Errr... Swimming. Anyone?

I was sitting idle, doing nothing (as usual) when suddenly those images entered in mind.

I used to be a small kid (sic!) when I first entered a swimming pool.
With fear and anticipation, I let go of the ladders and I was there alone and completely on my own.
The instructor asked me to float and in I went. For a moment everything went berserk. I couldn't understand which way was up and which way was down. I didn't know at what angle I lay with respect to the Mother Earth. All I knew was that I was lost and I had to somehow survive. And so did I.

First lesson learnt, I was soon the king of shallow waters (thanks to floor of the pool which was just 3 feet below and easily within my reach). A friend tried to test me and dragged me into deep waters. I fought for some time and again came out, with a fist in the air.

So there I was, the king (with all due respect to HANce King) of all waters (or good times?) - be it shallow or deep.

Now starts the funny part.
Somehow, I am able to correlate the experience I had while learning swimming to that of life in general -

We leave the safe environment we grow up in, start the lonely battle, don't know which way we should head and most importantly don't know where we stand.

Slowly, every thing sinks in and we find ourselves in peace with our environment. Just to be reminded by a jolt that there are still much deeper waters to be conquered. We take a deep breath and start our journey for survival (or at least that's what people make us believe). And at the end come out victorious.

But we never ventured out of the pool. Only the size of the pool changed. We never took on the waves that hit hard on the shore. We never tried to swim across a wild river.

So, does that mean that life will also follow a similar track. We'll look for challenges but within what we describe as risk-free-environment. We'll never act wild and act as if we don't have anything to loose. We'll always have something pulling us indoors.

Think about it.

Next Up - Life and how it relates to the art of motorcycling :D

p.s. am I quitting my job? naaaah.... am too lazy for that :P

When you try your best, but you don't succeed...
When you get what you want but not what you need...
Stuck in reverse?

Recently I found out what would have, in all probability, inspired Chris Martin to pen down these lyrics. It would have been a day spent at (trying to do some) shopping!
I mean, is it just me or do all guys (and some minisule proprortion of girls) have a hard time when it comes to picking out clothes/shoes/shopping in general ? Shouldn't there be a easier way to compute the complex logic of deciding what's gonna look good on you AND is affordable? How do you know whether the next shop at the next mall isn't selling something better? And I'm not even talking about following fashion here;that just opens a whole new dimension :-(
In my case all this has had catastrophic effects. I wear t-shirts that make much nonsense; I spent upwards of 3K on shoes that look like the ones in a bowling alley; and my jeans always, somehow, become ill-fitting the moment I take them out of the shopping bag at home...

Think I desparately need professional help. I remember seeing in some crappy star world sitcom that chicks take along their gay friends while going out for shopping, as seemingly they have finer feminine tastes...
So...err...should I try finding some lesbians?!!

Of hailstorms and all that rings in my ear

Ever heard of hailstorms in the middle of May (the month when Delhi temperatures are all too eager to break on through to the other side of 50°C).

So was Al Gore really serious about all that stuff he blabbered in An Inconvenient Truth?

Will we ever get hit by a meteor and start living in thousands of small Earth's that will take birth due to the collision?
Planet US will attack on Planet Iraq with troops having to fly hundreds and hundred of galaxies away.
Planet India will send its cricket team to the cluster of planet dust know at the West Windies.
I'll hit a lower low :P

*disclaimer - all that is written above fully complies to the little red book on Ethics@MostlyHarmless

Ahem ... v3 ;-)

Yes yes I'm back. Thank you! Thank you! I know your fingers must be trembling with excitement and you must be sending quiet prayers saying thanks to the gods above since your wish has finally been granted and all that. The credit for my return must go to Bertie who off late doesn't miss a single opportunity to compare me to an uncharacteristically lazy specimen of the female section of the canine family.

As ZZ9 rightly points out the flurry of random posts by Bertie off late has completely disrupted the think-write-read-comment cycle whose periodicity, in my case, had started showing a strong correlation to the position of the earth in its orbit around the sun.

It is not that there is nothing to write about which has kept me from posting on this blog, infact, it is just the opposite. Life has been such a blur the last few months with all the sleeping, partying, working and driving that I havent had the time to sit down and ruminate over the various events which keep whizzing by. It has been this rumination which has made my posts such fun to read in the past (people keep telling me how modest I am all the time :-)).

Life, in the recent past, has turned extremely strange. I still havent come to terms with the fact that I will be going back to being a student after 2 long years and will no longer be a part of the work-force. I often find myself wondering if I can ever get back to my full student form again since work seems to have done a good job putting my already few and sparse little grey cells to sleep. Assignments, exams, no money, no weekends etc seem scary to me now but somehow I am really looking forward to that kind of life again.

- "Your plastic pal who's fun to be with"
(c) Sirius Cybernetics Corporation

Hmm...
So it's been quite a while since i wrote my last post here...and it's not because the time in between hasn't been worth writing about! In fact...so many things are happening right now that, frankly speaking, my lazy and accustomed-to-slumber-mode brain is spinning, unable to cope up with the things happenin around!
Firstly...these flurry of posts by Bertie has completely thrown me out of sync. In the past few months I had grown accustomed to one bluesy post a month routine here at the blog...where i'd spend a week thinking about a post...another writing it...the next one reading any new posts...and the last was dedicatedly reserved to reading-n-writing of comments . But alas..things here have changed, and all I can hope for is another year of hibernation from Bertie once he returns to helL ;)
Secondly...there's the other flurry...of mails in my inbox from the Ko-rr-icode yahoo group. Here again, my 2-3 mails-a-day inbox is being tormented to 100+ mails from an excited bunch of people...asking anything and everything that comes to their mind.
Add to this the anguish of missing out on a europe tour with the family...and the weird feeling associated with living in a hostel 2000 miles away from home for the first time in my life, with Komrades at the Kampus of Ko-rr-icode in Kerala.....phew!
No wonder I feel like a doped out junkie most of the day...

Conspiracy Theory

There is a conspiracy against me and i'll tell you why. Recently i had the first ever heartbreak of my life. You must be saying its shoo unfair, itney haseen mijaj ka, mazakiya ladke pey.

Say whatever, but i was recovering in my own way, consciously avoiding anything even resembling mushy stuff. That meant leaving dirty, smelly socks in my room, watching 1980s hollywood movies about college, the type that is unapologetic, raucous, cheap laughs for cheap-laughs sake, male-bonding fraternity kind of cinema and was turning in at night, reading my copy of "340 reasons not to have a girlfriend".

Also, unintentionally, for some insane reason, i'm being nice to most people. So much so, that my mom must probably be saying,"This boy is the apple of my eye". In other words "Yeh ladka toh meri aankhon ka tara hai." Although, come to think of it shoudn't it be "Yeh ladka toh meri aankhon ka seb hai."

Anyways the point is i was doing fine. Then why you must be wondering am i through this blog hell bent on popularising my latest book "Getting over heartache in 21 days for dummies". Blame what happened in the morning today. I got up in a cherry'ol mood. Conviniently ignoring the fact my pillow was wet with my drool i'm up and about with a confident air, ready to face whatever this world throws at me. Have breakfast, mummy ko bye karke aur papa ki blessings, apna basta leke nikal pada listening to one of my favourite inspirational songs on my mobile,

Risin' up, back on the street
Did my time, took my chances
Went the distance, now I'm back on my feet
Just a man and his will to survive

Fast foward some 10 minutes later.....

I'm in my office cab sitting quitely, minding my own business. I should have recognised the early warning signs, as 3 of the 4 songs played in a segment called foreplay (??) on the radio were of the mushiest kind. Then it happened. The lady sitting infront of me suddenly started to look out of the cab putting tremendous strain on her neck in the process. Now she is not hiven to such a tendency, she's pretty, seemingly smart, dresses well, perfectly nice female probably in her mid-twenties.

She then pokes her female friend sitting on the front seat and coos,"See that white car infront, there's Blah blah (her husband) in it....see see...can you see him?" The other female didn't quite share her enthusiasm and didn't really think it was the same as sighting of a rare, exotic, almost extinct bird. She seemed a bit cheesed off at the unwarrented poke i think. So, she simply mumbled,"Oh! He leaves at the same time as you?" Sitting at the back, i raise my eyebrows, talk about obvious questions.

Anyhow that chit-chat dies down after couple of minutes. We are at the Dwarka-Kapeshra crossing red light. Now, let me tell you as far crossings and red lights go this is hardly a romantic setting. By now she can take it no longer, gives the old blighter (in the white car) a call."Hiii !! I just messaged you. Didn't you get it? My cab is behind your car. Nahi just behind...oh you can see me...hehehe...(frantic hand movements going on). Chalo byeeee!!" And then she waves that typically girly goodbye. The one where the fingers come down one by one slowly.

She then sat through the whole journey with a goofy smile, her eyes rolling in their sockets, and her face had taken on the colour and expression of a devout tomato. I could see she loved like a thousand bricks. Ah! life.

Marriage...eh!!

Seems like it is fast developing into a national past time these days. Discussion in offices over coffee, TV coverage, newspaper headlines, actually getting into one seems to be very much the rage.

Well you can hardly blame me for adding as somebody once profoundly remarked, fuel to fire. The Ash-Abhi wedding, impending nupital of cousins....hell even my best friend is getting married soon. So why the heck is it eating me so much, you may venture to ask?

Is it cause i see people cozy and happy together (atleast on the surface) while i like Schumacher in his prime am heading towards the dangerous curve of life called mid-20s at breakneck speed. Or that my younger cousins are attaching the words "old ancestor" in their warm salutations while greeting me. Or that just the other day i saying to my aunt, "Young Rahul would do well to concentrate on his studies rather than the girls in his engineering college."

Probably, although you might think that i am a tad overreacting in feeling like an old sock in the bottom drawer....hmm...who knows...but things to ponder on....in the meanwhile time to put on my jammies, hit the strip clubs, enjoy the lap dances and burn rubber with my ferrari.

I recall having rather interesting conversation regarding marriage last year. The characters in the conversation being me, aunty K and a guest appearence by me mom. Now aunty K is as far as people born before Goa was liberated (somewhere in 1961, you morons) a pretty jovial and light hearted creature.

In the noraml course of events i rather enjoy having a conversation with her. However, that day there were weightier issues on her mind. She was looking for suitable matches for both her daughter and son as they both were rapidly slipping past the acceptable marriage age in Hindu middle class families. Resolution of the Kashmir imbroglio wouldn't so much as registered a blip on her radar.

So here goes,
Aunty K: Sunn beta, you free naa? Internet laga dey....V (her son) key liye ladkiyaan dekhte hain. I knw this site.

Now, getting an oppurtunity to ogle at pictures of babes on the internet with official sanction, jumped at the chance and chirped,
Me: Haan aunty, jaroor. (Trying to sound cool, not over enthusiastic)

For one, the number of profiles of prospective grooms far exceded the ones for brides. Blasted twisted sex ratio in this country. So aunty suddenly changes track and decides its better to go through the groom profiles for her darling daughter. So then we proceed to go over them in some detail. Not an enjoyable experience to say the least. Aunty K was on fire and like a dragon slaying all in her path and rejecting prospective grooms with:

- He's too fat
- What will my daughter do married to a teacher ??
- Hmmm....decent...but the salary...
- This one is the best: He seems a bit old, my daughter loves to dance...i don't think isko dance vance aata hoga. Say what aunty, for all you knw he's Prabhu Deva's dancing coach!! (I swear this one is true)

An already dark day is getting gloomier :(

In the meantime darling mommy comes into the room and chimes, "Abhishek, you seem to be awfully interested in all the girls. Hai! Iss ladke ka kuch nahi ho sakta."

Before i coould spring to my defense, aunty K comes to the rescue,
Aunty K: Kya baat kar rahe ho didi, kitna accha ladka hai. IIM mein jo hai....(then turning to me) beta tujhe apni shaadi ki koi chinta nahi karni hai....IIM mein jo hai (again!). Sunder ladkiyon ki line lagegi iske liye toh.
Me: (Smiling like a contented teenaged girl having just bought the latest shoes from the mall.)

Two obseravtions here,

1. Wow!! finally i found the answer to the question that has proven to be a downfall of many, thinking about which many a night has been spent in agony...."WHY MBA ??" And as it is with the tougher questions in life, the simplicity of the answer is beautiful.

2. Thousands like aunty K spend spend hours data mining relevent marriage information. For crying out loud, why the heck does someone not developp some marriage index or rating ? Talk about a business oppurtunity going a begging!!

MBA => Mediocre But Arrogant

With the IIM results being finally announced last week just got me thinking about my own admission last year. Like a true blue MBA (even though a half baked one as yet) i like to hear myself talk. So the naive lil souls joining a MBA course would do well to read on with max concentration and those who dunn particularly like the variety (ie MBAs, justt incase u other morons didn't get it) enjoy some laughs at their expense.

These were the words that hit us, around 270 unsuspecting souls, sitting starry-eyed, straining our ears to hang onto every word of what was being said in the orientation programme. This was the opening slide of Rocky's talk. Now Rocky belongs to the rarest of rare species. Profs loved by students, by most atleast and one of those genuinely good teachers.

Before that Dean Academic had in a rather stern voice and grim manner of long time employee of a funeral parlour, told us about the rigour and challenges that the PGP programme at one of India's leading educational institution throws at nincompoops like us. She might as well have been one of Berite's aunts, looking like one who eats broken bottles and wears barbed wire next to the skin (to complete the picture for you). Then there was the Placement Chairman along with 7 of the finest students of the senior batch (Pcom as they are known, more on that in some other post), who reassured us that we will have good placements and they would need our cooperation in that. (I know i'll ahev good placements, but tell mewhere would i be heading to, the trading floors on Wall Street or consulting fortune 500 clients in Tokoyo or London)

Well, now that i am in Placecom and know the system, those were wise words. Infact next year am already dreading that i will have to stand while he speaks infront of the fucchas. But i do find it a bit weird that one of the first speakers you listen to in a new college is the Placement Chairman!!

Anyhow, getting back to the originally point....Rocky told us the right things what every MBA grad needs to hear and remember.

- Use the tremendous resources and infrastructure usefully
- Study hard but equally work on self development
- Utilise your time in a worhtwhile manner
But most importantly,
- Never take your self too seriously (we MBAs are given to such a tendency)

This is ofcourse not his original term. It is the title of a book by Abhijit Bhaduri about his life in XLRI. Haven't read the book so can't comment but heard its decent.

Teachers like Rocky are as rare as a good fielding Indian side. In our regular huffing and and pretending to have a busy life we often forget to appreciate them. As one of my collegues wrote in the feedback form at the end of his course, "The trip to helL was made worth it."

Happy Day!!

People (yes some people do land up at driftingdolts every now or then) have been complaining. The general complaint being that the posts here are anything but peppy.

People cribbing.
People puking. :D
People getting separated in Metro.
People declaring their comeback for n^th time.
People wishing to travel alone.
People complaining.
People speculating about strange questions (with stranger comments :D)

So, I thought maybe I’d write something peppy.

To begin with, today was an extraordinarily happy day.

The taste of that hot pancake with vanilla ice cream at Monk last night still existed somewhere between my teeth (I know what you are thinking. The answer is – No).

The Sunday edition of Indian Express cried aloud about the current trend of young people who were too busy with their work to forget about the leaves that they had in their kitty. Hmmm… reminds me of something!!!!
Peter Vidal says that the next week would be tough for me coz of Mars’ movement. You bet!

Sunday Morning Television is bliss.

Went to check out Spencer’s.

A guy at lift mistook me for a liftman and said – “2^nd Floor”. Feeling sorry for the guy who had no idea about what “2” looked like, I pointed out towards the number “2” on the instrumental panel.
And as expected more drama followed thereafter – A marketing girl came up to me and asked if I know about TAG Heuer. Asked her to have a look at my wrist and she fainted (Again, I know what you are thinking. And the answer, yet again, is – No).

After spending a lot of time at Tantra’s and contemplating over whether I should buy the Good Bush – Bad Bush Tee, I was back at home chatting with good ol’ bertie.

And keeping up with the trend started by bertie, I’ll sign off with excerpts from our rather hilarious chat –

Bertie: hi
whats up ?
me: hey dude
mm... fan
Bertie: ??
me: hehe
Bertie: whats that now...sistah ?
me: !!!!!
sistah !!
Bertie: yo man....my nigger
:)
me: d***-shitter :D
bro
Bertie: yo man bro
my daug
me: gimma hifi
Bertie: hifi
hochie mama
me: mm.....
that's it

Chennai Blues

SweatDrippingHatefulTamilsNoseyTamilsOutrageouslyHotFood
SmellyBeachesScrewedUpTrafficZeroNightlifeRedneckColleagues
NoSexyChicksFreezingServerRoomBoilingEverythingElseTwoHourCommute
NoseyTamilDriverNoMyoozikOnLaptopScrewdupSouthyStyleSeafood
NoseyTamilClientLettingMeWriteOnlyThisMuch!

Arrrrgh!

Wodehouse and books (contd)....

To be frank, i'm a big fan only of the Bertie and Jeeves stories...haven't really read many of the other works of Wodehouse - Blandings Castle, Psmith and the others. The thing about his works is the effortless use of language and style. The plot and the characters are scaresly believable anyways. But still it has given me, withy my limited reading, two endearing and memorable characters:-

Bertie: He is such a good soul. His whole aim in life is to help his idiot friends out of trouble, and he really has no thought of self. You can imagine that he'd be very good company. His use of language is so fabulous that just asking you if you'd like a cup of tea would become an event.

Jeeves: Jeeves is the guide, philosopher and friend everyone needs. The nanny to put you to bed at night and make sure you are comfortable.

I think everyone would like to have a Jeeves. I know i would. However, in these days of 'affirmative action' let me clarify i don't mean a butler or servant. For one because we would all be embarrassed by having a butler. We wouldn't know how to talk to him. It really goes back to Aladdin, with Jeeves as the genie. The genie could always mock his master.

Its quite brilliant really....

---------------------------------------------------------------------

Stephen Fry, the famous British comedian who played Jeeves on the series speaking about the challenge of the role:-

"Wodehouse described Jeeves' cough as 'like a sheep clearing its throat of a blade of grass on a distant hillside.' I tried practicing that but sounded more like a goat clearing its throat of a piece of cheese on a nearby hillside. These things are difficult. "

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Talking about helpful friends and idiot friends. Sample this chat i had with Marvin couple of days ago:-

Kshitij: what have you been eating/drinking off late pal?
:)
you seem to be on a roll with hindi movie type dialogues :D

me: i'm in a rut buddya big oneso deep that from the ground u can't even see me....

Kshitij: huh... whats wrong with you?
this is what wordweb has to say abt rut ....."Applies to nonhuman mammals: a state or period of heightened sexual arousal and activity"

me: whats wrong with this world i ask....

Kshitij: hmmmm ..good question

me: any answers my frnd ?

Kshitij: 42 ?

Wodehouse and books....

I have been thinking a bit these days. Those in the know would think this is rarity of a rare order. Well, yeah!! Halley's comet seems like a blasted nuisance in comparison. Also, i just downloaded the first season of "Jeeves and Wooster". Famous television adaptation of few stories by the Master himself.

Anyways, this morning i got dressed early for work and had about half an hour on hand. So, decided to watch the first episode of the downloaded series. To be honest i was not really sure what to expect. Noone knows what we Wodehouse adorers are like. They all have an image of Jeeves and Wooster's world in their heads, and there is always the possibility that any play or movie might ruin that image. Plus the movie version of the HG2G was poor to say the least.

But i needn't had worried, it had all the humour, sillyness and settings which the stories so vividly describe. Knowing the sullen mood i'm in and the genreal funeral air i carrying about me these days just what i needed in the morning, clearing the mind like fresh winds on a nice lil hill or a gud'ol shag (whatever you prefer, no judgements).

Whatever little i saw, the series seems really good. So, on my way to work in between thinking of minor matters in life such as how much equity stake to accquire in the latest merger deal, which capital markets to invest in and valuation of equipment worth millions of dollars....i started thinking of Wodehouse books and well books in general.

He is called the master, argubaly the greatest comic writer in english and among the most brilliant of the last century. To be honest, i can't really support claims like that coz to be fair i have read very little. But i like books that take you to different world, lets one imagine, mind you not just fantasy tales, could very well be a very stark reality. Doesn't mean i don't like other kinds of books, but just feel as if too much is made of some of them.

Now here i would like to comment on the reading habits of youngsters these days. There are your Chetan Bhagat's types, immensley popluar. I know, before you stone me for even using that name in the same article about Wodehouse, hold on, i have a thought here. In way the young, diet coke guzzling, k-serial watching, fancy mobile carrying generation has a book about themselves, living their lives in a book giving a glamourised anglel to it making them look ohh so cool.

Then there are the serious books, talking about complex relationships, human emotions and the truth, at times shocking, trying to shake us out of our comfort zone. Well, i'm not sure about these books/movies. It just seems a lie, beautiful people going through there own created emotional upheavel, finding comfort and excuses for their vulnerability and cowardice.

For better readability continued in the next post...

Ah! Another weekend goes by

Well there are times in life when what you feel is uncannily captured by a song or poetry or few lines. Well one such song comes to mind regarding my state of existance....

So close no matter how far
Couldn't be much more from the heart
Forever trusting who we are
And nothing else matters

Never opened myself this way
Life is ours, we live it our way
All these words I don't just say
And nothing else matters

Open mind for a different view
And nothing else matters

--------------------------------------------------------

Well finally one interesting thing happened on this trip to Delhi. On Sunday afternoon, me and Madmita meet up at the metro station....i buy the ticket when we hear the metro rolling into the station.

Madmita shoots a glance at me like two hunters would on an expedition,sensing the prey and exclaims "Dude!! lets run for it". She belts across like PT Usha at the nationals. Well now you have to appreciate my state of being at the particular point in time. I have been in a generally dopey mood recently plus the clumsy dolt that i am, i fumbled with my ticket at the gate...the damn thing won't open!! Over and above that the thing that i have for slo-mo runs (since the days i was scarred for life watching fine young ladies like Pamela and Yasmine on Baywatch). What all this meant was that surprisingly quick madmita was out of sight (i swear, i didn't catcha glimpse of her) before i shifted from the first gear.

Then came the escalator. Now i have a thing about escalators, i dunn like running or even walking on them....i feel it disrespects the good'ol esci. Anyhow, seeing the criticality of the situation (Madmita actually made it feel like it was the last train to El dorado) i moved rather swiftly, gracefully leaping from step to step.

Ok now this is where it gets interesting....as if you haven't cracked a rib already laughing. So i reach the top on the platform now....the train is about to leave...i can just feel it. Madmita has gathered such speed that its impossible for her to grind to a halt. The doors werea round 15 meters away from the point i was standing when i saw them closing....next few moments passed in classic slow-mo style, i tried my best like a hindi film hero shouting "Nahiii......(hands flying in the air), well i didn't actually shout. The doors closed me and madmita standing on opposite sides like lovers losing each other forever....u get the picture, purra hindi movie ka romantic scene....

Yeah enough of that...this is how actually the conversation across the glass went :-

Me: "What the f##$ were you doing ??"
Her: "Get on the next metro you slow coach, moron!!!"

And then according to her all the people in the compartment burst out laughing.

My comeback, Sport, World Cup and some perspective

Well to start off lemme just say the words masses of readers of this wildly popular blog have been dreaming of..."Yeh baby...i'm back". Famous words by Marvin, but actually hold good in this case.

Now that i'm back in Delhi for the summer i am going to regular with my writing. Actually inspite of being pretty busy n all i've also been super lazy. So when i did have free time, i preferred to sleep, watch a movie, chat with pals n do other stuff (i know what ur thinking.... "kids these days!!"). But i have been meaning to write for quite some time so now the enteries might seem about stuff that happened well in the past.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

With all the rampant speculation n mindnumbing news about India's World cup debacle cluttering up the media. Ofcourse as these things usually go, no real value-adding opinion is even remotely in the air or any such has been drowned. So that gives me an oppurtunity to use my favourite perspective quote, say what i think about sports n the World Cup:

"The fact that we live at the bottom of a deep gravity well, on the surface of a gas covered planet going around a nuclear fireball 90 million miles away and think this to be normal is obviously some indication of how skewed our perspective tends to be."

- Douglas Adams

To attempt to kick a round object between two poles or send a bunch of feathers over a net or attempt to knock over three wooden sticks with a leather ball might appear to be some of the most pointless things that man can do. Yet it is this very pointlessness that gives sport its allure. At its best sport means nothing beyond itself because it is artificial, controlled, and the rules change to take in either popular sentiment or commercial interest.

It is also the most profound activity we can engage in; as a legendary football coach, said, sport is not a matter of life and death - it is more important. Countries have gone to war over sport; economies have improved or collapsed over world championships; dictatorships have been given legitimacy over a tournament. This is the irony of sport - it is a pointless exercise full of meaning; an evolutionary step.

Sport is a representation of life with its dangers, pressures and the need to make a thousand judgements that would affect the outcome. Sport can seep into life, but when the reverse happens it upsets the natural order of things. When real life breaks through and enters a sporting activity bringing with it death, it is unfair.

Therefore, to term India's departure from the World Cup a tragedy is ridiculous. Tragedy is when a coach is murdered. When a champion tennis player is stabbed oncourt. Tragedy is when a world champion driver is killed on the circuit. Tragedy is not to understand what is tragedy. Dropping a catch is not a tragedy, being thrown out of the World Cup because batsmen can't score runs is not a tragedy. In fact, it is a farce.

If you saw the Australia-South Africa encounter, you knew that India had no chance in this World Cup. These teams have taken the one-day game to a different plane altogether. Everything is based on physical fitness and the ability to think on the feet. Two qualities that India lacked. If anything, by their refusal to acknowledge the importance of fielding and fitness, India were actually taking the game backwards.

Shane Watson throwing down the stumps from the boundary to break a hundred run opening partnership is what it's all about. It turned the match, and perhaps the tournament itself.

The lonely traveler

Now that Blatherer has already blathered about the pukey details of my Dharamshala trip, I’ll instead harp on an interesting incident, and the thoughts that followed, occupying my mind during most of the 3 day trip.

It all started with the Volvo trip where, by virtue of god-knows-which good deeds of mine, I was able to get a seat slightly away from the 4 weirdos in my group, and next to an absolutely gorgeous female named Rebecca, who’d come all the way from Germany like the rest of the foreigners in search of some Karma crap.(suckers!!!)

Anyways, though most of the time my mind was too busy looking at her than to hear what she was saying, I managed to hang on to one of the things she said. She told, or rather advised me, to travel alone the next time!! Now I don’t know whether she said this out of mercy for me, looking at the rest of my group, or out of pure lust so that she could catch me alone the next time, but I sure am intrigued by the whole prospect of being a lone traveler. I mean, just consider the following benefits:

• Only having to listen to you
• Not having to wait for the last member to finish bathing before getting ur breakfast
• Not having to see people wretch out bucket-fulls of puke outside your balcony
• Being able to talk to interesting people like Rebecca, without facing the customary leg-pulling about what happened in the night (that is so lame :x)
• Not having to pay inflated bills at some fancy restaurant, just 'cause your group-mates can't stop gorging like hogs
  
• Just being who you are
• Umpteen other benefits

And so it has been decided. My next trip is going to be solo. No pick-ups. No schedules.

Nobody knowing where I am.

Totally Free. Because that is how a vacation is meant to be.

When everyone left

Continuing with the 3 theme started by madmita -

We never really understood the fuss that a 3-day weekend created.
Well, we were in college and already had our hands full on the amount of free time to kill. A 3-day weekend was more of an additional burden - a hill we had to conquer just in order to find more and more time to play with.

But as they say - 'Times have changed.'

We started working :(
And time started killing us.
It seemed as if time was running away faster than the audience does on seeing a Katrina Kaif movie.

And a 3-day weekend !!! It was the best possible thing that could have happened to us. (Second only to the unmentionable)

But alas! While the whole Delhi seems to be out on the road on their way to Manali / Mcleodganj / Rishikesh / Hyderabad and God-knows what all places, I'm here - sitting in front of my monitor writing this goddamn blog - all thanks to my Orthopedist who thinks that the world is going to fall down and it should be my shoulders that would lift it up.
And hence the prohibition.

p.s. zz9 just called. That damn fellow is getting high on Apple Cider & Cannabis and is apparently puking his way to glory: Wish I was there :((

Will He? Won't He?

And yes...this time he DID! Yet-umpteenth again...
Well, since I'm in no mood for suspense...the He is our dear ol' Blatherer...and what he did do, is...well, he puked!! Yes people...the king-of-all-things-vomity did'nt disappoint us, with unmatched histrionics and acts at a recent bash at TGIF's...only to end it all with his signature puke-fall-and-roll-around-in-it sequence! Too bad you couldn't accompany us to PbN...would have been fun to see your reactions to those vodka-waala-golgappas...
The only troubling times in the entire incident were when his vows to stick to beer at parties...alas, that would only deprive us poor souls of such fineries!

Will She? Won't She?

Hmmmm....
The one question!

• An enthu project team deciding to have a cricket match on Saturday, just before India's first match at the Cup, only to manage 2 measly innings and spending rest of the evening guzzling beer
• An over-enthu member of the same team breaking off his bat when India lost...
• Abuses hurled and tables banged in a meeting to decide which team would be responsible for a critical bug
• A mock fire drill in which half the people were convinced there was actually fire in the building; more than half of those more worried about not having taken a backup or checked in their code, than their lives

Who says office is boring??

New bands, weird bands, awesome-sounding bands....it seems I'm being bombarded with newer-than-ever alternative music these days. Even more so, with my access to BOB renewed (the alt rock channel on worldspace for the uninitiated - read:Marvin :D). Anyways, all this gr8 music about, well about nothing and everything in general, sure helps me keep my mind away from all the crap happening in the world around us. Songs with sentence-long titles, songs about a few of my least favourite things...songs about something absolutely mindless like chasing cars(???)...the past 2 months or so have truly shown me the power of good music to keep a level head in a disheveled state of affairs. Songs like Trouble make so much sense at times. And so do the ones, like The only difference between martyrdom and suicide is press coverage!!

Nai Nai Sarak.

Finally and finally I got a chance to explore Old Delhi (finally!!)

Old Delhi has always remained nothing more than a small dab on Delhi's map to me. A place you wouldn't really prefer going towards, unless -

- you have to catch a train from Old Delhi Railway Station
- you need to get some "hardware" stuff (damn you pervert guys)
- you need books at discounted rate from Nai Sarak
- (and as pointed out to me lately) you need to do some serious wedding shopping :(

well apart from the 'books' reason, I couldn't imagine any other thing for me to go there. But then, we South (of) Delhi people had our own Ber Sarai. So all in all, Old Delhi has been a complete no-no for me.

And then, the time came and I really had to move my ass to Old Delhi.

But hell! it turned out to be a fun trip.
Loads and loads of walking (and while you are carrying 10kgs of books with you)
People guiding you who themselves had no clue about the place :P
Actually finding out that Nai Sarak has more Sari shops than bookshops.
Awesome parawthe (or is it paraanthe!) - deep fried and served with a whole lot of stuff and an overdose of ghee.
An overkill of Faluda kulfi at Giani's

-Hic- I'm on a guilt trip

p.s. I'm on a roll or what! Everyone else looks dead on this blog :D

Yawn!

Days fly by.
And I still watch them fly past the sky.

Have a interview tomorrow (don't know where it came from :D)
Do not know what the results would be, but in all the experience has been good.

A lot of time went into self-contemplation.
Trying to understand what life is all about (I think I had lost track since I started working). And I guess same has been the case with others (zz9!)

So as Green Day said (sang to be precise)

So make the best of this test and don't ask why,
It's not a question but a lesson learned in time.
It's something unpredictable, but in the end it's right.
I hope you had the time of your life.....

You used to be cool dude!

There was a time (in Delhi) when if you wanted to listen to good Rock, Great Indian Rock was the mecca for all the head-bangers.

Back then, live music was not that popular in pubs (It was either heavily taxed or banned - no clue). And apart from college fest's (IIT's Rendezvous in particular), there was a serious dearth of Rock gigs in the Delhi Circuit. GIR came as a respite for all the rock lovers.
Solid, good rock for 2 days - What else could a guy ask for.

Things changed. Gigs were taking place every now and then. The Mezz, Turquoise Cottage, Cafe Morrison, Haze, Cafe Thai - Go to any of these places and you'll be served with fresh live music along with the usual affair. So, going by the market dynamics (hi-fi jargon) your target audience had to be more specific.

And finally, I'm proud to say - We have arrived.
GIR, rather than offering you a variety of genres, presents to you good (sic!), clean, distortion-friendly heavy death metal!

Well, that's good as well as bad.
Good for those who know what they want and what they are going to GIR for.
And bad for those who are either old timers like us and newbies who want to get a taste of rock (all that howling and mosh associated with death metal can actually be a turn off)

So the need of the hour is 2 GIR's :D
- one for the college kids (ya they look like kids now)
- one for the oldies like us (sad to say this, but We are a bunch of oldies now)

RSJ, are you listening?
God, are you listening?

When the days are not long enough.

You need time; Time doesn't need you; Money is still trying to buy time; And someone just killed time. With every second that ticks away in glory, I wish I would have had more.

Life was getting cooler.
I was looking forward for a great year ahead. And then suddenly someone played an ass and put up my name in the list.

Damn! The complicated just got even more complicated.
The level of confusion has increased.
My ability to predict future just got a shot in the ass.

Soon there'll be day. The sun will shine through.
The harmless would get less harmful (mostly)

Went to my first ever book reading on saturday!!
It was totally awwwesome (used this same stupid spelling in my last post, but what the heck).

The venue - Crossword, Gurgaon (a cherished influx of culture in this materialistic shit of a city)

The book - The inheritance of loss. A great read...sad and funny at the same time...but not Booker material :D (not even close to god of small things, or midnight's children......ahh, wish for once I could've heard Salman Rushdie reading from one of his own works....)

The reader - One Mrs. Neelima Ray from the american council, also a lecturer at LSR.....blown away by the depth of her comprehension. Damn...I can't stop cursing my four years of engineering for shaping up this absolutely-no-lateral, only linear thinking mind :(

Note to self - Get your bum to every possible book reading-concert-theatre event hapenning around, and redeem your culturalself!

Is it lunacy! Is it a fad! No, it’s the CAT !!

Well I have been waiting a long time to write this (1 P.M, 19th November 2006 to be precise).
But somehow, never felt like doing it. Till now, the day the results were announced.

And it isn’t that I’m crying hoarse because of my inability to score well, but only because of the people around me.

People, who studied like there was no tomorrow.
People, who religiously gave practice tests over practice tests every Sunday.
People, who wasted every single weekend of their life for the past 6 months.
People, who fought foot and nails with their bosses to take some time off for studies.
People, who scored good enough in practice tests to put me to shame.

People, who meticulously did everything in accordance with the textbook, except for that single day.

And all this just to get that coveted IIM stamp on their royal posterior.

And it makes me wonder… (Led Zep to my rescue)

Isn’t it that we Indians (sorry for generalizing the whole lot) are like cows?
Simple and steady, doing what our master (replace this with any one’s name whomsoever dictates your life) orders, following each other in a herd, taking in everything our big mouth can take and cud’ing on it later. And with just two wishes in our life –

• To get the right brand on our ass (IIT/IIM/NIT/AIIMS/Any damn engineering /medical college will do).
• To provide our masters with the best possible milk our udders could produce

And we can go to any extent for this. Even forgetting if there exists any other reason for our existence and that at the end of the day, each and everyone of us will find his/her way to someone’s dining table (depends on which part of India you reside in) or some fat lady’s purse, wallet or that kinky little dress (it again makes me wonder…).

Hmmm….
I think I’ll have to start thinking.
Until, of course, the next bug catches my ass :D

This blog is cooler than evah befoe...
And the Decemberists are awwwwwwesome.

Post No. 100.

Dedicated to Google - Saviour of the In'duh'viduals

My two cents...

I know this blog is dead. In fact it's way past its death, multiple re-incarnations, some subsequent deaths, burials...basically been through everything remotely related to all that life-n-death crap...and is finally in a state of limbo.
And that, actually, makes writing here all the more worthwhile. Firstly, you don't expect any response whatsoever. Secondly....umm, well there isn't anything worthier to do on a as-bluesy-as-it-gets monday morning, when ur manager's on leave, and the work can, well, (to put it easy) can be overlooked.
So.
After all this mindless thought which used to be the very essence of this blog, comes the question i've dreaded for the entire 5 mins. I've spent writing this: what to write about in the first place!?
...
...
Arrr, what the heck, I might as well write about the damn weekend yet again. At least saturday ('cause sunday was spent healing my aging muscles who had to bear the brunt of the physical and mental stresses I'd been subjected to the day before). It all started on friday itself, with my manager coming up with another one of those ideas that makes you wonder %$#^ - to have a team cricket match, at 8 AM the next morning!! Curses, pleas, brickbats came his way from all sides of the team, but he was not a man to be swayed. So, here i was, at 8 on a saturday, standing on a cricket ground, barely able to control the shivering.
Thankfully, the match turned out to be more symbolic than what i'd though, with 3 of the 8 ppl failing to show up, and the rest in no mood to do anything at all. Just a few overs of struggling with bat and ball were all it took to send us packing back to home, with joints aching as if everest had just been conquered. But just as I'd happily trotted into home, aiming to stealthily make my way into bed till lunchtime, disaster struck, with the family declaring about plans to be out in 15 mins, and head towards a day-out at Akshardham temple!
Phew! What a behemoth of a monument is that place...just the parking expanse becomes tiring to cross. But it sure is a nice change from the regular expected experience at such huge religious places - well organised, informative...it resembles a museum more than anything else.
Anyways, after negotiating through the animatronics, boat rides, miles of walking, we finally got through with it, and I resumed plans to doze off right in the car itself. But lo and behold...such wonderful plans weren't meant to be...as my enthu-about-masala-movies brother reminded that we'd made advanced booking to watch - yeah u guessed it -Dhoom 2 - at a shady south delhi theatre!! All my "God bless PVR for not showing the movie" chants failed. My repeated rants about the new levels of crapiness the movie achieves were yet again ignored as the already sleepy me was dragged into a 10 to 1 nightshow.
Well, I can't find anything to write about the movie. Just can't. Skateboards that move faster than a Honda CBR can leave you too stunned to speak. The only consolation was to be proven right, at the end, that the movie did suck. Bigtime.

As the horridly tiring day drew to a close, I was too exhausted to even let out a whimper of complaint on being reminded that the wedding season had begun, and I had to be mandatorily present at each and every one of them.
And you thought weekdays were scary...

We are the champions....

And bad mistakes
I've made a few
I've had my share of sand kicked in my face
But I've come through

Nothing like listening to Queen, especially at times like these :D

The questions without an answer!

A Diwali weekend, crackers that make more noise rather than exploding: ka-ching!, Motor Cycle Diaries and the biography of Che Guevara - A deadly combo that can shatter your self-beliefs and make you question yourself.

You see your friends running to add that extra zero at the end of their paychecks and at the same time you see that poor fellow trying to remove the zero from his.

Are we on the road to progress?
Definitely not that kid who looked bewildered, seeing the sky lit up with a thousand colors (or was it the thousand rupee note)

India is progressing.
Salaries sure are.
And so is the disparity among the different sections of society.
Juvenile Crime rate is.
Naxalite and Maoist revolutionaries are.

So what is the solution to all this?
A revolution.
A communist government at the center.
A more socially-responsible corporate sector.
Or maybe more and more people giving back to the society.

I don'’t have the answers.
Hell, I don'’t even know the questions yet.

ic (why) ci

A company sells 2 products - A (costing 1,000 bucks) and B (costing 10,000 bucks); both at the same profit margin.
Now any economic book would tell you that it's all about the volume and numbers. The company sells A in much larger numbers as compared to the product.

But there is one market which defies all the rules of economics, comes up with its own chutzpah and makes the economists eat their words. India i.e.

The company being discussed is ICICI Lombard and the products: A - 2 wheeler insurance, B - 4 wheeler insurance.
The number of passenger cars sold in India in FY'06 was 2.4 lakh. Well, Hero Honda alone sold that much bikes in the month of August'06 :-O
Yet, almost all the 4 wheeler owners get their vehicle insured and a minuscule percentage of 2 wheeler owner theirs'.
Which directly means that companies like ICICI Lombard are not getting the expected revenue from the later.
Which indirectly means bad service and almost nil enthusiasm among the agents for pushing 2 wheeler insurance (These people are ready to collect the cheque for 4 wheeler insurance from your choice of place/time but wouldn't except cash for 2 wheelers' at their office)

And this isn't the lone case. If asked about ICICI bank, I could go on and on...

So much for the reforms, privatisation, demand and supply shaping the economy.
(My local govt owned insurance agent would blatantly demand for a Rs.50 note but at least get the job done)

p.s. wrote a 'disgusting' mail to all the icicilombard.com mail ids i could gather (including that of the operation head, mkting head, and other damn heads..suckers.. :P

Week(ends) with days


15 hrs at office followed by a DP with ol'college friends and you know that the weekend has arrived.

And before you realize it, you are supposed to go to n different places, eat all kinds of stuff and drink at the host's mercy.
And compare that to a normal weekday: home-to-office and office-to-home is all that you are supposed to do. All you get to eat is the ghissa - pitta food served by the cafeteria and drink what !!!!!!

Life couldn't have been any more strikingly different.

Good Will Hunting

At the mall the other day, hanging out with buddies (er..correction...colleagues), as we headed to a nearby restaurant to grab a bite, I saw an elderly couple walking out from the place. Now call me old-fashioned, but I really like (don't know the reason why, though!) to see old people having a nice time at the mall (which is o/w supposed to be a youngster's haven). Anyways, being the gentleman that I generally am, I pulled the door and held it open as the two walked out. But just then, to my utter disgust, a colleague of mine, who seemed as if he had'nt eaten anything in months or had a really bad case of diarrhoea, rushed through the door, literally pushing the couple out of the way, and almost stepping on to the poor lady, just to flash an ostentatious grin and a 'thanks, yaar' at me.
I don't know why I felt sooo bad at all this. But at that moment, if I could, I would have really landed a blow on the ass' s face, probably even asked him to apologise. But then again, the years of training that have been spent in learning to control onself and not making a scene held their own, and I spent the lunch sulking away instead.
I mean, what's with most of the people and some basic manners, that they can't seem to get along? Are we too brash or uncivilised a society, that showing even a lil bit of politeness seems too hard? Or maybe too worthless...
Hard to say.

Ranjana, Ranjana...who the {beep} is Ranjana

Another addition to the shining list of accomplishments that this govt. of ours can be proud of. The union ministry for broadcasting has decided that the Indian society is still too childish and immature, that it is unable to decide what should and should not be seen on TV. That, it is too stupid that any TV content must be filtered for objectionable content, before the poor junta is exposed to it. Can't blame them for thinking this way though, 'cause anyone who brought them to power in the first place, must be nothing short of a dumbass.

And hey...no hard feelings regarding the title...just thought it conveyed the idea quite accurately...n besides its hard to have those for someone you don't really know/care about.

Strange.

You meet people you never met before.
You talk to strangers you never knew before.
And yet, you stop talking to people you talked to before.

The vicious cycle sways away.
People come and people go. A few stay, the rest fade away.

The pictures are there, the names are there.
But you can't remember the people they were.

Too embarrased to ask their name again, you find it comfortable to leave them disdained.

And yet, you will meet them again.
With a brand new face and jazzy name.

The vicious cycle sways away.


---- sabbath, bloddy sabbath ----

187 life stories.

187 lives were lost in the Mumbai Train Blasts.
Indian Express carries an article on it's front page covering a victim's life story a day.

Reading one after the other, you'll realize that you have seen this earlier.

Final Destination, anyone?
People who were not supposed to be at the place they were on that day.

The story will fade away but the irony will remain forever.

Lost in a sea of souls

Had a sucky annual day party at some fancy five star yesterday. Damn those hotels suck at making food for a party-it was worse than my friendly-neighbourhood-dhaba.
Nyways...not deviating from the point, there was something apart from the bad food and the bad music and the bad crowd that troubled me. Troubled me so deeply that it forced me to write a blog!
Consider this. A hall packed with the company's employees. Lotsa colleagues, team mates around. Throw in a dozen or so people from the company whom i call friends as well. But still...once the forced greetings, a bit of chit-chat, and the customary mud-slinging of the company/party was over, I found myself at a loss of words. I just cudnt think of what to talk about. Conversations were forced. The smiles and laughs...faked. Even on the dance floor...it was as if I'm standing in the middle of a performance...people, whom I dint feel I even knew...dancing around me...pulling me to join in. But there was no connection. Whatsoever. And all this, despite mine being quite high as well!!
I tried to make a desparate, last effort to call Blatherer, but the ass refused. Then, thankfully, a good ol' friend from the school times happened to call me, and I ended up talking to him for almost an hour in the lobby. Ah...the joy of an unabated flow of conversation! That was for me the most enjoyable hour of the party.
So now a bit of gyaan: NOTHING makes a party more fun (not even booze) than the company of good friends. And also, the luckiest people are those whose colleagues (whom the percieve to be friends) are actually friends...........sadly, mine are not.

Post Surrogate

I know this doesn't count as a post but check this linkout it is hilarious
http://www.cs.purdue.edu/homes/dec/essay.criticize.html

Wanna race, punk.

'performance' bike vs. 'puny' scooterate.
12 horses vs. 7 horses.
4-3-2-1-2-3-4 vs V-matic.

Never thought a girl on an Activa would give my ol' machine a run for its money.
But the sheer driving skill, experience and hard determination made the rookie bite the dust.
The road to Sec-14 was never this fun before.

Who the hell is anonymous.

Ok, it do feels good to see someone 'reading' your blogs and posting comments.
But some anonymous fellow, linking me to an insurance / utility site. That something which really pisses me off.

@Bertie -
(Oh, I'm sick and tired of this) Share the damn admin rights to stop this stuff, since we know you are a bit easy down there :(
If not me / zz9 then atleast madmita or marvin (u still there, buddy!!)

The 1% Rule

Posted in Guardian (cross-linked through Emergic) :

'It's an emerging rule of thumb that suggests that if you get a group of 100 people online then one will create content, 10 will "interact" with it (commenting or offering improvements) and the other 89 will just view it.'

In our case:

For every god-knows-how-many people who are online, 3 'provide' content and 3 people 'interact' and 3 people 'view' it.

Freedom finally

Looks like the government has started listening up to protests from people like us.
News article in techtree

Blogger Blocked!

This is 21st century India. Where, whn a series of blasts rocks the business capital of the country, the best retaliatory measure that the govt. can think of is to block blogging sites. The torchbearers of the freedom of expression in today's connected world.
Is it only me, or does everyone feel that the people governing us, designing policies for us, are so disurbingly dumb that they don't realise...a free mind shall always oppose anything that is being imposed on it...just like imposing reservations is doing exactly the opposite of what it's motive is (er...removing social barriers and caste-based suspicions/hatred....right?)...similarily curbing freedom is the worst possible way to combat hate-based terrorism... for someone wanting to poison the minds of others to initiate them into terrorism, blogging would be probably the most insignifacnt way....but a fanatic blogger unable to quench his urge to pen down his daily thoughts can sure lose his mind and in place of the pen, pick up an AK-47 instead!

P.S.> though what the geniuses at good 'ol IT ministry missed out are the tons of proxi-fy sites that allow anyone to access any damn website...Hail Free Will!

Brave or Indifferent.

The day after the Mumbai blasts.

The newpaper says -

Mumbai'ites cope and will move on.
Everything normalized. Things will go on as if nothing happened.

Is it really so?
Are we brave enough to move on or are we just indifferent?

What did you tell yourself on hearing the news of the blasts? - Shit. that was bad.

Hidden cult of the corporate punk

Creased, tucked in shirts. Crisp business suits. Matching ties. Immaculate speech and mannerisms. The all-accepted image of the corporate world. An image conjured out of the need to be presentable. The need to impress, to leave an impact, and ultimately the need to do business.
But is all this natural??

Damn Fight Club is a great movie. True cinema. Shakes you up and forces you to think. Not to forget, entertains you like no other.
But such grotesque, in-your-face portrayal of everything can sure have some lasting effects. On the psyche ... the rationale to judge what is correct. Or rather, what is thought to be right, but is actually not.
Man is not built to be pleasant. Hell, no other creature in the known universe is. To be presentable...socially acceptable, is a burden, and not the fruit, of what has become to be known as human society. If there is a God up there, he might as well cringe each time someone sneezes and the people around, customarily, say "God bless".

Another thing the movie forces me to think, is that more so than not, people would hate following these stupid pleasantries and customs imposed by society. People driving us to the office, the xerox machine operator...hell maybe even our colleagues and team leads. People whom we think we are unrelated to, but in whose company our life is spent. A seemingly innocent, pleasant face, hiding beneath it the craziness characteristic of a true punk. A mind, trapped in an alien world, imposed, suppressed....ready to explode at any given moment....
Look around...and what do you see? People in a constant state of rage, hurrying around, brashing out aloud on their fancy cellphones...forced into the rat race by capitalistic corporate powerhouses controlling their lives...doing what they don't want to...buying what they don't need....and then made to believe all this to be traits of good citizenship....
One may see all this as something natural, inevitable....i see a punk revolution brewing up...

P.S.>Please don't watch Fight Club more than twice within a week, and go visit a shrink if u do.

The gud, The Bad, The Silly....

Bertie Wooster is the foppish, nutty, and very wealthy (soon-to-be in this case) co-protagonist and narrator of P. G. Wodehouse's Jeeves stories. Now i ain't called betrie for nuthing....usually it's Jeeves, whose genius manages to extricate Bertie or one of his friends from numerous awkward or difficult situations. But alas!! here there was none.

Infact Wodehouse societies from all over the world are famouse for organising large-scale pranks. Well as for as pranks go this was a gud one.....but a few things here :-

1. No i don't feel bad....i mean pranks are meant to be played on frnds...especially poor'ol bertie (phew!! thank heavens not many ppl read this blog though)
2. I wasn't high, infact i remember smoking abt 3 joints (most i had at one time till now) at blah's home n telling him how this stuff ain't gud....i guess the bigger fun was in making the joints with help of seesh!!Also one of the joints is still lying in my house somewhere (holy shit!)...so that pretty much speaks of the "high" i had.
3. Have to say though.....there was this nice-weird metro ride with madmita after smoking the shit....but then again our weirdity trancends clouds of silly smoke.
4. Side effects to the prank : my kurta almost caught fire, my car got little bit burned and ofcourse messing up madmita's throat!!
5. Finally i knew about this since quite somef time actually...not gonna say how.

2nd time unlucky

Well the whole thing was supposed to come as a package.
The actual execution and then the act of telling everyone about it.

But as they say - you can fool all of them some time, but you can't fool some of them all the time. (ok that was crappy)

It started with bertie asking us to provide him with some grass.
But since we had none, we manufactured some :)
Right from the tree under my house I took some dead leaves, grinded them till they resembled some what to actual grass.

Then came the D-day and we passed on this stuff to bertie and guess what he was getting high on it.
Voila, we had invented grass. And it was available aplenty - in the garden, on the porch, on the tree........

Things were getting a bit out-of-hand when he passed the stuff to madmita as well.
Don't know whether she got high or not. (my bet is on the former)

But unlike all things which end on a happy note, things went berserk.

We wanted to end all this thing with a bang - big blog, pictures attached and the works.
But, my guess is that Bertie got hold of the whole thing thru someone else thus leading to more confusion, mistrust, tension :(

Anyways, now that bertie has gone far away we'll have to find a new bakra for such pranks. Any one game?


Private Messages

@bertie - chill dude. it was just a silly joke. we know you'll feel bad but things will change one day and you'll get a chance to aim at my & zz9's ass.
@madmita - you became a passive victim. just stranded in the cross-fire :D

Sports Overloaded

Never considered myself to be a sports fanatic. Never was, actually. I have fond memories of me sitting under a tree, trying to make sense out of an Arundhati Roy, and several classmates calling me to join the ongoing game, much perturbed on losing out on such a fine athlete...
But how times have changed. The past two weeks have been a life-transforming period. God bless soccer, and god bless the World Cup. No longer does TV seem suitable for anything other than sports. Guzzling beer and shouting aloud during a soccer match... all seems so natural now.
And not just soccer. There's Alonso strutting his stuff, troubling Schumi. And the women's semi-finals at good ol' Wimbledon have been no less exciting than a proper catfight. Hell....I even watched golf for an hour recently....and thank god, the list does NOT include cricket (read: the dead sport)

Yaay!....TV's fun again....

I'm back kiddos!...

back from the summer hibernation...
as the dark shadows of the HAnce King leave us for two years, an opportunity knocks for unprecedented wackiness to shine its way thorugh...

Blog is Dead

Officially announcing the demise of this blog and the dreams of its denizens to break into something ........

The CRACKdown begins

2 more days to go.
Or maybe a few more days, coz I don't think Bertie would be free enough to soak up the fun :)

Good Times..Bad Times..

GD and Shubh trying to pass off Sprite bottles as the beer bottles

Zero (The best band in India, presently)

Zero (Missed Warren though)

End of the day

The biggest cover-up in the history of the world (or this blog) is still locked up...
...in the minds of 2 senechaux' (lol)....and would soon surface, as the end of the world (or this blog) approaches...
In your face, Dan Brown.

Countdown Begins

12 more days to go.

Beep....beep....beep....beep

.....thats my pulse. Just wanted to say I'm alive though barely. Bertie could we have a pulse check from you too :)

365 days.

That's how long it took.

An year ago, fresh out of college, started working.
New place, new faces, new names to remember, new concepts, new fundae about life, new perspective, new thoughts, new randomness, a complete new setup which I was never accustomed to.

Looking back, I should say every thing's not changed.

Few things remain the same but their context has changed.
People are same but their meanings have changed.
Faces are same but the character has changed.
The place is same but the address has changed.
I am the same but I have changed.

The 3 phases of Mukteshwar

Dawn

Rainy Afternoon

Sunset

I said, what do I know?
Show me the right way to go...


"Rule is evil, and it is none the better for being majority rule/democracy....What is the ballot? It is neither more nor less than a paper representative of the bayonet, the billy, and the bullet. It is a labor saving device for ascertaining on which side force lies and bowing to the inevitable. The voice of the majority saves bloodshed, but it is no less the arbitrament of force than is the decree of the most absolute of despots backed by the most powerful of armies."


Democracy, one of india's few shinging beacons in the current state of world affairs. A tool, used as much to feel proud about ourself, as it is used to leverage ties with the prosperous countries...and even at times to beg for help in times of calamity.
Democracy, taught to young minds thoroughout the country as the best, most impartial, just and righteous system of all.
Democracy,where the voice of PEOPLE is above all........

But is all this actually true??Is the current state of political affairs in our country the best it can be? Hardly...

• mass protests by the PEOPLE against misuse of reservation as a vote-bank tool, still no political party speaking against it...
• the judiciary being mocked at again; and again...at the whim of the RULING govt
• absurd promises of free power being fulfilled, crippling the state economies...
• no money to build roads in the country, yet no hesitation in increasing the millions already being spent on the burgeoning bureaucracy...
• an imminent energy crisis about to happen in near future...in on of the world's FASTEST economy
• a food grain crisis ALREADY here

what's going on? who are these people...supposed to be from whithin US, for US? where is the ACCOUNTABILITY? is democracy an EXCUSE for being wasteful, inefficient, power-hungry...and plain SHAMELESS? why is the NEW india, the intellectual hub of the world, at their mercy??
is there a solution? i want to vote...but who do i vote for?
is it time for a revolution...a change for the better? whom do we follow? marx? mao?...hitler?
i don't know.

"Democracy is nothing but the Tyranny of Majorities, the most abominable tyranny of all, for it is not based on the authority of a religion, not upon the nobility of a race, not on the merits of talents and of riches. It merely rests upon numbers and hides behind the name of the people."

Reservations. Do I care !!

Enough has been said and written about the whole Reservation for OBC's issue. But the matter of fact remains that only a handful of young, educated, urban youths cannot change the policy and no, I'm not a pessimist.

By reserving seats in higher education for OBC's, the Govt. has accepted that it has failed.

It has failed to provide basic primary education to the people from backward classes.
It has failed to uplift the social status of the backward classes.
But, where it does not want to fail is getting the support of the backward classes.

So, will the Govt. listen to the Youth of India.
With virtually no party opposing the move and no support from student unions (the real representatives of Indian students, as claimed by them), I really doubt so.

What can we do?

We can keep on protesting till the bill is passed.
See that what happened in Mandal-I is not repeated (I'm talking about Goswami).
Stop sending reservation mails in the same manner in which we forward junk to fellow friends (Show some respect to this serious issue)
?? Out of Ideas ??

Interesting Facts -

• Though the last caste-based Census took place in 1931, estimates say 51% of Indian population is OBC. 51% OBC's restricted to 27% seats. That's interesting.
• It is a fact that the real benefit of reservation will go to the Creamy Layer, but that will only make these students more miserable. The OBC's in urban India are educated and can afford the best education. By taking the help of reservation they are going to achieve nothing but self-degradation.
• The pro-reservation front often says that students from quota go back to the villages and are the one who are really helping the country. Truth is after taking the help of reservation, they become so habitual of this extra-help that they don't even try for jobs in private sector. Govt. jobs comes easy (quota again) and you can make a lot of money (apart from what the govt. pays you)
• The medical students are the one protesting the most as seats in PG are at its minimum. Engg. students, on the other, have way much more to grab.
• I doubt that, out of those protesting, even 50% voted in the last elections.
• The only thing which makes me happy about the whole issue is that people will finally start VOTING. The fact that their votes not really contribute much to the total electoral list is another thing.

Disclaimer - By writing this blog, I do not suggest that I support reservations or the protests should end. The more you'll protest, the more will you be able to come closer to your conscience. You'll be able to discriminate between Right and Wrong. You'll learn to stand up rather than hush down.

We don't want no reservation......

Meritocracy : a system of government/society based on rule by ability (merit) rather than by wealth, race or other determinants of social position.
India in future : a place where each position/oppurtunity is presented based on caste and one's family.

You may think that's too dire and i am sounding like one of those doomsdayers but unfortunatley it's not far from the truth. On saturday, for the first time i attented an organised, anti-establishment protest. It was regarding reservations the government plan to bring in centres for higher education. The main issues i have with the whole thing :-

1. Denial of fair and equal oppurtunities to deserving candidates n making it hell of a lot tougher for them to get into the institutes of thier choice.
2. Creating a society based on incompetence. For example, just imagine 50% of the teachers in government schools will from quota seats. Ok, all of them will not be bad teachers but most of them will not be upto the mark. Now, governnment schools is where most of the children coming from the lower n less priveleged sections of the society go to. We should be providing these kids with gud teachers n nice schools....but !!
3. The ridiculous double standards and myopic vision of our politicians - the infamous Mandal Commission report gave a two pronged approach to tackle the problem of social inequality. One ofcourse was the quota's but it also said that the reservations without changes in our education system at grassroot level is meaningless n substaintial effort should go in that direction. In grab of catching votes the second n more important action has conveniently been forgotten.

Right from the time the Constitution was written any sort of affirmative action was for removing the social inequalities present at the time of independence and not economic upliftment of backward classes. There are a great many anti-poverty schemes for that. Weather they work or not is an entirely different issue. Now, people of my generation i think give a lot less importance to caste boundaries then say thier parents. one would think that deep rooted predjuices would go subsequently in time. But by literally dividing every classroom into two parts the government is bringing that issue to the forefront for this genration and many future ones too.

Some suggestions:-
- Even if we have reservations in some form, give a time frame to them, infact initially these quota's were meant to be reviewed every 10 years but no politician has the guts to remove them.
- The benfits of reservation should be available for only one generation in a family - otherwise it's pretty much the same bunch who keep enjoying the benefits and the people for whom it's actually meant for aren't even educated about it.
- Provide better primary education and health facilities to the less privileged classes and think of a mechanism so that the benefits actually reach the
people who need it.

The protest march itself was gud, remained peaceful inspite more than 3000 people turning up. Lots off people from my company went as part of a corporate initiative which saw some 500 people from different organisations show up. What was gud to see was IT professionals, CA's, eminent doctors, ofcourse medical students and people from a wide cross-section of society came. Most of these people are probably not directly affected but very much concerned. I don't know if it's the RDB effect or what but such protests are taking place in Bhopal, Banglore, Orissa...pretty much all over the country. It's about time we educated folks stood up and be counted to make the little diference in making this country a better place.

Visit www.youth4equality.org to support the movement

Nuttin' New

blank....buick....busa....beemer....bones....build....
....buck....ban....book....big....bud....

and the thought process continues....

Cause it rained yesterday...

Ever been woken up at 2 in the night and then ended up being actually grateful for that? Happened to me last night, when the rain, thunder and lightening made a resolve so strong it made even me wake up from the slumber. But instead of feeling pissed, the feel of the fresh moist air, so rare in the Delhi summer, gushing through my window made me feel soo good, I actually got up and tiptoed upto the terrace to take in the feeling. And the sight was just unimaginable.

Pitch darkness of the night....the incessant, purple lightening rushing through the sky....drops of water being splashed on the face by the cold wind....

Who says you need some stuff to get high....

p.s.>just saw tht my Damn u Bertie-I am king-Hail Hitler(??) blog has reached 32 comments. Kinda like 32nd milestone (ugh)

Suspicious Activity

Has anyone recently noticed some funny thingies flying across the blog page...? I generally ignore such things cause frankly speaking most things we see on a webpage are useless anyways...but somehow a tiny bit of something zooming across the text when ur trying so hard to understand what's written can be a bit unnerving. Now try as I might, I cannot help but think about the reason why something wierd like this would happen on the blog:

• a mischief from a bored programmer at Blogger.com
• a trick by Blogger.com to dissuade us from wasting their preccciousss storage space with our worthless crap
• what the hell...wierd thigs are supposed to happen on a wierd blog like this
  ...............................................................................

A screenshot has been attached with a red mark for easy reference. Now some members may, and would, accuse me of being idle/work-less ( which FYI I am, wednesday onwards...), but taking a cue from a "How to make a presentation" session I was forced to attend, I could'nt stop myself.

Getting a finger, when it matters the most.

I am a good driver. Generally.

Riding in the correct lane. Not overtaking from the wrong side (bertie ??). Stopping at red lights when there's no one around etc etc.

Well, I was in bit of a hurry. Had to go to meet some ol' school friends and there was a big jam ahead of me. So I crossed the yellow line and was speeding away in the opposite lane.

Then suddenly I saw a car coming in front of me (opposite direction) and there was a girl driving the car with her middle finger in the air, pointed at me :(

Good to see responsible female drivers on road :)

Its the stupidity

Sometimes I'm forced to wonder how things around us, even the important ones such as television and the neighbouhood barber shop, keep slipping into a state of total squander without anyone batting an eyelid & thinking about salvaging them. Well, the bit about the barber may be exaggerated, but Indian television for sure has definitely become what can be entirely summed up as being utterly pathetic. I mean, when I look at the people around me, and then the ones on telly, there seems a divide so stark it feels almost unreal. There are women who can get away with multiple murders/forgeries, graduates who are called into board meetings at the office, sound effects that are borrowed straight from Star Wars, Gujarati families...well I can't even begin to describe their wierdity. Instead of waking up and trying something diferent for a change, all thse channels do is try to outrun each other in a who-makes-the-worst-family-soap race.
Even the English channels are'nt much respite. Apart from a few good shows, they too show mostly crap about teen crushes and the crime scene on a hawaii resort. But at least the cast is gorgeous, making them bearable to watch. Unlike most Gujarati-family-soaps which hire the ugliest people possible to be showed on national television.
Thank god for Discovery, NGC and the likes. If it were'nt for them, I would have exchanged my television for something more useful.

What saddens me is that there seems no respite from this stupidity even in future. Same is the case with Radio. Why are the people in the business of entertainment, who are supposed to be the best creative minds of the country, be satisfied with the current state of affairs. Wish someone could just shake them up.

Along came a spike


Well that's how I picture our blog.

A certain time comes when, suddenly, all the brains start working - posting blogs, comments on blog, comments on comments on blog.

Then comes a dud period........

btw just noticed a thing. The blog description says -

Around four years ago two specimens of the ape-descended species, which inhabit this utterly insignificant little blue green planet met. After a few months of relatively formal chit-chat they realized that they shared amongst them a rare brand of insanity. This blog is an attempt by these very same specimens and their friends to share their plethora of thoughts which range from the insanely sane to simply, insane.

bertie, I think the blog has grown from - hum do, hamare none to hum do, hamare chaar (whoever hum refers to)