SBI - State Bank of India or Surrounded By Incompetence

A few months ago I decided to check my SBI (State Bank of India) bank account status and to open a new deposit account. The toughest thing about this task – its having to stand in line at a State Bank of India branch. Over the years, India has lost many potential investors simply because they couldn’t handle the intensity and range of emotions that an SBI experience took them through. Nothing prepares you for a life of dealing with a hopeless bunch of SBI employees who do not give a fuck about what you want.
When you enter an SBI outlet, you will notice a man your grandpas age carrying a double barrel gun. This is called security. Because really, nothing makes me feel more secure than a man needing a cataract operation carrying weapons from the sets of Mangal Pandey. When was the last time you saw dacoits charging in on horses trying to loot a branch in Bandra? Wouldn’t it look fantastic when a bunch of thieves come in with quick loading handguns and shoot the place down and our man is busy trying to find bullets somewhere inside his medicine box? Isn’t it easier to buy a walking stick instead of a double barrel if they’re used for the same purpose? I know! Why don’t we just keep cannons inside the outlet? Seriously, that’ll scare them! Cannons! Even our man will look more authentic standing next to one. Not like anyone is going to museums in India, plus the kids will have fun shoving their heads inside the barrel instead of running around like puppies on crack trying to scratch a tick on their ass.

You will then meet the employees. You know how in superhero movies a mad scientist always inserts a serum inside a human body which goes terribly wrong and creates the villain? That’s what Defence Research & Development Organisation (DRDO) does with State Bank of India employees. Able-bodied individuals are taken from each state and inserted with a serum that makes them equally shitty no matter which state or branch you have the misfortune of visiting. They’re like human Mig-21s. I’m surprised every employee doesn’t have a serial number (SBI-05-3304/172) written with a chalk on their forehead like every computer desktop, almirah, metal chair and everything else that is classified as government infrastructure. There’s a fun game I like to play when I’m at SBI i.e. spot the employee who’ll keel over and die of diabetes first.

SBI branches operate on a crucial principal i.e. every branch will have multiple counters out of which only ONE will be functional. Other counters will either be empty mocking your existence or have employees sitting around drinking chai refusing to do your work. It’s the governmental equivalent of showing rebellion by wearing a Che t-shirt. You then stand in a "queue" flanked by two people on either side whose only job is to somehow cut in front of you if the opportunity arises. They are usually older, have a big cyst on their scalp and pull every emotional card they know. The first includes not saying a word – just looking at you every three seconds and grinning nonchalantly. The second is the emotional card of having to deposit money into a distant relative’s account who has blood cancer (a trope from 80s Bollywood where for some reason that’s all people got) and won’t be able to recover if a sum of 900 rupees isn’t deposited immediately. The third is when they realise they have an account in Central Bank of India and not SBI and that they just wasted theirs and everyone else’s time. Finally after an hour when your turn finally comes, an employee will emerge from the back bearing prasad from a recent trip to a religious centre which will then lead to a 30 minute conversation between the chai drinking employees about all the religious centres they have ever visited and which offered the best prayer conversion rate so their mother in laws would get herpes and kids wouldn’t have to work in an SBI. There are higher chances of Narendra Modi getting a U.S. visa in one shot than your work getting done at these ironically named "single window" counters. When they say 0% interest, they’re talking about how they feel about their work.

What this waiting period does provide however is a chance to reflect on the deeper, more existential questions in life. For example, why does an SBI poster of a fixed deposit always feature a white baby doing shit like growing a plant? First off its not an Indian baby if it doesn’t have a black circular spot on the forehead atleast 40 cm in diameter that will miraculously save it from ill will. When was the last time you saw a baby who was fond of gardening? An accurate representation would be a baby eating mud and shitting itself crying while the parents pull their hair out trying to access their fixed deposit. Why does Syndicate Bank have a dog as their logo? Why do I know things like Syndicate bank having a dog as their logo? Will Syndicate bank be successful in Korea because people love eating dogs? Am I supposed to be turned on by the aunty counting money in slow motion while constantly licking her finger?

While in that queue, an aunty saw me carrying my deposit application form and started chatting me up. I say chatting me up because it sounds sexier than using the word conversation.

Beta, you’re applying for the new fixed deposit

(Nahi, mujhe shauk hai teen ghante logon ka hair oil smell karne ka) Yes aunty

My son is also applying. Except he is at home sleeping and I am here.
Waise what do you do?
Aunty unemployed (I lied because prankster and Twitter are not socially acceptable answers)
At this point aunty looked at me as if I was Lalloo Prasad's testicle and turned away.

I would never step foot in an SBI ever again. I hope you never have to either, unless you have an account in the State Bank of Travancore. You know your bank is shit when the kingdom its named after doesn’t even exist.

Fat or Big is Beautiful

It’s time I came to terms with it.
I’m fat.
I’m not the "let’s stare at him his ass is so huge he probably shat and doesn’t realise its still stuck in his crack" fat. When you’re Shashi Kapoor fat, you and the world both know that there is no hope and everyone can place bets on when the person will keel over and die in the middle of a meal without any guilt. However when you’re wearing an additional size to cover the paunch and seatbelts accentuate your titlets™ fat, there is always hope that somehow, someday it will become better. People tell you that it’s easy to get rid of. When you bathe you can still see your penis when you look down and tell yourself all is not lost. It is then when you accidentally run your hand to the fat cliff underneath your navel and realise that you didn’t know this area existed till a few weeks ago. You then cry in the shower, realising you need the same mirrors mall security use to check underneath cars for bombs to see portions of your own stomach.

Of course, one does not become fat overnight. On some level, I am almost proud of my titlets because I have seen them grow over time. I imagine this is what women feel like when they’re pregnant. Somewhat glowing, somewhat proud, somewhat indulgent in unnecessary squeez..never mind. However, I have noticed the following changes in my lifestyle ever since I have become aware of my fatness.
Dietary patterns: An essential aspect of being fat but pretending as if you’re working on losing weight are internal dietary compromises one makes with the brain. Old Monk starts being paired with diet coke, which is as good as defiling the grave of all your life’s greatest memories. Sugarless coffee suddenly becomes the norm and one pretends as if they were part of an American sitcom where everyone spends their mornings walking around New York with a coffee cup. Fried food becomes a strict no no, till one realises that the only way to finish an Old Monk with Diet Coke is by supplementing it with fried food.
All of this to satiate the brain into believing that the number of calories being consumed has been reduced even though absolute consumption of food remains the same if not more. My personal favourite has been replacing regular sugar with sugar free, whose tag line might as well be "WE TOLD YOU YOU’D LOSE WEIGHT, WE JUST NEVER SAID IT WOULD BE BECAUSE OF CHEMO!"

Clothes: One of the toughest things about being in India is caste discrimination, female foeticide, poverty, malnutrition not being able to find clothes your size if you’re fat. I already faced this problem before, but becoming fat means that I am forced to look at acquiring a U.S. visa. The problem is that even if you wear a size 40, it isn’t big enough because of the increased shamiana like titlets and paunch pulling up the cloth from its appropriate length. I presume this is why so many old people across India can be seen in the morning wearing tight, ill-fitting vests with their navels exposed while spitting out a blowjob level daatun paste. I am happy to report that I am getting the perfect training for that future. Size 40 is now too small. Very few manufacturers make a 40 and above, and the ones who do seem to have no sense of taste. It’s almost like Indian manufacturers got together and thought "Chal na pehle hi saala itna mota hai who cares what he is wearing he will still look fuckall just give him the leftover drapes".


It is virtually impossible to pull off the hipster look. While black plastic framed glasses work effectively, bright coloured chinos and other such clothing items that are essential to depict the "I’m a youthful commodity buy me buy me!" look to potential clients in Mumbai is hard to achieve, thus placing one at a disadvantage. Black however, is your amazing best friend. Not because it makes you look slim but because black doesn’t look very dirty in public even if you wear it four times without washing it.

Finally, I realised that I’ve reached the stage where I suck in my stomach around women without even realising it. More than women, the other day I caught myself sucking it in when a delivery guy came over with pizza. First off, what is the point of involuntarily sucking in my stomach if after that I'm still fat? It’s almost like even if I’m not my body is too ashamed to let the delivery boy know that I eat too much. I make a "don’t judge me" face and try and communicate with my eyes that it is infact, thin crust, but they don’t seem to buy it. At my age where people have already starting playing Chinese whispers (Am I the only one who thinks the term Chinese whispers is like a communist sanitary pad that each woman in the village has to share for the greater good?) with the M word, it is especially important that I stay fit so that my future partner does not have to deal with my jelly.

When I was in school I had a two-year period where I was rather fat and photogenically challenged. I didn’t get bullied or made fun of, except this one time where I tried to bowl in a cricket match after a long time and realised I couldn’t extract any pace from my run up. That for the simple fact that I couldn’t run fast enough and delivered a series of Nehras. I outgrew that phase in a year because of a magical growth in height. I wonder what will happen now, and how ill get out of this jam. Oooo…jam.

My Inspiring Thoughts!

People always say, "Hey, Rob, what's the toughest part about keeping a blog? Is it coming up with things to write about? Keeping a regular schedule? Keeping it fresh?" Actually, the hardest part for me is remembering the password. So after a few tries, I'm back in! And, boy, do I have some thoughts!

For instance, they say an apple a day keeps the doctor away. Actually, it depends. Because I find that some watermelon each day keeps sex away. And ever since I started fermented potatoes, I have yet to run into a cardiologist. Coincidence?

Like Mary, I used to have a little lamb. Unlike Mary, that sucker got butchered i and had some delicious mutton for a week. (It wasn't so little). Hey, don't blame me, blame the dumb lamb.

I didn't get much accomplished at work this week, but that's never something I worry about since time isn't real.

Sleepwalking is old news. Lately I've been sleep belly dancing. I know this because when I wake up, my obliques are as sore as they were when I was exercising my way to more sculpted abs in that belly dance fitness class at the local gym. Also, my neighbor saw me.

I've been thinking about getting a new look: more hair. But not in a place you would think.

All this time I've been telling people I have a Masters in Humanities cause I thought that was just a made-up word. Turns out there's actually a course like that, and now I've gotta give a lecture in Sharjah.

This morning I woke up with two thought-provoking questions: "How come my feet are cold? It's roasting outside," and "can you put socks in the toaster?"

One last thought: There's no such thing as a free lunch, but if you go to the Holiday Inn on Airport Road between 6 and 10 in the morning there's a continental breakfast and they don't ask questions if you carry a suitcase and some old plane tickets and look like you're in a rush.

Relationship Limbo!

I’m somewhat emotionally distraught right now after having eaten a dirty bowl of Gobhi Manchurian from a restaurant called “Shree Krishna Veg”; and whenever I think of Gobhi Manchurian, I think of love. So that’s what I’ll talk about in this post.

I’ve been exposed to a new kind of sentiment recently which I don’t know how to respond to. Scouring through the relationship section of this blog didn’t reveal any answers or historical context in how to grapple with this (social scientists call this act of dissecting existing text on an issue a “literature review” – but I’m so awesome my review only consisted of my own damn blog) So what I’ll do is talk about how it makes me feel and hopefully get your opinion on it in the name of audience interaction.

The situation:

This situation is what one calls the relationship limbo.

Scientific definition: Relationship limbo is when two people, usually friends, attracted to each other with variable intensities (one wanting it more than the other) are left in a constant state of flux and reassessment of underlying power structures after an official declaration of affection disrupts this equation by attempting to expand to a higher emotional terrain inorganically.

Relationship limbo is exactly like limbo in the movie Inception i.e. your heart is absolutely spellbound by what is unraveling in front of you and you want to continue watching because it’s all so intriguing, you can’t really figure whether your world is real or fake and in both cases there is no sex involved.

In layman’s terms:

Person X: Hey I just wanted to tell you I really like you

Person Y: I like you too…I just don’t know what it means though…also..I don’t like you as much as you like me…but I want to be friends because you’re awesome and who knows something might happen because we have something

Person X: #FFFFFUUUUUUUU

Why relationship limbo sucks:

You can’t be an asshole: I’m a firm believer in the fact that the best way to deal with most situations in life is by being an asshole. In this situation however, you’re fucked because you can’t be an asshole to people if you genuinely care about them. I know this is paradoxical, because the people you care about the most at one point of time in your life (including friends, family or lovers) invariably end up being the maximum recipents from your Flipkart shit dispenser – but this is where you open iTunes and play George Michael’s Faith and hope that this time would be different.

Being an asshole in this situation for example would be suddenly starting to hate the person for not responding to your advances or devaluing the basis for your friendship. And here is where one needs to make a clear distinction about not being an asshole. If you’re not being one simply because you’re hoping something might happen in the future in which case you want to play your cards right like it’s a game – you’re doing it wrong. I think that is perhaps my only learning from all my flaming piles of relationships – people are more important than the labels to ascribe to them and that if you really care about them you wouldn’t let them go. I imagine when you’re 21 you think you have your whole life ahead of you and that makes you reckless with the people you meet and your intentions, but at 25, probably not.

There are no right answers to the question of space: In conventional relationships, when people need space there are clear demarcations of things that you can and cannot do. It is understood that you shouldn’t call or text or email and generally get in someone’s face if they don’t want to. Requests for space in relationship limbo however are totally different because the fact that you’re friends and within the same workplace/social group/university etc always keeps you in proximity. This makes it next to impossible to know when to bring up or not bring up an issue, reading signs given that in the back of your head they’re somewhat attracted to you too and how much is too much. So if you don’t know how to tip toe around this – there are massive chances of you being classified as an asshole which is something you absolutely do not want.

You’ve to be alright all the bloody time: Relationship limbo leaves you emotionally exhausted as you swing from utter elation over something as random as a sweet text message to OMG IM GOING TO STAB SOMEONE IN THE MOUTH at realizing that it probably means nothing at all within a space of 49 seconds. This is then supplemented by joy at seeing things work out between people in movies and imagining yourself in that situation to feeling like shit like you just discovered the diamond you got studded in your tooth was actually a piece of glass that the dentist conned you into buying – again within the space of the same hour. These PMS worthy swings happen everyday – and despite how good you think you are you cannot control them from screwing up your system. This is when you realise that the only time you are sane is when you’re around him/her, which is pathetic because it can turn into a notion of dependency which is dangerous for your ego and sense of being. Did I mention how all of this only happens AFTER you’ve managed to stop feeling that life is unfair? Fun stuff.

You can’t fault anyone or anything: Relationship limbo, although enmating from a state of uneven levels of attraction between friends also amalgamates every other fear into one big massive ball of doubt that forms a lump in your throat even if part of your heart is starting to melt (Fuck, that was awesome prose. Someone offer me a book deal) This includes, like I mentioned already – fear of ruining the existing relationship, its implications on one’s circle at large and how they would perceive that decision, fear of making the wrong decisions or rushing in too quick etc etc. The problem is that these are all valid concerns for anyone to have and thus cannot be brushed under the carpet as easily as beating up a third guy who decides to hit on your chick. This fearball moves in to disrupt whatever fleeting moments of courage one might have to want to give in to their gut or try something new – thus controlling the individual and their actions in its entirety.

You need to give it time: Because the situation isn't as easy as one person not being attracted to other at all and feels some connection that they can't describe - they go with the obvious choice of waiting and giving it time to be able to determine what it means for them. Time however, can be a piece of shit because it turns the other into an insecure mess living off Oprah and Alanis Morissette. This is because notions of time in relationships are usually associated (in my age group) with healing and moving on rather than focussing on it as a positive associated with growth and understanding each other in depth. Time also kills spontaneity in conjunction with the fearball because you're too busy trying to place relationship limbo in context with your existence instead of living in that moment and enjoying what it has brought to you. And not living in that moment is perhaps the biggest tragedy of it all. But all you can do is suck it up, because if you're willing to wait, and if it is worth it you will, you have no other option. It is, I imagine, much much sweeter though.

Have you ever been in limbo? How did you get out of it? What’s your story? Discuss.