October 09, 2006

On becoming a Socialite

For years one wished to dare to dream,
To beat a different groove.
One wanted to surpass oneself
Yes, one wished to Improve!

One worked one's way through learned Books
For logistic support.
(By "Books", of course, one means those of
The Self-Improvement sort.)

To build spheres of influence
To chicken-soup the soul
One must devise, they all point out,
A monthly Major Goal.

To become highly effective
To meteorically rise
It becomes essential, also, to
Robustly socialize.

One pondered long, one pondered hard
One thought all day and night.
And this month's Major Goal was set:
Become a Socialite.

Soon it seemed we'd bitten off
Much more than we could chew.
For, since the start of October,
We were almost halfway through!

You understand that one now felt
An acute sense of woe.
In these things, one had realised,
One had some way to go.

One tells all one's finest jokes
And folks just stand and stare.
(Just between you and the One,
It's worse when girls are there.)

And so it seemed like spiteful life
Was extracting its toll.
Then last night, one dreamt one had fallen
Down a rabbit-hole.

One dreamt of this caterpillar
Avuncular, and stout.
He asked one what the matter was
The tale came pouring out.

One soon finished telling him
Now one could only plead -
Help us, please, one cried out,
O chain-smoking centipede!

He looked at one with grave concern
(As caterpillars could.)
He'd been nodding all the while
To show he understood.

His brow now furrowed to a frown
He bit his lip; it bled.
He looked the One both up and down,
"It'll take some work", he said.

He went and spoke to friends of his
(As one would later find)
And came back with some points that he thought
One should keep in mind.

He knew this was his big debut
He looked at what he'd wrote.
He popped a vitamin or two
And then cleared his throat.

"Think of witty things to say, boy,
(Hope you're taking notes.)
And take some time out every day
Practise your anecdotes.

"The way you speak might put folks off
(It shouldn't, but it may.)
You'd be well advised to learn to
Speak the Orkut way.

"You must say u when u mean you
And n when you mean and.
N a Yo! when u mean Hello there!
Sounds positively grand.

"And take some tips from Bollywood.
You could choose to cultivate
An AB Junior three-day stubble,
A Salman Khan-ish gait."

And saying thus, the caterpillar
Waved a last goodbye.
(He later grew up to become
A Social Butterfly.)

One woke up, as one contemplated
All he'd deigned to say.
By Jove, we'll heed his kind advice,
Beginning today.

How well this'll work, or how poorly,
We cannot claim to know.
(This is one's Goal for October;
We have three weeks to go.)

At least it helped one write the rhyme
Of which you just partook.
One might now write, if one finds time,
A Self-Improvement Book.

26 comments :

tangled said...

(Aha, she said, i'm filled with glee
The one posting first comment is me!
Of course, it should be 'I', but then
I'm taking my cue from Old Ogden)

All fans await, with breath all bated
For the result of this experiment
For we'll all be proud when you turn out
a socially prominent gent

Arthur Quiller Couch said...

AS I read, I wonder what
you is. In short,
is you 'gent', or is you not?

No matter whether gent you be.
Having read your doggerel, we
Acclaim you unreservedly.

Anonymous said...

[*feeds bloggy its bedtime multivitamin syrup and cod-liver oil*]

It worked, it worked!! Oh it worked!
Now feed it all the vitamins you can find
Then one day we all can say
We've peeked into a socialite's mind.


Heck, what've you started? Its infectious! And looking at my stanza above, it's evolution is certainly taking a silly form.

~N.

the One said...

Tharunya:
The result, you see, lies largely
In the hands of fickle Fate.
And hence, fair T, thy respiration
Kindly do unbate :)

AQC:
What subtext have you read, good Q,
What invisible braille?
For this blogger is, in fact,
Quite definitely male.

N:
You see, N, your time spent here
Is really time well-spent.
One day one's bloggy, all grown up,
Might run for President!

Sheetal said...

We read you with unreserved delight
So the One wants to be a socialite!

The One shall know what he's been missin'
Lunches, soirees, and plenty air kissin'

One shall need to stand a lot
Smile and simper, occasionally plot

One will learn that the world is full
of people with remarkable push and pull

Gents with nicely lined pockets
Monocles perhaps in their eye sockets

One will gather tales for every occasion
for audiences of the f. persuasion

Daily practice facing a full length mirror
Will ensure a performance free of error:

For, as we know, a good joke is well enough,
Alors, it is the manner that's so tough

Turned out in natty threads, standing tall
One will hold forth, whiskers, whiskey and all

A worthy ambition this, we feel
It sounds in fact like a very good deal.



However this also leaves us a bit foggy
Will the One still have time for bloggy?

For this is how we know the One
This is how our hearts were won

Should this happen, this criminal neglect
It will not do, we now reflect

With gimlet eye and thoroughly grim manner
We now pick up the proverbial spanner

Will it suit you, we look askance,
this flibbertigibbet existence?

How shall you cope with a three-day stubble?
Come the fourth day and that plan's rubble

Can the One really grin and bear
to say Yo when he means Hello there?

Will not your grammatical soul cringe
saying u and n, and simply whinge?

One has maybe not considered that solitude
Is a better way of connecting wi' the multitude

A post a day is good for the soul
Two and we'd think the One on a roll

And so, O One, we beg, we plead, we ask
Turn your thoughts from so impossible a task

There are other roles that be so right
for a young man, than Socialite.

Anonymous said...

Smart One, the blogger who's quite definitely male
he is grooming his bloggy to run for president
plotting to make his millions in autograph sale
he teases nice readers with dreams of good fortune imminent

The innocent readers, they fall for this cleverly made trick
They keep coming back carrying multivitamin dose
Coaxing One to make the bloggy all grown up quick
Dreaming of the day they will next to a bloggy president pose

Selling this grand rosy dream, disguising a prank
One, he plays along like this, biding his good sweet time
very soon he'll be laughing all the way to the bank
And then to the whole world he'll be known, a brand new socialite prime.

;-)

~N.

P said...

lol!
comments space almost as 'fun' as the post itself! :)

tangled said...

See? That's what I say.
(3:33 a.m. where I live. sometimes i wonder.)

Spaax said...

One samples the glitz and dazzle
Its fatal claws
happpily clutched.

One asks for more of it all
please sir, can I?
sample the haul?

If One kisses the air
while drunk
is it secretly a success indeed?

Anonymous said...

Reading books will do no good,
One ought to take a chance
Have a drink, make that ten
Just stand up and dance!

Spaax said...

Thought some haiku among the rhyme will do good for your uber image.

the One said...

Sheetal:

For thy verse of highest class
We thank you kindly, elder Vyas!

Thy concerns are well understood;
We shall address them, as we should.

As for stubble, a leaf we've took
Right out of young Bachchan's book.
The problem, at its very core,
Is what to do on our Day 4.
But whatever Day 4 might bring
We could perform the following:
With shears and scissors (maybe both)
Remove precisely one day's growth.
And so, on our day number four,
We're back to where we were before.
(By "before", we mean to say
Where we were the troisieme day.)

And while u and n sound impolite,
Saying Yo, you see, is quite all right.
For this word is used these days
By 'portant folks in 'portant ways.

With progressive social success
You think one would write less and less?
No. No amount of rum and grog
Could make us forget bloggywog.
And furthermore, this social clout
Would give one things to write about!


N:
Congratulations are due, good N,
For you have understood
The One, and far better perhaps,
Than he himself ever could :)

Perspective, Inc.:
Had we but world enough, and time
We'd rhyme, and rhyme, and rhyme .. and rhyme :)

Tharunya: 2 a.m. here, incidentally.

Sowmya:
Excellent points, all.
But please to note tongue-in-cheek
Nature of this piece.

Jupiter:
And thus it shall begin, O Jupe!
(Much undisguised glee.)
All one needs now is, in fact,
Thy august company!

Anonymous said...

Thy sense of humour is well in place
One, I'll surely give you that
so if Jupe and you are dancing tonight
I'm coming too, just let me grab my party hat!

~N.

tangled said...

There's something so splendidly fun
In recounting compliments to one
The one, of course, I meant to say
And without further ado, before you I lay:

"The One is singular, indeed. I wish he wrote more, and more often."

Well done. :)

LAK said...

I feel pretty gauche amongst all these rhymesters---but hey, I thought of the caterpillar turning into a social butterfly too!BTW, I just realised that "Random thoughts" turned one year old in Sept., and I just passed it by!I even wished your bloggy Heppy Birdday, and it still didn't ring a bell!Me getting really old!

Nabanita said...

owwww

Sheetal said...

More for bloggy, not less, you say?
Dear One, you quite make our day.
That reassurance, the one we got,
was so precisely what we sought.

You give us insight into male grooming
So it is more complex than mere foaming?
It would appear The Look Unkempt
Is wrought by no mere accident!

Still, for whatever it is worth
you have our blessing, so go forth
and socialise. One day not so far,
I predict, we’ll have a ‘rock star*’!

*We speak, of course, in a thoroughly Indian/Bollywoody context, where one is not necessarily required to be a member of a rock band or even involved in rock music to be hailed thusly.

Happy Diwali!

the One said...

Tharunya: Why, thank you. A bold smiley, too.

:)

This is fun.

LAK: Oh, one feels gauche most of the time on this blogosphere of ours. And one shall now visit to wish you a happy budday ..

Nabanita: Er .. oww?

Sheetal:

And so we continue to try
To elucidate, to clarify.
Also, we continue to cling
To ambitions of rockstarring.

And yes, happy Diwali!

(If only that rhymed with something.)

Anonymous said...

Oy, I'm the only one left out from the reply list? :/

Just hope there were no misunderstandings here. My line about your sense of humour was an honest compliment, based on some of your replies given in the last lot, such as:

"The problem, at its very core,
Is what to do on our Day 4.
But whatever Day 4 might bring
We could perform the following:
With shears and scissors (maybe both)
Remove precisely one day's growth.
And so, on our day number four,
We're back to where we were before."

or

"And thus it shall begin, O Jupe!
(Much undisguised glee.)" to Jupe's suggestion of achieving fame by just having a good time instead.


Anyway, cheers!

~N.

tangled said...

And once again the One has started
To see how long we can stay parted
from his entertaining, funny blog
And we all suffer in the fog

This abstinence almost borders on crime
Why, I've written five poems in that time
So get your act together, please
Set our wretched minds at ease

And if this seems like too much talking
And wanders close to bein' called stalking
I offer as defense, though weak,
The fact that apparently I like to speak.

So I will begin to spam this page
Until you deign to take the stage
And do what all of us here plead
And give us something new to read

:)
And though I say it who shouldn't, I 'm actually not bad.

the One said...

N: Apologies. 'Twas an honest oversight.

Not to get worked up. You should never get worked up, as a general principle. Except if it's really serious, you know, like if someone disses Star Trek.

Tharunya: Goodness. Thank you. And no, not bad at all :)

Anonymous said...

Giggle... :)

Anonymous said...

"Star Trek"? What is that?!

Heh..hope that that's something serious enough to get you worked up, so that we get to read a new post soon. ;)

~N.

tangled said...

I'm going to have to resort to threats soon, I see.

Like mustard seeds.
Muwahahahahahahahahahahaha.

tangled said...

Alternate methods
I feel like a rabid fan.

the One said...

Jupe: :)

N: Yes, even if one's reaction is somewhat delayed ..

Tharunya: Ah, a tag. Very cool.