I Moved Your Cheese ...

Journeys can get boring.
Solitary journeys even more so.
And those in a train, cooped for 24hours, definitely top that list.

So what does one do, apart from listening to the middle aged lady or the old gray haired guy next seat, who wants to ramble all the way and make small talk, and not let you rest in peace, till the time he/she breaks for the rest-room or till you do??

Well, one can either pretend to be deep asleep, with snoring adding to the effect. Or try and look deeply pensive while staring out of the window, looking at the open fields and rocks go past by (counting the number of telegraph poles on the way), as if the answer to the next noble prize winning problem would be striking you this instant.

Gen-X these days would generally plug in to their ipods or laptops (with the Indian Railways now offering charging plug points). For me, it is the usual old fashioned paper back edition of an obscure book. Probably more than one at a time.

This time around it was one of my most interesting reads in recent times. Barely a couple of hours long, less than 100 paged, "I Moved Your Cheese" by Darrel Bristow-Bovey. Its a deep upper cut jab into the jaws of Mr Spencer Johnson and his Self-help book "Who Moved my Cheese?". In-fact, the buck does not stop here. Bristow takes a shot at all self help books and makes you truly realize how good one is by being his lazy self.

A true sarcasm laced read, you tickle yourself to death with the witty humor Bristow uses to charm his audience. Right from African hunters to surly neighbors to Osmatix to the mystic Mayans (which by the way is the best part of book and takes the cake hands down), Bristow teaches you one golden rule - "Find your inner ostrich egg". Life is all about pretending. Its how good you get at the game. The egg is supposed to be your secret, meant to be guarded well. Reveal what is in the egg (or rather what is not), and you lose all your glamor and glory.

For those of you lucky enough to have read it, it is quite dangerous. You really do not wish to work more, shirk all labor and find the easiest way out. Advanced reactions to the book may cause you to become so adept, that it becomes a child's play for you to delegate responsibility and make others do your (dirty) work. Trust me when I say every word of it is true.

But for those of you who still wish to go ahead and try out the low-esteem self help books, please do go ahead. I am sure you would make at-least one person around you smirk (easy to say that this one person would be the one who has read this parody).

I am actually wondering had I read this book earlier, who knows; I would have got my promotions much more quickly than the current usual. Honestly, I am almost on the track laid out by this book. I think now at the Mecca of all MBA schools, it is time to put the practicality to the test. I know I am a bit apprehensive, but the intention is to go out all guns blazing. And what better way to aim at becoming the best of the best of the best.

As the old self-help proverb goes - "Hard work always counts".
We antithetical retards prefer saying - "It is not about how hard you work, it is all about how smart you work" !!

And so the next time my office mates find me with an open excel file, they rather not ask me if it is work that i am doing for Unite or United. Someone definitely moved my D's ...