. The later part of my last reply was derived from the fact that she was born and brought up in Hyderabad (again the information was courtesy “About me” on facebook). My work took a back seat and my deliverable took a toll as I continued this for the next 2 hours. It was probably the only day I left my desk in evening with smiling face and content heart. “I had a really nice day at office”, I announced as I stepped in my room. My room mates looked amused and shell-shocked. One of them went on to the extent to ask “Did you go to a pub? Are you drunk?”. I ignored him completely.

Yes, love was certainly in the air. The technology for me took a giant leap, and I evolved from facebook to watsapp and continued with hours on cellphone. For the 1st time in 5 years of post paid experience, I took another look at my mobile bill, which had risen exponentially from the previous month’s. Getting a girlfriend is like buying a first car, you are excited at the mere pretext of getting one, then happy for the fact that you are one of the privileged few who owns one, but repent later owing to increased inflation, rising expenses and less savings. And added to it, its monthly servicing (read shopping) and maintenance becomes a vicious cycle in your life. Like a teenage girl facing puberty issues, I encountered a plethora of emotions, all at the sametime. The sense of mystery always prevailed, and I was ever unsure of what was to come next, obviously from my lady. 3 weeks into our relationship, I started to see a different phase of her. Actually I wasn’t sure, if it was her or me changing and evolving. I strongly doubted myself going by my past rendezvous with women.

My relationship with XYZ was like laws of thermodynamics, though it was indispensable, but it grew complex with every passing day. For me it was a disarrayed deviation of the love life from how its showcased in books and movies. “Where are we heading to”, “I am not sure if this will go on long” questions like this, became FAQs of my life. However, my innate habit of encountering any question posed to me with extreme ambiguity, often intended to confuse the other person always saved my day. If at all I had to answer her question, I never knew from Day 1 where I was heading to. I never had anything in my mind except for the fact that I felt happier when she was around, which went missing 2 weeks into our relationship. However, 4 weeks and 3 days when it all started, and when I was still not sure of why it all started, she decided to call it quits. She changed her number, refused meeting me and also unfriended me on facebook. I was severely distraught with a reduction in count of my friendlist.

There’s something strange with internet, though it doesn’t give you back what you have lost, but always brings up an alternative. After, trying to reach her again, I had a sudden urge of using my eloquence in speech, to abuse her via messages on facebook, and that was when I saw a friend liking her friend’s latest selfie. “Whoooa, she’s hot!!”, I exclaimed. A minute later, I had gone through the entire photo album and realized perhaps, she is the one I have been looking/waiting for. I paused and thought for a second if it was too early to get over someone and hitch with that someone’s friend. The next moment I sent the friendship request to new lady and kept refreshing my page anticipating an acknowledgement of acceptance. 6 hours after I broke up, I was completely over my “short loved love story”.