Before you brush it off as yet another Harry Potter-esque write-up, let me introduce the object of our current interest – the “few extra pounds”, which we will henceforth refer to as the Orb. Being a very touchy topic, (to give an idea of the magnitude of its touchiness, it is like shouting “Long Live LTTE” when Mr. Rajapakse is at Tirupati giving his thanks to one Mr.Balaji, aided by situational factors like a few gazillions of people crushing the Orb out of you or the sea of perfect round bald scalps while you were the neighbourhood Rapunzel with auburn highlights. Snipers?), our Orb can be described as a ubiquitous (we are talking of the i-banker circles here), self-censored, mild mannered, football-sized dumpling that can be dressed (disguised) either to kill or to spill. I would say that our Orb has been one of the most wronged beings in history. Now who would you say won the World War II – the young, dashing, Greek-god-like RAF pilots, or our jolly good old bloke Churchill who had a massive “few-extra-pounds” and overcame his stuttering to give Britain the ray of hope it needed at its darkest hour? But when you say World War II, who are you reminded of? The young hounds perfectly packaged by Hollywood of course. Brando gave his finest performance as a fat guy with thin hair who couldn’t do more exercise than open his mouth a half millimetre while talking. The symbol of leadership and unbridled talent is often nudged to the background by the sex symbols of both-my-mom-and-dad-are-thin and i-am-too-drunk-to-go-get-something-to-eat. You could say that the fore mentioned “icons” acquired their Orbs in their late 40’s, but back then, so was the rule for PhD. We guys with the Orbs are hungry (!) for faster professional growth. We do not let a night of booze and pumpkin-jelly-dancing take away our beacon of enlightenment (it certainly leads our way). We fuel it by having maggi at 3 o clock in the morning and a cup smoodles at 12 between classes. We eat a double cheese burger with extra cheese at 11 in the night and follow it up with good old beer at a party, invited to which by that guy who you saw in the mess and he was talking to someone about how something had happened to the niece of his third aunt on his dad’s side. We march on undaunted by mere truths like having given up painting your toenails which you can’t see anyway, having got that new bike just because you can’t climb the steps to the classroom, that special wonder of the opposite sex having left you to hang around with someone who looks too good to be intelligent, the list is endless. We d rather set the orkut profile data to few extra pounds, take a nice long shower using a long handled brush to clean our feet, think of the Nutty Professor, get the inspiration to find more proof for the law that goes something like “Intelligence and sincerity are inversely proportional to beauty”, celebrate with more beer and then wet the pillow with tears. After all, excellence begins with an XL.
