Dear Devil,
In reply to ur frantic letter, I thought it would be wise to answer u myself, and not let my prayer department handle this one.

I am God. No, not the one u saw in Bruce Almighty or some other Blockbuster flick. Im the real one, busy and confused, and neck deep in prayer requests. I have to make sure that the tsunamis dont wipe out too many people, earthquakes only squish a few people and most of all, the kids get their wishes for days off at school every second week. I have to ensure that Manchester United win every odd game, and Chelsea loses as much as the Arsenal fans want them to. I have to make sure that when Bush wins the election, he does enough good to warrant the ill-will from so many other Americans. I have to spread peace in the war strewn cities of Iraq, where humans murder each other for matters as trivial as the colours of their guns. Its upto me to make sure the Saudis strike oil, so that they can make some good of the desert that I bequethed to them. All in all, Im kept busy with over 200 nations and more people than I can keep count of.

If you're wondering what this job is like, its quite simple. I can never really sleep for one, so my account of my job can never begin with a "In the morning..."; lack of sleep doesnt hurt me too much, for my intake of the finest nectar keeps me in great health. However, since you can never imagine anything is so fluid a time frame, I will describe to you an average 24 hour period. After a shot of nectar, I ask my assistants to update me on any pending natural disasters in the coming 24 hour period, which includes the extent of the disaster, and any deaths that may be pertinent to the same. Mind you, this involves a lot of research on their part, since they have to carefully time the disaster; though once in a while some punk doctor comes by who stands in my way with his shiny scalpel.
I then need to assess the list of prayer requests that come through... Now this is the part that takes up so much time in the day. Kids come up with requests for a new doll or a new Transformers toy; but its the adults who come up with the requests that are hardest to get to. For one, every adult wishes something that contradicts what another human wants, so in effect, if I grant one wish, another one is broken by default. To add to that, is the fact that it is the adults who come up with the most childish requests. I mean can u imagine a 25 year old wishing that his car needs to be "boosted", his 40 year old father wishing that his son would stop worrying him, and the lady of the house wishing that both men would be gone from her life. And this is only one case. One Mr. Bin Laden has been pressing for a wish that he would have the power to destroy the world. Another tonne of Americans are praying that this same Laden would be killed in an ambush. While I have at least heard of these ppl, there are other teenagers in every part of the world wishing that they can become the next American Idol, or the next teen sensation. Every kid who picks up a tennis racquet wants to become a paro at 17, a la Rafael Nadal. Now, u can imagine how many requests I recieve in a day. These are sorted on prority, by a seperate set of angels, whose job is to stay in touch with worldly affairs in order to be able to categorise the wishes as Trivial, and Serious. The serious wishes are then sorted in order of time, and urgency, and obviously motive. Then I decide which ones I can grant, and be done with that set. From the trivial set, my assistants randomly select a few, and they are called miracles by u earthly folk.
The next part of my day, which is a very little now, goes into the population monitoring. My expert mathematicians have devised loads of devices which calculate the exact time that every human, including u, has lived, divided into fruitful and wasteful hours. Time gets added to ur lifeline when u indulge in more fruitful tasks of an angelic nature, and ur lifeline gets shorter when u get more devilish. This department is in constant touch with the natural disaster department, just in case a huge number of ppl in the same area are nearing the end of their lifelines. It is this very department where the time and manner of death of every person is calculated to the millisecond. It is also this very place where we handle births as well, again to be timed with ur human 9 month requirements. And to top it all, we need to time the exact time where the dead soul can find its way to a new body. In the rare account that we mistime this event, u humans end up with ghosts and we have a new logistics problem on our head, since that spirit is a very irritating peace of matter, over which none of us have too much control.
By the time I finish this, my 24 hours are nearly up, so I get around to surveying my abode and chatting with the angels and the assistants. In this time, I approve leave sanctions, in case some angels need to go home on earth to pay a visit to their families; and some new arrivals need to be fitted in as well. With all this done, I get down to my cup of nectar for the day, and look to getting back to work.
In case u r curious, u might wanna know that u have more than 8673 days 18 hrs 46 mins 35 secs 789 msecs of time left of earth. U might wanna get down to some angelic business soon enough if u wanna add on to that.

As for ur wishlist, it has been appended to my 350,889,867,879,656,703 requests and is being sorted as u read this letter. And as for ne more queries on the situation here in heaven, u r welcome to visit our official website www.thouhasbeenblessed.com, and u can send in any wish-specific requests to OhIwish@requests.godatwork.hv.

P.S. If u still think your work is hectic, try picturing my job. And dont bother with the trivial
requests... u know how they end up. So happy blogging and happy praying to u. May the
Force be with U. [That Star Wars line is being planned as my new campaign punch line..] U wanna comment on that??

Back from Vacation - Part I

Yeah its been a kinda blogging vacation for me... post July I havent really found the time to type out anything I got down to writing... so I thought Id at least ppl know that Im onli dormant and not extinct.
Yea, work is kinda hectic.. n I for one dont even know where its headed, but its been a good 3 months for now. My next landmark is CAT 08, which is back to haunt me in all its splendour. This year I havent even found enough time to iron out the mistakes Ive made last year, so Im kinda hoping the paper is so different that those mistakes might not even matter.
On the insistence of a couple of friends, and thanks to the free time Im finding in the local trains, Ive gone back to writing. I wrote a couple of poems, got down to penning a short story and then thought of jotting down some random thoughts. Eventually, I filled a whole scrapbook with arbit writings, and I think i'll jot down some of that over the week as a post.

Im looking forward to a couple of things over the month. Some friends coming over, the Sensex crossing the 18000 mark, and probably some headway in the CAT preparations. Any additions to that list are more than welcome, since my boredom is getting the better of me in recent times.
So till then, ciao

In Office

Office is a hectic place to be at..n i mean it. Today was expiry day, when the volumes are so high that every available trader works at top capacity. So much so that even me, who was onli training, dint get enuf time out during the day for lunch. The situation in the dealing room is so tense that u dont even wanna leave for fear of missing sumthing u'd wanna see.
It was fun making mistakes, n rectifying them, n seeing the action in the dealing room. It was not so fun having fun at 4. It was fun to have sumthin to do today; it was not so fun when I had to do it too fast to handle.

All in all - A good day; very worthwhile day; but not sustainable until expiry day next month.
So stay put for sum more updates

Update

Well this post is long overdue...over the past few months I've been meaning to make time to finish this update but everytime sumthing takes over n I get back to living the life I have n not writing it. So here goes...
My results came out a couple of days ago. I passed... with distinction. So now, Im a graduate.. YAY!! I also got admission into 2 well known management instis this yr.. n i rejected BOTH of them. NM offered me the Cap Mkts course, and Wellingkar's offer dint stand up to my taste either. So now, Im doin sumthin else. Im working...
I work as a dealer in the Cash Desk of a financial services firm, which means, I deal in equities. Fun job, it also means more of time at work n less time to prepare for my second shot at all exams. But this seems like an experience Im willing to experiment on, since its something Im a lot more comfortable doing. As for regrets, NO.. I dont regret having given up my chance to study right now, since the one year on hand can not onli help me rectify mistakes Ive already made but can teach me suave moves I would never have considered.

To my friend Payal, congo on topping in college, n getting thru to ur insti. To Suns, congo on the blog mate. To Sumeet, welcome back to India dude. To Rajeev, I hope that u landed that dream assignment. And, lastly, to my self, congo on getting ur life back on track.!!!

Happy New Year!!

Happy.. quite the opposite to how the year started at least..
But then... I chose today to post.. onli cuz happy makes sense today.. :D

The new year started off quietly..with no "Gang Party" and no drinks and our usual Dhamaal..since our whole Battalion wasnt in town, we did away with our usual style of New Year as well..
But, I have to admit, it wasnt so happy a year at all. CAT results out (with me deep in quicksand), a miserable XAT, my usual health issues and to add to it my own complications that I couldnt quite sort out.
And u can imagine how tht would make ne1 feel.. a lousy start makes a damningly bad impression on the new year.. but it seems to have turned around finally.
Some problems are sorting themselves out, some gud news headed my way... and to top it all, Im feeling ECSTATIC!!!

My vivas are on the 19th and my results are expected on the 18th... so yea a rock is underway..

But if my good mood carries on, the vivas are a piece of cake.. and the results never happened!!

Cya till I find more to write on..