Durvasa must earn points of penance


While assertively putting my perspective to client, I became little loud. A baritone shocked me, ‘Hey, don’t you understand, you are continuously disturbing me?’ I put my phone on mute and asked, ‘who are you respected old man and why are you frowning at me like Durvasa?’ he lambasted, ‘you software professional! How dare you pronounce my name with your profane tongue that never gets tired of speaking foreign language? I will curse you now; whenever you will be on important business call your phone will be out of coverage area.’ He left the place.

I became pale; I somehow demonstrated my emotional intelligence and concluded the call. I rushed to Mr. Durvasa to register my apologies for getting rid of his curse. There, I found him impatiently roaming as if he is an employee working in Gurgaon staying in Ghaziabad and somebody has informed him about some problem in Metro track. I asked, ‘what happened, Mr. Durvasa? What made you so worried?’ He reluctantly told, ‘I’ve fallen short of POPs, the points that required my curse to produce desired results and therefore extra points will be deducted from my bucket as a fine.’ I asked, ‘POP?’ He replied, ‘Yes, Points of Penance. Before slapping a curse or awarding a boon the person must have the required points in his bucket. The more the intensity the more points would be required.’

I said, ‘So what, in fact I should be more worried for the repercussion of your curse.’ He got irritated and said, ‘I just told you that there will be no effect of my curse on you as I didn’t have required POPs for this curse that I slapped on you. But the bigger problem is that it had put my reputation on stake. If I don’t earn the required point till tomorrow sun-set, this information will be published on my Facebook page. So that means, in your language, I have to complete this before tomorrow close-of-business.’ I asked, ‘So don’t you usually check your bandwidth before firing the command?’ He replied, ‘I didn’t realize that the intensity of this curse would be too high. And moreover, I cursed you because of the sudden outburst of anger.’ I said, ‘Please don’t take me otherwise, Mr. Durvasa but you should have mastered the art of controlling your emotions.’ He smiled sarcastically and replied, ‘I don’t work in an MNC where you have to polish every word of yours before speaking.’ I smiled at myself as he exposed me out of my intellectual attires; for sake of curiosity I enquired, ‘I’ve heard that your curse has never been turned down without producing disastrous results.’ He replied, ‘That’s what, this will certainly malign my status as a ‘frowning flame’.’ I poured empathy and said, ‘Though I had come to say sorry and ask for you to show mercy. But would you please tell me the process to earn more points?’ He said, ‘Go from here, it is because of you, I am in a big trouble now.’ I said, ‘Kool, I might help here.’

He sat and started telling, ‘I will have to browse the countless pages of bhakti.org and ask my disciples to do the same. The more genuine hits it gets the more points I’ll earn.’ I thought it interesting and sat down with him. I asked, ‘Show me how you browse the site.’ He had applied a thick sandal-wood paste on my forehead and asked me to concentrate. Oh, wow! I could see so many pages in a virtual screen in front of me. I asked for keyboard and mouse. He told that this takes input from your mental vibes.

I quickly focused on the site and asked him to login. It showed an error message – Durvasa, you have fallen short of 5 points on this curse. I tried to show some heroism on the domain and asked whether he knows how to access the servers. He was more intelligent – in the domain- than expected and said, ‘Only Administrators can access the servers – Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva.’ He further said, ‘Vishnu talks lots of Gyan but never shares His secrets. Brahma is introvert and nobody expects any secret out from Him. Shiva is a genuine lover of His devotees, He had once logged-in in the servers before me to make some changes from back-end and I had seen His password. The only catch is Goddess Parvati keeps changing it frequently.’ I smiled and said, ‘Oh, Okay, so you have already tried unethical means to get your POPs increased.’ He replied, ‘Unethical means! Not at all! Let me tell you the background tale. At the time of inception, when all the 3 admins got it implemented, they probably didn’t do rigorous testing moreover scalability was also the issue. I browsed it for several years and when I checked my POPs, it displayed some junk value. I rushed to all the admins; none but Shiva agreed to change it from back-end.  But I don’t remember why at the end it couldn’t be done.’

I said, ‘OK, There is no problem in trying once but tell me about firewall policies etc.’ He said, ‘Don’t worry about that my penance station is in a zone where every policy is open that too I got approval from Shiva only.’ He boasted about his relations with Shiva.

He had given inputs and wow we could access the servers. I have quickly done code walk-through and asked him to login in the database server. Till now, I knew from which table the points are getting displayed in the site. I had an idea of increasing it from back-end. He had logged-in in database server and I quickly accessed the desired table. ‘Uff’, I echoed. Durvasa asked the reason of my dismayed face. I told him that the values are encrypted and asked, ‘Mr. Durvasa, do you know the algorithm to decrypt these values?’ He replied, ‘Oh, same problem again! Now I remember same had happened at that time also. First Shiva told me to follow the process and not to get it done from back-end as it will not only corrupt the data but set the wrong example also. Later, he agreed but couldn’t recall the algorithm to decrypt the data. Though all the 3 administrators had implemented the algorithm for encrypting and decrypting the data but Shiva forgot the steps at that time – might be because of marijuana leaves, he is addicted to.’ He winked at me with a smile.
He further said, ‘No, as far as I know we need to browse bhakti.org to understand all the algorithms also.  You also join me browsing and this will eventually add points to my account. I will be obliged and will give you a boon after earning lots of POPs.’ After browsing for some time, I asked Durvasa to excuse me to take call as my client was calling again.
 
- Amit Roop

1 comment:

  1. Good one... I will also browse Bhakti.org :)

    ReplyDelete