my new job..

" hey..what you doin nowadays", one of my friends asked me. Its one of those questions which are asked to elicit an 'automated reply question' thingy.

I gave a mystic sigh. "umm..nuthin. you say." No we were not chatting online.

"you asking me what im doin aajkal?" He asked sagely.

i nodded. " well i just got placed in microsoft. Gave my CAT got a 98.9 percentile." A sigh. " will surely miss IIM- B"

"Hmmm...but u did good anyways yaar". I was making an effort to stay calm here.

"I dunno..but hey..what u doin nowadays?"

I was trying to discern sarcasm from the diahorrea of the curious kind. " arre its boring..you wouldnt be interested.."

"I am, I am...bata na..", he insisted.

"well..err..i work in a whine shop". I have absolutely no idea where that came from.

"u mean a liquor shop?" My friend was obviously scandalised. Of course he could't make out what i had intended. At that moment, i was happy that there are no dialogue bubbles in real life. Thank God for homonyms.

"No no. I meant a whine company. I taste whines", i said with a straight face.

"What are you saying man...thats fantastic. Fuck..i ve..i've never met anyone who does that", he stammered. " Do they pay well?"

"Umm..not me..coz i wine a lot". Man..i was proud of myself for coming up with something like that.

"haha..dumb joke actually...no really..why would you whine man? you're funny!" he chuckled.

Now the problem with funny people is- they rarely feel funny themselves. Most of them are genuinely depressed and suffering from some neural disorders. I heard that guy Chaplin used to cry while watching his own movies. Mark Twain, for instance, was heartbroken most of his life. Now im not comparing myself with Mark Twain.. of course 'the twain shall never meet.' (now this, here, right now, was the moment i felt good about myself). My train of thought was suddenly derailed by the following remark:

"How do you actually taste a wine? Like..is it as tough as they make it out to be?"

" not at all..you've just got to feel one with the whine..its said that whine is in the air..as cosmic particles i mean", i shot off to fend that sacndalised look which my last remark elicited. " you just enter a sort of a seance..and then you are the whine..the whine is you...and then you whine!" i closed my eyes and actually went into a semi -seance (i made it a point to add it into my resume in the column 'wildest things i ve done'. this comes right below ' buying an antivirus software')
" Then you say to yourself 'thou shalt not wine about whine' and 'what is the purpose of life if theres no whining'...and..", i opened my eyes to find that my friend was not there anymore.

its Ok. I whine.