I was fooling around in a coffee café just about to plunge into a much needed sleep and then I got distracted by a dish that my friend had ordered. For starters, yours truly and his friends have lunches and dinners too in the coffee shop!!!. I looked at the dish and it reminded of a colourful yet wasteful Karan johar song. I could have chosen to fall into a slumber then, but I, with my boundless curiosity, asked the name of the dish. In a jiffy, came the reply from my friend and it spoiled my entire sleep schedule for that day.
I, with my limited intelligence, questioned the name of the dish. It’s called ‘Open Sandwich’. I still fail to understand, how could it be called a sandwich when it is open?. How could a dish which is not being pressed against two bread slices be called a sandwich?. One thing for certain, I could realize then that it would continue to haunt me for the rest of the day. I wore the ‘open sandwich ‘ glasses for the rest of the day and tried to get a perspective of life around me from that angle.
I started to like the phrase ‘open sandwich’ . Isn’t life an open sandwich?. I could relate everything around me with the new found metaphor.Infact , now I begin to think that we were all programmed to work in an open sandwich atmosphere.
That made me look back at our placement interviews and one of the most frequently asked questions was about our strengths and weaknesses. I always felt that that’s the most stupid question that one can come up with . Take out the context of an interview from that question and it makes the interviewer seem much more idiotic than what the interviewee is supposed to. What does the question check by the way , ones bragging rights or honesty ? if the question is being asked to check ones honesty , then I haven’t heard a more stupid thing since George Bush claimed himself to be the ‘messiah’ of this world.
My friends were always at ease to answer this question , but I for one always struggled to come up with an answer for my strengths. I just could not talk about my strengths as I never pushed myself to the limits. I can never answer what my strengths are , I feel like am another average over confident guy who feels he can attain anything. I would be the first one to tell you what my weaknesses are as I know what I cant do , but am not sure as to what all I can do.
Probably there is a super hero in me, probably am Superman or Spiderman , probably I have the ability to fly , but I can never tell if that’s true unless I decide to abandon my parachute while jumping or cut the string off in a bungee jump.
So the ‘open sandwich’ theory tells us that we never know what our limits are , we don’t know where the boundary for infinity lies, but we know where the ‘zero’ horizon lies. We are programmed to be always in an open sandwich , we love to be in an open sandwich relationship. How many times haven’t guys prayed to just remove the upper slice of bread from their congested relationships with even more suffocating girl friends.
For all the rant that is there here for a simple dish named open sandwich , I’ll never again curse the guys who come up with such innovative names for their dishes .But unlike a Karan Johar movie, the open sandwich tastes as delicious as the look of it promises to be.
