This week, we return to solve the world’s problems with Aditya’s Advice Column!

Q: How does one console a colleague who has been given a pink slip (the IT MNC is on firing spree), conveying him that this company is doing nothing but body shopping and u are lucky to get that, albeit a successful career lies ahead of you.
- A
Hang on a second… Why would you console your colleague who has gotten a pink slip? He has just been freed from the drudgery of daily slavery. He doesn’t have to get up early in the morning and get ready to go and spend 12 hours driving through traffic only to end up in a windowless office breathing recycled, cold air and pretending to be busy, just to get the daily wage, only to hand it over to the banks as EMIs. He gets to wake up late, have a nice, fulfilling breakfast and play video games all day! Who has the better life?

If anything, the person that got the pink slip should be consoling you. Have you heard of anyone that’s working on a salary that got rich and successful? No Sir! ALL the top 10 richest people in the world were not daily wagers. J.K. Rowling, Shah Rukh Khan, Maria Sharapova, Rakhi Sawant, Scott Adams - All the great people in this world said goodbye to their corporate careers and did their own thing.

But all is not lost. You can earn your pink slip too, if you work hard enough. Resist the temptation to do any work - Be careful and miss deadlines and make sure your code has lots of bugs. If you work hard enough at this, you will receive the pink slip. You can speed up the process by going to your manager and point out that you are “just another resource” and you are not “a teamplayer aligned with the goals of the organization”. That might help.

If all else fails, you should DEMAND for your pink slip. The pink slip is your birthright and no one can stop you from having it!

Q: What comes first: The Wife or The Blog?
- VM

This question makes the assertion that the analytical knife can be sliced through reality to create distinct, compartmentalized entities that can be labeled as implied in the aforementioned question, but as the philosophers of yore have abundantly pointed out, such an enterprise is not without its obvious follies. In retrospective hindsight, this dualistic view - of subjects and objects - leads to logic traps and draws victims through the sub-concious perturbation of the irresistibility of the dialectic method, but one should be cognizant of the quality lost in such an exercise. In summary, such an inquiry into the nature of the continuum of reality only draws the response of moi, that is to say that the contextual space of the question begs to be expanded to gain any substantiative response towards increasing one’s knowledge.

Q: Everywhere preferential treatment is metted out to womens in transport vehicles, whether its in state bus or share auto, how should one respond to a female who wants to grab your seat just bcoz she is a female and be given first citizen status.
- AB

I know. This is starting to become a real problem! I don’t understand why women get these privileges. I even heard that in some middle eastern countries, women are not allowed to work! Why can’t I have that right? It would be so cool:

Wife: “Aren’t you going to work?”
Me: “I’m sorry I can’t.”
Wife: “What?!? Are you expecting me to be the sole breadwinner while you laze around at home?”
Me: “Can you go to office and call me? That way I can put you on mute. I can’t hear what Tom is saying to Jerry on TV.”

This is shameful that we men are getting sidetracked while the women start running this world. Hilary Clinton, Mayawati, Barkha Dutt, Rakhi Sawant - Only a few names among the hordes of women that are cornering all the power in their plot to take over the world! I think it’s time that we men started a society to counter this.

M.A.D - Men Against Distractions. That’s what we should call our club. This club should be engaged in the fight the evil women who are distracting us so that they can take over this world. To make our club successful, we should come up with some catch phrases and sound bites so that we sound smart on TV. I’ve come up with a few initial drafts:

“Just because we can’t see 34,432 shades of blue doesn’t mean we can’t see the truth!”

“Men - No beauty, but lots of brains!”

“We may not have have hundreds of shoes, but we do have our dignity!”

Can you folks think of more?

If you’d like to ask a question in Aditya’s Advice Column, send a mail to advice@pointlesswanderings.com. Don’t worry, your identity will be kept confidential.

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