Wife: He he, you look like the feng shui baba.
Me: Look like who?
Wife: You know the one with the big round belly, who is shown laughing with his hands above his head.
Me: You mean the Laughing Buddha?
Wife: Yeah, that one.
Me: …

Time to hit the gym. Chintu Chaurasia, now that you’re out of a job, call me.

Phrase - on the ground

Politically correct definition – Employees who empower the operational team of the organization.

Real Definition - The low-life of the company. People who are paid less, worked more and laid off when not required.

Example
Them: You actually want people “on the ground” to be preparing PnL statements?
Me: Ummm, no, they can still work on their desks.

Usage - Use this phrase when you want to refer to the lower rungs of your organization without making them feel offended or left out.

With this, I also add a new tag on my blog, consultese – which is short for consultant speak. Sounds like a disease? It most probably is.

I see these kind every day. And every time I see them, that is exactly what I want to do – punch their noses in to their faces.

Now I completely understand if you have gone abroad for a significant amount of time, your accent is definitely going to change. Your speech would gradually adopt the characteristics of the place where you’ve been. After all, you wouldn’t want to look odd in that place. So you start talk like them.

But what irritates me is the obviously fake accented people try very hard to “impress” other easily-impressed colleagues? I, for one, am not easily impressed. I can see through your fake accent even before you pick your nose in your cubicle when you think no one’s watching.

And to counter these kind of people, I have a very effective and enjoyable technique. I put on my best Indian-English accent and watch them squirm in discomfort.

Me: “The meeting has been resheduled at 3″ Them: Oh, its being reskeduled again? I will have to check my skedule to see if I’m available.”
Me: “Yeah, your shedule must be pretty tight.”
Them: Oh yes, since I was promoted, I have a water-tight skedule.”

Its fun when they keep on repeating the word “skedule” for no particular reason than to make me pronounce it as such. And its even more fun when I stick to saying it as “shedule” irritating them even more.

Hell, if you think that you are perfect in English, you should also know that India follows British English (from our former mai-baap) and not American English. And therefore the correct pronunciation is in fact “shedule” and not “skedule”. I was previously quite strict about this difference, but now I’ve stopped being a prick about it.

Today The World is Flat. And no really cares about who says what. In this globalized world, you are free to follow whatever pronunciation you like.

I don’t care two hoots whether the meeting was skeduled or sheduled. You are free to choose either. But if you ever try to correct me about my pronunciation of the word, you’ll get one response which is pronounced only one way – up yours.

If you have ever been to a cinema in India, there are countless numbers of movies going on. Some in English, some in regional languages. The funniest are the ones which are dubbed from English to Hindi (or any other languages). With the widespread access of cable and satellite TV, now we have dedicated channels showing dubbed movies. So you don’t even have to buy a ticket. For example, we have had Spiderman in Gujarati shown on a regional channel. And the dubbing of these movies is so brilliant/atrocious that it is always fun to watch it in Hindi – if you can just forget the million “lost in translation” moments which come up.

Enough of the back story, now the point of this post. I went to IMDB, I went to Google Translate and I started checking out movies which I would like to see in Hindi. Here are some of the funniest results. Of course there might be thousands more. Feel free to check it out.

• Terminator 2: Judgement Day – टर्मिनेटर 2: प्रलय का दिन
• North by Northwest – उत्तर पश्चिम से उत्तर
• American Beauty – अमेरिकी सौंदर्य
• The Good, the bad and the ugly – अच्छा है, बुरे और कुरूप
• Lord of the rings: Fellowship of the ring – अंगूठियों का मालिक: यह फैलोशिप अँगूठी की (Just like Kahani ghar ghar ki, fellowship angoothi ki)
• Psycho – पागल
• Its a beautiful life – यह जीवन है एक अद्भुत

and my favourite, भेड़ के बच्चे की साधना. Guess which movie this is.

See the entire top 250 list converted to Hindi here.