One of the latest pieces of work that has really caught the fancy of the world has been Anurag Kashyap and Abhay Deol’s Dev D. It is a story of this young lad, Dev, a rich dad’s poor little boy, an obsessive lover, an escapist, disillusioned by the world and in search for something that he calls love.
A works for India’s most visionary entrepreneur’s prodigal elder son’s one of million companies. This company is one of few organized players in India’s burgeoning retail market. A is one of the most extraordinary people that I have ever met. Although he doesnt put a lot of time and effort in coming up with insights and ideas but whenever he does so, he comes up with gem. His words are worth their weight in gold and diamonds and platinum. His thoughts are very clear and he knows what exactly he wants out of life and work. He is also one of the laziest people you would ever meet.
B works for a “conglomerate” with businesses ranging from chemicals to locks to rocket engines to foods to retail to real estate to medicine and to what not. If we legalized gambling and prostitution, they would have launched that too. Of course they would have put myriads of hierarchy and long designations for doing seemingly innocuous work. Anyways, B is an engineer by education, manager by designation and Shikari Shambhu by character. His sole aim in life is to make more money than anyone he knows, own the biggest house amongst his reference group and retire with enough in the pension fund. Nothing wrong about it. Just that its a different story that he is not doing anything about it.
C thinks that he hard to understand for most of the people that he knows. Including C himself. Actually that’s what C thinks. He is often branded random, frivolous and fickle minded. He is trying to ride some 19 boats at the same time and needless to say, failing at staying on course. He work a 8:30 to 5:30 job and leaves his office strictly at 5:30, goes to his place and stares at the wall and TV for about 5 hours before he sleeps.
So, three of us, our life stream can put any number of Devs‘ to shame. A typical day for each of us is VERY predictable. We probably are the cheapest targets for detective agencies. Sitting here, in my office, I can tell, with 100% certainty what the other two are upto. For example B is trying to scroll through his gtalk chat list thinking who he can chat up with. A would be out of his office smoking umpteenth cigarette of the day. I can also say for sure if you asked the other two about all three, everyone but A would know what others are upto. A’s secretary might have some answers.
Not that we dont try to break out of this monotony, its just that we are constrained by things that seem out of control and we dont even try to move out of the rat race. For A, its lethargy, for B, its security and for C, its, well he doesnt know.
Dev was better. He at least had an outlet in blur of alcohol. We dont.
P.S.: Title changed from “Putting Dev D to shame” to “A, B and C”