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2011-04-10T00:16:00.000-07:00

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The Politics of Cricket or the Cricket of Politics?

2011-03-22T13:22:00.000-07:00

He is a batting genius, the greatest we have ever seen, my generation has spent one-third of its life watching, thinking and talking about him, still he remains humble, modest, calm and a man of integrity.

He is an economic genius, the greatest the country has ever produced, at least with the greatest impact, my generation has seen so many changes around us due to him, over the last few years he has carried a big burden, still he remains humble, modest, calm and a man of integrity?

It was 1991, he was touring Australia and facing an all out pace attack at Perth. He scored one of the best innings anyone had ever seen. And India’s favorite kid with his Power bat entered everyone’s heart and into the head of Australian pace attack led by a tall guy with a huge moustache.

He was led by a wristy, skillful and stylish Hyderabadi who himself had debuted in mid 80s and was now leading the Indian side. Under him for years to come India remained strong at home, almost invincible, and entered a modern era, the age of ODIs. ODI cricket fuelled a new generation with Colas, Color televisions and new consumerist life. All along this the Hyderabadi gave the maestro a free hand, and let him bloom into what we know of him today.

It was 1991, the economy was in shambles and he delivered a historic budget, which changed India, forever. India was opening up to the world and an entire generation of people was exposed to Colas, Color televisions and a consumerist life. He was drafted into the ministry by someone from Andhra, he had his own style, had mastery of multiple languages and had been in the Cabinet in the mid 80s. And similar to the man leading India on the Cricket field, he gave maestro a free hand, a shielding from the all the politics around him, and allowed him to bloom.

Eventually the Hyderabadi had his downfall, caught in the web of corruption, only to resurrect himself later as, guess what, a politician!

Eventually the man from Andhra had his downfall, caught in the web of corruption, but he couldn’t resurrect himself, maybe there wasn’t a dirtier profession left for him.

As India welcomed the new century, marred by corruption and allegations of match fixing, the most ardent fans had stopped watching cricket, they had lost faith in an institution revered by many, as the simplest expression of honesty. And we got a leader who believed in leading a fresh generation of player, who didn’t think about just thinking, they were there to do it. The skillful, and almost poetic batting of the prince of Kolkata was a precursor to his aggressive displays on the field, we had finally found a leader, who spoke his mind, and made us proud on the Cricket field.

As India welcomed the new century, marred by failed governments, weird games of parliament and the influence of regional parties, the most ardent believers in India’s democratic system had lost faith in the country’s functioning. And we got a leader, who came with his fresh set of ideas, and a team which promised to guide us in the next century. The poet from small place called Balrampur (U.P.) had seen it all, and his calm aggression, both on matters of national importance or economic importance made us proud Indians.

In 2003, India reached the world cup finals, it was lead by the leader whom we thought had it all, but at the finals it seems, his team was too charged up, maybe a bit over confident.

In 2004, India faced another election, it was lead by the same old veteran we talked about, but at the elections it seems, his team was too charged up, maybe a bit overconfident.

…

2011:

Our batting maestro still goes on, with his same passion for cricket, all these years might have taken away those curly locks, a bit of speed while running between the wickets, or while fielding. But it hasn’t taken away his dedication and integrity.

But what happened to our economic maestro, well we had immense faith in him. He was a calming influence to the erratic ruling coalition loosely held under the blessing of India’s royal family. We had faith in him, and we gave him his chances. Be it the reservations or the terror attacks everyone stood by him. The entire country showed confidence in the nuclear deal because we knew it was he who was backing it.

But then he stopped talking.

And let things happen, as he silently watched, like a boring Wimbledon crowd, clapping at each ace, be it 2G, CWG, or Adarsh or any such thing which comes up daily.

At one end I see the batting maestro, putting in everything so that he could win it for us.

At the other I see a person, who just keeps on losing everyday at work.

Fear.Indifference.Awkwardness.Fear

2011-01-29T13:53:00.000-08:00

Past 2-3 months…

It was that kind of a mad night, winter just about knocking on the door, truck flipping on road, tyre busting and finally a bang bang happening. Although I was happy that nothing happened, but something which still happened was enough to create a churn in my mind. And my head went bang bang for a few days. As always I crumbled under this one too, simply because history was behind me. I used to love history lessons back in school though, but this history I am referring to, is bad. I am afraid of history now.

I don’t think she was stunningly beautiful or anything special, but as I observed her sitting there, I just felt that something. I am a very curious guy. I tried talking to her, but it didn’t work out. I love talking to people though, and I had a chat with her entire family, but not her. Then someone told me she is old, very old, well I left the case then. I hope she is happy doing whatever she is doing because I feel she is doing something really nice. I am very happy that I never talked to her.

I hate encounters, I love them too, I love to meet people, new ones are good, old ones are better and then there are always the awkward ones. I have become an awkward person in the past few years. I used to be so comfortable for everyone before that. Maybe I was an awkward person even before that. I think I am ok. I think people around me are awkward. I don’t know when it ends. I know I don’t want that stupid awkwardness around me, it should be nice and simple. I love all my friends, and I think I have become really nice and simple around them. I am comfortable, awkwardly.

I can go to Goa again right now. It’s the best place to be, and just be. I love the way they make omelets. Goa should be famous for omelets than Sea Food. I think most of the foreigners who visit Goa are beggars. I will buy Jenny an omelet if I meet her again. I should tell you that she wasn’t a beggar, she is decently educated. Few of my friends think they are not getting a girl on their life because I am around and I discourage them. I think they were talking about all the time, not just the time in Goa. I think they are all scared to have a girl in their life. I am scared too.

गीत नया गाता हूँ

2010-12-26T10:32:00.000-08:00

बचपन से ही मेरी राजनीति मैं काफी रूचि रही है। ९० के दशक मैं भारतीय राजनीति मैं खासे उलटफेर हुए, परन्तु उनमे से सबसे रोचक क्षण तब आया जब अटलजी ने प्रधानमंत्री का पद संभाला। बचपन में मैंने एक दिन पुस्तकालय से एक किताब उठायी, अटलजी की जीवनी जो रोचक भी थी, और काफी कुछ सिखाती थी। मुझे उनकी कवितायेँ पढना भी काफी पसंद आया। उनके बारे में समाचार पत्र में पढना, दूरदर्शन पर उन्हें सुनना काफी अच्छा लगा करता था।

अब जब में उन दिनों को वापिस देखता हू, तो पाता हूँ की राजनीति से सारा रस ही छीन गया हैं। परिवारवाद और घोटालो से घिरी यह राजनीति में उन अच्छे वाद-विवादों, रस भरी कविताओं, अच्छे वक्ताओ, और इमानदार लोगो की खासी कमी है। ऐसा नहीं की उन दिनों स्त्थिथि कुछ बेहतर थी, परन्तु अटलजी जब तक इसका हिस्सा थे, तब तक एक उम्मीद थी, और भरोसा भी था। अटलजी का राजनीति से दूर होना, मेरे और मेरे कई मित्रो का इस विषय से रूचि खोने का भी कारण बना।

२५ दिसम्बर को अटलजी ने अपना ८६वा जनादीन मनाया। मैं उनकी लम्बी आयु की कामना करता हूँ, और उम्मीद करता हूँ की भविष्य मैं हमें उन जैसे कुछ निर्विवाद, भरोसेमंद और प्यारे नेता मिले। अभी मैंने उनकी किताब मेरी ५१ कवितायेँ पढ़ रहा हूँ, सोचा मेरी पसंदीदा कविता के साथ इस लेख का अंत करू,

टूटे हुए तारो से फूटे वासंती स्वर,
पत्थर की छाती से उग आया नव अन्जौर,
झरे सब पीले पट,
कोयल की कुहुक रात
प्राची में अरुणिमा की रेख देख पाता हूँ।
गीत नया गाता हूँ।

टूटे हुए सपने की सुने कौन सिसकी?
अंतर को चीर व्यथा पलकों पर ठिठकी।
हार नहीं मानूंगा,
रार नहीं ठानूंगा,
काल के कपाल पर लिखता-मिटाता हूँ।
गीत नया गाता हूँ।

Remembering Her

2010-12-22T18:08:00.000-08:00

As everyday I reached the school gates on a cold winter morning in Korba. The rush of students, tens of buses (the one which stood out was always the Coal India township buses, white covered with layers of Coal dust), kids with their hair well-oiled, the sight of green blazers all over (a few scholar ones-red and blue), and the pink lady-birds and the black MTBs which had become so popular on those days welcomed me. As always Dutta bhaiya was on top of his voice, screaming on the gates and always giving that awesome smile when I entered the gates. That day I had not entered, I was standing at the front-gate with few of my friends, a green FIAT halted near the gates. Her green fiat is something which I distinctly remember, just like her red-shawl (which wa snever to be missed during winters), her commanding voice, and her accent which was very unique and just stays on with us. She got off the car and said, "Deshpande, clean your blazer properly before you come", and she walked away.

I was a four year old when I appeared for an admissions interview to DPS Korba, I vaguely remember a young handsome Thapar Sir (very little imagery, but I think its mostly constructed from the conversations I had with her) accompanied by her. She was the in-charge of junior sections and the interview was held at the Pragati Nagar campus. I was asked about my favorite cartoon character and I had danced all over the place like HE-MAN, and the panel had a nice laugh. I was given chocolates and an entry to DPS Korba- 8810 it was.

I met her last in 2004, she had lost a lot of weight, well that was the only thing which had changed, she looked the same, her eyes were still as expressive as always. She had made coffee and as she was talking about her new home at SADA and the change from the Yamuna Vihar home she suddenly mentioned, "Nowadays you don't watch He-Man, they don't show it anymore I believe?".

She was like that, she would recall the tiniest bits which would have happened, and bring them back to conversations. It was strange that despite being for my entire life in school I never got a chance to be her student. But I was fortunate it happened during my last year in school, Class 12th, it was just a coincidence that it was her last year too at the school. And as expected she was awesome, it was fun attending her classes, her voice modulations as she went through the English Literature stuff was brilliant, I vaguely remember the details, but it was a great feeling.

And in that year came a forgettable day, where for the first time she became so angry at us (I don't remember what had happened), she made the entire section stand and then she went and started punching back, this was not like her, she had become very angry with the behavior of few students in my section. Then as she finished the first column of benches, she came to one student and then she stopped (I believe it was Shameek or Swapnil) and then she cried. She then apologized for her actions, but conveyed how bad she had felt about the entire thing. Our entire class was not able to face her directly for a few days to come after that.

She was strict, but she was much more loving than that. Her touch was extremely special, she knew everyone's family in and out. Once in a while she would catch hold of me and ask me about home, about how my sis is finding the place, and am I enjoying my studies. She kept a tab on my studies as well that of 1000s others. I remember in Junior school Shameek used to be her favorite (or at-least that is what we presumed) and everyone wanted to be good in front of her. But she was never biased, she loved every student and really cared for us through all those years.

Also few things which I have memories of are that of her speech during Annual Function (she used to present an update of Junior school), she leading the assembly in case B Singh sir was absent (or later our other Principals), her screaming out for Kalpana Didi and Dashrath Bhaiya (that was actually funny, both of them were always scared when they reached her), her annual trip to U.S. and stories from her trip during assembly (I remember her talking about Yellow Stone national park, and Disneyland).

The last I had a really long conversation with her was in Dec, 2001. I was along with my family on a trip to South India and met her on Raipur airport. She was on the same flight with us to Mumbai (from where she was supposed to catch an international flight to Qatar maybe) and I took a seat next to her. This was my first flight ever, the first time I ever sat in a plane and I was lucky enough to experience my first flight with her. She talked about her trips, the years passed by in Korba, about her family in U.S. and a lot of other things. Even that was winter and she was wrapped in a red shawl.

I sometimes feel that over the years I should have tried to connect back with her, I think I called her once in 2006, to tell her my engineering was done and I would be joining job at Bangalore. Be it the meetups with school friends, or teacher's day or sometimes just like that, I would remember her and think that I should contact her. But I didn't do it for a few years, something which I would always regret.

We would all remember her, always...

Wedding Bells!!!

2010-12-14T13:27:00.000-08:00

This weekend came with a strange feeling, its not that I haven't attended a few weddings offlate, but this one was different. I have spent a considerable part of my life with him, those childhood days, stupid teenage discussions, my weird spin bowling and his super quick pacers, and just staying next to each other for so many years. And then we moved to different places, but those letters (one of which almost got me into superbig shit at school), STD calls, mobile calls, mails, and then reuniting properly after so many years at Gurgaon last year.

I don't think I will ever think about stupid concepts which have been introduced to the friendship lingo off-late with him, like having personal space, having a connect or a disconnect, the need to meet each other every other week, or to discuss the same old crap, it just stays simple and nice as it always was.

And I was nervous, I don't know why, but from the time he climbed the ghodi I suddenly had this feeling of how much things have changed, he is getting married, we have grown up, things have started changing. And even during the wedding when I was with him, we just needed a couple of words to convey whatever is going on, I hope it stays so nice and uncomplicated with everyone around me. The period between the jaimala and phere was full of nostalgia, lot of thoughts, tonnes of pineapple juice and mega tonnes of awesome Indori food.

And by the time it ended, I had realized maybe its time to change gears, maybe not marriage, but something which as we discussed brings isthirtha to life.

I don't know, with so many people around me getting married, how much more will I think, maybe Feb'11 in Kerala would be another such affair, I am clueless about the changes happening around me, maybe its the age for change, maybe its just that one desires a break from the routine, or maybe its just the way wedding bells have been ringing all around which makes me think. I meet a few people around me and I feel there life is changing, the topics of discussion are changing, and they are changing for the good. They have moved a couple of steps ahead in life, I am as always on the same page.

Whatever it is, its a fascinating and a happy period for me and my loved ones, and I hope it stays forever happy.

The Death of Longer format

2010-11-22T13:29:00.000-08:00

Watching the current India-NZ series made me think a bit. Gone are the awesome days of test cricket when there was a patient build up to the innings, each ball was played on its merit and there was a healthy competition between bat and ball. God, Dravid and Laxman are probably the last generation in World Cricket who can play the classical game the way it was played. So what has changed apart from the ho-hullah of T20 cricket, the flatness of the pitch, short grounds and lesser number of test matches due to jam packed T20 seasons.

I feel test cricket's biggest change has been the role of opening batsman. Where a Gavaskar or a Boycott labored for the entire morning session without a helmet to take the shine off the new ball, the likes of Sehwag, Smith, Gayle hit it all across the park to take the shine off the new ball. Opening batsman of the past were patient enough to see the new ball off, and pass on the responsibility to the middle order to accumulate the runs. Not that they were not scoring runs, but they usually used to stick around, anchoring the innings. A modern day Test opener wants to unsettle the opposition by thrashing him all around the park, then let the captain spread the field and then accumulate singles. They are fearless (given all the modern day equipment, and the lack of awesome fast bowlers). They want quick runs, so that there isn't much pressure on the middle order.

If we look at it both had similar intentions, but the way of achieving it was different.

Now think about how life has changed around you. Well the pitch has changed, there are lot of opportunities, life is faster now. You want to a good opening in life. Everyone wants quick success. Ask any MBA who has recently passed out and they will say, well I will work till I am 40, and then become a consultant, or work with NGO or do something on my own. Till then I want to earn. Everyone wants quick bucks, quick success. Everyone is secure financially, still they want more of it, and maybe few years from now give their children an awesome playschool so that he /she can enter a good school. Be it career, relationships, friendships, everyone wants to keep things short and uncomplicated.

Think of the previous generation, they used to labor it for years for getting things in place and give their next generation a better life. They would face the balls coming their way with courage despite much cover, lesser security, play off the new ball and then pass on the innings to their children to take it forward. It was all so courageous but brilliantly simple and happy.

And I think in between these two generations separating the Test Cricket generation and the T20 generation, we are stuck, the One Day generation- confused and unsure about our existence!

[SCM]: Baigun Bhaja

2010-11-15T07:27:00.000-08:00

[My fascination with Bong food goes back to my good old childhood days, where Durga Puja and Navratri used to be my favorite festival. Khichdi at Durga Puja has no match, and the amazing chutney served with it, ahaa. Also my pados ki aunty used to make amazing fish for me. My liking for bong food has been well documented earlier. This recipe is dedicated to kharagpuriya bong at whose home I made this last week, the to be bong bahu who will eat a fish-head during her wedding, and my poor friend who spends nights in shady bengal hotels traveling on thelas, eats jhal mudi and sells tide:). And haan to the Amdavadi Bahu who loves cooking :)]

Baigun Bhaja (Serves 3)

Ingredients:

Big Fat Brinjal (One or two, depends how hungry you are, please check for small pores in the Brinjal, if they are there be careful, isme keeda lag jaata hai kai baar]
Mustard Oil or Sarso ka Tel (extremely high on calories, superb on taste, if you don't have this, please don't try this dish)
Ginger-Garlic Paste
Turmeric and Red Chillies powder

Method:

Wash the Brinjal (they use the max pesticides on poor Brinjal, wash it properly, and then wipe it with a dry cloth). Cut it into slices, slices shouldn't be wafer thin, nor they should be very thick. Medium thickness slices. Cut them but don't leave them for long, Brinjal has Iron in it, so like Apple, it oxidizes and turns dark. Its very high on Vitamins and Iron, but don't worry, we will kill it all :).

Take a bowl, put 2 Tb Spoons of Ginger-Garlic paste in it. Add a tea spoon of mustard oil, half tea spoon of turmeric and hald tea spoon of chillies powder. Mix it well. Remember its not like pakode ka batter, it shouldn't be too much, you just need to put that masala on the slices.

Take a pan, heat it, put mustard oil in it. Remember less oil and Brinjal might burn, or turn dry, a nice bhaja is always soaked with oil. Put the Brinjal slices in the bowl with paste in it, coat it evenly and shallow fry it in the pan.

While frying notice the sides, they will turn crisp, the center soft and yellow, fry evenly on both sides. Don't fry it too much, otherwise it will be too oily, just the right amount. The center should taste like oily bharta, and you know its done.

Goes well with Khichdi, simple Daal-Rice and even as a starter with alcohol. Yes after a long time I have found new company for alcohol :)

[SCM]: Desi's Mashy Mayo Wich and Thakela Sunrise

2010-11-14T05:06:00.000-08:00

[Through Simple Cooking for MBAs or SCM I want to share a bit of whatever I try out in kitchen, you can ping my roomie, it tastes decent :), and its easy to make. For all my friends, living on those lonely sales stints, or sitting in distant plants, girls who always have wanted to cook but then finally don't, guys who think they can cook if they make maggi, those who are bored of their cooks, or thinking of throwing a home party, you can try a few out. Didn't take any pics today, will put them up next time around.]

Desi's Mashy Mayo Wich (serves 3)

Ingredients:

Vegetables: 3 Potatoes, 2 Tomatoes (1 tomato diced, 1 sliced), 1 Onion (diced), 2 green chillies (finely chopped)
Brown / White bread: 9 Slices
1 Tea spoon oil (use Saffola, good for heart, and would help increase my friend's sales)
Butter / Amul Lite (based on what mood you are in, nothing tastes like Butter, but I think Lite is Ok)
Masala: Jeera whole (1 tea spoon), Red Chilli powder, Chat Masala, Salt, Pepper
Mayonnaise (take the veggie one, its tastier, there is healthy option available too, fat-free one in stores, made of mostly milk solids)

Method:

Boil the potatoes (wash them, put them in a cooker, now handling a cooker totally depends on you, my cooker is awesome, and I am comfortable with its setting, Apeksha's cooker behaves differently, totally your call. For me I sink them around 3-4th in water, put 6-7 whistles as I want to mash them, Jeera-Aloo would require 4-5 whistles). Then mash them.

Heat a bit of oil in pan, now crack Jeera in it. Now Jeera cracks earlier than Rai (mustard does) so don't heat it too much or you risk burning the Jeera. Best way is to heat it, then sim the gas a bit, then add couple of Jeera seeds, if it cracks put the rest.

The sugandh / khushboo / fragrance which follows is better than your Chanel's and Boss's. Its mahaan (most prominent places where you find the smell, Jeera rice, Dal Fry made with Jeera ghee and aloo jeera).

Put in the mash potatoes, mix chat masala and red chillies powder. Slightly heat it and mix it well. Take it off the flame, add diced tomatoes and onions. Cool it a bit (the sandwich mix is ready). Put salt and pepper to taste (remember you have added Chat Masala which has tonnes of Salt, so be careful while adding salt)

Heating the bread is not a simple act, there are multiple variations to how you can do it. The most boring is the videshi method of putting it in a toaster or microwave. Boring!!!

Best is the desi tarika, put them in a pan / tawa, put Lite / Butter, let it slightly melt add Jeera powder in Butter (you can add Red Chillies Powder too), put the Bread on Top, nicely butter it with Amul Lite (remember not that many calories, you can add your bit:)) and heat it. Let it be nicely brown (slightly soft or crunchy, whichever way you like it).

For the wich to be ready now, keep a slice of heated bread on a plate, put the potato as one of the layers. Close it with a slice, put mayo on it. If you are cal-conscious use a knife to spread it, otherwise use a spoon :). Remember even this has salt (so keep this in mind while using salt earlier). Now put the tomato slices on this layer and close it.

Its a fact that Sandwiches cut diagonally taste better than stand alone or beech se cut sandwiches.

Btw it's ready, eat it :). You can add cucumber to it, might go well. Goes well with Thakela Sunrise.

Thakela Sunrise (Serves 3)

Ingredients:

350 ml Minute Maid Pulpy Orange
Ice Cubes 12
5 Tea Spoons Glucon D (preferably Orange flavor)
Bacardi White Rum (90 ml) (depends if you want a mocktail or a cocktail)

The objective of this drink is to energize you on a boring day, and its amazingly refreshing. A sunrise for the thakela :)

Remember cocktails are all about measures, you won't get the right feel if the measures are not right.

Method:

Mix it, if you have a cocktail mixer, shake it. And its ready.

Let me know if you try something out, in case you don't be happy to know that your friend keeps on trying things out :)

Main meebo hoon...

2010-11-08T08:29:00.000-08:00

Eeeeee...it hurts. Its so strong, so bright, so yellow. And he closed the eyes. He tried again.

Ufff...too much. I will wait.

He was sitting, he had opened his eyes for the first time and found it difficult to just keep it like them. The sun was just too strong for him.

He opened them again, it was beautiful, it was all green now, all that was yellow had turned into a deep orange hanging somewhere on top. He felt happy. He tried to stand, he fell. He couldn't stand, his legs were just too weak. But he sat there, he felt comfortable in the greens around him. He was sitting next to two white long rods, on the other ends he saw some beautiful colors dancing around, blue, red, pink, black, lots of colors. A little later they all went away, and it started turning black, the beautiful orange amongst the blue was gone. He was scared and he closed his eyes again.

He woke again, too tired, his throat was dry, he needed something, he tried to stand again and this time he stood, and stood there for sometime. He started moving away from the pole and he fell. He tried again and it worked this time. He was walking.

He started walking, he saw a spray in the middle of the green, he went towards it, a bit of that went into his mouth. He felt good. He had more of it, and he felt even better. He felt he was ready to move. All this time he was missing something, he didn't know what, but he was missing something for sure.

There was a pool of that liquid created on the ground, and the sun was shining brightly on top of it. And he saw someone in it. He was scared, so he walked away, and so did the someone. He realized that it was him, he had seen himself for the first time, pale, four legs, weak, two ears which stood up, and slightly yellow as that light which he had first seen. But not that bright.

He started walking towards the end of the grass, there were green trees on top he crossed a sort of a mound and heard a few screechy sounds..."bow, bow, eeeeeeee...." suddenly a similar voice burst out of him, maybe they were the ones he was looking for, they were the ones missing. He started running towards the sound. He saw two of them much larger than him being dragged into a wooden box, and there two more, exactly looking like him being dragged into a wooden box by two tall brown people. They were shouting, but they moved inside a blue big box which whizzed away on the clean grey roads.

It all seemed grey, maybe he knew who they were, but maybe he will never know them, and he didn't know who he was, all that he saw was grey in front of him and he felt a growing heat under his feet so he started walking. He found trees around him and on his left he found a path which was white he moved onto it.

It was nice and cool there, there large white and cream colored structures on both his sides, and pavement which was fitted with white and brick red tiles, on the three way he took a right and walked. There were tow large buildings on both his sides and he saw green again in front of him, he jumped there again and he closed his eyes.

" Dekh dekh, waha amisha aur uska boyfriend hai, arre unhone dekh liya, bhaago"

This noise woke him up, it was dark already and there bright lights all over him. The trees were hardly visible, he saw three guys running from there, and then he saw two people sitting on bench, one with long beautiful hair and the second, a tall guy. Both of them were very close.

He thought he will walk so he started going ahead on the pavement and took a right, he thought he again came back on the greys, he was tired and weak again, so he slept.

Thuck. He woke up.

It was bright again and someone had thrown a yellow long something at him, it smelled good, he licked it, he felt a nice sensation in his mouth he saw lot of beautiful bright colored people walking around. On top they were black and light brown, below they were of multiple colors, as he had seen earlier on the greens. People with long hair, people with short, both distinctly different.

He was still missing something.

And then he started walking along with them, he was not scared, but all of sudden he thought were they the same people who had taken those who were similar along. As he was thinking someone threw things at him, he felt a pain and they started making loud sounds, he was scared. But then he felt something on his back. It was that thing which was missing, it was the touch of someone who cared.

He looked at her, he felt amazing, she was so nice. He started walking with her, and kept walking. And then she picked him up and took him to a huge hall. It was huge and bright and there lot of brightly colored people. One of them in blue with shiny black hair came and sat next to her and asked "Who's this?". She told " He's nice na, think of a name". The guy told "Meebo".

"Meebo!!!". He smiled and felt happy, he knew what he had missed, he had seen all colors and smelled beautiful things and tasted some nice stuff, but he had missed the sense of being with someone who cared. And he had finally got it.

He looked at both of them, they were looking in front now, and she gently patted her back. He finally knew who he was.

"Main Meebo hoon..."

The SemiPali Adventure

2010-10-30T14:19:00.000-07:00

Mondays were always like this, f**king boring, although I am not allowed use the F word as I am still in class VIth, it brings out the haaawww from you. So we have a Maths test tomorrow, I don't know what happened to my school and they kept this routine of a weekly test, Kendriya Vidyalaya is so good they have a unit test, need to study once a month, we need to do it four times a month, although thanks to Gregorian, we sometimes have it five times a month.

Mr Sharma, we secretly call him DK and laugh behind his back, is different from the rest, just this year they started telling us that other than numbers you can also play with a,b,c in Maths, hey but this guy is new, maybe he doesn't know Maths at all, otherwise confusing English with Maths is a mistake, atleast something which I would never do. He calls this new thing Algebra, sounds like a Arabic Zebra, but my friends say that if you do this you get very good marks later in boards, and anyway everyone says you have to be good in Maths, they are the only test copies my father is interested in seeing, luckily for me I end up scoring good marks in this.

So I have a Maths test tomorrow, and I can't get the hang of it, these f**king (a,b,c)'s, so let me roam around a bit. Maybe Kartik would be studying too, let me bug him, he studies a lot anyway all the time. Kartik lives on the last home of my row, in township we have rows of houses, we even have gali rivalry, people from our row cross into other rows mostly to play cricket, pitthul and kabbadi and racetrip as we don't have enough boys of our age group here, all are people from Tiny Cottage, those red dress wearing, nose wiping, small looking kids.

I shouted Kartik's name standing at his house gate, it may not sound civilized but this is the way we do our things, and he comes out in his trademark wide-assed shorts and a baniyan. By the way Kartik quite wide-assed, literally i.e., people had that observation when he rides his cycle, both the cheeks spread out like a vada-pav. Infact most of our brain works during that time only, we think better when we are on our cycles, we talk about girls in different way nowadays too while riding the cycle, things are changing.

"So, how is the preparation, bore laga raha hai"
"Yes Pattu, but I still have lots of course pending"
"Hmm..., lets roam around a bit, get fresh and come back, you and Sunny always talk about that place right, with a small river and a bridge nearby"
"SemiPali?"
"Oh haan, yes that one, lets go there "
"Now? You must be out of your mind its around 10kms, no point today, we can go tomorrow"
"Na na, today chal yaar, this algebra anyway doesn’t make any sense"
"Ok, let me get ready then". So Kartik puts on his trousers, wears a rough looking checked shirt, I am wearing a trouser too with some T-shirt. Trousers are in nowadays, my cousins from cities talk about something called a jeans but we don’t like that much, trousers make you look older than your age, and also its much better than half pants, we are in sixth now, so we are anyway allowed to wear trousers, it feels great, also with so many hirsute male legs around, it is a welcome move.

So we pick up Sunny from his home and progress on our cycles to SemiPali, Sunny by the way is another of my classmate, I don't interact with him much but Kartik so transitive ways I too, he is a good footballer and is creating a buzz on the township cricket scene too nowadays. SemiPali is a small village next to JamniPali, our township is located in village Jamnipali although it can be noway called a village with beautiful gardens, club, great homes, shopping centres and clubs around.

Sunny talks about Semipali on the way, about how Kartik and he has been to the area before, how they found out that place, how one of his chachaji sat on a grave and had a cigarette.

"Grave!!!"

Yes he said, he told the river had a graveyard nearby, which was rumoured to be extremely old, and its closed now that means no more new burials there, but for me it came as surprise, recently they started Zee Horror show on television which I find very scary and anyway I am very afraid of ghosts and spirits and similar stories. The first episode was killer with the head of Archana Puran Singh served on a plate by a butler, although Butler reminds me of the sweet Butler from Ducktales, wonder what his name is though?

We ride on this kaccha road outside our township, all Chattisgarh roads are kaccha mostly, and you just have to get out of the township to ride on any of them. As we continue on the road, we find a theatre on the way.

"Hey, have been here saw Jurrasic Park here, what is it playing now"

Some dirty stuff, people say its known as Porn or something, its not good for kids and newspapers and posters advertise it as above 18 stuff, I don't know how being 18 qualifies you to see a movie, although the poster here doesn’t have any good hero-heroine also, who will watch it anyway. Also it seems Jurrasic Park is the only under 18 movie ever played in this theatre, because that’s the only one I saw here with Meenal (chronologically my oldest friend, about her sometime later).

As we start moving ahead the small shops and business owners give way to lush wide paddy fields (quite a common thing in Chattisgarh) and half chopped teak woods in the way. This area is mostly red-soiled, you can conclude that in two ways- the ghadas made here are Red in Color and during Autumns when the leaves dry and shed off, they all get a reddish tinge on them from dust. They look simply amazing, even the Trees turn Red. Certainly not RedWood though, read in Britannica that they are found in USA. Right now though my Hercules MTB is getting a Red Tinge, lucky Kartik and Sunny, they have a Red Bike.

As we moved ahead all three of us were pretty excited, both of them talked about the beauty of the place, while I was wondering how I could have missed this place. The road was sparsely populated, just a few cycles once in a while and even a tractor once. The slightly tiring long legs on the BiCycle keep moving though, crawling towards the destination.

On the way you see small children playing, women moving around with Water in Brass Pots and men sitting and chatting, its almost 5:00 PM and everyone is back from fields. One thing about Chattisgarhi Women though, their skin is has this amazing shine, it shines as though tonnes of Coconut Oil has been poured on it, and when they carry the Brass Pots on their heads, the sheen and the contrast makes the whole imagery brilliant. That Dark Shining Skin reflects confidence and their hardworking character, which I find missing in people from township. I was seeing this movie Shaukeen the other day where even Utpal Dutt was appreciative of Chattisgarhi women, but in a not so goody way. Generally he is good but that time he wasn’t, he was a bit dirty.

“Aha, so here we are”

“Pahuch gaye” shouted Kartik while getting off from his Bike in a superb fashion which was possible for only Kartik to do. Jumping off and continue running, it was funny but took a lot of practice. He also had many other tricks up his sleeves on a bicycle of which I had tried at least half, and almost all of them had resulted in a fall, and Dettol being pured over me.

It was beautiful. It was like well, lets see, a bridge, a leftward turn down a dusty lane, a small river, making the nice kal-kal sound. Smell of wet mud, aha, now thats something.

“And, there is the kabristan” shouted Sunny. How the hell does one see that in between the scenic beauty. Anyway we rolled our cycle down the lane next to the bridge, took it to the river and gave it wash. It was shining, the sun was about to set and there was a beautiful orange light all around us, the cycles were shining too, although the shine was nothing compared to the skin of those beautiful Chattisgarhi women.

And it was all so nice, we sat there, and it was all so nice, before...

He was a silhouette, a sort of a shadow, a lean figure, short in height, he just kept walking, he came from the side of the kabristan. I don’t know what the others were thinking, I thought he was a ghost, a spirit, or something on those lines. He limped slightly, and then he came near Sunny’s cycle, a mid-heighted reddish bike, picked it up and kept walking. He didn't utter a word, we shouted chased him, but we were so scared, we couldn’t do a thing, it was so weird.

And he went away, and I sat there, scared and stunned, and suddenly I realised that Kartik and Sunny were running behind him and they were gone.How the hell did they have the guts to chase him. I felt slightly ashamed, or maybe weird that I didn't support them. All I could manage to do, is cry.

Yes, I cried!

And I picked up my bicycle and started going back towards the township, the roads were empty and dark, there was hardly any street lighting on the way back. I felt ashamed that maybe I just left my friends on their own, or I felt that I cheated them, or I was just lost.

Yes, I was lost!

I was just going back, I found a drunk fellow on the way back, and there were no Chattisgarhi women with that awesome shining skin. I was crying and cycling back, running away from my first slightly super-natural adventure.

It was an hour and then I saw light, ya, Mohan talkies was here and I had reached the edge of the township and once I entered I cycled back to my home.

I had reached, somehow!

I just ran to my room and sat on my greenish teak wood study table. I couldn’t concentrate, nor did I have the courage to goto Kartik’s home and ask about him.I was scared, and I wanted to read.

I somehow tried to sleep later at night and just saw the same figure before me. I ran to the bathroom and saw him standing there again. It was so so bad.

Morning finally came.I possibly had my first night out and somehow cycle to the college. I crossed Kartik, we didn’t say anything and rushed away to the test hall. I couldn’t see Sunny around, but later realised he sits in another exam hall. I couldn’t concentrate, nor could Kartik, I just wanted it to end.

And it ended, and we met, and I asked?

“How was the test?”

Kartik told “ It was Ok!”.We met Sunny sometime later, he said “Hi” and moved on.

What about the kabristan guy? What about the cycle? What about Semipali again? What about Maths test? How did you come back and how?

The day ended and I just wanted to go back and sleep, I stepped out into the cycle stand and saw Sunny riding his red cycle. I wondered what had happened. Maybe I shouldn’t discuss this, maybe I was too sleepy!

Scooter ki Sawari

2010-10-13T10:58:00.000-07:00

Scene 1: I was behind him, on 4th gear but always afraid to go a bit faster, my foot always flirting with the foot brake, and then something strange happened. Bhippu was sitting behind him, and he the fearless Jubhash riding his bottle green some plain looking bajaj turned back, and said namaste. All this while the scooter kept speeding ahead of me.

Scene 2: We were standing at our regular adda, doing bakbak, and the girl passed. The girl on the pink ladybird (well there were so many of them during those days), and Jubhash again went mad, he picked up Seepak's awesome hulky looking cream LML and went behind her, I don't know why but he went behind her. His best buddy Taanu accompanied him.

He came back after 10 minutes, and then something strange happened, he stopped the scooter, and raised his hand, the clutch came out and he gave it to Seepak. He drove it for half a km without a clutch in place!!!

Scene 3: He told me to release the clutch dheere dheere, and move the accelerator up at the same pace. Unlike making him run while learning the bicycle this was much much relaxing, and I learnt it in one day. He told me about his first scooter, a Vijay Super (made by UP government factory to capitalized on the growing demand and limited supply by Bajaj) which was bought by my dadaji.

Putting it on stand and locking the scooter took maximum time to learn.

Scene 4: Me and him and his Jijaji's scooter. It was a very pale looking Bajaj, well past its prime, but we roamed around the empty roads of Gandhinagar on that, eating paratha shaak, sipping Trupti lassi and Gh-0 soda on the way back. All my bank work, taking people to Civil hospital, going to R-World, everything was done on that. It just went on and on, and I think finally it died a silent death, although much used it was, and it had a painful life. I wish we had treated it in a better way.

Scene 5: I entered from the Kaveri Vihar end, parked the scooter there, and my friend used to enter from the Yamuna Vihar end, parking the scooter there, I always used to take aloo-pyaaz in the end, he used to buy it first. Subzi market in the township was the place where one realized the true power of a scooter. It was so easy to carry tonnes of it near your feet, and you can always show a thenga to bike guy on the Tuesday and Friday, days when weekly subzi market was there.

Scene 6: It was my birthday, and it was bhoko's birthday. Guys from NTPC were brilliant, they drove scooters, guys from MPEB had one thing in common, everyone drove Sunny, that plastic bag covering a m-80 which used to be present back in 90s. Tiddu thought he would drive bhoko's Sunny and thrashed it to an electric pole.

And then some one took a condom (one gifted to us on our 16th birthday!!!), blew it, and put it behind someone's scooter, and they drove it away, wonder what happened next!!!

Scene 7: Both of us went for back to back movies to R-World, it was strange and very rainy day and we were walking back. When we reached the highway, there was no auto, no tempo, no truck giving lift. We walked to the corner of the road to take a leak, I still remember the scene, lightening, empty roads, and everything very very wet. So both of us started emptying our tankers near a set of empty drums. He finished and started walking, I was about to and then something strange happened, someone screamed from within that pile of drums,

"Kaun hai be, bhaag jaao"

And he started running, and I followed holding my loose jeans, and we kept running and running (it was my first interaction with the supernatural and it literally took my pants off). We stopped after some 10-15 minutes and it was still raining loads. And then came a guy on scooter and offered both of us a lift. Was he a god, trying to save us from the evil?

10 minutes later the scooter stopped, he asked us to push it, it didn't work. We checked the tank and the petrol was over. No point now. Then he laughed and laughed. And then he and his Scooter started and whoosh he went. Both of us were scared, but we walked the next 8-9 KM and somehow managed to reach the beautiful DAIICT.

The post title is inspired from the Sudarshan classic Cycle ki Sawari. They were just my experiences with scooter, the best vehicle I have driven till date, adventures, racing, supernatural etc. etc.

Hope you guys would have had many?

Katti and the Art of Bicycle Maintenance

2010-10-03T12:36:00.000-07:00

That thumb, the stupid angutha, the one which appears on Thums Up bottles and nowadays keeps fiddling with blackberry, goes near the incisors and gets itself a bite, and Katti is what is said post that. After every small or big fight katti was our way of expressing disgust, frustration and anger towards a dear friend. And then the friends stopped talking, started giving each other dirty looks, talked through some common friend, start going to different locations during lunch break, get in different teams while playing cricket, started sitting in different rows. But then that was the age of innocence, pyaarapan, so few days later one of them would always come and make up. It was all so nice, there was so much fun in katti. It also had other variations like Khi-Mi, and inti-minti, all similar in nature, but with different actions. Even Munnabhai came up with a differently named Jhappi for resolving issues, but he underlying concept was that of Katti.

Today during a brilliant discussion on bicycle repairing we again discovered that bit of innocence, the tricks behind chain chadhana, the action which was required for filling air into the tyres, "puncture banwana", the bhudak bhudak sound which came when the cycle repair guy used to dip the punctured tube in water, the rubber patch which he use to shine and polish and then stick it with a red adhesive, all for Rs 2.5-3.5. There was a simple and cost-effective solution for every bicycle worry and it was fun getting it repaired. Bicycle maintenance taught me that solving problems can be fun, lot of fun.

Now when people fight, it is not as simple as the good old katti, it is much more complicated, or they make it unnecessarily complicated. Bachpan was certainly better, plus we had a fun-filled way to repair fights. Katti was our tool of relationship maintenance.

The tool is out of stock now, and they have stopped manufacturing it. I hope they start making it again and even grown ups start using it.

Brand or Fad

2010-09-01T10:39:00.000-07:00

Nokia as India's most trusted brand... naah [Brand Equity Survey]. I mean my last 3 phones have been Nokia and I just love them still I don't feel for they simply didn't deserve the numero-uno position in the survey, given the awesome ground players like Micromax and co have covered. Rest of the top 10 are made by the usual list of Lever products along with the red and white toothpaste, the awesome smelling antiseptic (smelled its Chinese version at Apeksha's home, disappointing, doesn't smell the same) and everyone's favorite biscuit brand.

Some years back at DA-IICT we were debating the difference between a Brand and a Fad. Pumped up from the success of Rang De Basanti and the awesome Legend of Bhagat Singh songs my roomie always wanted to be a rebel, maar daalo he said, anti-establishment had become. I came up with this point on Bhagat Singh being a fad, something which didn't last, and Gandhiji being a Brand. As per Nitin Paranjpe, CEO, HUL successful brands deliver timeless values, build on them and resonate not just with the immediate needs of consumer but with their larger aspirations.

Now think of Bhagat Singh, yes he indeed was a hero and he did satisfy the immediate need of the masses, but he or his means were not enough to sustain it over a time and fit into the larger picture of achieving independence.

Gandhiji lived his life with masses and delivered trust over a sustained period of time (even after his death) and the core values remained the same non-violence, tolerance and respect for everyone. He became much more than a brand, he became a way of life.

So is Nokia a Gandhiji and Micromax a Bhagat Singh? No, these things are not comparable but yes these brands can learn a lesson or two from personalities and how they managed themselves. Nokia can't all of a sudden come up with a blast of weird low cost dual/ quadra sim phones, and Micromax can't come up with the awesome quality which Nokia offers.Gandhiji would have never taken up violence of any form, and Bhagat Singh would have never had the tolerance to tackle the beating of British officers with a smile. But now these brands are trying to find a middle ground, Nokia planning to come up with multi-sim phones and Micromax offering great service through its network.

Whatever be it, no one wants a rebel around, just think of it, what would be better, a Nokia coming out of your pocket, or a Micromax!

[Note: It might sound loose, if one has to analyze Nokia, one has to look at a zillion other pressures the company is facing across the globe, I just mentioned a small situation which had stuck on for a few days]

Fake it till you make it

2010-08-27T13:06:00.000-07:00

Sometime in mind 90's I was sitting in my school auditorium with friends waiting for the swamiji to come. He used to come every year and used to interact with us. I don't recall his name, but his face is so clearly etched in my memory, it had tonnes of happiness sprinkled all over it, and he seemed content with everything. In fact when I read Hesse's Siddhartha years later I was reminded of him.

Mamaji of one of my batchmates in school, Swamiji had left his family and a well-paid job as a Chemical Engineer (he studied at Jadavpur University, so many awesome engineers in the country came from there in the mid 70's, ask a bong and their heart still beats for the place) to join Ramakrishna mission (around the same time DD showed the movie on Swami Vivekananda, in which Paramahamsa was beautifully played by Mithunda, and I also read some literature by both the teacher and disciple).

That day Swamiji talked on the topic, of Fake it till you make it. He discussed it in the context of shedding away inhibitions, developing confidence and all. I don't remember exactly what he talked but that phrase just stuck on. And I came across it again during the ethics course at SP, when we were discussing Geeta.

You imitate something which you can't do naturally, and slowly it becomes a habit and you are in a comfort zone with it. Like lets say one asks me to talk less for some days, even if I am uncomfortable doing it, slowly faking the habit can actually lead to me adapting and enjoying the change.

Travel through the markets and you always see these distortions. Obviously many don't observe it, but look closely and one is sure to find packs of well known brands Fair and Lively, Luk, Colgote, Bora Plus, Ankor swtiches, Paracheet, Detol and so many more. The market for counterfeit/fake/me-too (products which look and feel the same as original, many a times come from Registered companies, the visual elements are same but the names are slightly different) products in India is huge and continues to grow at a similar speed if not more as the real products are growing.

I remember having this discussion with Sagar, KK and our Professor of Consumer Behavior (one of the best courses I did in the second year) on me-too brands and why does someone buy it. Well in most cases the prices are similar (for the retailer though the me-too brands offer heavy discounting), but the Indian consumer just goes for the colours and visual elements mostly. Like if he visits a small shop and asks for a toothpaste and receives something which is a red colored tube with white font over it and the symbols appear somewhat relevant he doesn't event think. Same for a cream and a pink and white tube. Although we think its as practice prevalent in smaller towns and villages, how many of us actually check/inspect the products we buy? I even consider the main competitor of Glucon-D launched by a top FMCG company in the country to be a me-too, the visual elements are copied, and only after a court ruling they managed to get the family pic and the font changed (both of them so symbolic of the Glucon-D pack).

If the appearance is mostly similar, you can actually push through the fake ones, and the original ones despite all their efforts are at loss. But in the long term does it work out for small players, or they just make some money and maybe will switch businesses or disappear over a period of time?

In the past couple of years I discovered another huge market with a high penetration of fakes in the system, that of people. Although this is a much more complex market, its extremely difficult to identify fakes. Past couple of year I found many people who were experts in the art of faking, being a different person than what you are with many people, turnaround and not necessarily think the same about so many. Be best friends in front of the world and then crib about them behind their backs. You found them all over, from fighting on organizing events, to fighting over the best jobs. Even the hugs at final farewell parties, the singing together of Puraani Jeans / Yaaro Dosti songs (with so many people as if you are actually going to be in touch with even 10% of them over the next year). Talking bullshit about people in hostels and liking them on Facebook pics. So many things, so many instances. But its not bad, its just the way one is.

And there were few who tried to be honest and conveyed whatever they thought about the person in front of them and mostly landed into trouble. But those who faked had a much better time, they didn't fall into unnecessary jhamelas. Again not bad, but its just the way one is.

Couple of them I knew very closely were what we called experts in faking, they had the ability to change the way they behaved with different sets of people and sometimes just kill the real feeling, brilliant they were! The visual elements were mostly same, so was the outer appearance, but the product was not the original one.

So is faking worth it? I don't know about that but certainly being honest is surely not worth it.

Simplicity and Chaos

2010-08-24T11:55:00.000-07:00

From the time is was a Rs. 6 green fatty-boxed luxury, tothe Rs. 10 yellow slim box regularity, Frooti has been one of my favorite brands. Why do I love it? No it's not the usual nostalgia I associate with so many things; it's just because of its simplicity. There have been many changes to it with times: the fat green box (Rs. 6) to green long boxed Yo! Frooti (Rs.8) to Rs. 10 yellow boxed one (it spiked to Rs. 12 one summer, evoking concerns from fans like me). But Frooti's soul remains same, being Mango. At core it's the same simple mango drink, and its packaging might change, or the price, but its soul (read positioning) remains just the same.Super Shimplu! (For SP marketing junta, recall one of Ashita mam's classes,when Pooja and Nitika gave this presentation, I was super excited and we had a nice discussion on Frooti). Frooti has become a routine for me, I don't care much, I just pick it up, I know it's my Frooti, and it always will be.

Then there is always the other extreme. Remember Liril, the superb refreshing lime soap (the la lalalalalaa lalalala laaa classic ad featuring Karen Lunel created byAlyque Padamsee is still so refreshing). But Liril somehow became confusing.It used to be my favorite soap, but they tried out too many things. They came up with what I recall as India's first shower gel, different variants to core Liril (blue Liril) and finally disappeared. And then it came back, in a disappointing way as Liril 2000- aloe vera soap with an element of freshness.It felt like Ekta Kapoor took it from Unilever, performed a plastic surgery using another actor known as Levers 2000 and re-introduced the character. It was disappointing for a true Liril fan. The simplicity of freshness was replaced with chaos, and finally what emerged was something without its soul in place. Maybe a lot of people won't relate to it, but a true Liril fan would just know it. But what power does a consumer hold, finally it was Liril who wanted to change, did they really care for a loyal consumer? But still sometimes I buy it and try to look for my old Liril, maybe I will find it.

One tends to fall for simplicity, it's always comforting,and it gives you peace of mind. You get a sense of oneness with it, simple things click, they are long lasting and consistent with what your mind desires.Be it simple things or simple people, life is much better with them around.

And chaos is disturbing, trying out too many things,thinking about too many things, and trying to hide your simplicity with randomness. One might try to change a lot, feel a lot different, but a person who knows, would always spot the difference and then try to disassociate from chaos. But chaos has its own fans, and they are very different from those few who desire simplicity.

What happens to the entity under change, what is its identity now? Well it's for them to change, it's their choice and person who knows the entity so well should also respect the change, whether it works for them or not. Still one tries to reach out for the simplicity which is still there, but hidden.

I would always desire simplicity, and for things which move away from it, I will hope for them to be simple again.

[I messaged Shaik and Dolu to find out a few brands which have had a chaotic rise, they couldn't come up with anything major, stupid they are :), but I super miss having FMCG discussions with both of them. The discussion featured Dolu- the marketing guy, Shaik- the sales and distribution expert, Desi- the fact, figures and insights guy and harsh- the listener. Well all this is a bit unrelated to the post.]

A bit more from earlier times on simple things,

Hrishikesh Mukherjee - Simple movies, Simple life (http://beingdesh.blogspot.com/2006/10/hrishikesh-mukherjee-simple-movies.html)

Who Enjoys It? (http://beingdesh.blogspot.com/2009/01/who-enjoys-it.html) (This one written somewhere mid SP days)

Simple Things again...(http://beingdesh.blogspot.com/2010/07/simple-things-again.html)

Block 83

2010-08-22T20:57:00.000-07:00

When you leave school for college, a million things run in your mind, staying away from your family for the first time, the kind of people you will end up meeting in college, who will be your roommate, will the newly earned freedom be at the cost of something etc etc.

Cut back to 2002 when a few innocent souls stepped in dusty sec-7 of Gandhinagar, a Colonel with shiny bald head and a glowing moustache showing us the not so impressive facility, and curly haired friendly gujju guy showing us our rooms. We were nervous, most of us were accompanied by our parents who were equally concerned if not more.

So I entered the wing on the 2nd floor, very jarjarr apartments, seemed like they will break down soon, decently sized one room apartments with wooden cupboards and loads of dust. First thing which most of us bought there were plastic buckets. My room mate was Kamsi Vrishna but he had moved out to some PG in Sec-2 looking at the hostel condition with Dagar Sas. So I was alone in the room.

In front of us used to lived Kayur with pea-cockish hairstyle, always stuck onto the metal seat, his roomie Panabesh, sainik school import, reminded me initially a lot of the lafoots in townships :), front door had Ghaitanya and Saveen (famously known as Charra later on). Other inmates were Copolla a distant relative of the francis ford coppola khaandaan and an extremely religious guy in the first year , so was his roomie Gaibhav Vupta.

Then there was my awesome roomie Sajeev, oily haired bespectacled simpleton from Vizag on his way to be a changed man (four years down the line...kaafi change :)), who escaped from the neighboring wing as his room mate was an abusive chap. He came in and we both got the honour of being each other's roomies for the next four years.

Then there was a quite room, of Jrateek and Pandheer, mostly busy educating themselves I assume, quite simple I was the least interested in padhai in the block.

But then there were few whom were brainwashed by me, Jaran Kaine with his beautiful legs, Sajjwal Ungal with his already faded Pepe jeans (asking our hotel supervisor for happening places in gandhinagar), a self proclaimed rock music bhakt Krinal and Jineet Vain with his shaggy doo like walk and ability to call da as ra.

Frequent visitors included Sabhishek who used to dance his hear out in the wing with Saveen ( and our neighboring old uncle almost had an heart attack due to the hulla), LKP for aalasya, Grasoon at times, Nand, the 82 block gang including gex suru tonu, mhinav abhishra, Kakshat etc. Also we had a lot of visitors in Panabesh's room which included Jarun Vain, and all.

Just thought would remember all of them today, lost contact with many of them, but awesome days they were.

Plum-esh

2010-08-22T08:54:00.000-07:00

Plum cakes, those brilliant ones which Anthony uncle used to bring to our house on Christmas when I was a kid, mostly all of us had it during Christmas season in all parts of the country. The dark brown ones filled with fruits & nuts, and marmalade like orange peels, these things are simply awesome. The best part about plum cakes are those mishy-mashy fruit bits and marmalade, they just stand out for me and create that plum-esh effect. Those bits and pieces are soaked in brandy or rum, and they just absorb its flavour, its some kind of a taste which you can only associate with a plum cake. It takes time to make one, you must keep the fruit pieces soaked for a couple of days before you can create the bestest plum cake (it can't be like the instant one, with hide and seek biscuits crushed and mixed with Eno, that only our super awesome brilliant Gujarati genius lady can manage).

Relationships too take time to mature, initially you need to soak them in the right kind of brandy and let it be, and slowly it will absorb all the good things around. Then you need to bake it at the right temperature and then scrub off all the unnecessary burnt portion. But what would stand out is the taste of those early days, soaked in the brandy of love, friendship and all the good time you spent together. And those days will define how life would taste in the future.

Plum-esh is just a start my friends :) and sorry there is no short-cut Eno recipe for the perfect plum cake, there never can be one :).

Well Left

2010-08-21T18:59:00.000-07:00

Gone are the awesome days of test cricket, when Dravid just used to leave it on its way, even God did it but Dravid was much more elegant in leaving the cricket ball. Commentators always used to say he had an exact idea where his off stump is, a supreme bowler like Glenn McGrath would be hovering around that line but Dravid was extremely sure when to leave it and when to play (followed by an extremely elegant nod of the head, which became a trademark of sorts and something very well imitated by couple of school friends). No doubt he was extremely successful when it came to playing abroad when there were just fast bowlers all over us.But leaving the ball is an art, when it comes to you, you just want to hit it, it requires a lot of patience to leave it and just let it be on its own. Sometimes I felt its the batsman who love ball more than a bowler does, they want it see clearly, slowly they start feeling it and it appears bigger and better to them and aaah, that sexy sound and feel which comes when they hit it.

And then there is the stupid thing called, what they have always called it, life! A lot of things come your way, you just don't want to leave them, because leaving them requires a lot of courage, you are not sure how you are placed, you just don't know where your footing is, and where your off stump lies. Plus we are not patient as Dravid is, we tend to hurry up and nick it on the way at times. And a brush with the ball is mostly a wicket, rarely we would be dropped. You just want to hit at things which doesn't usually happen, and then you finally hit one and aaah, that sexy sound and feel comes from life's willow. Happiness follows, and you are rewarded for leaving things which were not meant for you.

So just try leaving a few things on on the way, don't worry a lot about things you leave behind, there is always a wicketkeeper to take care of them.

it waSP

2010-08-18T22:27:00.000-07:00

Remember talcum power, packed in those nice Cuticura boxes and pink Ponds dabbas. Throughout the year we just loved to sprinkle tonnes of it, for many mothers it was a medium to shower tonnes of affection on their kids, for many people it was their only experience of make-up, for many a fairness product. It was a remedy for rashes, itching and unnecessary sweating and the nycil dabbas to kill the deadly ghamori during summer. Another usage was of using it instead of boric acid as a carrom board smoothie :)

A Ponds ka pink dabba used to be a common fare in our regular grocery shopping, but now visit any supermarket and the shelfspace for it is almost gone. Visit someone's house and observe the products in their bathroom ( I do this frequently, tells you a lot about the person, recently I took someone's case when I found them stocking rival company's products :)), it has disappeared. Clearly the days of talcum power are over, and we have moved onto newer things such as deos, perfumes, fairness creams, summer cooling lotions, itch guards...

Remember SP, we just loved to be there, few of us hated to be there :), but it was something which kept us busy, super-occupied and surrounded by few awesome people. Unlike undergrad, not everyone was awesome in everyone's eye, but everyone had found the awesomeness in a bunch of people. People laughed, partied, cried, conspired :), did loads of bakwaas, but they were never lonely, they always had few people to fall on to. And we were used to it, it became too much a part of our system.

But then we have moved on to our jobs in different locations, and few of always feel like they should go back to SP ( I don't want to ), they just miss the SP routine so much. The feeling of being among people all the time is lost, now one comes back home (or some lonesome hotels in few cases) and tries to do the same things but with lesser loved ones around. Clearly, we should realize the days of SP are over, we should look out for newer options to keep ourselves occupied and happy.

[Note: People might argue with the actual sales figures of Talcum powder, this is just my perception :), rest of it stems from a few discussions with dost log over past couple of weeks]

Lonely Nuts

2010-08-13T19:59:00.000-07:00

Consider a pack peanuts, crunchy roasted salted ones, the kind of which are awesome with alcohol, or the kind of which come from Bharuch in Gujarat, not very dry but the slightly greasy types without the chilkas.

And then open the pack, divide them in a few parts and send them to Mumbai rains, Jaipur's market, Delhi's shopkeeper lanes and coaching centres, Howrah's gullies, Pune's garages and the sort of places where the really shiny good quality peanuts wanted to end up.

Peanuts are comfortable, mostly their future is secure, just that it seems these peanuts have lost their crunchiness. They get soggy is Mumbai/Calcutta's humidity maybe, or develop a powdery coating in the Delhi/Jaipur's heat or get too greasy in Pune garages.

And then there are few of these lonely nuts, who have ended up in places like Bareilly, I mean maybe they show that they don't care, they have always shown that they don't care but even these nuts would lose their shine soon.

And some had the courage to go far far away, to U.S. and they too seem to have lost out on their munchability index.

Work, money, comfortable life, tough life, lonely life, losing awesomeness, developing tan, talking too much, not talking at all, having fights, making new friends, losing friends, losing heart, losing faith, losing patience, losing weight, gaining weight, drinking, drinking alone, stopped drinking, work is good, work is bad, work is the same...

Nuts have gone nuts!

Desi Ud

2010-07-30T05:17:00.000-07:00

Its been a long time since I wrote about a movie. But Udaan is something which certainly deserves a "writing".

Udaan reminded me of a zillion things, although I am always nostalgic about one thing or another, Udaan certainly brought a lot of those memories in picture. Few striking memories were of Banu and Jubhash's adventures at Mohan talkies with Bhishra sir (names changed to hide identities); me and my friends visiting chattan (we could view chimneys from there, sitting in peace, and that was a place few friends actually tried out chimney smoking too :)); just roaming around the township with its beautiful gardens, well manicured lawns, nice big houses with garden and jhoola; doing stupid kaands in school; a self-destructed diary with good amount of writings and many more. Lot of things which stay in my conscious but I generally don't talk about also came up. But every thing in a good sense.

Like Rohan even I am confused, and so are most of us, but the age is different. At Rohan's age one had the chance to take a decision, we are past that, its mostly too late for anything radical now.

About the movie, I just loved it from scene to scene, Rohan's performance, his kid bro and that of chacha Ram Kapoor. But what I really liked was Ronit Roy's anger puffed stern looks, I always thought of him as a successful businessman with a hit romantic (Jaan Tere Naam, awesome songs) and then a big TV star (Mihir 2, I am cutoff with TV post Mihir 1, so didn't really know about his acting that much), but never knew he could come up with such a brilliant one.
The setting of the movie is pretty authentic, take apart my nostalgia, it really is real, and then there is the end which was good again. My favorite song from the movie is Azaadiyan, but I really love all the songs and they just keep playing on my playlist all day long.

Another development with the movie is that few of my friends came to know about me watching this movie alone. Alone and You they said. Few inquired about my tabiyat, few about my mental state, few asked that am I happy with work or not, I just said maybe I have grown older :). Well I should say that it isn't that boring to watch a movie alone, just that you cant finish the PopCorn alone (I certainly can't). Too much of a shock for my new shauk of watching movies alone!

Its late at night now, and I am working, felt sleepy so thought would write this down in the break. That day when I ran off for this movie I was stuck, mind wasn't working the right way, the movie helped me be fresh, feel positive and super happy sorts after a long time. I felt a connect with Rohan and the settings, quite simply I felt there was just too much of me in the movie.

About writing, have lost a few, have thrown away a few, now considering should I be more serious about them? Lets see, quite a simple trigger I received during the movie.

And I think its time to get back to work again, too much of sitting and working nowadays and too much eating too, I think I will become MotuMaster soon :).

But I should be lighter, otherwise people won't raise their fingers when someone says "Desi Ud" in the cult-game "Chidiya-Ud", surely time for me to fly.

Right now, it would be back to work and then some sleep.

Simple Things again...

2010-07-17T00:45:00.000-07:00

Its awesome, the feel of having simply cooked jeera fused daal & chawal after a week of nonsense eating. Pizzas, subway, manglorean style chicken gravy, dosas, chinese stuff, ice cream and a bit of C2H5OH. But nothing gave me as much satisfaction like today.

Simple things, like cleaning up my closet, washing clothes, reading a book, cooking food, having a nice simple chat with my friend yesterday night are always the stuff which keeps me going, still I wonder why I run away from it.

Simplicity from work to food to other things in life, is the way to go. [Ref: Hrishida movies :)]

For the past year or so my association with things simple were with something else, although in a different form, that simplicity has gone, now I need to be back to what simplicity originally meant to me.

And hope all things simple which I like will fall in place too.

Left Behind Part 2

2010-07-12T12:53:00.000-07:00

Down there, next to the hot fish plate and shiny gravels, she just lies there, she belonged to someone stupid, someone ever so simple, disturbed, but happy at times, someone who always loved the smaller nuances of life, someone who cherished the company of people being around, someone had been changing recently, someone who had changed forever.

Between those blue shiny covers, and the plastic bound ringlets, were 200 pages, around 180 off of them inked with someone's thoughts. Someone knew that he is going to have a few missing ones in his life soon, and he was prepared for it, the blue notebook was his way out, of keeping all of them together with him forever.

A a half eaten pack of jalebis & some other rotten food is on the same track & is close by the blue notebook, she is unphased by the million flies which surround the neighboring jalebis, & she is still buzzing with a million stories which was part of someone's life till a few days back.

Not long back was someone confused, now he had sort of realized what his mind was upto & he knew its going to be difficult as few missing ones dominated the blue notebook, much more than others, & some of them might permanently go missing, despite how hard he tried.

But loosing them was his mistake maybe, why did he throw the blue notebook off and left her behind.

Blue notebook feels sad for someone, & is happy that she was left behind, not long back when someone hardly used to sleep and used to be stressed out, he used to read her at times, and used to poke her sometimes pen, but then after going out of the place, someone never left the blue notebook alone. Blue notebook was always tired as someone never left her alone, and continuously browsed through the memories of the missing ones. He felt a jolt of happiness at times, but notebook mostly saw a sad face, which she wanted to run away from. She feels ok now on the track, even if she is in the middle of nowhere.

As for someone, he has lost his track & hopes that he finds his direction again. Although he won't mind being lost too.

[Left Behind Part 1 was on something else... but I really like that post]

Bachpan ka Hawww, Bani Jawani Ki awww...

2010-07-05T06:19:00.000-07:00

Remember when we were kids and,

Someone fired an abuse like the dreaded S Word
Someone's pant dropped by mistake
Someone choked up after going on stage

Or when we were even smaller kids,

Someone wetted/soiled their pants
Someone forgot the multiplication table of 6

we all used to say Hawww...followed by a handsome serving of shame shame, and even pappi shame.

But as kids become older, and become much more mature, and much more facebook-ish, they found newer avenues and awww... came into being

Awww... for me and a few others is the most irritating expression ever invented, it smells, sounds & looks very artificial. My first tryst with awww... came during the much forgettable days at vyapaar school, where ever pic on facebook was celebrated as an event of great victory & awww-ness.

Then there were always those awww... girls, or awww... sisters as someone called them a few days back, they connected with a bond which ran through their cheeks, all the pics were loaded on facebook, cheek to cheek, neck slightly tilted, and a firey grin to top it up, and then followed up with a zillion aww-full comments. I think this is something which runs across all the b-schools as I have recently noticed.

Awww moments are not only female centric, they can be a male phenomenon as well, where supposedly cute n hot girls click pics with sincere and honest guys (our yearbook describes everyone in the batch like that), and then people post the same aww-some comments.

Some people like it, some dont, I certainly don't, its sometimes like the screeching sound of thermocol, or that of fingernails on blackboard for me, but everyone is free to use whatever they want to, people might the same about my pet MAHAAN, so its ok.

I am just trying to point out a trend, that's it...awww...kay.

p.s.: name is inspired from a famous writing which shows quite a lot on the wall paintings from Gwalior en route to Delhi on Indian Railways :)

Being Chintu

2010-06-21T23:00:00.001-07:00

Its strange. Its strange because I never wanted it this way. But after SP it sort of became quite prevalent, especially among few around me. Self discovery is some call it, LMA is something which we used to call it earlier (Leave Me Alone). Even I succumbed to it at times.

I am too much a people people person, something which have been re-emphasized with my second entry in Mumbai, and it has just taken me a week to realize that I am in between a set of awesome people, some people who resonate with my areas of interest (56873 on last count)…

So there is the lonely state, and the people people state, and I obviously prefer the latter, the kind I have been for most of my life.

But this time around there is a Chintu state I have to deal with. Chintu is short for Chintan, the mode in which I enter nowadays, mostly when I am alone, or sometimes even between striking some awesome conversations something puts me into Chintu orbit. I just shut down and get into my chintu mood.

I want to be just the people people kind again, Mumbai part-2 offers an opportunity to achieve that with a set of good nice people around & few old ones who are simply too awesome, but some things just keep moving me to being chintu.

So what are the other options I have, maybe nothing as of now, but time will make things easier I believe. The only thing I know is I don’t want to be chintu, I just want to be like the old times again, pattu are you hearing?

Sorry to say but they surely are...

2010-05-10T10:29:00.000-07:00

During Hero Cup I liked them but Sachin ended them in that historic over;1996 I was fascinated by them: by Jonty, by Cronje, by Donald, but Lara did them; 1999 they were surely the best, and I cried with millions others when Klusner was run out, Steve Waugh did them; 2003 they were the home side lead by the brilliant pollock, but Duckworth Lewis did them; 2007 they did themselves limping out in semis; T20-1 they played awesome but didnt qualify after loosing to Indians and for the first time I stopped supporting them, I started believing what they were labeled as was true, 2009 and 2010 the pakistanis helped us to prove that the South African Cricket team is well and truly:

"CHOKERS"

Me and many like me have stopped loving South African Cricket

The Story of Indian Railway Cutlet

2010-04-15T11:32:00.000-07:00

Have you ever noticed Bhartiya Railway- “Aapki Sewa main” (In Your Service) written in small circles on the berths in railway coaches. For me the service by Bhartiya Railway is represented by the quintessential Railway breakfast, Cutlets ?

Those small patties, covered with bread crumbs, deep fried, cut in various shapes (circular in west, heart shaped in east, other shapes which I have seen include a rhombus, small squares etc.) are part of the morning happenings of any train journey. After seeing (or smelling) the great railway toilets in morning (usually flooded, soiled and you know what all) & a quick brushing of teeth along with junta, many a times with finger (as one forgets the brush?) the smell of these cutlets is the first welcome thing which invigorates all senses, especially "the smell" which ends all smells. The smell of railway cutlets is unique, much unique than that of soil after first rains, or that of Chanel no.5 . Any other smell which comes closer is that of railway window railings, purely metallic and very very unique.

These cutlets are mostly made of potatoes with a few seasonal veggies, mostly peas, carrots etc. Although the best ones always have that bit of beetroot in them, they always have. They are the mostly nicely packed item which Indian Railways provide, well wrapped in the aluminum foils, in fact there is a bit of sogginess prior to the crispiness of these cutlets due to the foils which adds to the taste. They always serve two cutlets with bread butter (2 slices only, never ever more than that). I always make a sort of a sandwich out of the first and the second one I just get lost in its taste. One can’t forget the contribution of Sauce here (enriched with Kaddus ?) this tomato ketchup is always packed in those small plastic sachets, bright red in colour, it always adds to the flavour of cutlets.

Cutlets taste best with the watery coffee (which is much better than the watery tea). Although if one gets tea of the quality of Chaudhry Chai waala (near nandurbar station, en route Ahmedabad to Nagpur) one shouldn’t miss that.

Cutlets compete with Omelets in morning, and from the look on the faces of people who buy omelets one knows who wins ?. Cutlets also get an enhanced version in Rajdhani or Shatabdi where they are accompanied with fried green peas or a bit of French fries at times. But the basic taste remains the same.

I just hope I keep traveling, enjoying my journeys on Indian Railway and keep enjoying the wonderful moments it brings along.

Long Live the Indian Railway Cutlet, one of the best breakfasts in the country…

Missing Ones...

2010-03-28T13:11:00.000-07:00

6th Oct 2010

My birthday in 2 days, Hyderabad (maybe not) has been a nice good city, minus few of things which were an awesome part of my life few months back.

Like loosing things in room and getting scolded for that, or looking at bargaining skills all through the day, or his awesome vishnu bhagwaan like sleeping position. All that taane which he gave me.

Or the touch of her hands on my ears, or the sound of puchuk, or just watching her staring at that laptop, and getting disso with her.

The burrpy giggles he used to throw up once in a while, sharing the asexual tag with me, and such a calming influence he always brought to me.

Her awesome influence on me, her electrifying presence in placom room, the way she handled things and the way she cared for me through all the toughy times.

His gossips, me and him discussing our chai-biscuit grihasthis :), his awesome pics which truly represent what a person is, removing all the fakeness from them and bringing out what they actually are in his signature style pics.

His love stories, his hugs, the time we spent in DOCC, his presentations, and his voice, he caring for me and me cribbing about his GK, his love for all things non veg.

Her awesome teeth flashing smile, her caring touch and exciting voice, her energy levels which always kept me going through those bad days, her dance moves which I would die for, we talking nonsense sometimes and so much of sense most of time, her gujju jeans , our discussion on small town stories and our so called ganwaar attitude when we sat together, me pulling her leg over she eating fish-head and being bong for the rest of her life.

His love for all things sweet & chocolatey, his mood swings, awesome sense of knowing what I am going through, we forming the profanity expert gang, me cribbing about him never studying, him talking in sleep and running away from all thing academic, and our natural partnerships, and indori dicussions.

His slender legs n wicked smile, his fingers rolling over cellphone with infinite speed, he combing his hair and looking like a nursery kid, him being the most mature persons around irrespective of opinions, his happiness in achieving what he always wanted, his sincerity like of which I never saw, his voice which was irritating but necessary for me to hear whenever I felt sad.

His love for Old Monk and his weird discussions on FMCG, half of which I skipped listening, but they are so difficult to live without now, him shouting at times, but being caring all the time, his enjoyment plans which I was scared about, his relaxation plans which I loved to be part off. Me enjoying sometimes abusing him for weird reasons :), him cribbing about things but being so focused in his life, and for the infinite time we spent together.

Her zillion attempts to declare me incompetent of ever patao-ing a girl, her multizillion attempts to prove herself as kamini, which always bombed as she was so simple, the simplest of them all, me feeling guilty about not knowing her better earlier, to being very lucky to know her so well, just sitting with her and get to listen to her, noticing her fake smiles which were easiest to comprehend and just told me what she thought, and her real smiles which made me more happy than anything else here and for the infinite time we spent together.

Missing ones in my life, hope they don't go missing forever.

The Times of Holi - Edition 1

2010-03-03T03:23:00.000-08:00

Sometime in 1996, somewhere in Chhattisgarh

“Bhaiya kuch fugge (balloon) dena, arre yeh nahi, who paani waale”

“Lo Beta, 5rs ke 100, rang wagera chahiye”

“nahi bhaiya, who le liya, Thank you”

Tomorrow is Holi time, this time it has fallen in between the exam, but we will play. Holi requires hell lot of preparations and we are all ready for that. I have my entire arsenal ready,

2 packets of Gulaal- my favourite- Yellow and Violet, the weirdest of combos
2 packs of water waala colour, 1 Solid (choti bottle), one regular in both red & green
This year I have given away with pichkari, no use, small streams of water are of no use, metal pichkaris as shown in Sholay are not good too. Me and my friends have come up with a set of plastic bottles, cut & twisted to form nice pichku devices with maximum impact
Fuggas which need to be made into chotu hand grenades filled with water color
A set of old clothes, the only festival in the world where o0ne wears that. Although on television nowadays they show people wearing Super White clothes on Holi I think it’s a stupid idea. Every year this was the day when we dispatched our worst clothes (mostly torn by EOD). Although one of my friends use to wear the same trouser every year for holi (something which I tried on later)

I woke up early, and we did a small pooja at home. Post that I applied Parachute Nariyal Tel on my body & face and hair. A yucky feeling but its ok, as everyone says it will help in removing the colour later on. And then I move out of C-655 Kaveri Vihar.

Apart from Patricks, there is no one else, so we put some gulaal on each other and moved to the row behind. This row has been amazing for my childhood, where I have played everything from Racetrip when electricity goes, to pitthul, kabbadi and obviously cricket. So we played holi here with everyone with our entire arsenal. All my grenades were transferred to a terrace and fired from there.

Although as always there are two types of people everywhere, Good and Bad. We were obviously the good lot, and the bad ones use on Holi day are the ones who use Silver Paint, Grease, and play with even Gobar at times. Also they whistle and say bad stuff when didi log from our township go around on holi. All dirty people…

After the first round we reload our arsenal and move towards Nucleus club where the whole of township assembles. Everything is arranged, from drums full of colour, pipes throwing up chilled water and water tankers supplying hell lot of it, holi style dhinchak music, jalebis and bhaijyas, my friends from all over the township, thandai (2 types, one for us, one for uncles with something called bhang in it which is like alcohol I heard). It ends with food packets.
After playing for a long time, its back home and then the efforts to wash off the colours, and its bad if someone has put some paint or grease on you, bad people. Next day in school everyone would turn with pink cheeks and multicoloured hands. Holi also brings a lot of tiredness and a nice sleep on that day.

Also the sad part is like Navratri it always either falls on sideline or in between an exam. Horrible timing for such an awesome festival, but I will always enjoy celebrating it.

Never better than at Korba…

This year I didn’t celebrate it after quite sometime, hoping this never happens again and keep on enjoying my favorite festival.

Hope you have read the Navratri collection,

What Having Fun was... What it is?

2010-02-18T03:30:00.000-08:00

Comes from my conversations with few buddies... mix of their and my incidents :)

As a Kid having a cold drink was fun. I still remember the time when my dad used to take me to Indian Coffee House, ordered a Special Dosa for me (with one Kaju, costed 14 Rs. then). He would order a filter coffee and watch me munch on the dosa. And then came the cold drink. Ahaa, that straw and that first sip was awesome. From Gold Spot to rarity of having coke, it was all fun. And yes The Green Boxed Frooti (Rs. 6) was awesome too.

As a kid I loved having an ice cream. Didn't we always dream of a chocobar or a vanilla cup. It was so awesome when I went out with my family to have that. Maybe once a month, maybe once in 2 months. But it was awesome. Arun Ice cream's vanilla cups were the best :)

As a kid I loved ice cream. The best thing was Nirula's. Chocolate was simply the best. They used to give me one after I showed them my report card, and I also got coupon for my birthday :)

Those were the days. Sipping Beer, or whisky at Banshankari's famous hang-outs. Seshgiri or its not so far sister concern (codename: 3 gigolos :)). We got drunk, had chips from some HOT CHIPS, cold drinks from the same store, and then we talked...

and talked

and talked

a movie used to play, a guy used to enter kop-bhavan, 2 guys were always coding something on a red laptop which was hotter than a frying pan, and we ended up playing karaoke with Golmaal or discussing Nihilism, science fiction & indian cinema.

And there are moments which me, and a few others dont like that much, but it gives some sort of fun to others. Like, loud music, dark discos, late night drinking and talking sessions etc etc.

But then like today, there are awesome mornings to cover them all up, from disc-asur to Idli-esh. We had the best breakfast one can ever have to start the day, filter coffee, 5-6 types of idlis, 4 types of dosas, podi with oil, benne (white butter).

I know what kind of fun is best for me, and I will be back soon, as soon as this 2 year thing comes to an end.

Left Behind

2010-02-16T19:39:00.000-08:00

Once upon a time, there used to be this colony of around 200 ants. They had been living together, happily for around a year and a half now next to a small river. There colony had the best stocks of food, good climatic conditions in the area, and above all great antz. They were fun loving and used to enjoy each other's company. They had fun in outings, in the functions and even the sports festival which they celebrated. Then came the day of the great rains which continued for a few days. The river overflowed and the ant colony came under threat. A group of 20 odd engineer ants created a bridge for the ants to cross the river safely. Slowly they started crossing & around 150 of them crossed the bridge to move towards safety. Rest were stuck on the island created due to rains & river as the bridge broke down after that. Still the team of around 20 kept on trying to recreate the bridge.

End 1:

Engineers kept trying to reconstruct the bridge with great difficulty. Rest of the ants who had crossed seldom cared. Few of them did, but some of them went away to their homes, some started playing sports- cricket & football & handball, some went for trips, & some just didn't care. Some kept on partying which the ants stuck on the other side used to witness. Even I sometimes attend those parties, & so do the other engineers. Every time the ants who had crossed partied the ants who were stuck felt sad. Few of them sent across signals of reassurance still the ants who were stuck were lost in hope. They were sad, and blamed their misery on fate.

Somewhere in those engineers, I felt really confused, & filled with guilt at times. Why it has to be this way? Couldn't we all be together. The bridge would be completed soon, and all of them would be able to cross, but why this indifference?

End 2:

Engineers got the help from the entire population of ants who had crossed. They worked day & night to help the rest of ants cross the river. The ants who were stuck felt reassured that the all their colony members are with them in this moment when they needed them the most. Although it took time for the bridge to complete still they were able to live through all this reassuringly.

Me and my team of engineers was happy looking at all of us working together in these tough moments.

There can be two ends, I know the way it is shaping now, and I also know the way we want it to end. Lets hope for the best.

कहानी २५ पैसे के बोरकुट की

2010-02-13T06:03:00.000-08:00

On all those cycle journeys back from school me, my namesake and few more friends spent most of our time chit-chatting, drinking water from my Milton bottle and taking numerous stops. Strangely each stop and its activity was the same for years.

The school was some 15 mins from our home Krishna Vihar in morning (or even at 10 mins at times), but in afternoon it took us half hour or more. We had 3 stops, first in Yamuna Vihar (water drinking and discussion on girls and on latest Kaands in school stop), Kaveri Vihar Market (detour from our route, chedu's pravachan, his our fascinations of kimberly drummond (different strokes) & ms. winslet of titanic and experiments with sanskrit :)), and finally the borkut stop :D...

Borkut stop was our final frontier of freedom, 1Re coin helping us buy 4 of them, we were usually 3, so one for each and then carefully splitting the final pack in 3 parts. Or mixing borkut with aamkut and imlikut just at 25p :). Borkut is btw a pachak product made from Jungli Ber's power along with chatpata masala (like hajmola). Aamkut is amde form raw mango and imlikut from dried tamarind.

Those were the days were a rupee bought me that much pleasure. Jalebi in those days was Rs. 40 a kg and we were full in 5Rs.

And yesterday whn I stpped out with another of my namesakes we spent 98 Rs for 2 pieces of Jalebi and 2 Pieces of Gulaabjaamun. Oh I forgot 5ml of Rabdi which accompanied it. Felt bad, but world has changed.

And so have we...

Reliving छब्बीस जनवरी

2010-01-25T23:46:00.000-08:00

Happy Republic Day. Enjoyed a wonderful morning today at college, all the National Events tend to be extremely pleasing events, and as I felt today if it was not for them, we would completely disconnect from our cultural heritage.

As a kid Republic Day (and even 15th August) used to be super fun. It started a week or 10 days before the D-Day. As a kid and even now I wasn't that performance inclined. So as always I formed the chunk of the neglected extras on the day forming the part of MARCH PAST :). The superstars always were part of some dance, or group song. ( I was part of group song once, last row, because they wanted few guys who were tall in the last row, so far from mic, that no one can hear us. As a chotu child Group songs were occasions when our faced were smashed with Red Colored Circles, and thumb sucking kids we were used to running around on stage with nursery teachers chasing us :)).

March Past practice was fun too, forming queues, using cliched phrases like arre one-arm distance lo na, Physical Education Teacher finding center stage apart from his usual student-thrashing activities etc. etc. Girls who were part of the March Past were a depressed lot too, because most of them anyways were part of dance, the girls who were not, were thoda sort of Tom-Boyish types as people said that time. Then there was the yatra-tatra-sarvatra drummer who was omnipresent during all practices of all kinds. Be it the regular march past routine, morning assemblies, tabla in annual function, any other instrument for annual function. He was the Music Teacher's favorite and was groomed to be a Music Teacher in future, sadly ending as another engineer among us millions :). BTW this March Past was for commoners, the Scouts and Guides were the Elite class, we were just filler items.

The D-Day used to start with Flag hoisting in school with Vande Mataram and ending with Jan Gana Man. Mostly students associated with the main event came to school (yes there was a lot beyond that, not even a part of the march past :)). We got an extra packet of the same goodie kit which we received a day prior to 26th Jan too (distributed among all township schools). Kit consisted of 1 Classic Parle -G (the then 100gm 4rs. to the now 82gm 4Rs.), Poppins (the then Rs.125, not to be found much nowdays, there is another interesting story about Poppins, but sometime later for that), couple of candies/lollipops and even dairy milk at times (used to change every year). Then we sat in a bus and moved to the main ground.

All the township gathered on the Man Sarovar ground, the battleground of our numerous Cricket battles, fistfights, once visited by the great Narendra Hirwani and Sandeep Patil :). The ground was always full on these 2 national holidays and it was great fun to be part of the festive atmosphere.

Most of the attention was always grabbed by Dance performances from across schools, award winners etc etc. The most depressing lot was always that of the March Past gang, who started the proceedings and then stood there for an hour till everyone danced, sang and received prizes. Whatever we did, we stood, got tired etc etc., but we never broke the one arm distance :).

After so many years छब्बीस जनवरी still evokes emotions, but not of that strength. But I am happy these things keep country's culture running for a few more days before the roadie kind of people swallow it up completely.

Also would like to remember the ones who lost their lives on 26th Jan'01 in the Gujarat quake, may their souls rest peacefully in heaven.

Learnings from MBA- Part I

2010-01-13T10:22:00.000-08:00

The best thoughts hit when you are sitting on the toilet seat. Suddenly realized how much disconnected from the world I have become sitting there today. Many people whom I talked are nowhere to be found to nowadays. Have missed one friend's wedding, going to miss 2 more soon. Lots has changed, MBA has changed a lot. Just to summarize the learnings from the 18 odd months till now,

- Acads, well remember a bit of Business Strategy, Consult is still fresh, a bit of marketing fundas which have been repeated enough number of times, few of the Finance ka fundas, thats mostly it. Haan, liked supply chain and a couple of visiting faculties too, but thats it.

- Ability to take Stress, or the non-ability to take it. It actually depends on you that how much you set your limits as. I set it very high, to levels which I cant take, and it shows. Its difficult, and you know that you cant take anymore. But just 2-3 months to go...

- Anger Management or the lack of it: For a person who claimed to be Anger Free since Two Thousand Three ( 2-3 instances) the worst part is to abuse daily and shout at other people which is like a ritual to me nowadays

- Networking they said happens in MBA, honestly all your old pals, relatives etc. stop talking to you given the lack of interest you show in them, so its just you and you forever after that

- Sense, or lack of it missing in the Top .01% of the country sitting along with you for 2 years. What else should I tell...

Would be putting down a few more during my final days here. If its going to be like this in work post MBA too, either I would retire in 2-3 years. Or even sooner.

People planning for MBA, dont do it, kills your life.

भेडचाल

2009-11-29T12:27:00.000-08:00

बदलाव हमारे अन्दर होता है। बदलाव निरंतर है और उससे रोकने का शायद ही को कोई उपाय होगा। पर क्या मैं बदलना चाहूँगा?

कुछ वर्षो पहले तक मुझे कुछ पता नही था की मैं जीवन मैं क्या करना चाहता हूँ, और आज भी मेरे विचार कुछ स्पष्ट नही हुए है। काम करना क्या केवल एक मजबूरी है, या इसमे कोई आर्थिक लाभों के अलावा लाभ है, ऐसे प्रश्न मेरे दिमाग मैं कुछ दिनों से आ रहे है। काम काजी जीवन जैसे जैसे नज़दीक आ रहा है, वैसे ही मैं थोड़ा उससे घबरा भी रहा हूँ।

प्रबंधन का अध्यन भारत मैं कई छात्रों का सपना है, क्योंकि इसमे पैसे अच्छे है और यह आजकल की नई भेडचाल है। पर मेरा अनुभव कह रहा है की आप जिस अवस्था मैं प्रसन्न रहे, वही अच्छी नौकरी है। प्रबन्धन के पश्चात् आपको इतनी म्हणत करनी होगी की वैसे भी आप ४० की उम्र के बाद कुछ करने के योग्य नही रहेंगे।

तो क्या मुझे चाहिए,

अच्छी नौकरी, अच्छी तनख्वाह और एक बड़ा नाम
या फ़िर कुछ अच्छे लोग, कम चिंता वाला काम, और ठीक ठाक तनख्वाह

फिलहाल तो मैं हमेशा की तरग इस असमंजस मैं हूँ की मैं क्या करू, मेरे आजू बाजू हर कोई जरुरत से ज्यादा एकाग्रित है, सबको साबुन तेल बेचना, बेंको मैं जाना, और संगणक उद्योग मैं अपना जीवन बिताना है। मुझे इन सब से कोई लेना देना नही, मुझे कुछ भी चलेगा। पर मेरे लिए सबसे जरुरी चीज़े है,

मेरे आस पास के लोग, एक अच्छा वातावरण, और निश्चित आराम और अन्य रुचिया पूर्ण करना।

पर मुझे फ़िर लगता है कीजीवन मैंने आजतक उस चीज़ को नही चुना जिससे मैं चुनना चाहता था, बलकी उन बातो के पीछे ज्यादा रहा जो भेडचाल का हिस्सा थी।

यह सब बस कुछ विचार है जो चले जायेंगे, मैं फ़िर इन किताबो और अजीबो गरीब काम के चक्कर मैं डूब जाऊँगा, और रह जायेगी यह भेडचाल, जिसका मैं सदेव हिस्सा रहूँगा।

खेल,इन्टरनेट और हम

2009-11-29T00:42:00.000-08:00

कुछ बाराह साल का था मैं, जब मैंने पहली बार भगवान् को देखा, वो नीले रंग का मुकुट पहेनता था अपने घुंघराले बालो के ऊपर, और एक भारी लकड़ी की गदा थी उसके पास, और अपने चमत्कार से वोह दुनिया के सबसे महान गेंदबाजों का नाश कर रहा था. उस साल था विश्व कप के उपलक्ष पर उसने दौड़ो की झड़ी लगा दी थी, और शेन वारने नमक गेंदबाज़ को तो उस महान ने नेस्तनाबूद ही कर दिया था.

पर फिर वोह दिन भी आया, जब कलकत्ता की रणभूमि पर ९१/२ के स्कोर पर वोह आउट हुआ, और उसके बाद कलकत्ता की जनता ने उस देवता के अभाव मैं मैदान को भस्म कर दिया, लोग कहते है वोह शिवजी का दुःख था की उस नन्हे भगवान् के आउट होने पर उन्होंने उस दिन कलकत्ता पर आग बरसाई. पर उस रात मैं सो नहीं पाया, और उन आँखों मैं कही कुछ पानी की बूँदें ज़रूर थी.

१९९६ का वोह साल और मायनों मैं भी ऐतिहासिक था, जब इन्टरनेट नामक तकनीक मेरी दुनिया मैं आई. एक घर्र्र घर्र करते संगणक के सामने बैठ कर आप दुनिया मैं कही भी चिट्ठी लिख सकते थे. हॉट मेल , याहू, और मेरे आज के नाम से जुडी एक पोर्टल काफी प्रसिद्ध हुए.

पर मुझे क्या पता था, की कुछ १० सालो बाद, इन्टरनेट के जरिये मैं उन महान खेल के क्षणों को संभाल के रख पाऊंगा, जिनका इतिहास मैं कोई सानी नहीं, और जो मेरे दिल के बेहद करीब रहेंगे. इसी का प्रयास करते हुए हम कुछ मित्रो ने मिल कर "पेन द गेम" की स्थापना की. इसके पहले ही वर्ष मैं इसने indibloggies पुरस्कार समारोह मैं भारत के सबसे बेहतरीन खेल ब्लॉग होने का गौरव प्राप्त किया.

इस वर्ष भी हम इस सम्मान के लिए नामांकित हुए है, कृपया इन संदेशो का पलान करे, और हमें विजयी बनाने मैं मदद करे..

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जय सचिन,
आपका प्रिय

देसी

A Night at Lodhivali

2009-11-20T13:27:00.000-08:00

Where the hell is everyone? I can’t find anyone today. Alone in room, no Khaut, no Sagun & Saachi. All gayab!!!

Living with all 3 has been awesome, I have had great time with them over the past month. The highlight have been the sex education classes we conduct once in a while for Sagun, super fun. Plus me, khaut, shotu have got access recently to this amazing library of Hindi Erotica which is helping us in our mission to get Sagun upto sexually acceptable standards prevailing in modern times.

Also Shotu has created this alias Jenny73153, Yahoo ID which we all use for chatting like a female, awesome fun with people calling a number XXX73513 and then Jiri picking up and acting like an escort service agent. Well enough of this.

I think I should look in Pure Bhaiya’s room, one of my best buds in the senior batch. Awesomely brained & very hard working, I have real fun with him at times and he is a nice happy shappy types fellow. Cares for me & Sajeev a lot. I miss Sajeev though, quite some time since I experienced his histrionics, his would be a tale of simple boy going not so simple thanks to Sex (not the verb, but a proper noun, yes someone in flesh & blood, actually too much of flesh).

Oh even Pure Bhai is out, where the hell is everyone, being late from office doesn’t mean you miss the action. I think they should be in our township mess.

Trying to bring a revolution in Speech Technology, back in those days it was considered biggest thing after Graham Bell’s own invention, Voice Recognition and that too for so many regional languages. Daily office work included recordings, creating fancy scripts with JeDi, gaming & life lessons from dhavesh & his wonderful encounters with Bhakti our ex Mtech student. On top of it you had a bell labs return white shirted, steamy idli eating leader & a budding love story of geeky-techie IITian with a lady in office (who looked slightly older than him). The boss was a delightful idli-popping guy with super crisp white shirts (always) with changing trouser colours, accompanied by a recent Swiss import.

Also featuring were a few other teams BREWing mobile apps, Voice apps team back in college & a traffic signal team famous for doing mostly nothing. That team consisted of a brainy happy & a geeky chunnu mobile.

Walking down towards the mess I found chunnu sinking into his super cool blue displayed handset. Mobiles are a new thing, I have one from Siemens & it’s a rare thing to caryy one. But chunnu thinks in a few days everyone would carry this, I don’t think more than 10% of population would ever have it. Just now in May TRAI removed the incoming charges & at max it would let them sell a few more. This is a fad like many others.

I reach the mess and the first thing I see is a somewhat odd looking BPS sitting with Methi on the roadside. BPS is not regular today, with his long hair messed up and his fingers waving, he looks….drunk.

Are they all DRUNK???

BPS calls me as he is towards finishing his awesome lecture to Methi (lectured only first & last time in his life on this date) on the topic of “Ladki %$%$% hoti hai”, also walking at a close distance were a few females. Well I would leave them out of this story.

So BPS told me how I should stay away from girls and never get into them (I have strictly followed him after that J) and I could smell it. For the first time in almost 2 years I saw one of my friend’s in a drunk avasthta & it felt a bit funny. Well being in a dry state had resulted in a very different engineering college where students got a high from installing/uninstalling Linux, downloading movies & playing all types of games.

Off I moved to the TT table. On the stairs I met this bearded guy who said high, wonder what he does here, he always stands here, doesn’t look like the chaukidaar but his beard looks irritating. Few of us ended up having a discussion on the possibility of him being gay & maybe even hitting on one of our “HEALTHY” friend.

TT table was witnessing an amazing game of TT between (I don’t know who), but the spectator/referee was Pappa, his wavy hair sitting on top of a very brainy brain. But that day the brain had gone on hadtaal as he waved his mundi from side to side & kept on doing it continuously for indefinite time. When I approached to have a conversation he just sshhhed me away.

I met Sacchi in mess & he told me about the party thrown by Pure Bhai for some reason. It seems lot of everything had been drunk & everyone was waving around. And then I met khaut…

He shouted & became normal just the next moment. He asked me to play carom. The small boy who served us food in mess came to us and Khaut all of a sudden slapped him… “Ladkiyo ko pahle khaana deta hai, humein nahi “

Small boy stunned & I was in a don’t know what to do state. So I just walked away from there. Later that night I had the scary task of walking back Khaut to our room.

As I prepared my bed I thought, well I will never touch alcohol.

Omitted a few incidents, changed a few names, all for fun. By the way I broke the pledge sometime in the summer of 2005, had a White Mischief with Shotu & co. at Mt. Abu, then waited till Bangalore & CAT incidents to let hell break loose. But this was my first true interaction with the concept of getting drunk. All thanks to Lodhivali J

Yellow

2009-10-22T13:41:00.000-07:00

All characters in this story are fictional and bear no resemblance to anyone dead or living

2005

After the great Mumbai floods engineers were repairing the sewer system of the city, an engineer mistakenly planted dynamite on one of the lines, the blast was big, and it released crores of tonnes of pure Golden shit on one of the suburbs of mumbai. To check the devestation all the shit was diverted to a large 25000 acre area designated for a SEZ soon. Area sinked, and it definitely stinked.

In that plot was hidden long back, a treasure of immense value, all of it pure gold.

Present Day

Bhairav is the coolest rag picker in the town of Mumbai, has two of everything, but misses the essential thing which should exist in pair. Apprently his boxing buddy, Langdu Sethji with manly boobs and a raunchy paunch kicked him in his gehnas once. From that day, Bhairav yearns for everything in pairs.

Langdu and Bhairav are the best rag pickers in town, but Langdu can swim saala, and that too in shit. Bhairav wants to go for treasure in the shit laden area, but Langdu says no.

Langdu's wife munni is an expert in picking rag underpants, which she even tries on herself at times. she is hot though and even Bhairav has the hots for her ;). Munni says she is poor (thats why lesser clothes) & wants to be rich & start a Safai Vidyalaya on the lines of one by Baapu at Ahmedadbad.

Cut Scene- Andheri

Langdu's brother is the top begger in Andheri, popularly known as Spam he also rides in a haathgaadi (Shaan movie's Mazhar Khan style). At night he takes part in an underground haathgaadi drifitng race. Haathgaadi race expert Don Karnash challenges him in front of his hot eucuch friend chikki. Chikki drops her pallu for the race to begin, and Spam wins it. Don Karnash asks spam to deliver a box for him which he misplaces. In between he falls in love with Chikki. Don Karnash him for life and even burns is haathgaadi. Spam hitchhikes and reaches the boundaries of Shithole where Munni, Bhairav & Langdu are waiting...

(I am cutting on the hit song, Haggi Waggi, by Chilly Min-Hug and few other songs...)

These guys hang out near the shit pond, singing Balluuuu, yeh saans pukaare, Baluuu...

and all of a sudden appears Balu, along with Madam Ritika Mahalingam and Kid Cloud waala. Punter and Dolly are not seen though.

It seems Balu is a dushman of Don Karnash & wants him badly. In the mean time Langdu developes a liking for Madam Mahalingam, much to the distaste of munni, who starts wearing even dirtier and smaller rags to catch his attention.

Climax

Don Karnash wants money from spam for loosing his box of whatever, 50 Mn Zimbabwean Dollars. As Spam and others are unaware about the latest currency rates they get scared and plan to go for the treasure. Balu has a seaplane which can carry them to shitpond and Langdu knows the location. It seems his dad almost reached the treasure. When he tells the story Kid Cloudwaala realises that he is Langdu & spam's brother who got lost on the day of floods.

But Langdu has a secret to share.

It seems their dad was off to find some treasure and he found it somewhere in the mid of shit pond, but Langdu was having loosemotions that day, and he used to the pond to do you know what. The level started rising and his dad lost control and sunk and died. Langdu is scared of that place.

But he is convinced and Balu drops him using his seaplane to the location. Here they put the anchor, Madam Mahalingam & Munni cook food and the guys go for treasure hunting.

Shit main tairne ke teen golden rule,

- Never breath
- Hamesha Saath main raho
- Never shit...otherwise, you know what can happen

They find the treasure, but Don Karnash comes and as usual grabs the heroines. Then they come out of rooms and the dress area of their arms is removed (remember the old movies, what this signified, confused me ). Anyways heros have found the treasure now (100 20 KG toilets made of solid gold), but Balu starts breathing and dies of the smell, being heavy he sinks too. The others float back, fight and rescue heriones. Bhairav is found missing.

Don Karnash tells everyone that he and Bhairav planned this and now he would kill everyone. Bhairav comes up and tells that he fooled everyone because Langdu being color blind too was the only one who could have spotted Yellow in Yellow. so he picked him and made a fool of him. He runs away and kills Don Karnash on the way by flushing him in the pond.

Madam Mahalingam uses the seaplane to go away and other live happily, but one day Bhairav calls and tells them that he has progressed from being a rag picker to India's largest toilet manufacturer, all Yellow in color. And Chikki is his wife or something.

**The End**

Request: Dont watch Blue, please

मदन - कहानी एक Pub की

2009-10-22T07:40:00.000-07:00

***Starring ***

Chipu
( I have decided to write a book on the life and times of this guy)
Rattu
Bhussu

***And***

Dandit
Mimpy
Bho-Bho-ti
Pat-rick
Nippu

***Friendly Appearance***

KAddu
Piddu
Anit Pacob Jillpose
Khakre

***Scene-1 ***

Somewhere on quite nice crowded street on Bangalore (crowd is implicit in Bangalore), ambling around are three stupid looking individuals, quite visibly mistaking the road as a Bird Sanctuary. ( For people in Bangalore I am referring the set of perpendicular roads connecting from Jyoti Nivas College-Koramangala 4th Block side to Forum-100ft road connection).

But enough of birds, these guys have never got them, one of them although carries the distinction of breaking eggs :), lot of them :D. Who's interested, Chipu, Rattu and Bhussu just want some beer, and they will get it at Madan Pub. Small shabby looking place where evil ideas thrive, men with rotten faces, dirty lungis and unbrushed moustaches laugh like Ashok Vatika Sita Kidnappers, light is dim, TV always throws a classic Rajkumar Classic (the same one always where he plays a Rajkumar) and waiters serve with uncut nails filled with smudge..yuk

But beer is cheap and thats Ok, for us :)

This place was discovered by Fake Kannada speaking Bho-Bho-ti, patronised by the wide assed king of bangalore, Pat-Rick & made popular by rattu. Anit Pacob Jillpose lived in Pune but he dreamt of going to madan, and Khakre cracked up as we muttered him stories of Madan.

Madan Rocks, no... Madan Mahaan hai :)

In an area full of beautiful chiks and chikkis, this is the place, where Men can be Men, and not those spiked hairs, loose jeans, jockey showing lean kids, they can hold their drink with pride and drink and bask in the glory of the super dim lights which make you look, evil.

I dont remember whether Mimpy visited it, but this is a place liked by 3 of us who came here tonight, me, Bhussu, Chipu. Bhussu loves drinking, and following it up with Hyderabadi Biryani, Drinking loves Chipu, and will always love him. As for me, I can walk downstairs to pick up Mysore Pak off Adayar anand bhavan :)

But as Mimpy says, yeh ek Mahaan jagah hai, so ashtumaadi

Kahani starts when Nippu comes to Bangalore... till then wait maadi

Another Kiddie incident

2009-10-13T12:10:00.000-07:00

Posted one long back on Kids. Today was time for another classic incident:)

Words from a 6th Class Kiddo on the car backseat,

"Virginity is a man's gift to his wife"

Couldn;t stop laughing for the next few hours, Gen Next/X/Y/Z/Whatever is really scary at times :)

life with an addict...

2009-10-09T11:49:00.000-07:00

He was happy, used to talk while he slept, but apart from them, quite Ok. Used to loose apetite once in a while, but apart form that, Ok. He thought smoking is bad, drinking is bad too. But he was addicted. And that too to...

Well I entered the room that day, and he suddenly had hidden it. He used to hide it in drawers, almirah, below the bed in a suitcase. I knew every spot, but how could he, I still didn't believe it.

I got a hint, that day at Bandra, near carter road CCD, we saw a bunch of young kids smoking it, and it smelled like, you know what. He had won a bet and asked me for something. I paid 150 bucks for it.

It was Chocolate, and in the room were being gobbled up tonnes of Lindt, Toblerones, Cadbury, Ferreros and what not. I knew it. He was an addict.

Addicted to chocolates.

I just pray he returns to the original addiction, unAdulterated. The new one doesn't suit him. It suits me :)

Of things Artificial, and those Natural

2009-10-03T02:08:00.001-07:00

Love being Natural?

Yes you would say, but are we ever natural!

On an auto ride with my friend in Delhi we debated the artificial vs. natural thing like never before, especially in the context of Delhi, debate continued at an engg. college friend's home party.

We have two sides (we is generalized by people coming from smaller towns & cities), one is natural, likes meeting people, sitting with family and friends, enjoying nice street food, being part of festivals, going to temple sometimes, roaming around and having a nice relaxing evening followed by a movie on TV and some nice sleep.

The other side, goes to Pubs, drinks the hell out of oneself; multiplexes: buys popcorn worth 70 bucks (within 44 Rs. I used to enjoy pop corn, a movie, cold drink and a two way bus ride to city during school days), watches a movie a week, walks into a mall: window shops, really shops and just keeps on spending through the clutter of restaurants, food courts and ice cream parlors.

And after moving to cities (and especially after we started earning), we sort of have started living more like the latter than former. Although the joy of living life this style is hardly long lasting.

For a city, you would consider Gurgaon the best in India, super awesome roads, beautiful buildings, so many malls. My first day here I wanted to buy some innerwear, and I told my friend, so my friend asked Levis or Nike store? A city where people think of malls even while buying chaddi baniyaan!!! Its not their fault, this place is the pinnacle of consumerist culture and show-baazi, a practice linked to most of North India. Although I am not accusing all of this, there have been strange exceptions right from UG to PG days and they are all dear friends. But mostly a region characterized by slight rudeness in the way people talk, slight aggression, and a fascination to show that one can splurge money.

Compare that to the long walks I had in Old Delhi near Redfort through Ramlilas. Regular people, enjoying with families, having fun and a great time, & contrast it too hardly-anything-wearing-girls in GK or South ex at night, have seen a bit of all in the past few days. From the aloo chaat & paani puris in Old Delhi to 70 Rs dosas in Gurgaon fort, a nice mix of Artificial and natural awaits us everywhere we go.

Its on us and only on us, that which path we choose.

Many here want to fake it to make it, but I think they would be just fine if they just try to make it…

Right now for me I am trying to balance the two, somehow unsuccessfully

The Times of Navratri- Edition 4

2009-09-25T06:31:00.001-07:00

Sometime in 2008, Mumbai J

Midterms, horrible they are. I always thought the worst gets over after coming to a b-school, this is over and above worst. Midterms are on and Falguni sings daily next to the hostel, well Navratri used to be different earlier.

This Navratri hasn't been great, it had been just Okay, before it turned slightly awesome. Till now just one day it felt like Navratri as I kept a fast and went with one of my friend to Vrindi to have sabudana vada. Apart from that it hardly feels like one, b-school surely kills all the festivities and festivals.

So our midterms ended and a senti Ajayjeet cribbing about not being at home on Durga Pooja for the first time in his life told me about Lokhandwaala Pooja. (senti Ajayjeet and Tommie had also tricked one of the profs using this sentipanna to get a deadline extended J). By being as dramatic as Ajayjeet can get, he convinced me. Another option to celebrate was that few of my friends were heading for the Falguni garba.

Garba- well childhood and Gujarat I had lot of it but Durga Pooja, haven't been to one for many years now. Ajayjeet's pitch of having khichdi, mishit dohi & bong sweets finally had me in. Although he also pitched about Bong Girls (arguably amongst the best in the country), but that was a point of parity in both the options (Garba Costumed girls giving them equal, if not more competitionJ)

So I, Ajayjeet, and lot of us went for the durga pooja, few of them also opted for Garba.

As I entered the pendal, it was time to get nostalgic, the beautiful pendal, the sound of shankha, the dhol & the beautiful idol of Maa Durga. We had a few sweets and then Ajayjeet with couple of guys met Abhijeet- the Singer. Awesome guy he is, talked nicely to all of us and arranged entry passes for the Euphoria show, for all 28 of us!!!

So we entered, danced, singed and enjoyed that night with Palash & co. One disappointment was the fact that the crowd was short on bong girls, or maybe I didn't spot them J, ajayjeet does that too well ;)

Not an elaborate celebration, but enough for b-school days, more than enough.

p.s. - I have forgotten about episode 3, i.e. the Bangalore days, sadly didn't visit Mysore Dusshera, but don't remember anything at all on what we did?

Technorati Tags: Navratri

The Times of Navratri- Edition 2

2009-09-23T06:24:00.001-07:00

Sometime in 2002, somewhere in Gujarat

Hostel life, weird quizzes & scary electronics course make up my life nowadays. Although I am enjoying riding cycle daily to college and me and my roomie Sajeev have been losing weight, and lots of it. I enjoy programming, and lot of bak bak we do in hostels. But midterms are coming up.

Bored by studies me and Prajjwal were thinking of only one thing, Navratri. Apart from my memories in childhood and Prajjwal's quest of finding cool places in city another motivator was Vishal- our hostel supervisor. His story of condom sales spiking up 10 times during Dandiya season in Gujarat & all nooks and corners of building being occupied by couples doing you-know-what was enough to fuel… fuel us to goto Garba.

So we tried to convince everyone, starting from our dear 83 block. Puneet & Krunal; the lovely legged Sainy, simple Sajeev, tanabesh & his peacocked roomie. Prajjwal asked a few girls, but given the midterm was on, no one was ready for it. So me and Prajjwal begin our journey towards the nearby Sector's garba.

Rs. 10 entry was well within our budgets, although it sounded insane to me that people paid for entering garba (of course later on I came to know about paying 1000 bucks for entering it J). As we entered it was a mix of nostalgia, teenage fantasies and bhakti bhavna all packed into one.

Well we entered and kept on watching junta dancing, and we kept on watching and watching.

Garba is the bestest form of dance ever I thought, and Prajjwal agreed, still trying to look for his favorite Dilli-ish girls. But he too lost interest and then we just immersed into the excitement of dance & music. We didn't enter the arena, firstly we didn't wear proper attire and secondly we were too shy to dance in front of these awesome performers.

We were standing and we found our ever sweating- rock music loving- calculus prof. Nice Guy he is. So we chatted with Prof. Chatterjee on a zillion things. An awesome night where we were mesmerized by dance, the devotion for Devi Ma & and slightly disappointed at our Prof. not offering us a cold drink.

And the initial thoughts, well in teenage days they are never gone, but still parked for sometime J

2 years later

Garba time in college, the arena is ready, guys dressed up in Kurta-Pyjama, girls shining in their traditional attire. That day most of them had taken a bath it seems ( a popular perception within my batch that like guys, even girls were lazy enough not to take a bath J) and sort of put some make up too. A rarity again J

Well we danced and had loads of fun, this time it was post the midterms too.

Few days later

Chachu said, yeh ek aitihaasik kshaan hoga, jab hum Ravan ka dahan karenge. So all of us started from a few Bamboo frames, loads of Fevicol (everyone smelled of it that day), crackers and whole loads of masti constituted the process of making our college's first ravan. Painted black and around 15 feet tall, it was constructed on the A-D wing junction and carried to the ground. The night was fun as the Ravan caught fire and Chachu set up his famous havan later.

But us raat sab Pyaase hi soye the J

Final Year

Puneet still believed in the first year Vishal theory, and he insisted that during our final year we try out the Hot Shot Garba at Karnavati Club. For a Rs. 200 entry it was worth the no. of well tattoed backs we saw, and heard a 3rd/4th runner up Indian Idol singer. All of the city's super rich were there and it seems lot of so called setting is done there. Still this one didnt beat the simple garba of sectors near our college.

And Puneet still remains, well he remains... :)

Technorati Tags: Navratri

The Times of Navratri- Edition 1

2009-09-18T05:17:00.001-07:00

Sometime in 1998, somewhere in Chattisgarh

Navratri is the best time of the year. Like yesterday I left from home at around 5 PM. After our customary cricket match at the abandoned tennis court we cycled to the Pooja Area. The Bengali Samiti in township begins the Durga Pooja ceremony on Shashti and so the preparations were on for that. After that me with few of my friends moved to Santosh Chaat Bhandaar near Indra complex. After a few paani puris we visited the Navdurga Pendal next to Ambedkar Auditorium. Here the Devi there for all 9 days of Navratri.

After that we moved to the house of Ayush, next to his house in a Badminton playing area Chauhan uncle organizes Garba. We didn't dance but went upto the terrace on Ayush's block and were just looking at Garba & especially our new found interest of ogling at girls. Well Nipunjai says that there are couple of nice girls on the other end of the circle so we watched there, and then we watched a whole gang of them. Also behind them were the so called lafoots of the township. The difference between us and them, well we move around on cycles, them on motorcycles; we hide and watch girls and at max giggle post that, but they are quite visible and vocal in the way they WATCH.

Anyway after lot of bird watching we moved to Jagran program at Navdurga Pendal. Its very peaceful and the best part is almost everyone from the township is there.

Today I woke up late. The best part about this navaratri is that this one is after the exams, when it happens before the exams it kills the fun. Well today is when the Durga sits in the Mandir complex so should get ready for that.

After the morning pooja there is Bhog. All the Kids are supposed to help in serving the Bhog to all who come to eat. Again the whole community is here to pray and have Prasad. So we served everyone and btw did I describe the Prasad.

A sweet, but well that wasn't the attraction. You have Khichdi & chutney. Superbly awesome Bengali khichdi cooked in Desi Ghee, and along with that Chutney made of Khajoor and Papita. Awesomely awesome…

All who helped to serve get Extra Ghee as reward!!!

4 days later…

Another Navratri ended L. Dusshera was awesome yesterday and so were the Durga Devi visarjan in the morning, we went on the truck to the lake and danced a lot on the way. After that in the evening I watched the Dusshera from the balcony of Indian Coffee House munching on Special Masala Dosa and Frooti (felt like sitting in Royal Box at Wimbledon). Dusshera is like a mela, everyone from everywhere on earth assembles on the KV football ground. And the fireworks were awesome.

Now school will start again, boring…

Technorati Tags: Navratri

Back to Regular stuff...

2009-08-29T12:23:00.001-07:00

As tonight's super-heavy, super-aweFome Gujju/Rajasthani dinner struggles to sink in my belly I can't help thinking about the past few days. After a trimester where I indulged in activities beyond my comfort zone, there was hardly any padhai in my life, I lost touch with most of my friends & my beloved acts, and the final day even my cavity dilling erupted out :), but in the end was Happies Endings...

Looking at everyone over the past few days, I found many new things about many people, found so many broken at times, fixed up the other day, and in that dily-dobly state of being happy-sad. I too went through the curve, but as another new chapter in long cherished firm of mine beckons I am super excited about just being there. Also staying childhood langotiya and meeting him after so many years would be awesome too. Gurgaon-Delhi-Noida sounds great as of now :)

Although sometimes I felt not so good too about all this, and a few things were dissapointing at times. But finally as everyone is happy, I feel good too.

My team was awesome, and so were my boss log who kept there calm throughout it, team was simply awesome :)

Plan to be more regular with regular things in life from now on ... :)

is this the end???

2009-08-15T09:59:00.000-07:00

Is this the end of the much thought of Small City Dreams, or is it just another passing phase. Past few months have been the most boring in my life, I am through my worst days in terms of doing what I was best at. I miss the detailed research I went through for every new food item I had & every new food joint I tried, I don't watch, hardly anytime for digesting news items leave politics. I have read just one book in the past more than one year & above all I have lost touch with most of my friends (which brings to end the notion that MBA enhances networking, it just kills it, you hardly can sustain your existing network, for those who say who do it, maybe they hardly had any before coming here.), and also I realize that I am hardly any good at writing anything.

So maybe the end of the Small City Dreams as all this bound to happen, but I am sure that they would soon to surface, not now, but maybe a few years down the line.

Till then I think it would be great if get back some other pleasures of my life back in place.

Last Week

2009-07-26T12:28:00.000-07:00

I have worked for two years, but sometimes a week can be heavier than that and much much longer than that. Some happiness followed by tonnes of feedback, mostly not so good about whatever you thought you were always good on, coming mostly for people who are not that relevant, but sometimes they are too.

Then an odd day when you don't have anything to worry about, you had the whole bunch of people you like so much to worry about. All of them with their sunk faces was hardly encouraging.

And then there were submissions, exams and some scribbling on forms and papers as always.

All of it is hardly joyful, dissonance resonates here, (and as one of my friend here tells me, all this effect is getting cumulative, lost and getting further lost) and I need to get over it. And at the end of it all, being high on a bit of Vodka remains the only bit of bliss I had.

Looking forward for a happier week ahead, but I hardly remember what being happy was, those moments are hard to find nowadays.

Me Too...

2009-06-14T15:24:00.000-07:00

While writing this short writeup on Me Too Brands, I realise its already 03:52 AM.

Me Too is sad today because,

1) India out of T20 World Cup
2) India out of T20 World Cup
3) Me got pissed of in class today, my so called Intellectual Class can show all sensually charged ads, but giggles kiddishly when Freud was discussed
4) India out of T20 World Cup
5) Some regular no sleep syndrome after doing tonners of clerikal work
6) Writing a writeup for another irrelevant assignment, few will read, no one ever implements anything here
7) India out of T20 World Cup
8) India out of T20 World Cup
9) We couldn't work properly on another bplan contest, again!!! :(
10) Haven't met one of my friend for ages, the dinner got canceled, and now she is nowhere to be found!!! btw she is in this college too :((
11) India out of T20 World Cup
12) India out of T20 World Cup
13) Memory getting worse
14) India out of T20 World Cup
15) India out of T20 World Cup

Last time when we lost in 2007, it was sought of ajeeb types bad...

Me Too was sad today, as many others, I just hope I get some sleep tomorrow in class, and then Me Too can dream of the next world cup...

Speaking as someone else...

2009-06-10T09:47:00.000-07:00

Every new stage in the life introduces you to lot of new things. This one has brought an environment Cultural shifts, a maturity level in establishing relationships, mood swings arising from a hectic schedule. And as everything else in this program, it fails to be consistent.

People swing from extreme forms of conservatism to the radical, and hardly any stand is conservative. Stupid-Dumb to the extremely intelligent, laziness to diligence, I fail to understand most of it.

And people it, from giggling on everything "Sensual" shown in class, to justifying the rationale behind "sex sells", I hardly find a strand of conviction. One second they are the all progressive kinds, hailing from metros, the other they cant digest petty things here, leave alone someone's freedom of expression.

I still am caught in the small town idiosyncrasies of conservatism and rigid thinking, but I think its sometime better than switching so much....

And Respect, well I have my biases, which everyone has, but atleast something is left.

Influencing People and all the other things...

2009-06-09T15:25:00.000-07:00

It can be an extremely simple act, you want people to do what you want, to induce yourself in them. All of you which is Good, Bad or Ugly tries to penetrate them. We need a mirror everywhere, we want to see self in everyone.

And the preys, well they are freely available, vulnerable souls waiting for someone to take control.

I sometimes wish I could be a prey, but I am not at all that types, I sometimes tend to be blatantly expectant and try to be the hunter.

Leave me though, I am not relevant. I see the few influenced ones around me, and just wish that they were better off. Changing patterns in their life keeps them away from normal, way away.

Let things be simple and normal. Again.

Simplicity would be the way to happiness, maybe not eternal bliss, but just to keep things normal.

Ghajini-isation of my once famous memory

2009-05-23T02:58:00.000-07:00

It pays to do an MBA, but we part with things to do it too. Money, Sleep and now memory top the list of my key take-aways from this course.

Once called DesiPedia I still am doing well with my strategic memory (so called long term memory, the junk facts and figures, although doing bad with names), but I tend to forget small regular items ( read tactical memory loss).

My story might be similar to a not upgraded computer which boasted of a 20GB hard disk 4 years back (or that of Chacha Chaudhary: His brain used to work faster than a computer, but those were the days of the great 386, and maybe thats why this generation of Kids moved away from him).

My memory tools: a small spiral pad which helps me remember tasks and followup with them. Most of the people who tend to be busy around me are found with that item nowadays. And it helps.

I know it can get worse than this, but still I will never ever go for tattoos :) or that haircut.

Strangely all this happened without Asin in my life ;), wonder if it would have made things much worse or better?

My playlist plays Guzarish from Ghajini :D

Short and Sweet Holi :)

2009-03-10T23:13:00.000-07:00

10-11:15 Am on 11th Mar'09

Shortest Holi ever for me, it started and ended pretty soon. But we won.

We won over the Kala Bandar of exams, quizzes, tension of assignments of the two end terms tomorrow.

But still Kala Bandar managed to win over a few... :(

Still BH and GH celebrated a quick, nice, rangeen, kichad bhari Holi. As always we have had maximum fun when the batch has been together.

Last year was a classic Holi, rooftop in Bangalore, sipping Kailasa made Thandai, Mithai and then drinking beer basking in sunlight, ekdum Shawshank Redemption ishtyle :)

Wishing a Happy Holi to everyone visiting the Blog.

कॉमिक्स और हमारा बचपन

2009-03-10T06:38:00.000-07:00

लुईस कैरोल की एलिस को कल्पना के उस अद्भुत संसार में जाने के लिए खरगोश महाशय के घर का रास्ता नापना होता था लेकिन मुझे (याने जब में बच्चा था) या मेरे जैसे कई भारतीय बच्चो को अपने घर के कुछ आधे किलो मीटर की परिधि में कोई सोनू या मनोज लाइब्रेरी ढूंढनी होती थी | उसके बाद तो बस अपने कल्पना के संसार में डूब जाने के लिए हम आजाद होते थे |

नागराज, ध्रुव, परमाणु, भोकाल, तौसी, हवालदार बहादुर, बांकेलाल, चाचा चौधरी, बिल्लू, पिंकी, साबू और ना जाने कितने ही किरदार जीवन का एक हिस्सा बन गए थे | अब जब में पीछे मूड कर देखता हूँ तो यह सोच कर ख़ुशी होती है की भले ही चोरी छुपे या लड़ झगड़ कर भी मैंने कॉमिक्स पढ़ी है तो अच्छा ही किया है, वरना जीवन की ये यादें कभी नहीं बना पाता |

जहाँ तक मुझे याद है कॉमिक्स पढने की खुमारी गर्मी की छुट्टियों में सर चढ़ कर बोलती थी | और कॉमिक्स खरीदना तो काफी महंगा सौदा था इसलिए लगभग हम सभी मित्र किसी ना किसी लाइब्रेरी के सदस्य बन जाते थे और किराए से कॉमिक्स ले आया करते थे | उन चौबीस घंटो के समय में सभी दोस्तों को एक दुसरे की भी कॉमिक्स ख़तम करनी होती थी तो बस फिर क्या कॉमिक्स लाइब्रेरी से ली और पढना चालू एक आधी तो घर पहुँचते पहुँचते ही ख़तम हो जाया करती थी |

शुरूआती दिनों में जहाँ से मुझे याद है कॉमिक्स का किराया होता था पचास पैसे और डाइजेस्ट का एक रुपैया लेकिन हाई रे महंगाई बाद में किराया तय हो गया था कॉमिक्स के दाम का दस प्रतिशत याने ८ रुपैये की कॉमिक्स ८० पैसे में | कॉमिक्स न सिर्फ आपकी कल्पना शीलता को एक नया आयाम देती है अपितु व्यवहारिक ज्ञान में भी वृद्धि कराती है | जैसे आप देख ही सकते है की कभी न कभी तो आपने अपने किसी मित्र के साथ साझेदारी में लाइब्रेरी खोली ही होगी, और कुछ चव्वनी अट्ठनी का मुनाफा कमा कर खुश भी हुए होंगे | लो जी बन गए आप उद्यमी (entrepreneur) !

लेकिन इन सब से बढ़कर बौद्धिक विकास में सबसे मददगार साबित होते थे मित्रो के साथ कॉमिक्सों पर गहन विचार विमर्श ! जी हाँ कौन सा नायक किस नयी शक्ति के साथ आया है, किस नायक को सबसे मुश्किल खलनायक से जूझना पड़ता था, यदि ये दोनों नायक साथ में आये तो ज्यादा अच्छा कौन लडेगा इत्यादि | बिना शक्तियों के दुश्मनों के मात देने वाला सुपर कमांडो ध्रुव मेरा पसंदीदा नायक हुआ करता था | और ध्रुव के खलनायको के ऊपर तो विचार विमर्श मैंने देशपांडे के साथ माइंड ट्री में रहते हुए भी किया था | उदाहरण के लिए चुम्बा, बौना वामन, चंडकाल हाँ लेकिन ध्रुव के दोस्त भी हुआ करते थे जैसे किरिगी, धनञ्जय, येती |

अब तो कई सालों से किसी की भी सुध नहीं ली है | पर मुझे अभी भी यकिन है की ये सभी नायक अपनी जान की बाजी लगा कर आज भी विश्व को बड़े बड़े खतरों से बचा रहे होंगे और इसलिए आप भारत में या यूरोप में या अमरीका में चैन की नींद सो पा रहे है !

A mail by my friend Kapil. I think so many of us would identify with the same. Plus I love his hindi writings (read a couple of his entries secretly in Bengaluru along with Mathuru ;)). Till he has his own blog, this one will be kept by me :).

Also for my friends doing MBA, this is what a Dimdima should feel like, so maybe something like this would have determined your pitch for selling Dimdimas.

Although this is a thinking of a kid 15 years back, things have changed now.

Hardly anything great to Talk about...or maybe

2009-03-06T01:41:00.001-08:00

When I used to read Naresh's blog while he was doing MBA I always thought it is surely something which I will enjoy. Talking about things which we {include DAIICT E-Wing, Bangalore BakarBandhooze} had made a habit of was about to find its glorious destiny at a b-school.

At almost of the end of three trims it has been,

- a fight for marks, dirty one at times, me being a party to this constant usage of rand() function...
- my database of facts eroding, that too eroding badly. Desipedia is history :((
- Lack of attention, lack of focus, a future prospect for me becoming a Ghajini hero someday :) (atleast I will get Asin ;))
- horrible writing skills (blogs, reports, I cant write anything properly now)
- lack of movie gyan and watching very few movies
- a whole lot of keywords, but everything is in air. I first thought Fin was grounded, but slowly as I understand it in a better way, that too is highly Airy (financial crisis was bound to happen)
- loosing touch with zillions of my friends back across India...
- less sleep
- no more following news and random data and discussing it over ...
- no more roaming around half the hostel block and doing bakk...
- no time and no money-> (-5.5 lakhs) and further drain of cash :)

Overall the first year has been a bit disappointing for me, or maybe I expected a bit too much... but there were good moments, and they came in company of my nice of no-brainers like me here. They have been together in all the great fun here...

Memories from my Div although didn't make me that senti and all today, but they would linger around.

Maybe I talk about thing in extreme extremes, maybe its not that bad.

Just this internship in Himachal and then I am BACK :)

Although the long term plan or Strategy ( as me and my roomie recall, the most used/abused word this year) remains to minimize my un-learning and maximize sleeping time :)

Situation: Studying Convertibles and Business Law before that, have exams tomorrow
Song: Pardesi, Toshi, Dev-D...the one with 3 dancers and abhay deol drinking, right now my While(1) song :D

This movie would have surely triggered a discussion on nihilistic intentions of Dev back in Bangalore... right now they talk only about the music which is good, but something else missing

Vada-Pav, Totos and ... Girls :)

2009-01-22T03:15:00.000-08:00

Vada Pav is God's Own Food in Mumbai. Have gulped thousands of them since being in Mumbai, it comes in various formats and my favorite one is one near NM (Vile Parle) and at Shetty's in front of my college gate.

This place in Bandra, Totos- Garage Pub is really quite nice. The first time I was there back in Aug'08 with my friend we ended up standing on a small table on the side, enjoying the view of tonnes of good looking girls on the Table on View, and obviously having Beer :). I really like the place, a Chicken Roll near Carter Road CCD and a Brownie nearby always precedes the events at Totos. Overall good place...

Girls... well I hardly have had any luck with them... lets not talk... ;)

Kissa-1:

Sometime in August, me along with two of my friends, goto Totos. We drink a bit and then come across few of my friends juniors from his college. So we sit and share the table. Enter this girl, who we all know has to be good (otherwise the story won't be told :)), who comes and sits with us (seems she knows someone among the Juniors). So everyone is talking and fortunately I get a seat in front of her which gives me the freedom to talk with her for ages (it was just two hours:)). Ahha, and her boyfriend too ... he was sitting next to me. But who cares, the girl was good, enough :D

So when all the bills were cleared, she leaves a Rs. 10 tip (or maybe 20, I was drunk, but my bill was already cleared) . I told her why Tip, I think I brought a Pitcher to the Table too, why not Tip me.

"What would you do with this?"... kuch nahi, mujhe tip do, isse vada-pav khaaunga :)

Shocked and Stunned, she Tipped me :), my friend who was the closest linked to her was hiding his face and all other laughing. Don't know why they were, because I kept the note and had an awesome vada-pav of it the next day :)...

Kissa-2:

She is a nice and pretty girl, (self claimed hottie, which I dont agree :P), He is the CUTEst kid in the batch (so much so kid that he was asked for AGE proof at Totos :)). I thought will do them both a favour.

I two years of Vada Pav- for Preety Girl given that she takes Cutest Boy and introduces him to the CUTEst girl at Totos and helps him to hit on the Cutest Girl :). (No one knows who the CUTEst Girl was, rest two are friends )

Cutest Girl was sitting in a corner (with no boys around). So again will the vada pav make it, or break it. I offered Pretty Girl Beer, she refused, but then when I offered her Vada Pav, she agreed. So she took him to meet the CUTEst girl, and the rest as they say was LEGEN...DARY (Barney Stinson's Blog)

Kissa 3:

My friend enginerd was roaming in Bombay it was the day of Chatt and thousands were performing Pooja on Juhu Beach, enginerd was there too, to have a glimpse of Priyanka Chopra who apprantely was there too. I divert him to this party of bloggers (also on http://www.thevoiceinmyhead.com/2006/10/29/mandira-meets-bloggywood/) hosted by my once favorite blogger (once because I hardly read anything nowadays :)). As I was lucky enough to get invited, I thought if I am in Bangalore why doesn't my friend get the chance to have a bit of fun.

But the passing of invite came at a cost, I asked enginerd to buy 4 vadpavs from NM (or mithibai) get them packed and hand it over to the hostess. Surely something that she would remember for quite some time :) (in a party where people are bringing wine and flowers over, that was surely a differentiating factor :)).

2 years later at my college canteen I see her sitting ( i never met her but wrote for her blog sometimes long back), so I go and meet her, and remind her of the vada-pav. She recognises me on the basis of Vada Pav :) and then she remembers me as desh and then we talk :).

Conclusion:

Girls come and go, a vada-pav is forever :P

Who Enjoys It?

2009-01-16T06:23:00.000-08:00

Some are doing it, some do not. I always seem to fall in the latter. They do different things, different activities and seem to enjoy it all. For me somehow once the Primary activity starts turning a bit and infact a lot boring I seem to shed the other added ones too.

Some stand up and like giving motivational speeches, which I think are mostly worthless, some do all the work in life and you never know, and some write sitting in their 3 seater room ... :-|

I sometimes end up drinking along with my similarly-bored friend, same Old Monk with dry peanuts, Chakli and watery green chutney and discuss the same things over and over again. Its all about thinking about those great days of Work. Did I say great???

It was thinking about BTech days while being at work, although I thought that the next degree would be back to that kind of fun, but I miss something.

Miss TIME, just to be, just to roam around, discuss stupid stuff with people, read some nice stuff, read books, watch cricket all simple things in life. Taking walks during night-time through the dusty lanes here, me and another of seemingly lost friend, talk about not getting what we wanted here and what we will get after here, thats one of those simple things, but not much otherwise.

I am sick of those same old jargons, I am bored of people not knowing and saying anything about anything without thinking (ha, they call it thinking on the feet), tired of the same old classroom, excel sheets, mera DELL and writing the most stupid pieces of assignments in the history of assignments.

New Year, already half a month past and still to add that much needed freshness, because all things tend to become same over a period, especially when you are in this corner of Mumbai.

Desperately looking forward to March, time for escape to Villages and it would be fun for sure.

People think that I am frustu, but its just the lack of time and senselessness of what I am doing, I know that I need, a new pair of lenses to view the world.

Literally, these specs are old and loose now :D

10 Hour Sleep...Kidding Ain't You!!!

2008-12-20T04:38:00.000-08:00

Tired mind, tired soul, tired body, sitting in a lecture and looking at the red layer forming on my eyes is a habit now, it was the same tomorrow, my friend lal saying me that my eyes have turned lal, a quiz to attend (not the regular B-School Acad Quiz, but a general Quiz for a change), walk crazily back to the hostel, drink a chai and the 82gm Parle-G, go to room, another "Online" B-School event to work on, another unsuccessful attempt, eat dinner which has turned extremely boring nowadays and...

Sleep...Sleep...Sleep

Roomie wake me up at 12, I know I always say that but surely wake me up, have loads to study, me putting an alarm too...gnite

Sleep...Sleep...Sleep

A Foggy room, smell of rain, nice and cool feeling, "The Straight Drive is his favorite shot, they not that, we know that", the sound of Mark Nicholas from Cricket 2007, the mobile says its 11:45, roomie1 and another guy from my wing onto Cricket, they love EA Sports Cricket07 here and it has caught on with lot of people recently, roomie2 studying most probably what looks like FM, I wake up, sit and sit for 5 mins, I do some badbad and say that I am very tired and want to sleep. I spend five mins thinking about what to do next, and then think why not just lie down for five more minutes...

Sleep...Sleep...Sleep

Sleep...Sleep...Sleep

Sleep...Sleep...Sleep

Looks like a nice long shopping street, like "The Mall Road" on every Hill Station, its nice and cool, I am walking, but why alone, I have no clue. Oh, how come he is here, he and his wife, I am meeting them for the first time after his marriage, he still seems the same.

"Sorry yaar I couldn't make it to your wedding, how could I have, I have no time"

"It seems thats the only line you have picked up after going to a b-school"

I don't talk to his wife and both of them just walk away...

Sleep...Sleep...Sleep

Sleep...Sleep...Sleep

Sleep...Sleep...Sleep

An office, I don't know where it is, looks like a decent enough one, nice and clean, a sort of a bluish-saawariya-ish tinge to the whole place, I fail to understand why am I here. Hey I know her, I know her for sure, its the same ...hmm wait, cant really make out her face, its a bit blurred, infact everything is blurred.

A change in office from Salt Lake Kolkata to Mumbai is required, she is not getting it, we meet talk about it and start walking. Keep Walking as the good old Johny said (Diageo's Johny :)). Nice Breeze, great weather, me doing bakbak as I always do, she responding sometimes as she always did!!! Hand in Hand, the touch of her hands, we talk for about 15 mins or so whooffff she goes...

Sleep...Sleep...Sleep

Sleep...Sleep...Sleep

Aaah, the pleasure of a stiffness in the body when you wake up after long time (I just cant imagine what would have happened to Rip Van Winkle), roomie 1 still sleeping, roomie 2 sitting straight with his chadar on his head (in a meditating pose), nice breeze flowing through the window. It seems it rained at night, aaaah, the smell of Fresh Air, for the first time in ages. Pre-Reads and assignments, chuck it yaar, its 7:45, lecture starts at 9, anyway can't do it.

It feels great to sleep for 10 hours sometimes, especially in a b-school where the only thing we lack is that, had a fresh day with no sleeping in lecture today, and even the weather is good with slight helpings of Rain making the day every pleasant.

And see, sometimes sleep is the only time where my imagination runs wild nowadays, it used to different before...

200201094 was surely much enjoyable and relaxing than PGP-08-003 (my GTalk status nowadays)

p.s.- Please no Freudian Interpretation of Dreams or Jungian for that matter, I tried reading the first one unsuccesfully and the second one too slightly, both not successful...

A Part of me Died

2008-11-10T08:31:00.000-08:00

Dada, Dada will never ever play again. After the post lunch victory, reality has just started sinking in. It has been eight hours after that historic victory but I have no other thoughts other than Dada in mind right now.

I almost ran into tears as I went through this article Losing my Religion. Its one the best articles on Cricket I have ever read. As Siddhartha Vaidyanathan narrates his story me and all my friends across India felt that he is telling our story. I thank him for writing such a great article. As I looked at this phrase in the post, a part of me died, I felt the same. All these cricketers have been as indispensable to me as my body parts and as they go slowly I feel a great sense of loss and sadness. Its almost the formal end of my childhood which lasted so long due to these great players and the day Tendulkar goes life would never be the same again. Just today I said to someone that almost 4 years of my 24 year life has gone in thinking, watching, playing and talking about Cricket, and these guys made it possible.

I don't know what to write, Dada has been a Dada for me, as a Big Brother he has given me and so many other Indians great moments which we would cherish throughout our life. 1996 when he and Dravid came into the team, I missed his first test hundred. I heard that there is this new guy who is king of off side, bowls some nice swingers too and is very similar to David Gower. His elegant off side drives gives me fond memories of my childhood, after Dada every kid in my township started playing strokes on the offside (generally it was considered that leg side is more scoring with a tennis bowl). Almost invariably when he used to open with Sachin and take first strike he would hit a sweet boundary through the off side. I vaguely recall him hitting Pollock many a times through the off side, the bowl slowly travelling to the fence, and Boycott all praises for the Prince of Kolkata.

As I came from class 6th in 1996 to the 2000's 10th board, Dada had become a prolific run getter in one dayers, I had remained the same students, in the years had passed an unsuccessful world cup, The God becoming the captain unsuccessfully, azhar going in and out of the team, a World Cup where Dada scored a brilliant 183 at Taunton, a World Cup in which I didn't sleep at night and and went into tears momentarily when South Africa lost in the semis, lot of Coca Cola cups at Sharjah where Tendulkar and Dada were killing all bowling attacks, a Sahara Cup where Dada set himself as an all rounder, a period of change in Cricket when Wills ended its sponsorship with the Indian team, Jagmohan Dalmiya headed the ICC, and above all a disgraceful India South Africa series. And then it was Captain DADA.

Although I was a Dada fan but it was after he took up captaincy my respect for him increased, as he and his side with few new players started winning it was a different feeling altogether. Dada positioned the Indian Team as an aggressive unit, for the first time in history I felt that Indian Team was doing something like this, change which Dada brought about was zillion times more than Obama used the word in his campaign. Change we need was brought and it was just amazing. The Great Eden victory still comes in my dream, and the Natwest one, or India almost ruining Steven Waugh's farewell in Australia, and the 2003 World Cup and so many others.

Lot of memories, but sadness is blurring most of them today. Some not so good ones of Dada's spat with Greg Chappell and him being dropped after the Zimbabwae tour, some of prayers which we did for his return to Cricket, some extremely funny like me saying Jai Dada aloud in front of a Dada poster with 20 people standing around before my XAT exam last year in Bangalore, some drunken memories of me and my friend dimpy, patrick and sussu drinking and praying for Dada to score during our tragic loss to Bangladesh in last year's World Cup, more drunkard ones of me and the quark and the enginerd and Ati-Say supporting Dada, and Sandy and Mathuru and Mandu supporting Dravid and Barve as always confused :), some meoments where I cursed Greg Chappel like had none other in my life, two historic moments when I watched Dada Live on stadium, him hitting a Six to Vettori during a Test match in Ahmedbad, him winning in the IPL opener at Bangalore this year, never saw him in one days, some more cursing for Bucknor when half the times gave pathetic decisions to Dada and many a times helped the cause of getting Dada a ban, some moments which I was ashamed of as Dada's Pepsi ad, and another million memories.

I hope Dada finds happiness in whatever he does next, he enjoys life and cricket and some time with his family.

I am happy that I can tell my kids 20 years from now that Dada was there, because I don't think they would ever see a player like him again, they will ever feel the emotions of the game we all love in the same way as we did, but as Siddartha pointed out in his article we belong to this generation and for all of us its a very sad day. Hope is what I have and I hope there will be many more greats who will play for the Indian Cricket Team. In the current lot I don’t have that feel for anyone other than Sehwag or Dhoni. Lets Hope.

So finally this is it, as the Quark would have told me in his favourite singer Jim Morrison's words, this is the end, beautiful friend, or debu would murmured his Darkness filling up the room dialouge, one thing I know, I have lost something which is irreplaceable.

God give me the strength, I would badly need it on the Day when Tendulkar retires.

Technorati Tags: Sourav Ganguly, Dada, Cricket, India

Sunny Paaji da Tashan :)

2008-11-03T12:45:00.001-08:00

It all started with Quark again showing his appreciation for Cinema which only few like us appreciate :). Here he learns from the greatest fighters in Tamil and Telugu industry.

Watch it and enjoy Big Brother, because every family has a saviour :)

Paaji ka ek aur chamatkar, Jeet ka Mahaan Dance, remixed!!!

Technorati Tags: Sunny Deol

Bye-Bye Jumbo

2008-11-02T11:08:00.000-08:00

18 years, for 18 years they waited that he will turn the bowl, and he didn't.

Anil Kumble was never the conventional spinner, one who turns the bowl much, infact at one time we as kids used to discuss how Venkatesh Prasad's cutters turn more than Kumble's leg breaks. But what he had was consistency, over after over he used to place batsman on a grill. If Warnie and Murali had all the fast food instant items, Kumble was of the Tandoori variety, slow and effective.

As a kid my friend Anirvaan or Rikki a big fan of Kumble use to imitate him and his action exactly. So much so that after every bowl he used to adjust his specs (something which the Kumble of those days with a specs and moustache used to do). Tall and broad he resembled Kumble and used to bowl day in and day out like him. His imitation was on similar lines as that of Shameek's Prasad action or my Arshad Khan action :).

Kumble's earliest memories take me back to Hero Cup, where he took 6/12 (if I am not mistaken) against a pretty strong West Indies side. India won that series and that was the first time Day and Night Cricket happened in India. Most from my generation remember that as the first time we saw cricket. (Although I remember the 1992 world cup too, good memory you see :)).

Kumble cleaning up the stumps of Richie Richardson is something I vaguely remember.

From those days Kumble had a great ability to bowl straight, consistently probing the batsmen. Flipper and Googly, both his main weapons surprised the batsmen. He used to slowly setup the batsmen and then use them as weapons which more often than not resulted in success.

Azhar had a major contribution in shaping up the career of Anil Kumble along with India's manager in those days, Ajit Wadekar. Throughout the days of Azhar India remained unbeaten at home and Anil Kumble was one of the major reasons for that. During that period Kumble cemented his position as the undisputed domestic champion.

With Dada came a change, India started winning abroad and Anil Kumble contributed to its success in australia, W Indies, England and South Africa. He had a mkor role to play in all its victories abroad.

There are three moments which stand out for any Kumble fan- the ten wicket haul against Pakistan at Kotla, I still remember praying to god for the final wicket of Akram which he took; his jaw breaking effort at Antigua test where he claimed the wicket of Lara and bowled even with a broken Jaw; the Sydney test (Steve Waugh's farewell series) which he bowled superbly and we came very close to a series victory (thanks to Parthiv Patel and Mr. Bucknor we didnt win it). Although I would like to add another, the Perth test in which he led us to victory last season after the Sydney MonkeyGate scandal. That was another moment which stands out for me.

When he left the stadium at Kotla that day, I suddenly had a feeling of immense respect for this cricketer whose importance many of us realise now. His match winning contribution to Indian Crikcet is unparalleled and a spinner like Kumble will rarely appear on World Stage again.

Hail Kumble and may he have great success in whatever he does next.

Extra Bites:

Harsha Bhogle has paid a great tribute to this great cricketer, read it.

My post on gilly's retirement earlier in the year

Coming up is the super sad moment of Dada retiring :((

Technorati Tags: Anil Kumble, Indian Cricket

City 3-tier

2008-09-04T08:37:00.000-07:00

After two and a half months at SP, it seems I have slowly started realising the fact that most my bakbak, most of my stupid and sometimes interesting jokes (although I try to relate them with loads of real life examples), most of ideas relate to 3-tier cities. Thanks to one of my friends here who made me realise the importance of Small City Dreams again.

You talk of a Loreal and I move to Chik Shampoos, talk of Britannia and I talk about the reach of Parle-G, someone mentions a detergent and there I start with Karsanbhai and Nirma. It seems brans with huge mass appeal and great reach attarct me more than glossy and high end brands. Nothing against any of them, just that I somehow realte easily to the mass-brands.

It comes from my upbringing at Korba, that small town which nobody has heard of (people find it difficult even to locate Chattisgarh at times) and the diversity I witnessed there. Just came back from 1st Ganapati visarjan here at Versova Beach which reminded me of my days there, still crave for the Ganesh Chaturthi get-togethers and the Durga Pooja Pendal excitement.

In between loads of padhai-likhai for which I have been completely uninterested for the past few days, I think this is something which will keep me a bit motivated for 2 years.

All that old song singing, recalling DD serials during free time, talking about politics (which many consider small-townish), talking about regular dal-aata issues rather than using MacroEconomics to dissect issues and complicate them, or even hating to pay so much for movies it comes naturally to me.

Lets take the Tata Nano issue for instance, everyone ta my college (that issue super hot, in classes, outside it too) have been cribbing about Tata not being able to succed and W.Bengal not taking advantage of a great oppurtunity. Having had the oppurtunity to live in Bengal for few days I have a slight idea what people there think, how people there work and I can judge the situation with some better clarity. I won't put my judgement here though, thats another issue.

Whatever it is, slowly its getting difficult to assimilate so much happening in class, I think its better I slowly start building upon my interests and giving it some direction.

Destination 3-Tier surely looks promising again.

Theory of Sleep Management

2008-08-05T13:34:00.000-07:00

The best thing you learn at a B-School is "Time Management"

Ok, there were so many MBA's out there who said that to me. But that was before I joined a B-School, now that I have joined one of the best ones around, I have realised that its not at all about time. It's about something which we all enjoy doing, SLEEPING.

This is what David Allen says on Time Management (first thing on Wiki page of this topic),

You can't manage time, it just is. So "time management" is a mislabeled problem, which has little chance of being an effective approach. What you really manage is your activity during time, and defining outcomes and physical actions required is the core process required to manage what you do.

We will try to rephrase it in context of Sleep through the length of this post. Anyway coming back to a B-School, in between all the subjects, quizzes, assignments, those group works, lectures, hostel, everything involves a bit of sleep. There is no more physical exercise (except the stupid dancing sessions we have at Boy's Hostel sometime), it all about giving rest to your mind. Although sleep does provide for Physical Exercise, you can sleep on sides, straight, upside down (as I do nowadays), also while sleeping in classroom, you can bend your neck which is highly effective against neck pain, then you can stretch your elbows and press your cheeks against those cold tables....Ahaa

People sleep in Class, thats a universal fact, the first time I slept in class was post school though, that was at a FIITJEE center New Delhi where I went for a IIT crash course. By the way I also slept while working on a B-Plan(plan related to IIT's) recently.

Also you find variety of people obsessed with sleeping in different ways, my friend hasodi here asked me yesterday to ping her every half hour to keep her awake, but she slept before the first ping happened, then you see a nice chirpy fellow on the 3rd floor of my hostel who I have seldom seen fully awake, and then there is this lady here, who asks questions while she is sleeping, and a Happy Sardar who just ensures that his eyes turn tomatoes but he doesn’t sleep.

I have my own unique style, its like a camera shutter, those eyes behind those specs of mine ( I have broken two since coming to Mumbai) shut on and off. Its basically my mind which tries to sleep, but somewhere there is that conscious which tells me, come on Desi, you should listen to the lecture, you should study. What finally gets through the mind is my favourite dish, khichdi.

Any activity at a B-School and you need to cut down on your sleep, not on your time, although it might be related but I believe sleep and food are related to productivity than no other thing. A chain ki neend ensures proper completion of activities and better concentration. Now this is what the experts say, the more I sleep at night, the more I sleep in classes is the relationship I have observed.

To summarise, your stay at B-School is a function of Sleep Management and not time.

Success = K X SleepFactor

Where K is a correction factor, for me its food, for some others it maybe finding a girlfriend at B-School etc etc. Sleepfactor is a number calculated on the basis of hours you sleep. Its basically an average number of hours slept for a particular time period. Although I am not sure whether this may follow inferential statistics and this maybe extended to the overall Success over two years...

Enough of all this bakwaas, let us try to reframe the theory I quoted at the beginning,

You can't manage SLEEP, it just comes to you naturally. So "sleep management" is a mislabeled problem, which has little chance of being an effective approach. What you really manage is your activity during SLEEP(read dreaming, asking questions etc.), and defining the number of hours of sleep, and your outcomes and external factors required(read mattress, tables, chairs, music while sleeping etc.) required is the core process required to manage how you sleep.

I just feel while publishing this that this is my worst post ever, totally irrelevant and useless, Dahi Vada and Aalasya, aahaa, those were the days.

First month at...

2008-07-16T20:40:00.000-07:00

I am a month old in this MBA thing today, just woke up to the sound of the Jhaaduwaala on a lazy Thursday morning. The only day that I remember nowadays, about the rest I am pretty oblivious. Have lost the sense of days, always feel sleepy, get bored in the classes quite often, sleep in classes, have to attend them all, dont get much time to roam around in Mumbai and I am still to meet few of my dearest friends here due to lack of time.

But still I am loving it, although MBA is much much different from the pre-conceived notions of yours truly, it needed a slight adjustment in my strategy to approach it, hopefully I am tweaking it right.

Don't think I am all that bored and down and out, this is the way we live, infact this is a new way of enjoying things, and last month has been great with lots and lots of interesting stuff happening. Few of the highlights being,

The amazing reception I got here, thanks to my friend Dhari, I will never forget that.
Getting back along with Pillu Bhai and Patrick Baba for a Alcoholic BakBak session, old days ishtyle.
The first classes here, my fear for Mathematics coming back, my liking for Fin increasing, etc etc
The only movie I saw here, the one in which Pappu cant dance saala, waste for 200 bucks.
Toto's and getting the 10 Rs tip :))
Still avoiding a ZERO in any QM quiz here :D
Freshers, all that stupid effort we put in for preparing some of the most pathetic ads which make Leo Burnett alive just to kick us.
KHAULTI KHABREIN
Quite a cheerful group of friends assembled here, one a Bangalore continuation, one reminds me so much of Sandy that I don't feel he can be anything else, one a DAIICT ka bak baadshah and another namesake of my super nachaiya friend from DAIICT and many more including a 2/3rd CA.
Room-mates one of whom reminds me of an unpolished Rajeev of the First sem at DAIICT, the other is interestingly named as a English word for Pyaar and initial trends suggest that he is an excellent student.
A very very enthu batch especially when it comes to asking questions in class, anyway I just love everyone :)
A very cute bunch of girls ;)
Birthday celebrations here.
Screwing up Foundation exams :((

Those were a few, anyway the thing different between Mumbai and Bangalore is that at Bangalore I had loads of time, empty time, which is less here, one needs to just give up a bit on his/her sleep to be part of lots of great activities, lets see whether I would be able to do that.

Right now a trip to Khandala today is all that I am looking for... :)

Bye Bye Bangalore

2008-05-19T21:07:00.000-07:00

It's Game Over Bangalore.
14th June' 2006- 16th May'2008

So bye bye to my first job, to all those Hot Idlis, Dosas and Coffees, Mysore Pak :), Super Expensive movies(which I never saw, I saw only at super cheap places), those farewell parties and non-farewell parties, bits and bytes of alcohol, the niceness of Jayanagar, the famous 201 bus, lots of blogging, all that stupid CAT preparation, good weather, lots of cute looking girls whom I only watched at times, all that Dada vs Dravid discussion, Kannada Songs, late nights at office and returning back home in cab on a strange empty road, Vasanthi on Radio City, my bus journey to office, BMTC buses, Majestic, heavily crowded city market, even more heavily crowded Forum, the UnBanglorish BTM, Highly Bangalorish Basvangudi, the farway lands of Yelhenka and Hebbal, Volvo Buses, MTR, Food Street, juice shop near Kamkhya, the cooking we did, EB(Emotional Black-male, our so called pet dog), all those stupid styreet dogs, those stinking chicken shops, a housemaid who talks to only one person, has an animagus Crow and does black magic at night, to all my office mates and great friends I made at work, my reunion with many of my old school friends, and my continued union with all my DAIICT friends. I will miss everything.

Above all I will miss my roomies at Seshgiri and the Three Towers of Kathriguppe( a clan famously known as Kathriguppe ke Kutte)- including seshigiri and two other houses inhabitated by fellow daiictians who became great friends at Bangalore.

It Mumbai... this Summer

Technorati Tags: Bangalore

Pyar-Shyar Waali Thappi

2008-05-08T01:04:00.000-07:00

Although I don't pass on this Tag thing much and seldom indulge into it but still pick up this one from Cuckoo, simply because I enjoy reading whatever she writes. No major fuss and I will just fullfill the Tag. By the way Tag,

First heard this word when in WWF (WWE as known then) my favorite Tag Team combo Smoking Guns used to play. Even Brett and Owen Heart became a Tag-Team.
Whenever we used to play RaceTrip(Chupan chupai), Kabbadi, Pitthul or Cricket we commonly used the term Thappi (given as a promissory note to the receiver which can give him extraordinary powers like having two batting chances, two out chances in Pitthul or in RaceTrip). Someone from the southern parts of the country came and told that its known as Tag.
My BTech Project was related to XML's so loads of tags, even the project I work on has loads of them.

So now listing the rules of Game, although Cuckoo asks us to not copy anything from her blog and has been very serious about it still would copy the list and rules from there :-). Yuk, this is known as a Love-Link Tag, Pyar ki Thappi one should say ;-)

The love-link tag. The Love-link Tag is another of those Linky Love game where you only have to tag 10 person in one post but still there is no actual limit (you can tag more if you want!).
Once tagged, you have to copy paste the link in this post, and make them grow! Do not delete any of the links and be honest to yourself! Copy paste the link in this post, and make them grow!

BennyLiew, RamblingMoo, Mum & Kids In Wonderland, Judelittle, Our mini blogsphere, Rooms in My Heart, http://janiceng.blogspot.com/, ChinNee, Jo-N, LadyJava’s Lounge, Strange but True, Mariuca’s Perfume Gallery, Meet Uncle J-Uncle J, Farah, aNgRiAniWoRLd, How’s Life Bout, The Three Heroes, Ceedy, Veena, Vandita, Cuckoo, desh, (here goes your name)

So pick up the tag if you want to, add your own twist to it and lets see how it goes on.

I tag,

Quark

Vishwa

Naresh

Prasoon

Sur

JD

Sabari

DK

Malavika

Parul

Also you can read my previous Tag waalah post.

Baap Ka Suroor

2008-04-23T08:04:00.000-07:00

A Post which confusingly switches between Bollywood, issue of Female foeticide, killing of Girl Child, the practice of Dowry all packaged with a tribute to the legendary Satyen Kappu. Stays true to the name of Blog.

यह शादी नही हो सकती , ठाकुर साहेब मैं अपनी पगड़ी आपके कदमो मैं रखता हूँ , मेरी बेटी लक्ष्मी है उससे मत ठुकारिये, मैं आपकी पाई पाई चुका दूंगा,

यह शादी नही हो सकती, कहा उसका खानदान कहा हमारा !!!

मुझे अपनी बेटी की शादी के लीये करज़ा चाहीये लाला !!!

बेटी सेठजी से शादी कर ले, तुझे खूब सुखी रखेंगें !!!

Satyen Kappu is a legend by any standards, people remember Jagdish Raj for playing the inspector innumerable number of times, so much so that he has a Limca Record on his name. Satyen Kappu (originally named Satyendra Kapoor) has been devoid of such an honour but I bet him playing a worried Father of an unmarried daughter symbolises much more than these recognitions. He is part of a group of individuals whose contribution to Cinema is somewhat neglected in the glitz of stars. [Refer this post which pays a tribute all these characters.]

( A Middle Aged Kappu from movie Coolie, he played charecters from every facet of life, irreseopective of religion, caste or profession. Inset: Waheeda Rehaman)

In an India torn apart by the Gender divide Kappu represents the destiny of so many fathers who end up struggling for their daughter's marriage, and brings to light the issue of dowry and female infanticide. In times when our Nation is struggling to keep up a healthy sex ratio, Kappu acts as an inspiration to Millions by giving the message of Beti being Ghar ki Lakshmi. The topic of Girl Child being killed is one of the most depressing things which comes up in our day-to-day discussions, people who practice killing of girl child should be hanged, movies like Matrubhumi have really shown what extremes this phenomenon can lead too. Also Dowry Deaths are still present in our country and is well spread, all these practices should have an end and Cinema can act as a vehicle for raising the concious of so many people related with this. Read through this poem by Sur on Dowry Deaths which was posted a few days back, The Ultimate Greed.

coming back to Mr. Kappu, be it the drunkard who is worried about his daughter's marriage in Kaala Patthar to the recent tele series on Zee TV "Mehendi tere naam ki" directed by Aruna Irani where he plays the father of four daughters, he has given new heights to the role of a worried father. Even in films like Rajesh Khanna starrer Aap Ki Kasam where he plays the second-hand Husband of Mumtaaz, his defining scenes come when accepts Mumtaaz’s daughter and finally when he is marrying her off (in the last scene when Khanna dies). His efforts spread across decades are put forward by his presence in the movie Beti No.1, a movie which epitomises the importance of Girl Child (the concept was good, the movie’s execution pathetic), such a movie can be never conceptualized without Mr. Kappu. Maybe he suited the roles to perfection because in real life he had four daughters himself. No one played the role of a depressed Beti Ka Baap better than Kappu through the 70's and 80's.

But Kappu's defining moment came in two movies- both Kurosawa inspired Rural-Bandit sagas one of which went on to be come Sholay and another poor man's Sholay- Khotey Sikkay. Although everyone remembers the Ramu Kaka ka kirdaar from Sholay less is known about the origins of an Advocate who fights for Truth and Justice against Jagga (Ajit as the Bandit), is gifted a Golden Watch (which hums a melodious tune) by Sarkar (government, maybe the judiciary) for his sacchai and imaandaari and gives his life for that. In Khotay Sikkay he plays the father of Feroz Khan(who just roams around in a Eastwood inspired robe from spaghetti western days) , Feroz Khan (the unnamed Horse Rider) then goes ahead and avenges his Father's killing by killing Jagga by the end and hence the victory of Truth and Justice.

Kappu's death scene in the movie is one of my favorite moments from Hindi Cinema, when Jagga puts the Khanjar ( a dagger) in his stomach, the tension, the carvings of his face, the widening of his eyes, some 8-9 drops of sweat on his face and the watch poignantly falling from his hand playing a melodious tune and in background of the ever strong Ajit laughter makes for a unparalleled moment in Cinema. I don’t think this death sequence will ever bettered by anyone.

RamLal from Sholay is somewhat popularised recently by the series of jokes remarking the relationships of Thakur-Ramlal, something which puts the great man in bad light.

Apart from these Kappu represents the true Indian middle class by donning almost all possible professions in his career- Inspector (on all possible designations from hawaldar to DIG to Commissioner), doctor(Aap ki Kasam), Judge (Khotay Sikkay etc.), Naukar( Sholay), Army Fellow (Dream Girl), Teacher(Khel Khel Main) cutting across religions- Panditji in Ganga Ki Saugandh, Aslam Bhai in coolie, to church Father (I don’t remember the movie name but remember seeing him once). Mr. Kappu is a true manifestation of Aam Aadmi, and we will always remember him as a great actor and a champion of Social Cause.

Technorati Tags: Bollywood, Satyen Kappu, Cinema, Dowry Deaths

[Kareena Kode]

2008-04-19T01:52:00.000-07:00

/**
** Class which represents the Indian Actress Kareena Kapoor
**/
class Kareena extends Kapoor implements OverActing{

public Kareena(){

super(); //calls super constructor Kapoor
}

public static void main(){
Kareena k = new Kareena();
k.weight = 50;

//once Kareena's bodyweight drops below 0 and she is //completely malnutritioned, till then
//Dance on this Tashan song
//basically she is going against the genetic order, refer //superclass

while(k.weight > 0 && k.bodyType= "Malnutrition")
{
System.out.println("nasila nasila tera naina, churai le hamra chaina, tu hamre dil main rehna..., Chaliya");
k.weight--;//moving closer to anorexia
}
}

//Base Class for Kapoor Khaandaan featuring there basic //properties
class Kapoor {

private String bodyType = "SuperFat";// We all know there //BodyTypes don't we
private String skinColor = "SuperFair"; // All Kapoor's are //fair, but not all are lovely
private int weight = 100; //it can be more too

// add other methods if necessary
}

// something which has been common from RajKiran(Ghar Ek //Mandir fame) to Kareena
interface overActing(){
//something, doesnt matter much
}

Code Output: Just to make the program a bit colourful ;)

(Image: www.wikipedia.org/)

I would like to say this has anything in against anyone quoted, Raj Kapoor and Rishi Kapoor are two of my all time favorites, this is just an analogy of real life scenario in code, so no offenses meant.

p.s.- no guarantee that the code compiles

p.p.s- Alternate names for the post "Kapoor se Kwashiorkar tak", "Maal se Malnutrition tak"

Technorati Tags: Kareena Kapoor, Anorexia, Tashan

If only the Reservations were...

2008-04-14T21:21:00.000-07:00

a bit more flexible. I mean look at the transformation Mr. Lalu Prasad Yadav has brought to Train Reservations. Although the IRCTC web site is slow, lacks a basic error page for JSP, and whatever, still it has made our job so much easier. Or look at Capt. Gopinath's Airline revolution which has spurred a number of Airline Reservation websites. If only the reservation policies implemented by government were a bit easier to understand.

If only we have online portal by government where we get the latest Caste Score side by side our reservation status, that would be wonderful, will let me know when people form my caste fall in Reservation bracket :). Also one can book his reservation seat, cancel it, check status, check waiting list etc. One can even apply for caste certificates online and his/her application can be processed by government.

Even couple of years back this issue was quite happening and it has come back again to give us more to talk on.

I was thinking of something better when it came to reservations, maybe the Central institutes have to increase the seats this year why not have the concept of RAC being promoted with waiting lists and Confirmed seats. If seats are less lets go for RAC, a railway like concept where a single seat will be allocated to two people, given,

Both of them belong to different caste.
Both of them share the same set of books, same hostel bed (taking turns to sleep), same bathroom.
Both of them share same laptop, same pens, pencils, eat from one thali, drink chai from ek pyali etc etc.
Both share the same girlfriend/boyfriend ;)
To avoid unnecessary hassles lets keep the RAC seat for the same sex, i mean both candidates should be either male or female.

I think this will be a new way to achieve National integration and bring different people close, issues won't separate them anymore and the benefits will be equally shared.

On a serious note I think I am in for Affirmative Action, certain sections of Indian society have been neglected and treated in an unjust manner for years. I also believe the injustice has been caused independent of Economic levels, and even after getting good jobs and home people do suffer due to caste differences. But let some sanity prevail, let the process not be an indefinite one, I think more than anything else, we require quality institutes of higher learning, more number of seats will keep most happy. I think slowly such a system should be done away with, but it will never happen. So let us think of "innovative" ways in which we can twist this process and make it much more entertaining because slowly we would have to learn to live with it forever. Look at Vishy's suggestion to do the same...

I am more in for a scheme suggested by Mr. Yogendra Yadav and co. named MIRAA which creates a social index factoring parameters like Caste, gender, economic levels and provides reservation on basis of that. But maybe for such a huge country, its a a difficult and confusing exercise altogether.

I believe its time for everyone to realise that percentages and number of seats and caste and religion and regional differences will be always there, and so will be reservation, atleast its much better than the country falling apart into separate pieces like so many European nations. Isn't it?

Technorati Tags: Reservation, Quota Issue

Bye-Bye Gilly

2008-03-04T03:39:00.000-08:00

India Won just 10 mins back, something which overshadowed completely the last match of Gilchrist, one of my favorite cricketer. It has been a great career, too much has been said about it, I found this awesome presentation on Gilchrist somewhere, do have a look with headphones on.
I will always remember Gilly as someone who stood out from the rest of the Australian bunch, due to his honesty, his sportsman spirit and the way he played his game, and I always say, truly a Mahaan cricketer. He along with Brett Lee are the only current Aussie cricketers whom I like and respect and the respect Gilchrist has is truly deserved. An awesome Batsman who played wonderful knocks such as the Last Year World Cup Final, which Australia won or the then Fastest double century against a South African attack few years back.

Gilchrist on crease has always been an exciting prospect, even today I was praying that he gets a farewell 100, but somehow Australia loose at the same time :-). I was really disappointed when Praveen Kumar rolled him over, lucky guy, the last one to take Gilly's wicket in international cricket. These were his words today post-match, just goes to show his modesty,

"Thank You very much for this acknowledgement. Its probably going on too long(the farewell). Well done india..they outplayed us. Thanks to my family, and friends, and fans all over the world. And finally, to Ricky and the team and the support staff, it's been a magic ride, its not been a fairytale ending but it's been a fairytale career. Thank you so much."

Definitely a fairytale.

The pic I have put up here shows Gilchrist hitting the mid-wicket pull, something which has been his signature shot, as slog-sweep for Steve Waugh or shuffled leg-flick for Tendulkar, and its a very exciting shot.

Enough of words, despite India's victory(an awesome one), I am very sad that it's Game Over for Gilchrist in Aussie colours. Although IPL will give me another chance still everyone will surely miss Adam Gilchrist.

Technorati Tags: Adam Gilchrist, Australia

Connect DA-IICT

2008-02-26T00:51:00.000-08:00

As people who have gone through what you are going through today, we have learnt our lessons through our own share of success and failures. Now, we the Alumni of DA-IICT would like to extend our help and support to you guys in resolving your queries on career after graduation. With our friends and seniors in various sectors and walks of education ranging from Physics to Film Making, we look forward to help you guys to the best of our abilities. You can send in your queries on anything related to your career, be it Job, MBA, Internship, VLSI, Film Making and anything under the sun.

Shoot a mail to connect.daiict@gmail.com with an appropriate subject and we would find the right person among us to resolve it for you. Given our own commitments and constraints, it may sometimes take longer than what you expect to resolve a few typical queries, but we would make sure your queries are attended to.

We hope you put us to the best of your use...

Terms and Conditions:
1. You can ask us about your internships, but please refrain from sending us your CVs, SoPs etc...
2. Please use a proper subject line with the most appropriate key word in square braces. For eg, if you are asking something about a VLSI, please use [VLSI] in the subject so that it would facilitate us in our division of duties.
3. We are not legally liable to provide anybody with any assistance. We are just a voluntary helpdesk. We only facilitate people in making decisions, in as many cases as we can.
4. We have no legal hierarchy, and we represent no organisation or enterprise. The opinions expressed are entirely our own, and carry no affiliation whatsoever.

- DA-IICT Alumni

Sales Pitch

2008-02-06T04:03:00.000-08:00

I was formally introduced to this concept by someone from my company's sales team during my assimilation. Although over the period I have realised that everytime we end up selling something, although intangible, but everytime you talk, you want people to buy it, more so true in case of a self-obsessed person like me.

It ranges from formal sessions like interviews, to just a cup of coffee, anytime anywhere. But if you keep in mind that it's officially a sales pitch I think it gives you more confidence. Consider my first and till date only job interview, although I was nervous, I was good in selling my confidence, my passion for loads of other things than "C", my love for Java(which too has disappeared) etc etc.

Few days back when I attended a b-school interview it was another such attempt. But after talking to my friend's sister I realised that it's officially a sales pitch. The panelists are consumers who are looking for the best deal, I am nothing but a salesman who sells himself off. So this time I kept this thing everytime in my mind while giving any answers, it helps quite a lot. Only that thinking of you as a commodity can be demeaning sometimes, I mean I am obviously different from a Parle-G.

Btw, do read the interview transcript, it should be fun.

Coming back to me, I think I am good in selling things, although not the regular shopkeeper stuff but things I have realised for the past few days after giving a thought to what actually interests me. For example I wanted to consider couple of friends of mine for this course at ISI Kolkata that they should do as they are good with numbers. Anyway people dont see much beyond an MBA or MS for higher eductaion nowadays. I just tried to make the pitch exciting by saying that guys from ISI are quite in demand among good looking bengali gals ;). Couple of them really got excited and hope they will apply. By the way Bengali Girls are really quite beautiful J.

You talk to any girl and you will realise that they too are looking for a package deal, so when one proposes it should be Sales Pitch rather than regular proposal. We had a brainstorming session on this one last week and some real good points came up. Although we are not looking at a slideshow for asking a girl something, but a step by step breakdown of things helps. (Maybe, some experiments will be conducted on this theory soon :))

When you talk to your client you sell him your work, when you ask your boss for leave you try to sell the need of taking one, when you talk in appraisal your boss sells you his rating, when you say sorry after doing something terribly wrong you sell your ignorance, when you ask your dad for money to buy a new cell phone you sell your innocence, when you are in a discussion and just want people to buy your thoughts, sometimes ignoring there is something buy from them too.

It's always a buy-sell thing, we trade thoughts and that's how all the humans co-exist, but some people label it sharing, I disagree. It's never sharing because sharing is done for mutually agreeable items, like you can share a pizza or a Mysore pak or a nimbu soda, but you will only buy knowledge when you think its good for you and you can use it and it comes with the minimal cost, the same way you end up buying toothpaste. Cost here though can be a set of multiple parameters.

So just try it out once, whenever you try to talk to someone, think of the items you are selling to him, think of yourselves just as a Eureka Forbes guy and have a go, I am sure it will turn out quite well. Sales Pitch is not as mysterious as this year’s WACA Perth pitch, but again like that it’s sure to give positive results.

Technorati Tags: Sales, Marketing

Angrezi aur main...

2008-01-18T06:23:00.000-08:00

Class 4th-5th

It all started with that, we were given some sort of scholar badges and all (for consistent performances with a particular score in core subjects), there was this English teacher who I didn't like at all, you know the sorts who went ahead with people who get top marks in junior sections, all those cute looking piglets whom they think are brainiest who get everything right, although I wasn't that bad but she never gave me marks, maybe I wan not a piglet anyway.

Class 6th-10th

Same not so old boring angrezi teacher who gave marks to girls and little healthier sort off pigs and screwed me up again many a times. I also had a fight with her which messed up my relations and so I never got a scholar badge till class 11th as they held me back some way other for English and sometimes Hindi. Maybe I behaved like a dog here, pigs were still in demand. My confidence in languages till 10th had already received a heavy blow though. worst still I became a horrible public speaker in those days due to that.

Class 11th

Probably one of the best teachers I ever studied under was Mrs. Biswas, elegant and caring are the words which come to my mind. She had such an awesome persona and like others, her marks were not based on pre-conceived notion of an individual. All notions of animalism chucked off for the time being.

Class 12th

The year I cherished most in the school because my favorite teacher Mrs. Ratnam taught me for the first time (sounds unusual but true). She is the one I knew throughout my school tenure, the bestest teacher there ever was at DPS Korba. It was delight as she taught English in an year when no one thinks about it. She took my interview way back in 1988 and its quite ironic that she retired the same year I left school, 2002. Best year for English and me :)

College Days, one Cat, workplace, blogging etc etc.

Everything went fine, reading speeds were good, although I was regualr reader earlier I improved, did more discussions, turned from a hand shaking- leg breaking speaker to a nice confident aggressive presenter. Did all of this stupid writing, all dung, read dung, ate dung. See now I became a Pig.

Good days for English were obvious.

CAT & XAT this year

Similar percentiles of 84.16 (84.13 in other) (Overall 97.7 in CAT, 99.42 in XAT) help me secure a missed call from IIM's and XLRI. All the AIMCATs I hardly got below 95%ile, my worst performance coming up in these two examinations.

Although I am disappointed I would like to add that my English is not that great, its just the way people judge your language skills, the kind of exams they look for, I don't know.

In that regards the best language teacher I had was my French teacher at Ahmedabad, she had an amazing persona and I really excelled when it came French learning.

Although disappointed I am not broken, its enough of these exams for me, maybe something better out there for me. No one is an authority to comment on what I am like in anything, English has screwed me for a long time and hope it enjoys f**k*** me again and again. At least the language will get some pleasure out of it.

Living in Bangalore has made me a dog again, pigs are the most intelligent ones, thats why there English is good.(George Orwell says so, although both the species should control there reproduction rates :))

Technorati Tags: CAT, XAT

Jai DADA …Cuck Fhappell...Shappell Cucks...

2007-12-10T00:32:00.000-08:00

Dada showed all of us what great player he is, along with Yuvi he broke records and showed people like Dravid and Chappell how great he is. I think now its time both of them realize that they can't destroy any cricketer's career at will and they must learn to respect people like Dada (it will be difficult as there would be no one like Dada again).

What my friend Nitesh another Dada fan said yesterday,

Darvidian Zameen par Dada ka Double Ton...

BTW This post comes from my friend who along with me and Nitesh is the biggest dada fan ever. Shameek didn't even cut his hair for a long time waiting for a dada century to happen. Shameek runs us through the Dada stroy still reminiscent in the mind of each and every cricket fan. So fresh from a hair cut and an amazing Dada knock here is what Shameek has to say,(all what I wanted to say too)

5 log jinko DADA ne us din double hundred maar kar karara jawaab diya hai :

Greg Chappell : said that DADA was not mentally as well as physically fit to be in the national side.
Kiran More : said that DADA does not fit into the scheme of things.
Sharad Pawar : used him as a political pawn as and when he needed against Dalmiya group.
Rahul Dravid : who did not support him when he needed it the most, may b the biggest mistake by Dravid.
Bishan Singh Bedi : duniya ka sabse kamina ex-cricketer jo apne aap ko chhodkar baaki poori duniya ko ******* samajhta hai.

Cut back to early 90s...when this young maharaja made debut, not a great one in ODIs and when rejected to carry drinks...People said his attitude is not good and cannot fit into team....He went on to become the BEST captain of INDIA....

Come to 1996....when he was selected for England tour after 5 years...people said, he was selected because of his political backing...and went on to said "He will not continue in team"...then entered the GOD of OFF SIDE making back to back 100s on debut..."Prince is born"

he never turned back and kept scoring "sexy" square cuts...lovely off drvies and those deadly sixes....and there was a time...when he was on par with another GOD of cricket....

When Azhar was out and Sachin couldn’t handle it....he took the onus...people again said.."how can he be captain of Indian team?"...awell...we all know how Indian cricket team transformed from tigers on paper to Tigers on field....

Natwest trophy, beat AUS in India and also in their back yard..beat Pakistan,Won a mini world cup,runners in WC2003 and reached to finals in almost every tournament Indian team played...

People said he can’t play in Australia....his 144 in Brisbane set the tone for Indian fight back in Australia...

Then started decline in his personal form and people started to write off him..

"This is the end of road for Sourav"

"End of an Era"

"End of Dada Giri"

"he doesnt fit into scheme of things"

were few comments...but there were many silly and humiliating jokes cooked upon him..

He was "thrown" out of them team with out any respect...

Even few of his team members who flourished and retained in team under his captaincy didn’t even go and gave a tap on his back...

the prince was left alone. deserted....lost captaincy. lost place in team...but not the hope. not the hunger...not the fire....

December 2006...when India toured SA...team needed some experience and called him back...though people said "he will face the chin music on SA pitches"

"We dont want Sourav" were the press conference words said by the then coach and captain...

But those ignorant people forgot something..."Only challenges bring best out of warriors"...

That is what exactly he proved...played an crucial role in India's Win against SA..and was highest scorer for the series..

People kept saying he is the weak link in the side...and he kept coming up with his own replies...

Now came the thunderous punch to those people...a hundred at his own home followed by trade mark sexy stylish superb 239 which not only made a world of good to him but also bailed team out of trouble along with Yuvi and pathan.

you are looking for a clue to what has helped Sourav Ganguly sustain his spectacular run in Test cricket since his return at the fag end of last year, don't bother looking at his footwork or the flow of the bat. Take, instead, a close look at his eyes while he is batting. They speak of a calmness almost bordering on serenity, and a combination of composure and resolve. You could see it in his comeback innings in Johannesburg that fetched him an unbeaten 51 and you could see it through his epic innings in Bangalore that marked a new high in his career.

People will still say..."he doesn’t have technique..." "he cant play short balls" "he is unfit" "he is weak link"....

And I am sure they will again get their replies from this great warrior....SOURAV GANGULY.... from his bat!!!!

Technorati Tags: Sourav Ganguly, Rahul Dravid

Dreaded S-Word

2007-12-04T02:27:00.000-08:00

1993

two kids from class 3 fighting as Abhishek watches on (still be christened with any of the present day nicknames).

bippu*- saale kutte kahi ke???
ritesh*- shocked and about to breakdown
Abhishek and rest of the audience- Haaaaauuuuuuuuu......
ritesh*- full-tu crying, I will complaint this to Ratnam Mam [My fav teacher in school, bestest teacher ever, will write about her sometime)

Pumped by anger, insult and what not ritesh decided to complaint and bippu got punished, junta was obviously shocked at bippu's behavior and happy that bippu got punished.

1999

All of us on the playing, tiddu*-famous for not blurting out any bad word till date fires one on pattu, pattu laughs like hell and so do the others, tiddu rages and starts a bat-beating session on pattu, pattu and others still laugh and welcome another member to the gang.

[*Names have been changed to confuse identities]

Gone are those days, in primary school using the S-word (something similar to a Brother-in-law too, your wife's brother, I don't know why it became an abuse in the first place) meant that you were the full-time rowdy in class, other kids parents wanted their kids to stay away from you, and it was not at all good public behavior, you were the big time culprit of every wrong deed done in class. Slowly though, with secondary and higher education an Indian student gets graduated in profanities too.

Nowadays when I see kids using the F-word is much more than feeling, its mostly going away from our culture of using the S-Word to perfection. Although lots has been said about girls not using it but I know a few who use it nicely. But lets not get into gender aspects as of now.

Although the Hindi/desi equivalent of the F-word is considered quite crude in its usage but I don't know why people consider the formers usage as much more decent (relatively). Both are the same, a conservative may say that they are bowing to western culture, but I think its much more to do with the popularity of such terms in Hollywood, its counter-part Bollywood has been not so liberal in usage of abusive language.

I picked up foul language sometime in mid-school, when we passed school there was only one or at most two boys still away from its active usage. In my college I found only one among 200+ boys (but he had his own versions of curses, which went quite above everyone's head). The good things about using foul language are,

Good way to throw out your anger and frustration, go and shout from a roof/hill top, or do it after getting drunk.
Gives you a good time cursing your bosses, peers, any boy who roams around with good girls or mostly anyone.
Comes for free and is quite relieving, much more than dhyana or yoga.

The only things about it which is not good and I don't like is when its done in a seriously serious manner. People start fighting over it and makes matter stupid. When I and most of my friends do it, its mostly for fun, although we know making fun of other people is a serious crime, but everyone does it, and criminals are bound to use some foul language here and there. Some serious misapprehensions which are associated with this are,

it slows down with age- I think this skill mellows with age, the usage becomes more or less perfect and less hurtful to others.
you shouldn't say it in front of girls- ???? pointless

Although in front of parents and relatives better don't use it. I mean you can but better don't. You might have noticed it, sometimes when you are at home, and things haven't rubbed off from your tongue you feel like shouting sometimes, do it in a bathroom, safest place to do it.

By the way some unique ones which I have come across in my life are,

- Indi-Poi Indrapal- used by a schoolmate, he considered this to be the mother of all profanities
- Dusht Bijuke - Bijuke is Pure hindi for Scarecrow, my friend in college made it quite popular.

I am not mentioning lots of them which would like a bit indecent on my blog.

Whatever be it, never ever use it to hurt anyone, as long as its for fun, use it...

And for all those like the F-Word, try using the S-word!!!

Small City Dreams

2007-11-25T23:44:00.000-08:00

An unshaved face, a stinking jeans, a dirty t-shirt, Kapil's wrist watch, drinking frooti just before it, this and a whole lot of superstitions, nothing worked. Six months of stupidly wasting time was followed up with disappointment and nothing more. Six months of screwing up my brain, with just 3 movies (2 were at the end of period when it was getting closer), 2-3 canceled outings, Diwali* away from home, all this amidst hell lot of work pressure at office, night outs, nothing worked. I had a realization the day I gave it, that why people leave this country, so much struggle to get anywhere that people get really pissed off. Anyway I decided on something else though.

I want to move to a smaller city, much much better than going to a country where no one knows you (this would be a bit different in my case, as I would be still Desi for them :)). So new vision statement for life was drafted,

Small City, Medium Money, Small Dreams, Lots of Happiness

Money has been kept medium as of now, but even small is Ok. I am tired of hearing about,

People taking EMI's to run there life, take a home in Bangalore and pay up for next 20 years. Buy a car and pay up for next 4-5 years.
People using credit cards to run there life.
People stuck in traffic for half there life and profanity-fying the condition of Bharatiya Roads.

Basically I am pissed of city life, after living 17 years in a township in Korba, Chattisgarh and four years of engineering in an extremely peaceful Gandhinagar, this is all too much for me to take. I think its better to strip down on your Monetary ambitions if you get happiness in exchange. The thing is after seeing so much, going to small place won't be much of an issue for me atleast, there maybe difficulties initially but in long term it would be much more effective. In return I get,

A HAPPY family life...
A nice home with lawn and jhoola in it :D
Kids who don't pass out in pubs and watch movies for 25 Rs...:)
Me watching movie for 25 Rs
Neighbors who atleast talk
Cheap vegetables, cheap commodities, cheap most of the things.

Even if I earn what I am earning now for the rest of my life at a small place, it surely would mean much more savings for me than me living in Bangalore. Maybe I am thinking too long term, but anyway one has to do it. Smaller towns and cities stay better as the big cities grow, the "Supposedly" successful crowd moves city wards, small remains mostly the same. although I am worried by the Mall-ification of these places too but most of them, I expect to be quite stable even in case of economic swings. Thinking about what I can do there,

A sarkari naukri, but extremely difficult to get that one.
Moving into Public Sector...
Moving into things like Manufacturing etc. which maybe the industries at these places.
Goto a small place, start my own petrol pump, a halwai shop and a hotel.

All this will come up sooner or later, lets see how this stupid MBA thing goes on, one thing is for sure, I have had it enough for a lifetime here in a city.

*Diwali Celebs were quite different this time, though I missed being at home but this is what we did for Bangalore Diwali,

Got confused on Nark Chaturdashi as everyone in Bangalore celebrated that day itself :)
One round of pooja at home on Lakshmi Poojan, couple of crackers bursted, prasad included Peda and Mysore Pak.
Another bit of pooja at friend's house, 2-3 rounds of crackers (extremely low quality ones), and gobbled up lots of mithai
Dinner menu included- Davangare Benne Dosa(Butter Dosa) from my favorite shop in NR colony. Followed up by a nice bottle of Wine.

मैं राहुल द्रविड़, भूले तो नहीं ??

2007-10-31T02:52:00.000-07:00

मैं राहुल द्रविड़, भूले तो नहीं ??
जो हुआ जैसे हुआ, बहुत बुरा लगता था ...
पर अब मैं तें में वापस आने के लीये बहुत मेहनत कर रहा हूँ.
कया पता फीर से “Pitch पर दीवार जैसे खड़े होने का मौका मील जाए”.
टीम के अंदर या बाहर, मैं हमेशा टीम INDIA के लीये CHEER करूँगा.
अब से जब भी हमारे लड़के खेलें तो मैं ज़रूर कहूँगा , ”HOO HAA INDIA, आया INDIA”
और आप ?? अपने “Jammy” की बात सुनेंगे ना !!!

Dada consulting Dravid now for a comeback. Although I couldn't get a classic one for Dravid like this one for Dada,

कया पता फीर से “हवा में Shirt लहराने का मौका मील जाए"

Just goes to show that he has done nothing except playing Cricket, a great cricketer who just came across as a lame and dumb captain on the field, showing no control over anyone. Although I don't care whether Dravid Dropped or he in, still I feel he is good as a batsman.

Life has just come a full circle, what he did to Dada has happened to him. Dada made him a keeper to keep him in team and he just didn't help him through his bad times.

Looking forward to Dada taking up the test captaincy, for Dravid he will be back sooner or later but right now he is as low as the Marina Trench.

-
Just Another Dada Fan
(Conceptualized by my friend Shameek, inspired from the famous Pepsi ad)

Technorati Tags: Rahul Dravid, Sourav Ganguly

Billi aur Chooha

2007-10-24T21:13:00.000-07:00

Read this,

Billi aur Choooha

Not another Tom and Jerry though...:)

And it changed at last...

2007-10-11T21:18:00.000-07:00

New look DAIICT website is up and running...

Nothing is better than a change and that too after 6 years of same old boorish(as in clumsy) bluish tinge haunting our College's website. Ever since my second or 3rd year at DAIICT the question of a new website has been equivocated by Profs and students alike.

Lots has been talked about the Website in Batch of 2006 mailing list, the few good things coming out of this,

A good, neat and clean UI.
Proper info everywhere, FAQ's, Alumni pages are quite good.
Finally all the clubs, committees and activities in college given a proper placing on website.

etc etc.

Hope now people applying outside India won't face many issues with regards to Website as all the information has been put up quite nicely.

Kudos to the team involved!!!

Btw last few weeks our people from our batch have been quite nostalgic when it comes to college. All was triggered by this pic sent by Vivek,

This pic reminds me of the countless nightouts at DAIICT, seems to be taken around 4-5 in morning this one.

And then this website thing and then there were mails forwarding pics of Profs and all, and mails about the new E-Cell at our college...

College was great, miss it like anything... as we realized during the Bangalore Meet last month

One happy shappy pic from the meetup (courtesy: Pratyush)

Technorati Tags: DAIICT

23

2007-10-08T06:56:00.000-07:00

A prime number - the smallest with consecutive digits ...
Number on the T-Shirt of Michael Jordan, and off late David Beckham ...
Number of Chromosomes we have ...
Years since I made my Debut in the game of life...

40 to 50 more to go, lets see what I can do in rest of them?

Bhains Ki Taang, We Won!!!

2007-09-25T23:38:00.000-07:00

It was the Great Indian Wet Dream, having an India-Pakistan WorldCup final, and surely proved to be one. Starting with the resolution this tournament has been quite up on its sex quotient. This was twenty twenty is all about, its what Sex and Violence do to frigid cinema, its all about adding that extra much needed masala to a great game going through its worst phase after a uber-boring World Cup and suppa-disappointing Champion's Trophy last year.

It hits back badly on purists, most notably the well known Greg Chappell, last employed on the post of decimator of Indian Cricket Team, the one who thought Tendulkar lacked attitude and skill, Pathan is always low on confidence and I won't mention what he did to my favourite cricketer Dada. According to that guy this is just hitting, I just pity him now that this team which doesn't include his favourite player Suresh Raina (wtf) won the world Cup without the coach.

Match Day

Superstitions, a Mallu Star, a Mazdur and a back in Form Pathan

Venue- Quark's Den
Edibles- Veg Puffs, thums Up, Some Desi Namkeen, Some Haldiram stuff and those cheesy chips by Lays (which give me a nauseating hit)

Match started on a poor note, our Match routine which involved,

a can of Kingfisher for the quark.
a bottle of Knock Out again for quark.
a bottle of Fosters/Budweiser for Daisy. ( no Fosters in Australian Match)
Mast Mirchi Bhajji worth Rs.15.00

was missing. As if this was not enough our sitting arrangements were much more varied then the previous ones and I think that lead ton India's debacle.

Although the Pakistani Bowling was superb. Main mast moments were the opening sequence(run out appeal against Yusuf Pathan), six hit again by him and Rohit Sharma's mast knock. I like this guy because his favourite dish is Kanda Poha which his family was telling the recipe on AajTak. I love Poha(also called Pouva someweher). Just one of many reasons why I simply adore Shara-Pova ;-)...

The second one was the real thing, RP was up right from the word go, it just took an innovative profanity(read Mayawati ka Bhai) to generate that spark and make him pick up the first wicket.

Sreesanth according to me was the real match winner for us, offlate we have compared him to a dangai (rowdy or something, the one involved actively in riots) who can't even throw stones properly. They are all over the place. The Mallu Star is as unpredictable as one could get. Ok he is a match winner if can bowl well, but that rarely happens as it happened against Australia. But I don't really see him out of the team too. surely we have next Ajit Agarkar ready.

Anyway in case these kinds of bowlers are more popularly known as Rhythm bowlers, who bowl when they are Rhythm, utter crap, even I can bowl 6 yorkers an over if I am in Rhythm. Also I think Agression is OK as long as you have stuff within, a samosa without aloo can't even become a papdi.

So such a bowler didn't even hear to all the profanities flying all around the room like charms were in Howgarts (refer final few chapters The Deathly Hallows). In came a new idea to call on Sankatmochan and a round of Hanauman Chalisa brought calm and produced a maiden and another good over.

Similar chants were fixed for each and every bowler,

Irfan- Jai Dada, with dashes of Jai Dona-Dada
Sreesanth- Hanuman Chalisa
Bhajji- Nothing really worked, we tried everything from Jai Siddhu to Jai Monty Panessar to Jai Bhajji himself.
Joginder- Main Mazdur mujhe devo ki basti se kya- "Ramdhari Singh Dinkar". Refer Bal Bharti NCERT, Class VII. It seems people identified him as a Mazdur from that poem.

We were damn superstitious with sitting arrangements fixed, a particular person locked inside a room and me diving at every lofted bowl to the foot of TV stand.

Anyway all this crap somehow worked till the deadly bhajji over and then it were the Indians who won the game. Although I should Pakistanis were an awesome side. Misab is surely the new age Miandad (he almost did a name change from Joginder to Chetan...)

The end would have been surely a disastrous one, all the mantras failed in final four overs, so our brave Sreesanth didn't find his Rhythm and jerked of few forgettable ones. He took a wicket later with a sensible one. RP's next over was again a mast one.

Then came the final one, I have backed Joginder throughout this tournament, according to me belongs to the league of Gavin Larsen/Chris Harris kinda bowlers who can suck of the runs in the middle overs for opposition by their slow line length bowling. Although when his first wide happened, I thought its over, and then a six and it WAS over.

The End couldn't have been this bigger, bigger than the Jim Morrison the end or a Hindi Cinema The End. Or much ironical as Sreesanth held on to an awesome catch (whatever it be it was still awesome for me). In the words of one of my friends company mate,

Misbah thought he was sending the ball to a place where there was no one. He did not know that there is a Malayali in every corner of the world!!!

Anyhow no qualms against Sreesanth as of now, he is the part of the best cricketing moment we ever witnessed. Pathan's comeback has been the most delightful thing which happened, amazing comeback to prove his strength as a bowler and fowl all attempts made by Chappel to destroy his career. Also RP has been awesome throughout the tournament. all in all our bowling looked nice and quite non-scrappy.

What we witnessed was the Best Blue Film ever with 11 Men in Blue completely You-Know-What the pakistanis...

Post Match

It was surreal, completely unbelievable, we were dancing, hugging each other, the neighbours and their kids came out to the balconies, everyone was dancing running around, firecrakcers all around, millions of SMS's being sent around. And when Dhoni lifted the Cup, it was just so GREAT.

Shoaib Malik's post match comments etc...hmm, they were extremely disappointingly. I won't reiterate the same but with so much ire back home it must have been something to avoid it. Pakistan has always been my favourite team when it comes to any tournament (obviously after India) and the only thing I sometimes not so like about them is the importance religion takes in the proceedings. Cricket is the last thing we want to be hampered by such differences. Also I think that it would be better if players are allowed to speak in language of their own choice, it avoids confusion and players can speak out what they feel properly. With Ravi Shastri up their a normal conversation could have been struck and maybe what Shoaib actually wanted to say would have been much more clearer. Even French, Russians, Chinese etc. do it in every game, I think Cricket should get past its colonial hangover of English usage.

Aur Main Ban Gaya Dhoni!!!

Dhoni is here to stay, after Dada he looks the only guy who suits the job. Dravid's captaincy should be forgotten as a pathetic phase in Indian Cricket(though I don't have anything against Dravid the batsman). Dhoni is calm on field, he TALKS, shows less of emotional jhol jhaal, has loads of ads under his tummy (he too has one) and quite unlike most of the Captain brigade he is much more fit.

He has lead India to its greatest victory after 83 world Cup, the first big Indian victory in my life span and many others. Add to that the batting by Yuvraj and comeback of Pathan and you egt the best three things to India this World Cup.

What Next???

Nothing let us roll our Aussies in India, about Ganguly, Dravid and Tendulkar I won't comment much, but for people already starting to shout in favour me not so much in agreement with them.

All in all a great victory and a moment to cherish throughout our lifetime. But all this makes the next year for me and few of my friends so much difficult following celibacy as fallout of the victory.

Never mind anything for the country...:)

* Originally Posted on Pen The Game

Pics from WorldTwentyTwenty

Technorati Tags: Cricket, TwentyTwentyWorldCup, Final, India, Pakistan, Dhoni, Sreesanth

the resolution

2007-09-21T04:49:00.000-07:00

Our resolution is so strong that India will win for sure!!!

Gandhi tried it, so did Ronaldo, now its our turn to do it for our Team...May India win.

Jai Dada, Jai Bharat!!!

the two month itch...

2007-09-06T06:38:00.000-07:00

Almost two months without a blog post...horrible.

I haven't been busy at all, because being busy means - watching movies every week, going for food outings in Bangalore, playing volleyball in office, meeting new people, writing a few stupid blogposts now and then, talking nonsense most of the times, going home and getting stuck in 4-5 books at a time.

Nothing like that happening, the only good things that have happened for sometime now,

Billi form reached safely, hope 1st October goes fine too(when the form is rejected/accepted)...

I tasted almost the Best Wine of my life, some Italian stuff, we had that along with some Port wine from Pondicherry. Awesome stuff which went well with Pizza and Maggi, now I know why people love wine so much. By the way vows have been already broken once. Also maggi is always good, although same can't be said about Pizza. We watched Golmaal with it and again got into a debate regarding dahi-vade it might be post modern dilemma of love, food and women & gender... :)
Some good test series scores, some not so good ones.
Our project team getting like 2-3 awards within a week.
Me scoring a goal, yes a GOAL in my company's annual football tournament. Believe it or not it was a last minute goal hit from half-line. It was fun. Followed it up with a penalty too.
I have somehow rekindled my interest in Mathematics, its a lot more fun nowadays, like the good old days of school.
Saw Chak De...awesome movie, Shahrukh is Baap of Bollywood.

Although most of the changes can be attributed to following factors,

Billi, padhai has taken me over quite a lot, I have started studying quite a lot, though the scores are not hitting a good tone, but still atleast I am giving it a shot. Have joined a test series plus a coaching and its eating up most of it, i.e. time.
Work at office, that speaks for itself.
Me shifting from up to down at home (because of Nihar and Sandy moving out), although that has made no difference at all.
No Sandy at workplace is a lot boring...:(
I have had my Sardi Khasi month of the year ( a period where I can be spotted in sweater, with a hanky, smelling of Vicks Vaporub, gargling with hot water before sleeping, popping Sinarest, Crocin at a threatening pace, choking in dreams etc etc...)

And some of the things I have chucked due to work, Billi etc.

A trip to Cochin and nearby villages, to attend one of my team-mate's wedding. All my bags were packed, my tickets were booked, but Billi came in...:(((
A trip to Ooty and a nearby Forest Reserve, staying at a resort, going for midnight forest tours with rangers and ofcourse Ooty tour. Btw all free of cost as a part of Happa's Party (he going to Stanford...:))) again billi came in the way of me watching the Big Billi...:(((
A burrp meet which I said would go but didn't show due to office...:((, imagine me missing loads of bak-bak and good food...:((
Partner, Transformers, Cricket Matches(although I hate Cricket nowadays), Hey Baby, RGV ki Aag etc etc
Blogging, no more of it.
Haven't started the seventh Harry Potter book yet, somehow crazily wrapped up all the other six in one month, and then didn't read the last one.
Started and chucked, Henry Kissinger's -Ending the Vietnam war, Harper Lee's To kill a mocking bird, Moby Dick and some Peter Drucker book.

Things that will never change,

Me not having a Girlfriend.
Kapil not having a Girlfriend.
Stupid lunch time discussions dealing with Nihilism, work life balance, sex life of IT professionals, extreme programming, signal processing, mother boards, bluetooth, Who will die when you cry, cheap bollywood stuff, how great Satyen Kappu was, How pathetic was the food today, why cheese goes well with wine, there are three kinds of things in this world argument, why postpone GRE dates, why some people don't work, Why grass is green, Why Public Policy is hot, I want to work for UN, I don't want to work at all....huh

Although Nihilism is quite interesting, enjoyed reading a bit about it. Thanks to the quark for triggering half of the above mentioned discussions. And also Kapil and Akshat for chipping in...
Sleep and alaasya live on...

Moral of the story, get a girlfriend, get a good college for higher education, get a job with high paying salary and you will start watching movies and India will start playing cricket.

p.s.- Don't think I have gone insane, just that I am not getting time to do my stuff, I am used to talking nonsense, so that would keep happening.

Ashtumaadi, 8 facts waalah tag done...

2007-07-12T01:56:00.000-07:00

Tagged by Steve and Naresh, I thought I better fullfill this one (I missed the last one I was tagged with). The title is Ashtumaadi a term quite often used by my school time pal Shameek which in Kannada means just do it (bas itna hi karo to be more specific). Also Asht reminds me of 8 so I put that particular title, add to that I just did it. Me quite busy so have put around some real random facts real quickly,

I don't like my work, but I still go and do it. There is this keeda in me to show others that I can do it, add to that I am too bad in rejecting work given to me, something of which Prashant aka lamboo was a champ of (when he was working, now he studying). Add to that I don't like most others that what I want to do, Billi is just an escape route and a window for sorting things out.
I don't eat that much, as my PM puts I am rather a connoisseur of food rather than a glutton. I like the variety in food and maybe in future I want to study it, I would have been better as chef I believe.
I drink mostly to please my friends, my only fascination with liquor is that I like to experiment with it as I do with food. But I think I don't really like it. That's why its less of it nowadays. I feel non-alcoholic meetups are much less exciting. And I want to kick those people who sit on the sidelines during a drinking session, gobbling up all the liquor-goodies.
I like traveling in Trains, if a ever direct a movie the plot would be set in a Train, I just love the Sleeper Class journeys, travelling alone, traveling with friends, the food stalls, chaiwaalahs, the debates with TTE, the fights, the auntyjiswho ask you to exchange the berths, the stinking toilets, the magazine stalls, the smell of the metal railings of window(yes they do smell), basically everything.
I always have had a sorta crush on Madhuri Dikshit, I always had it in my mind that I should have been born 20 years ago to shrink that age difference, if she was not married till now maybe I could have still given her a shot. By the way having a girlfriend in the girlfriend sense of it is still pending...Also as I mentioned Madhuri I would like to mention that I love watching movies, any kind of movies.
I detest watching Cricket nowadays, given a chance I would throw Rahul Dravid into a gutter, I feel that he along with that stupid Chappel made Cricket what it is today-Boring. Dada and Tendulkar are the bestest players ever and I will always worship them. I also watch all kinds of sports- tennis, Golf, NBA, football, Badminton etc etc in no particular order. I play too btw ...
I have a good enough memory, its a bit out of order but still quite in place, the pages in memory shift with time, in 90's it was all the Tennis matches with all their set scores which I remembered, add to that the cricket matches, I have a tag based mechanism for searching through my memory. It's complex to understand.
I don't remember my dreams and I don't try to because I get weird dreams sometimes, I feel its a sin to interpret dreams, they should be left alone as a cleanup job for mind.

Some good posts for the same tag I came across were by- Naresh, Supriya, Steve and Sur. I wont tag anyone, this one is a bit old now.

Long Live the Aam Aalsi Aadmi

2007-07-02T03:53:00.000-07:00

If R.K.Laxman gave The Common Man (Aam Aadmi) to World, we give the world the Aam Aalsi Aadmi. Some of the charecteristics of AAA,

He is Aam, Aam as in Aam- the Common.
He is Aalsi
First two sentences prove that He is a Aadmi

Also rather than being a silent witness to most of the events around him and having an opinion about it, AAA is suppose to save his energy by having an opinion but not being at the site of incident. AAA is gifted with a strong sense of instinct which helps them form opinions without even observing an incident.

The Cartoon character is still under design but he is supposed to look quite shabby due to his Aalasya preventing him from taking a bath.

We are in talks with Air Deccan for replacing their mascot with ours once its designed, the Aalsi theme much in sync with their timings...:)

This character is truly inspired from one person whom I consider to be the human incarnation of the Aam Aalsi Aadmi. In his own words,

alasya kabhi marta nahin hai...bas so jaata hai

meTaL or LKP (its pronounced as ल क प ) is the true representative of the Aam Aalsi Aadmi, one who inspires everyone to Billi glory. From the sleepy hostels of DA-IICT to the irky dorms of IIM-Indore he effuses laziness in its full glory. In his company I have spent countless hours just doing nothing and creating some silly things like the once famous DTC (DA-IICT Tond Club). He is a true inspiration for millions of us showing that sleeping is far more superior mechanism of nutrition than food itself. Sleep gives us more energy than Carbs to basically do nothing and save it for future, quite important as the world moves towards an imminent Energy Crisis.

Other members which truly deserve the company of ल क प,

Inzamam-ul-haq aka Inzy, former Cricket Captain of Pakistan.
Sarat aka TTY (read as तू तो यार), aalasya and intelligence zipped in one file, currently lazying out at IIIT Hydbad
JD who is heading to IIIT HydBad :) (We will all miss you at office, volleyball, home and Bangalore :( )

Me leaving myself out, I am aalsi but not in the league of these extraordinary Gentlemen.

p.s.- No offense meant against any of the above-mentioned individuals, I think they are truly all amazingly intelligent individuals...(including the great RK Laxman). And all of you take bath for sure...maybe!!! Thanks to Jaine for telling me the famous quote of LKP to work on...:)

p.p.s- The character will be copyrighted by me soon, so no infringement...:)