Catch the asteroid

The blog has moved!

2011-07-23T12:42:00.000-07:00

Hello people

My blog has now moved to my own website for better usability and integration with the other parts of the website.

You can access the blog here

Alternatively, you can also paste the below code in your browser :
http://www.akshaykakkar.com/blog.html

My website is :
http://www.akshaykakkar.com

Thanks for all the support.. hope to see you at the new address.

wedding, Tamasha.. and a bit of "Royalty" to it!

2011-05-01T05:21:00.000-07:00

Yes, the royal tamasha has just ended!
The euphoria has finally faded and Britain plans to go back to work tomorrow.

For the uninitiated, tamasha is an Indian term, which signifies a 'song and dance' routine.

What was it really?
A tempest in a teapot or something more?
It was an event of 2 individuals taking the vows, but the media coverage that they got was maybe a tad bit more than what the 911 got.
Multiply it by the euphoria of 60 million Britons and you get what you call a 'National Tamasha'.
Multiply it by 100 more, that would catapult the event to being an 'Epic Tamasha'.. a tamasha with an international flavour.

We'll talk later if the British royal family even deserves the attention they are getting.
The British royals are no self sufficient hard workers.
They are among Britain's biggest parasites.
They receive a government grant of about 43 million pounds a year to cover their daily expenses. But the public cost of the wedding far exceeds that.

Now have a look on the expenses incurred :
1. Extra policing and overtime alone is estimated at more than $35 million.
2. When all the people are celebrating, they're not working. And because the wedding holiday falls between two long holiday weekends in England, you can take 11 days off by burning only three days of vacation time.
That could bite atleast a quarter of their GDP for this quarter.
3. The wedding expenses are rumoured to be in excess of $50 billion.

First, the money belongs to the taxpayer, the state exchequer.
The wedding expenditure far exceeds the grants given to the lazy and lethargic royals.
$50 billion is something which is a medium sized country's GDP.
$50 billion could feed all the hungry children around the globe for atleast a couple of months.
$50 billion is what the blue chip Indian software sector earns in one year.
$50 billion is what India earmarked for 5 years to fuel the Urban growth in 30 cities by renewing the urban infrastructure.
$50 billion is what India pays for its defence deals in 2 years which help countries like Britain in running the show in the times of recession. Compare this with the following figure : India had procured 66 hawk advanced jet trainers from Britain for just a billion dollars. Pittance... right?

Now, come to the more philosophical part.. the poetic part of it.
The Britons were cheering.. laughing.. jumping at the sight of Kate and the not-so-good-looking William(I don't want to be rude, but he resembles VVS Laxman with a lot of talcum powder on his face) kissing.

Oops, a kiss that costed them a few billion dollars.
The money that they save up and pay in taxes, the money that the Royals use like it was their right!
The so called Prince... what was his name again.. ah.. William.. I would want to ask him what he thinks of Britain's sinking economy, what does he think of NATO strikes on Libya.
I know he's serving the Royal air force in some capacity, yeah, but who would know what capacity! He's the second in line to the throne.. a virtual throne .. which doesn't give them one penny a year.

Britain, in the recent past has become conservative, trade wise.
They have contained the skilled work force visas by a big margin.
They are following the once-famous-but-now-very-ordinary Obama's path of protectionism in trade.
Why? To save them the pounds.. to save them an economy which had a glorious past.
The country is now ageing and it shows in their result book, yet they choose to spend on seemingly insignificant things, and cry hoarse when the government fails to provide the people jobs.
Ridiculous. Preposterous.

Sample this against a developing country like India.
I am absolutely sure, there would
a. be no such event even if it were Rahul Gandhi's wedding.
b. No king of the past (oh yea.. we have had them in droves.. with a much richer past than what the Britain's royals have had) would dare to ask the state exchequer to foot the bill.

It's very ironical that a country with a democratic setup would advertise monarchy to such big proportions, however dear the parasites may be to their citizens.

I am really not too sure because I am not a British citizen, but I would be surprised if the average Briton actually supports such vulgar displays of public wealth.
Maybe, many young Britons are happy, because they just got 11 days off.. thanks to the wedding.

Truly a tamasha of epic proportions!
Long Live Great Britain.

PS : Kate looks lovely though!

Russian babes or Russian babies?

2011-02-18T12:32:00.000-08:00

Well, Russian babes or Russian babies?

The answer is not straight!
If you are a guy, in your wonder years, then choice 1.
If you are a girl/woman who is old school, or if you are a man who's settled, then choice 2.
Exceptions galore!

Check out any fashion week, all the babes would be Russian or from the nearby CIS countries.
Even today, walk in the streets and you would find much more than average looking ladies everywhere.
Be it a simple grocery purchase, they come decked up like its a party!
Not without reason, have they gained acclaim around the globe for their beauty.
Maybe its the tough and inclement weather conditions that give them the good looking build.

Christiano Ronaldo's current flame is a Russian supermodel, Irina Shayk.

Well, she's the quintessential 'Oh-My-God' babe.

Now have a look at the guy with her

As much as i dislike deviating from the topic, I cannot help but comment on this idiotic looking guy.
He is the quintessential 'oh-WTF' guy.
I have seen a few of his interviews, he doesn't even know how to speak what we call 'basic'.
He talks like the cheesy guys in the bar who ogle at women. He looks like that too.
Absolute 'no-class' guy.
So why is Irina with him?
Ah... show me the money, honey!
Plus the fame of being a footballer's WAG apart from being a supermodel!!

Now choice 2:
I have started noticing them quite a lot on my recent trips to Russia.
Have been touring this place for a long time, but more recently, these sugary cuties have started catching my eye!

On my last visit a couple of weeks back, a small baby boy, maybe about a year or a couple of months over, was at the security check in counter of the airport.
This guy had his shoe fitted on his left hand, it was a fur lined shoe.
He had put his hand in the shoe and was running all over the place with his hand held high... that was his airplane.
Suddenly he came near me and I too did the same thing, put my hand in my shoe!
He was taken aback... something struck him... he had competition, he stopped and started looking at me like a deer lost in the headlights.
I showed him my airplane and told him that it was bigger than his plane.
Obviously he did not understand, but now he wanted my airplane.
He gave me his shoe and started tugging at mine!
His mom came over... smiled and took away his 'airplane'.. said.. 'isvinite' (excuse me)...
I smiled.. and said that she had a very beautiful baby! :)
The joy on her face was something to behold.

Today, I again encountered 2 more such cute babies on my way back to India.
One at Ekaterinburg airport... this time it was an infant dressed in black.
He had stuffed cheeks that drooped like a fruit laden tree branch.
He barely knew how to walk, but the terminal was spacious and there were not many people.
So his mother allowed him to take a walk.
He did, and how!!
He wowed all the people around, because he walked a couple of steps to whoever was sitting nearby, went to them and just hugged their legs like he knew them forever.
Then he looked at them, made some gurgling noise and moved a few steps again.. then the next person.. hug hug.. that's all he did!
I was no exception... he was moving in a circle.. he came to me and did the same.
I picked him up. His mom, probably a little worried seeing a non-white guy came across, but then when she saw my smiling face and the comfort that the child was showing, she too smiled :)
It was a lovely moment.

Take-2, Moscow airport :
Here, the story went a little further.. a girl, all of 3 or 4 years.
But the same Russian cuteness overflowing...
She was in pink, pink cap, pink top, pink pajamas, pink shoes.
I was sipping my Pepsi diet, she was a couple of feet from me. I said : Hey, pink panther!
She smiled... then moved a couple of steps forward, turned back and gave me the smile which made my day.
Then again moved a few steps and turned back to see if I was still looking.
I was..
and she was happy!
Then she ran to her dad who brought the luggage stowed on a trolley.
She started speaking to him, but every few seconds turned to see if I was paying attention.
I was beginning to enjoy this!
Very few things in the world give you joy like playing with children.. it might be a game or something like this.. where there is eye contact and you just go wow!

She started to feel a little uncomfortable in the heavy coat that she was wearing.
Now, she told her dad to take it off.. but for some reason he wasn't willing to.
She turned again to see.. I was still looking, then she sat on a seat and started taking it off herself.
Once she was off with her coat and cap, for some strange reason, she wanted to put in on the trolley which her dad did not allow her to do because the luggage was a little dirty and her coat would get dirty as well.
Then he made her sit on a seat and went to get something.
She sat for a couple of minutes till he was out of sight, then she just looked around.
She put her cap in the hand luggage area of the trolley and covered it with a cloth so that her dad wouldn't see.
Then there were a couple of suitcases piled one over the other.
She wanted to stuff her coat in between them so that her dad doesn't notice.
But the suitcase was too heavy for her to move.
She looked at me like a child who had got lost in a mall :( .. eyes that said, "Please, help me".
I just went to her place and put the coat on the suitcase, sensing that her dad wont like it, she pointed at the place between the 2 suitcases and gestured at me to push it in between... I looked at her and smiled.
Taken in by her innocence, I just did what she said.

She was so happy, her face was now grinning!! End to end.
This is such a crazy and small thing... but it brought so much joy to both of us...
Then it was time for me to board.
I said.. 'dasvidaniya'.. she said..'svidaniya'
I waited to see if her dad was in sight.. I did not make it obvious, but I waited till he came over, then I left.
When I was leaving, I saw her again... she was so happy that her dad hadn't yet noticed the cap and the coat which were on the trolley.

These incidents made the end to my otherwise trying trip, fantabulous.

My vote : choice 2.

Why does nostalgia 'ALWAYS' feel so good

2011-02-12T03:02:00.000-08:00

The best times in one's life are the ones that have been spent in the past.

Everytime you think of one such time in your life, it evokes a nostalgic feeling.
As a human, we tend to forget the things that happen in our lives, both good or bad.

But a small glimpse of a photograph or a fleeting thought of something which reminds you of those good times sends you packing back in the past.
The feeling is superlatively special to you but you cannot share it with anyone because people, however close, will not relate to your nostalgia unless they have been a part of it themselves.

It's like a cup of hot coffee with a topping of chocolate sauce and fresh cream on a snowy day.
You are on a busy traffic median with traffic zipping past you in both directions... there you stand all unaffected with that cup of coffee and snow flaking on your shoulders... you look around dazed, but the surroundings don't affect you.
That's because the nostalgic feeling makes you numb to your present troubles.
For a moment, you forget whatever is bothering you today and just feel happy for that time that you spent in the past.
This is nostalgia.
No definition in any dictionary can define it.

A person could feel nostalgic about his high school cricket team..
About his crushes which never went to stage-2..
About college life.. hostel life..
About the first few days in your first job...
Basically just about anything that makes you feel happy..
Just a couple of days back i saw some pictures of a long lost friend on fb who was on some common friend's profile .. just remembered all the good times we had..
For that next 10-15 mins, the world's troubles could not touch me.

There are other kinds of nostalgias as well.. those that are invoked by listening to songs.
This, the Indian audience will appreciate.
In India, we have songs for every occassion. Some of them take you back in your memory lane and bring back all those good times.

'Live in the present' is a famous saying.. well, not always.
When you have time to introspect, have those few moments where there is just you and nobody else, it's an absolutely good idea to go back into the past.
It refreshes you like nothing else!
Try it out.

But, despite all that, its only a feeling which is virtual... which will make you feel good for a few moments.
It's not real. It 'was' real once upon a time.. not anymore.
Maybe that's why it's beautiful.

A famous song from a Hindi movie in the 1970s rings through my ears...
"Zindagi ke safar mein guzar jaate hain jo makaam woh fir nahi aate.. woh fir nahi aate"
--All the milestones that you cross in your life, will never come back.. will never come back.

But you can feel good that they came once in your life!

Can loneliness break you?

2011-01-28T07:54:00.000-08:00

Lonely I'm Mr Lonely,
I have nobody,
For my own

People often confuse the world with the words : lonely and alone.
Lonely is something which you feel from within yourself, nobody can force you to feel lonely.
Alone is what you are when you are with nobody physically.
You can feel lonely with 20 people around you and that's precisely what I am going through.

How lonely can one get?
Can it ever get so lonely to the point that it could kill you?
Well yes, if not physically, then of course mentally.

It doesn't matter what the quantum or the timeframe is... you can start feeling lonely even in a day.
This has become a way of life for me now... since the time I opted to come to a godforsaken place called Ekaterinburg.

The temperatures are bone chilling. Moscow now feels like a summer resort.
The day I landed it was -27 degrees C ... later that night, it plummeted a little further.
The next morning, like a labourer on the job, I started from the hotel when it was -31 degrees C.

On the first walk to the office, a few tears slipped out of my eyes because of the wind chill and fell on my glasses.
When i reached office, I realized that the haze that was on my glasses were a few of my tear drops which had frozen on my glasses.
That's when I realized I had taken the wrong bus and reached a place I should not have.

But those were only the teething troubles which I got used to in a while... what kills me now is the loneliness.
I can grapple with lack of good food, infact that's the only silver lining here... i lose a good number of KGs when I come here.

The opposition is stiff and hostile, I can deal with that.. i don't care a damn.
The food and weather is adverse, been there, done that, dealt with it before.
But this is the first time, I realize how difficult it is to live without the ones you love.

Jack said to Rose in Titanic :
'Dont jump, you dont want to feel that kind of thing... water that cold, it feels like a thousand needles pricking on your body'
In my case, it's not the water, its the loneliness that pricks me like a thousand knives.

If you do not have a close one whom you can confide to, it gets claustrophobic after a while.
Just yesterday, I got to hear something from someone which I did not like.
It affected my whole day. I flipped at everyone and everything after that.
Later in the night, I realized it was only because of the feeling of loneliness and as a result I felt helpless at most things that I would just brush off when I would be home.

The biggest things that can affect you do not lie outside you.

You can look within yourself and resolve most things.. but loneliness will kill you from deep within.
I sometimes wonder, what Ajmal Kasab would be feeling like now. He should never be hanged because death is an easier penalty to pay.
Few days back, I had read that he started abusing the guards on duty to provoke them.
Reason : The constables have an order from the authorities that bar them from talking to him.
He has nothing to do at all, no jail work like gardening or any other errand. He cant sleep forever too.
He is going crazy because of his loneliness.

That is why I say loneliness can kill you from deep within.
Tonight I plan to sit with a few of my office buddies and sing a lot of songs!
Weird hobby, but it will drive away the blues I hope.

Another few days here before I reach Moscow, that's when I can say 'AWESOME'.

The 4 lettered magic word

2010-12-25T02:08:00.000-08:00

This is the day, this is the time.. but yet...
There are things which bother me.

The time of my life is now, the time to rejoice, the time to feel like God.
But yet, there are naggings which make me feel so slipshod.

Since a long time now, I have been thinking about what makes a perfect life?
How does one attain a life which is devoid of negativity or any other ill?
Is it really possible to dream of having such a life?

An emphatic and resounding NO is the answer from the skies.
So if some such thing like utopia doesn't exist, can we create a replica of it or atleast pretend that we live in a replica of it?

What did I just say? Pretend to live in a replica? Oh yes, definitely!
You can pretend to just about anything.
Inside, you may be the most insecure and jealous person, outside you can always potray a cool, suave and unperturbed image.
If you can be pretentious about all these things, then why can't anyone pretend to live in utopia.
But the point is, you are still pretending.
You are running away from what bites you.
You know how affected you are by something, but yet, you think by not thinking about it, the pain will subside.
The truth is, the more you try to detach yourself, the more you internally end up thinking about it.

What then, is the resolution?
It ain't that simple. It requires a lot of courage.
It requires a lot of confidence.
It actually is the simplest of things, but turns out to be the most complex thing to do in such situations.
It is 'TALK'.

It's a simple 4 letter word that has kept three big nuclear powers like India, China and Pakistan from going to war in times of adversity.
The most difficult part is to 'start' talking.
But once you do, you realize that the other person isn't all that bad, he isn't all that conniving.
Once the sun is out, the snow melts and the flowers bloom again!

But if you don't talk, you deny yourself that chance to joy.
You deny yourself that chance to mend fences and be back on track.

I have had instances in my life too, where things were assumed and then it snowed to such an extent that nobody was ready to clean up the snow.
Had I not come out and started to 'talk', who knows how much time I would've lost out and in course lost out on many other things important to me.

This situation will stare you in the face many times in your life, sometimes as frequently as everyday.
All you need to do is .. come out.. hold it by it's horns and say..
"Yeah, lets talk"
The wildest of bulls will also mellow down and listen to your side of the story.
Conflicts are inevitable, but combat is optional.
So the easy way out, however difficult it may seem initially, is to 'TALK'.

Garth Brooks said : "The greatest conflicts are not between two people but between one person and himself"
This signifies that most of the conflicts are assumed and not real, the other person may afterall be only a catalyst to your own conflicting thoughts.
This makes 'TALKING' an even more sensible solution.

Wish I had the courage to always stand up and 'TALK'...
Because it can make things go from this...

to this...

Travails of a guy's life and a tribute to the ladies

2010-12-04T00:06:00.000-08:00

Have you ever faced discrimination as a guy?
Sounds strange?
Well, you would find it less stranger by the end of this post.

For all those who maintain being a girl comes with its societal problems, please re-think.
I have been a guy for 28 years now and will continue remaining so :)

When I was a kid, I was fine till the age of maybe 6 or 7.
That's the age when you hardly realize who a guy is and who a girl is.
Frankly, for me, judging the sex by the length of the hair worked!
All short haired ppl were guys and long haired ones were girls.
Call it stupid or whatever, that was how I was till atleast I was 5.

As time passed and I grew older, I understood there are more intricacies to this guy-girl thing.
Till 6th grade, in my school, we considered talking to the girls a thing below the 'guy' thing.
Now don't ask me why, I don't remember either.
We made faces at girls. (like girls generally do).

7th grade was kind of a discovery period. It was a realization period when we were starting to reverse what we were made of, the guy attitude.
Slowly but surely, the hormones started jumping.
One by one, everyone seemed to like some girl or the other.
I was shocked... because it was the first time I was experiencing this.

There were 3 guys with whom I was friends... 2 started spending more time with the girls they started liking lately.
They even changed their positions and no more sat with me in the class.
They went to the bench behind their new 'girly' friends.

Exasperated, I looked for company of the last guy left in my gang.
Unfortunately, he thought that I liked a girl... and the problem was that he actually liked the same girl.
So, inspite of me not liking Madam X, I lost out on the last guy friend too!

Then I made newer friends.. slowly started realizing that this age does not belong to the 'guys'. Girls are what drives the guys crazy.
So this was my first lesson that girls are more equal than the guys.

Time passed, I had similar such experiences in every walk of life which reposed faith in my belief that guys don't stand a chance when it came to a face-to-face battle with the girls.
Especially in the softer aspects of everyday life.

Being favourites of the lecturers in college to getting favours from the lab instructors in the mechanical workshops to getting good marks in college internals to hogging the limelight at college festivals, the girls got it all done!
And how? Just like that!

Guys, including me, no matter how hard we tried, found it difficult to manage the same kind of attention!

Another example, have a look at your social networking profile, orkut or facebook or whatever...
If the guy is extremely popular or drop dead killer looking, then the case may be different, but for a commoner, the updates/scraps are a little far in between.
He generally keeps 'liking' others' posts.
Sample this against an above-average looking girl on facebook.
The first thing you would notice that her number of friends are double yours.
You may be a stud in some other field, but on networking sites, you don't just measure up.
The saddest part is, you post something on your profile, there would be a couple of 'likes', a few comments.
But on the other hand, any mediocre status update from the above-average girl and the humanity pours in on her profile.
If it's a happy quote, people rave about her wittiness, talk how they feel the same and everyone else is dirt.
If her status message is sad, the whole set of friends, some who even otherwise barely talk to her, would give her pep-up talks, give jadu ki jhappis and make her feel that she is 'THE CHOSEN ONE'.

All this talk and people talk of downtrodden ladies!! :(
Agreed, there is a section of the female society which still is in the previous century...
But you also have to agree that the urban go-getters of the female community are leaps and bounds ahead in the race and have their male counterparts a distant second in the race for attention.

This is not a letter of appreciation for the more-than-equal ladies of the world!
Yet, I would also concede that I am also in awe of such ladies.. afterall I am a guy who is prone to killer ladies :P

Few years back was when the 'travails' ended.
And how? Just like that! :)

8 years back, lightening struck and I was smitten for life by one such lady.
Slowly, I started doing everything that I hated my friends in school for. :)
We went from strength to strength and now we are married happily! :D

Apart from my mom, who is still 'the-one-lady' whom I look up to for everything, there are just 2 ladies who are on my list now.. the ones for all occasions.
Needless to say, they are my support system and that's how the travails which I faced in my earlier life with the girls turned to the biggest boons with these stars!!
My wife, who was my friend-turned-life partner, continues to remain my best friend and biggest asset of my life, a person who I look upto when I am down and beaten.
She gives me that charge which makes me feel larger-than-life.
She is not just 'a star', but 'the star' who keeps my solar system chugging.

Next, my sis-in-law, the name the law defines, who was my friend turning to a person who I can share anything with to a close confidant is my next biggest star!

I don't know how life would've shaped up without these stars, whether it would have been better or worse, but whatever it turned out to be, it made me love my life more... love the people in my life more.

Either ways, it's the initial travails that made me what I am today and gave me the stars which light my life now!

How to make your bird flock together with you?

2010-12-02T08:08:00.000-08:00

The best days of my life were spent during my college days.
And I don't say this without a reason.
There is a distinctive 'aashiqui' thread that I keep talking about.

That's common everywhere as long as a guy has hormones to keep playing!
Ok.. coming back, have you ever felt that you like/love someone but are just not getting the kind of response that you'd like to?

How simple is it to decode?
Is it just that the 'bird' isn't interested? Or is the 'bird' playing around?
Well, it can be both. It's not that easy for a guy to dissect.

First up, you have to learn to decode the reaction through common expressions that she shows.
She might be smart and brilliant, but when you throw a hint at her, does she reply stupidly or just like she did not understand what you meant?
Well, if this is the case, then she isn't dumb, you are.
You are the biggest moron on the planet.

Then there are girls who just do not understand anything.. whatever you say, they just laugh it off!!
Believe me, they are the most irritating lot.
But inside, they too might be intelligent!! Beware.

There was one guy in another college whom I knew during my college days, Purab Dambekar(name changed of course).
I sometimes felt for him, because I never understood if what he did for 4 years was even worth it or not.
He tirelessly pursued Anjali Matondkar(again name changed of course).
First, I felt it was a true case of aashiqui.
I watched from the sidelines. Slowly by the end of first year, it became a kind of junoon for him and he thought he was the next SRK from Darr.
Anjali always was friendly with him... talked when it mattered or replied when talked to.

Purab took this for something else and fell deeper for her.
In the second year, took a gift and went ahead and did the unthinkable on 14th February.
Got royally snubbed, came back dejected, downed 8 bottles of beer and spent the nite in the lavatory puking.

But Purab sir, for whatever reasons, thought that Anjali was his partner, you know, like saat janam waali.
Like the ones that get manufactured in YashRaj films.
Kept pursuing and passing comments on other guys who were friendly with her.
Third year passed, proposed again, got slapped across this time.
The resolve got even firmer.
Fourth year, 'bas-abhi-nahi-toh-kabhi-nahi' syndrome took him over.
Tried all tricks in the book, never got the girl, but failed in the exams.

The result, girl happily got done with her engineering, guy sat around for another year sulking and completed his engineering in 5 years instead of 4.

Now, in my eyes, this is a classic case of uber-moronism where the guy should've fathomed in the first year itself that the 'bird' belonged to a different species.
The 'poor boy meets NRI girl-knocks the wind out of her sails-and they live happily ever after' never works in real life.

Lesson 1 : Get Real.
Lesson 2 : If your subtle hints don't work, there is good chance that they never will.
Example : If you say, you have been thinking a lot lately, and she asks about whom? Sachin Tendulkar?
You have got to get the signal.
Lesson 3 : Often, its better to be direct and get your answer. If its a yes, live happily ever after, if its a no, look for another branch and another bird.
Lesson 4 : Never under-estimate the people who may be her confidants and in-the-know of things. A smitten kitten is more easier to spot than a tiger in the yellow grass.
Lesson 5 : Always do a benchmarking exercise before beginning a voyage. Every Seal doesn't mandatorily get a Heidi Klum.
There too, Heidi was very 'high-maintenance' and Seal was perpetually rich.

This, I realized when I saw so many guys fooling around in the 4 years. It continues to show up till date, but on a lower scale.
The Junoon isn't so pronounced, it's more subtle and subdued, but the 5 lessons still hold true!

Kinship - an overrated phenomenon?

2010-11-13T09:10:00.000-08:00

Kinship, one of the most basic building blocks of the human civilization, in my view is quite overrated.

Quite simplistically, if anyone were to be asked, who is the person closest to you,
the result set would vary from one of the parents to a sibling to a friend from college or work.
This is because there is an emotional connect between the two people in question and that is the reason of the fondness between you and him or her.

Genealogical relationships are cursory bonds that I think we pursue to show everyone around that we form a dynasty.
For example, a sibling to my father might be a person very close to him, but may not be so much to me.
This is reason enough for me not to be very aware of my father's siblings family's family.
But if I ever visit them, meeting everyone cordially and saying sugar coated "HIs" and "HELLOs" is an unwritten rule.

Here, in India, I have seen scores of people including some of my very own people carrying forward genealogical relations just because of the societal norms.
Neither of the 2 parties involved actually cares once they are out of your homes.

In my case, I live quite far away from the city where most of my relatives live.
So I go only once in a while and I only stay put with the ones I am comfortable with.
But still, the genealogical nature of the humans forces me to go visit just about everyone's home.
Father's sibling's daughter's husband's sister.
WTF!
I can only go till level-2. I find people in level-2 itself very pesky.
Any further than that, I will prefer visiting a man-hole.

There are 2 kinds of relatives. 'Pesky' and 'friendly'. True to their names, the friendly ones are the ones who mind their own business and come to meet you because they actually want to meet you. Most have very few such relatives.
I say most because my analysis is only limited to the friends and people I interact with.
And none of my inner circle people have Karan Johar style family bonhomie.

'Pesky' relatives are the ones who show up once in a while but would be infinitely interested in your personal lives. They would have an opinion about everything including the colour of the tiles in your bathroom and the shape of your dust-bin's lid.

A lot of such masala is available on platter, free-of-cost in India round the clock.
A typical such case is any Indian festival.
Scores of people will descend on your house like thirsty birds on a lake in summer.
People who you hardly know or have heard of, come and hug you.. saying : "Oh my God..you have grown so big"
Yeah, right, if you never found the time to come see me in between, that is no reason for me to stop growing!
They wait around for an hour, ask you questions about your personal life and basically pry around everywhere you are uncomfortable.
But wait, I need to keep smiling!
I do, always!
Because I love the last tradition which is followed in India, more specifically in the North.
Any relative before leaving, however pesky, gives you some amount of cash if you are a little younger than them.
I consider this as entry fee to my house and gleefully accept it!
A nice 7 inch smile, satisfies their hunger to see my face and off they go seeing my vigorously waving hand and an equally vigorously grunting face!

Now, what I mean to say here is that, this is a typical case of putting up with a familial relationship even though you don't believe in it.

There are scores of such instances...
Unmarried girls would relate with this instance I am about to give..
Any gathering, any function, if your daughter is hovering in the 25-30 age limit.. the nosy aunties get hysterical.
There is an unmistakable feeling of one-upmanship in the neighbourhood aunties as to who gets your daughter married off first.
Each one will have their own way of saying it :
There are some direct ones "Your daughter is getting to the age.. what are your thoughts on her marriage?"
Some not so direct but will approach the girl directly : "Beta, what are you doing these days?"
Girl : Smiling.. "Job, aunty"
Pest : Disguising the taunt and the curiousity to poke in everyone's life .. "So beta.. what have you thought about your marriage?? Do you like someone...? " and then a devilish... HA HA HA HA HA echoes and the uncles join in the comedy circus.
More follows :
Pest : HA HA HA HA HA .. "If you say.. shall I get you a good boy??"
Some more HA HA HA HA HA

Poor girl.. she just has to put up with this shit because of this so called kinship.
She would be close to just 4-5 people in her life.
They would never do this "HA HA HA HA HA" thing with her... "Shall we get you a good boy... HA HA HA HA HA"

Once these pests are out.. everyone whips them black and blue!
I too am a part of this circus.. but I just wonder.. how artificial everything around the civilization is and how artificial this has made each one of us.

If anyone reading this, hasn't experienced such a thing even once in his/her life, then he either is Karan Johar or aspires to be Karan Johar.

Initially I thought, there was something wrong with me because I was pretty negative about letting people in my personal space.
I am atrociously reserved and very guarded and protective about anyone close to me.
But when I saw many of my friends in similar situations, I knew it wasn't me, it was the reality of life.
All of us are artificial and we love being it. Either by choice or by force.

The reality is not Karan Johar, the reality is Ram Gopal Verma.
(a little out of context maybe. Sorry, the people not familiar with them would be cursing me).

Not very long back, I met a motor mouth, who was probably level-15 or 20 in the relationship circle with me, I touched the feet of his mom while she was leaving and she gave me 1000 Indian rupees(it's an Indian tradition to touch feet of elders).

The motor-mouth shot off "See, you gave him money and he touched your feet".. all this with the oh-so-typical "HA HA HA HA HA".
People think they can be smart and pass off any taunt with a "HA HA HA HA HA".
I was so bloody pissed off because I didn't even know who he was...I hadn't seen this guy ever in my life... i had even forgotten his name.
If he was someone at the street, I would have pulled out each single hair from his moustache with a plier.
But then, sense prevailed.. and I thought.. what the hell.. I don't even know him.. it's not bad for 1000 bucks.
So... "HA HA HA HA HA" from me too.
He felt a little embarrassed at my "HA HA HA HA HA" and beat a hasty retreat.

Kinship, like English is a very funny thing!

Hunger, thirst and Karva Chauth

2010-10-26T09:12:00.000-07:00

Karva Chauth is undoubtedly the most 'in' and celebrated festival in the northern part of India for all married ladies.
The euphoria doubles when it comes to newly-wed brides!

Decked up like it's an early Diwali.. the young married women flock open areas and terraces of their houses to catch a glimpse of the moon.

If moon was a person, then his name would be Osama bin Laden on this day.
The moon is simply the 'most-wanted'.

But the fetish for the moon isn't all religious.
Well, let's see what the religious angle is first :
There was a mythological princess called Veeravati who had observed a fast for her husband. The deal was that she would break her fast once the moon had risen.
She was fragile and couldn't stand the rigour of not even having water through the day.
Her brothers were worried and lit a fire on a nearby hill and tricked her into believing that it was moonlight.
The lady believed, broke her fast and almost instantly received the news of her husband's death.

Now, this is only a part of the story, but it's long enough to understand the essence.

Modern Day adaptation :
Veeravati's husband had died because she broke the fast.
So the ladies observe this fast once every year to ensure that their husbands have a long life.
Now, this is a little far away from the real truth simply for the reason that Veeravati was penalized for breaking her fast without seeing the moon.. it might not mean that her husband would live longer if she observed it truthfully.
But then anyways, every adaptation has a little bit of distortion.
So giving it the benefit of doubt, moving on to the modern story...

Today's scene in my apartment complex :
Young ladies and old ladies egged on by their younger counterparts flocked the terrace of the building.
All decked up, smelling of extreme perfume and a pooja thali in their hands, they had forgotten that today they are going to worship the same husband that they had beaten black and blue yesterday.. well almost :)

The husband, forgetful of the past and gleefully smiling stands in front of his wife.
She takes the sieve out(this is again the tradition, that the wife sees the moon first through the sieve and then sees her husband through it.. whatever it means).

She sees the moon, then her husband, thanks God for marking the moon's attendance quickly and then drinks water thereby breaking the fast.
Now the husband is not needed.
Run back home.. that's where the food is waiting at the table.
Ah, bliss...
Hog, hog, hog and then just remember there is a husband angle too...
"Honey, awwww... didn't you start the dinner still?"
Husband : "Honey, how could I? U didn't allow me to"

To save myself from all this melodrama, I took an oath 4 years ago.
I have been observing the Karva Chauth fast with my wife.
On this day, I too stop eating and drinking water.
Once a year, it's worth an effort.
For me, it's more about showing solidarity to her cause.
If she can fast for my well being, why should I not for hers?

Moon, though, is my favourite target this day.
Last year, it just didn't show up.. and I was burning with acidity with all gastric acids playing foosball in my stomach.
That was when I threatened it with dire consequences if it repeated the same thing next year.
Today, my gamble paid off.
The moon like a good boy after summer vacations in school, turned up right on the dot.
I heaved a sigh of relief.
She broke her fast with water and I broke my fast with Eno.
The antacid mildly placated the acidity.
Then came the hogging time.
I hogged for 30 mins. She too did, to a lesser degree though.

We then had dessert and were smiling ear to ear with fat bellies!

Ah, Karva Chauths are fun if you want to have fun..
A modern adaptation of an ancient tale may necessarily not be boring.
The best part about it is it ends with good food!

Happy Karva Chauth 2010 everyone!

Is ayone really good or bad?

2010-10-21T00:46:00.000-07:00

Is anybody in this world really good or bad?
I have always believed its only the situation that makes them behave in the way they do.
But then if its only the circumstances then stars should be blamed for everything that goes wrong on our planet.

There is another hidden factor called demeanour.
Demeanour is something that is going to save you from situations when you have a slight upper hand in a conflict, it

will also make you victorious when you are the victim.

What the hell is demeanour now? Is it something which is genetic or cosmic? Or can it be acquired?
I am reminded of a line from the movie Rocket Singh :
"Every person has 2 qualities. One which will take him up and one that will take him down. Whichever one he takes, his life only becomes a manifestation of that path"

I recently had one such experience.
I was in Ekaterinburg,somewhere in Russian hinterland for official work.
I was lonely because I was kind of cut off from my world and my people.
The loneliness coupled with inclement weather, irritating rains and sub zero temperatures were a bone cracking deal for me.

The people from the client organization I worked with were not favourable either.
Few of them were good and amiable, but most of them were mocking birds.
The smallest hint of an issue and their scoffing smiles coupled with the 'looking down' behaviour killed me.
The lady 'second in command' on the other side was leading the way.
Now I really don't know if that person knew much about the work done, but every small pin drop was potrayed as a rocket launch failure.
Plus as an Indian, I was deprived of any decent food for four full days.
I only had cup noodles for lunch and some ready to eat stuff in the nights.
All these were not honeymoon conditions.
They were taking a toll, but I remembered that line in Rocket Singh.
There was one occassion when I had the 'second in command' firmly under my grip and I could have chosen to twist the neck of the opponent.
But I knew that would only make things worse. I resisted and the results started showing in 1 hour flat.
The other person realized the mistake on their part, but did not apologise. I wasn't complaining either. My point had been made.
I moved on.
The last day, the 'second in command' came to my desk and thanked me for whatever I had done. The other people who I thought were my opponents too came and we clicked pictures together.

The one that made my day was something like this :
When I was leaving the building finally, a nice sweet lady in her 20s maybe smiled at me and said 'Dasvidaniya, come again'.
I was zapped, I even did not know who she was.
On my way back I was thinking who she was. Suddenly it dawned upon me... I had gone to one person from the other organization to explain something. She was sitting by her side and doing her work.
Seeing that I was helping the first person, she asked me how to solve particular problem.
I did not pay much attention to her because I had gone to do something else.
But then I realized I can help her with her problem, it was a small thing. I did and left.
Then I fogot about her completely.
The last day she was near the door when she greeted me.

That was when I started thinking that nobody is bad or good.
Circumstances also don't make you bad or good.
The way you react to a situation is what forms a perception about you in the world.
Its not that Mahatma Gandhi never lost his temper, but he knew how to react at the opprtune time and that made his image in the world.

Smiling I came back from Ekaterinburg.
I had won because I won over my ego. Not because I defeated someone.
I won because I knew the other person realized his mistake and came to my desk to talk after the stalemate.

Everytime a person reacts, he is making an image of himself which will affect someone.
This may not be significant to him, but he either makes an enemy or a friend for life.

Come to think of it, you or anyone else in this world is just a chemical which has a finite life. After that you cease to exist.
In that short life, you can either choose to do whatever makes you happy or let go and be happy and make others happy as well.
Too much of righteousness at most times causes problems for the people around you.

The choice is to each individual to choose the quality which takes him up the ladder or the one that brings the ladder crashing.

Do dooni dus!

2010-10-09T06:31:00.000-07:00

This week I thought there was no movie to catch up with.
On a busy Thursday afternoon, I just checked bookmyshow.com to find that Do dooni chaar was running to an empty theatre.
I immediately booked 2 tickets, praying that we are not disappointed.

Do dooni chaar is a story about the Duggal family which has a papa duggal, mama duggal, bhai duggal and behen duggal.
It's about a middle middle class family based in Delhi and how they go about their everyday chores.
Their mundane lives are also complicated by the lack of money through a salary that Papa Duggal earns as a modest and honest school teacher.

The kids in the movie, played by Archit Krishna and Aditi Vasudev are astonishingly refreshing and to the point.
At no point in the movie do you get the smell of a star studded movie.

The protagonist, Santosh Duggal, played by Rishi Kapoor, who himself was a superstar in the 70s and the 80s, is a lovable character which every normally brought up Indian can relate to.
If you were born in the eighties and were middle class, that's probably how your Dad would be!
Neetu Singh, playing Kusum Duggal was endearing and had a very earthy character which she did full justice to.
All through the film you would never feel that this woman has come back to face the camera after 30 years.

The real-life couple also extend their chemistry to this movie which lends it the soul of the movie.
Much of the movie can be relished only because it was Rishi and Neetu.
Their real life charisma also rubs off on the screen to recreate magic that one would not expect, atleast out of a small budget film like this!

Archit who plays the role of Sandeep Duggal is Rishi's son, a typical Delhiite, a guy lost in translation.
He loses his way in between and when he finally admits it in front of his family, unlike Indian cinema, his dad takes him out and does an uncharacteristic thing to bring him back on track.
Watch out for the scene where the dad-son talk happens on a road side thela eating paranthas.
That's as real as it gets. There is simplicity in the scene, yet it is so refreshing that the audience gets transported back in their lives, when their dad must've given them a lesson for doing something wrong.

The sister, Payal Duggal, played by Aditi Vasudev is a very well potrayed girl brought up in urban surroundings, but wanting to break away from the mould.
She is a typical bubbly, effervescent middle class girl who is a little ashamed of her dad's salary.
She has a boyfriend, Micky, who is a son of a gun.
But when the time comes to stick by her family, she very clandestinely supports her dad towards the climax.
She is definitely better of the two siblings when it came to the role.
For a debut role, it was a more than decent performance by her.

But, again I would say, that this is a movie meant and written for Rishi and Neetu.
The sheer chemistry between them is what makes this film work.
They share a lot of witty moments between themselves.

Do dooni chaar is a story about a very normal, very earthy, very middle class family who make their ends meet with a lot of difficulties.
Yet, what is endearing is the love that they share and the eighties feeling that most born at that time would be aware of.
It is not flashy. It is not preachy. It's just a light movie which touches your heart.
You will not come out heavy from the cinema theatre because there is no melodrama.
Yet, you will be refreshed because it is your story, my story and a story which millions of my countrymen would share.
It's like a mirror of your household in the eighties, which would bring a smile to your lips.

This movie is right what it was meant to be. A middle class story.
A Hrishikesh Mujherjee kind of film, which has a message but said very subtly without preaching.

Watch it for Rishi and Neetu.
Here I would make a comment and exercise my discretion and say that Neetu Singh is still as beautiful and graceful as she was when she quit acting at the age of 18.
Time has only brought more grace to her face and she managed to pull off a very middle class role with aplomb.
No wonder Ranbir's good looks come from his mom. Rishi was handsome too, but Ranbir is Neetu's son.
The mothers don't get more beautiful than this and he should be glad for that!

I would go with 3 out of 5 for this wonderful rendition of a common man's life.

Don't miss this movie. If nothing else, then Rishi and Neetu would make your weekend worthwhile.
Also, as an after note, do check out the way, Mr Duggal picks up the phone everytime and says :
"Hellooo, Santosh Duggal this side"!

Anjaana Anjaani and the deathly hallows

2010-10-01T22:48:00.000-07:00

Do not judge a book by it's cover.

This is the cover :

This is vindicated in the case of Anjaana Anjaani because the book is like this :

Ranbir Kapoor and Priyanka Chopra play Akash and Kiara. We'll come to them a little later on.. there's a lot more to despise!

The movie starts through a pathetically shot scene with Ranbir and his business partners planning to take up a loan to buy a dead company and Ranbir eventually losing out the loan of 12 millions dollars because the stock market crashes.
The scene is so tragically shot and the camera work is so shoddy that you think even Ramayana and Mahabharata shot in the 90s had better camera techniques.
There are unwanted rays of light escaping through the frame and dust spots on the camera lens which become glaring on the big screen.
What makes me wonder is how this passed the editing table.

So much for Siddharth Anand and his poor cinema.
He has directed duds in the past.. but with Anjaana Anjaani he leaps past the limits of moronity and low calibre movie making abilities that he has defined for himself.

Coming back to the opening scene, there is a friend of Ranbir Kapoor, played by a small time actor Vishal Malhotra.
Now, i don't know why but I think Vishal Malhotra should take off his shoes and hurl them at Siddharth Anand.
Both the shoes... ah yes, one by one.
The poor guy has only one scene in the movie in which he is made to act like he is some harassed bahu from the torturous Star Plus soaps.
Don't forget to check out the first scene of the movie where he accuses Ranbir of losing everything out.
There is so much melodrama in the first scene that you are thankful at the end of it that Vishal Malhotra's body didn't burst out of his uncalled for emotions.

Ranbir and Priyanka both meet for the first time on a bridge where they want to commit suicide.
Initially, when you are not in the know of things, you are intrigued by the situation, but slowly it dawns upon you that both of them lost the golden opportunity to end their lives and end the torture of the audience as well.

In a sequence of supposedly comic events which fails to strike a chord with any intelligent movie goer, they attempt suicide through childish sounding attempts many times. But each time they are not successful.
The unbelievably stupid Priyanka Chopra likens this to destiny which she thinks has other plans for them.
Sadly their destiny was Siddharth Anand and his plans for them were nothing close to grand.

Priyanka had had a cheating partner for which she was heart broken and wanted to commit suicide.
What I also fail to understand is, that this fact is brought to the audience in bits and pieces unlike Ranbir's grouse.
Priyanka's stupid story of her partner's deceit only comes through at the interval.
Now, the bonanza.. her partner was played by the lamb-looking Zayed Khan.
I have always maintained that if any of Fardeen & Zayed Khan are even a stray character in your film, then the film has to pay.
It did royally in this case too, Zayed as usual looked lost and ugly.
His pock marked & expressionless face does not evoke any sympathy either when he apologises.

Anjaana Anjaani gets so predictable and repetitively boring that at times I just felt I should doze off.
But the thought that I have to drive back home after the show kept me awake.
The dialogues are cliched and so long.. that sometimes I shot.. "Ok guys.. done.. go ahead.. next dialogue please"

The humour is so regressive and low IQ child like, it did not make me smile even once during the 2 and half hour duration of the movie.
Scenes like Ranbir and Priyanka in Atlantic ocean with Ranbir's boxers floating around will make people pee on Siddharth Anand.

Anjaana Anjaani is a movie shot in exotic locales apparently in the most picturesque locations of the US.
But my dear Siddhartha baby.. all these have been done to death zillions of times in Yashraj films when you were a kid.
The whole movie looks like an infomercial for 'Cox and Kings' or 'Raj Travels' who are publicizing their US tourist packages.

The losers, Ranbir and Priyanka are supposed to be penniless, but they visit a nightclub almost every night, wear flashy dresses & zip around the geography of US in a gas guzzling Cadillac.
Siddhartha baby must've borrowed the money from Nadiadwala uncle's grandson to pay for their free trips.

Priyanka Chopra definitely has got something wrong with her lips.
Siddhartha baby's cameraman too was obsessed with extreme closeups which did not help Priyanka either.
I know swollen upper lips are a turn on for many in this world, but Priyanka's looked bee-stung.
Plus the extreme closeups also showed that she hadn't got her upper lips done.
Now, I am not picking on her.. but if your lips cover 35 mm of the 70 mm... tongues will wag.
Piggy chops.. you gotta be present at the editing table next time.

Ranbir, the poor guy, the fall guy in this sense.. is also to be blamed.
He made the only decent attempt to salvage the movie... but he should be blamed for accepting this movie after a superlative performance in Raajneeti.
Ranbir tries hard, but one champion sailor cannot save a sinking ship, just like Sachin Tendulkar alone cannot save India.

There is one thing about Ranbir Kapoor which I did not know earlier, but gathered from the extreme closeups from this movie.
In one scene where he scares Priyanka up from her sleep, his fingernails and tips occupy 60mm of the 70mm on platter.
He also bites his nails and fingers like me. Quite an 'ewwww' habit I must say.. but I do it too... so I felt for him :)
Ranbir, the shining star.. you rocked in whatever little scope this pathetic movie could give you.

All the best and a belated happy birthday.

I would go with a 1 out of 5 for Anjaana Anjaani.
0.5 for the exponentially brilliant "Naina laggeya baarishan" and 0.5 for Ranbir showing his bitten fingernails and tips :)

PS : Don't forget to check out the coast guard persons who save the 2 losers a couple of times in this movie.
The old man looks like the dad of a meat shop owner from India.
And the writing on the boat says : "US Coast guard".

I also thank Siddharth Anand for reaffirming the faith of the world in not judging a book by its cover.

Ranbir Kapoor and his winning sad songs!

2010-09-28T10:07:00.000-07:00

Ranbir Kapoor doesn't need any introduction.
There is nothing in the Indian film industry which creates as big a buzz as him.
He has age on his side, a star lineage and good looks.
The country has millions of girls crazy after him.
In rudimentary terms, I can say that he is the Robert Pattinson of the east.
Both of them are young.
Both of them don't have many films to their credit.
Both of them are more than decent actors.
Both of them have crazy female fan following.
Both of them have delivered big hits commercially in their short span of careers.

Just like they keep speculating about Pattinson's love life, Ranbir is no stranger to those controversies in India as well.
His breakup with Deepika Padukone was so public that India knew about it a month before they officially broke up.
More salt on the wound.. my neighbour's dog too knew about it.

But I am guy and I am not actually interested in his love life or him.
But in the same breath, I would have to admit that he is good looking, is a more than decent actor and a refreshing change from the star kids whose only claim to fame is the beefed up meat shop body that they build.
Ranbir has kept it simple and worked only on his strengths.

But what I love the most about him is something he also would not be actually aware of.
There is a pattern in his limited number of movies that he has done.
All the sad and slow songs in his movies keep getting better and better.
Most of them have such soothing lyrics and beats that you just merge into them.

Have a look :

#4 :
Saawariya slow version (his first movie) :

#3
Gets even better. I did not listen to this song carefully, until my sis in law told me about it. Have taken to it since then :

#2
This is one of the very best songs ever. Have a look in HD here, tell me if you dont fall in a trance :

And finally, #1 on my list.
This is the latest song from his unreleased movie : Anjaana Anjaani.
I have listened to this song just 4 times, but it has created such an impact that I have been humming it since the last 6 hours.
Tip : Put your home music player/headphones on a moderately high volume, close your eyes and just listen. You don't even need to watch the video.
Vishal Shekhar have done an astounding job. Hats off. Mohit Chauhan and Shruti Pathak, take a bow... wonderful rendition

The only one I can turn to is you.

2010-09-25T12:06:00.000-07:00

Life is what happens to you, they say, when you are busy making other plans.
There are many times when you wish you could be the hero and you end up falling with a thud.
That time, no matter whoever is with you, the one who picks you up and dusts you up, buys your heart for life.

A degree happy, a degree curious, in anticipation I waited to to see..
But the inept heart forgets, sometimes it is never meant to be.

Not worried about the consequence, a question it poses in ignorance
It is met with a response of insolence
A little shocked, a little annoyed..
It wondered how a question could have all the deserved joy denied.

Torn, the heart came to the bedroom windowsill
The windowsill was its only pill for any ill.

He wept and wept cursing himself for prying
The cold wind sweeping his face had all the tears drying
He asked God, do I have anyone here?
There was no reply.. that's when the wind said.. I am here
You can tell me all that is there..

Like a lost child who finds his parents.. the heart cried
Cried again and cried till his tears dried.
The wind, now serious, asked if everything was allright..
The heart nodded, but knew it was night and nothing was bright.

The pain was not big, but the heart was bitter
That's when he realized that all that's not gold also does glitter

But it was late..
And after a while, the tears refused to co-operate.
Sad that the tears had also left him alone to fend
He looked up again in the skies and asked, is there someone on whom I can depend?

No answer again, the heart turned back waiting for the sun to dawn..
But that was a while away, so again he asked..
this time with a resolve..
the voice inside him answered this time, yes, it is your mom..
A smile dawned on his lips with this thought which was not new
Yes truly, even when you aren't with me, the only one I can turn to is you.

Azaadi, Pakistan, curfew & stone pelting

2010-09-18T20:01:00.000-07:00

For years, somewhere in the Pakistani psyche, etched deep within is a wound... a wound that brought up such amounts of pent up energy that it attacked it's bigger brother with hostile intentions four times, but fell to the ground all four times.
After the third round, the bigger brother too did not take it lying down and freed East Bengal(now Bangladesh) from Pakistan's control.
The final of the four, the Kargil conflict was a macabre and treacherous operation by the over ambitious Gen Mussharraf who was later desecrated and thrown off his chair.
India, the goliath, each time with it's strange fetish for peace, got up, dusted itself after each war and moved on.
But David, prepared for the next war.
Decades ahead now, India has clearly moved on, opening it's trade barriers and rubbing shoulders with the mightiest economies in the world.
A vibrant democracy with the most impressive growth rate during the recession of 2009, it was the beacon of hope for the rest of the world in terms of sustainability in the banking industry. It taught the world, how the Central banks of the world could play a crucial role in preventing such occurrences.
The world sat up and looked in amazement as India posted a 6.8% growth that year when majority of the world posted negative double digit numbers.
Pakistan, on the other hand, as some reports suggested was looking down the barrel.
It had about $6bn only left in its forex reserves, which could feed the country for a week at most.
Militancy and narrow mindedness and the regressive one-point agenda of destroying India had clearly costed Pakistan it's place in the sun.

A shining example of the above text is the following video, where the regressive Musharraf was mauled by a true Indian peace loving Muslim and deoband leader, Maulana Madani.
Musharraf was dumbfounded and could not even regain his composure!
Have a look :

But all this to no avail!
Separated at birth like Siamese twins, bitter neighbours for long, Pakistan has always eyed Kashmir from the corner of it's eye.
Kashmir is one topic which refuses to die in the Indo-Pakistan affair.
Pakistan has and will always tacitly support militancy in Kashmir, support every person, goon and rowdy sheeter politician who wants to separate Kashmir.

Behind the scenes, I cannot help but wonder, how the separatists and hardliners like Begum Mehbooba Mufti and Mr. Gilani manage to hold the state to ransom.
The government in all its earnestness only pampers the separatists in the name of democracy.
Could someone help elaborate, what democracy exists in PoK or the so called 'Azaad Kashmir'?
Ask Mr. crazy Gilani to go to PoK and foment his forces there.
Ask the mental Madam Mufti to get the separatists to free her if at all and ever at all she gets kidnapped by militants in future. It was the Indian govt which freed her after releasing 2 dreaded terrorists who later planned an attack on the Indian parliament.
The kind of peaceful and forgiving nature that India has shown over the years, I can only say that these separatists have only slept on beds of roses built on the pyres of the Kashmiris.
They talk of the liberation of Kashmiris.
I want to know which normal, common Kashmiri wants to shut his shop down for 50 days at a stretch when his family has nothing to eat.
Which normal common Kashmiri wants to stop sending his kids to a school, when elsewhere in India every progressive kid is riding the new wave of Indian economy.
Leave the bloody PoK and the China disputed part aside.
There is Jammu and Kashmir in India which can enjoy the democracy.
A lot has been put at the hands of these back-stabbing separatists who hold the state to ransom.
They pay the unemployed youth to throw stones at the forces.

India can only watch, because it will not use its military might against its own people.
It is a peace loving country whose state J&K has been ravaged by these mobsters.
They talk of some bullshit like, this is Kashmiri mindset and the government cannot supress it.
Ask them, where did this mindset of the average Kashmiri go during the bygone elections just about an year back when ALL the separatist parties were slapped across their faces?

Why were they hiding their muck-ridden faces all through and why only in the last 2 months have they started the stone pelting culture again?
They have caused millions of dollars of loss to the ex-chequer and routed the tourism industry in one of the most beautiful places on earth.

I want to and sincerely want to know which Kashmiri supports these stone pelting goons?
Is this the 'azaadi' that the Kashmiri wants?

Bosszilla

2010-09-13T02:07:00.000-07:00

The following statement is a palindrome of sorts, just that it is a statement and not a word.

"The nucleus is considered the boss of a cell".
The other way round, "Boss is considered the nucleus of the cell".
This is true in many respects, without the boss, the cell(or a business project) cannot function.
So a sensible and stable boss is what is the heart of every successful project.

But 90 out of 100 instances, the bosses that we get are insensitive, clueless about their team and grossly unreasonable.
These are what are defined in the urban dictionary as 'Bosszillas'.
A godzilla kind of boss.

It's important to understand that the boss is also an individual and hence his ablities are limited like any other mortal.
He is no superhero, so in times of distress, he would have to turn to few of his 'trusted beneficiaries'.

I have developed the following diagram which illustrates the various attributes of the boss and his team, the pros and cons of being in each spectrum.

The innermost part, the nucleus, does not need any description.
It's reserved for the boss!

Coterie :
This is what I earlier referred to as 'trusted benefciaries'.
These are the finite set of people who form the white protein layer, around the yolk.
They are super efficient, all of them. Bug busters, efficient machines who work tirelessly to deliver everything to machine level perfection.
On a scale of 100, some are 101, some are 90, but still the level of dependency that they create on a boss is totally irreplacable.
Pros :
1. Fabulous appraisals
2. Good recognition
3. You become a star at work

Cons :
1. You are overworked and overburdened.
2. Boss depends on you, so obviously you pay a price for it and that you do by sacrificing your personal life many times.
3. You get very less leaves.

EGOM :
This term caught my fancy.
This is a realtively new term which is widely used in the Indian democracy these days. It's the new 'in-word' in the corridors of power.
Whenever there is a specific 'high profile job to be done, the govt of India finds itself inept because the leaders are poor visionaries.
So the best person from the specific industry is picked up and made the head of the project. Such people are called : 'Empowered group of ministers', they are the real set of decision makers, the parliamentary minister merely signs the documents then.

Now in a project environment too, you would find many EGOMS, working behind the scenes, if the lower grade of the 'Coterie' works at 90% efficiency, you can find EGOMs delivering 90% efficiency very easily if not more.
But like the parliamentary scenario, they lack the political clout, to make it to the 'Coterie'.
It's like a situation where the boss cannot do without them(because they are the work horses and are more in number), but does not recognize them enough as well.

Pros :
1. Reasonably good appraisals.
2. You are not a star, but you are still looked upon as 'the few white collared people'
3. You get quite a bit of personal time in which you can do what you like.
4. You do not sacrifice your weekends.

Cons :
1. There always is a glass ceiling, which stops you from jumping to the 'Coterie'.
2. No matter, what you do, even when you perform better than a few coterie members, your contribution is forgotten pretty quickly.
3. You are sometimes frustrated with the happenings around.

The Waywards
These are the set of people, sometimes many in number, who come and go without impact.
The boss is not duly worried if they leave.
The mindset of the boss is pretty rigid about these people, so there would be more cons than pros being in this band.
"Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned" they say.
Bosses are not very different, multiply the agony by 2, if the boss is a woman!
The waywards are mostly the people at the 'bottom-of-the-pyramid' or people who have rubbed him the wrong way sometime or the other.

Pros :
None

Cons :
Too many to describe, and will include just about anything that can go wrong with your life.

If we equate, the office space with the game of snakes and ladders,
the ladders are always taken by the 'coterie' members.
the 'EGOMs' generally move step by step because of the glass ceiling, but get a ladder here and there, but they are far in between.
'The waywards' are alwars bitten by the snakes.

Either of these 4 bands, the one who calls the shots is the Bosszilla.
Love him, loathe him, you just can't ignore him.

A manic birthday on a manic monday!

2010-09-08T05:00:00.000-07:00

Ah, it was my birthday and it was technically yesterday!
What a day it was... unlike any of my previous ones...
It had everything which I would normally curse, but then there were so many bright spots through it, that I feel humbled, overjoyed and satisfied at the end of it.

I am sitting alone at the RGI airport Hyderabad, all steel and glass glitzy structure, but the emotions that passed yesterday are hard to ignore.
Suddenly the vastness of the airport seems hollow and I feel that a relationship is worth millions of squarefeet.
A small human emotion is something which can make you forego some of the biggest joys on earth!
Waiting for my flight, I realize how empty the last 3 hours of my life have been.
Absolutely none to look at, to talk to, even though there are so many people around me.
All waiting for the same flight, but none familiar.
This is when I realize that all I have earned in my lifetime is a handful of people, not money.

These handful of people make me laugh, make me sad, make me weep at times.
These handful of people make me jealous, give me heartache and headache, but if it weren't for them, my life would be anything but liveable.
I sit by the side of an elderly couple right now, but I look at my screen dazed.
They stare at me, like I am an alien typing away gibberish on my laptop.

Right now, I miss everything that is mine, that I consider my space.
I am not thinking, but just writing.. the words do not stop flowing from my mind.
And do you know when this happens? When you miss someone badly or are in complete control of yourself.
I can safely say that it's nothing related to control.. so it has to be the former.

When I look back at the last day, a gentle smile dawns upon my lips.
As I smile, I remember, that I got up to wishes from my mom, dad, brother and Tina.
These are people who mean the most to me, to an extent that I take them for granted so many times..

The smile widens when I remember that my wifey gifted me a TH watch.. she had actually bought it without me knowing anything when i actually dropped her at the mall! I found out from the date on the warranty card! Astounded!

The smile widens further when I recall the 100 odd mails and messages that I received through the day. It's a rewarding feeling to know that a hundred people atleast remember you! :)

Then came the zapper... my sweetest sweetest SIL Divi put up a note on her communicator : To my superhero!! HAPPY BDAY.. You are THE BEST!
This made my day.
I didn't care if it sounded over the top, I didn't care if people were reading it and what they thought.
I just felt happy that she too didn't care :)
Thanks a lot Divi, will always remember the 'quote'.

I had a bad day at office running pillar to post, for my tickets, forex, laptop etc, answering the queries which my colleagues had in between.
But all this is vanished.
Vanished when my mom and dad made me a special dinner and cut a cake. My brother cut his training short by a couple of hrs and came to join me for dinner!
It was just 5 of us, but it seemed no lesser than the joy a party would give!

I would do myself an injustice if I forgot to mention the cream on the cake.. Tina packed up my entire stuff in a matter of 2 hours.
Now I really don't know where she gets the energy and grit to do it.
Nor do I know how she manages to do it so meticulously.
My life would have been a lot messier and very accident prone, if there was no Tina.
Like I always keep saying, Tina means'There Is No Alternative'.
Always like this, she never ceases to amaze me! Thank God for her :)

All this drama in a day! and here I am in a completely contrasting evironment now... everything so dull, so empty.
I just feel I can live my next year in the memory of the joy that all the small things gave me this birthday!
Thanks everyone for making it special.

And yes, you are hearing all this from me! Sigh, most people never thought that I too could have an emotion!
But then, however hard from the outside, a coconut is the most tender and vulnerable when its born!

PS : In the background, a song plays : "Thoda hai thode ki zaroorat hai" (I have a little, I need a little more), pretty much sums up everything I am writing!

Likejacking - beware facebook users!

2010-08-30T08:38:00.000-07:00

Facebook is 'the' most popular application in the social networking space today.
It's a hit and people are loving it!

Like all other applications, this too has pitfalls!
The modus operandi is all too simple.
All of us have heard of such things before, but some people just don't care.

An external link is posted on a profile which is rather enticing in nature.
Gone are the days when a porn inspired quote got the attention of the users.
These days, the quotes are more sublime, docile and a bit funny.

The probability of people clicking on such links is very high.

For example,
"This boy fell straight on his face after this girl slapped him"

You have to 'like' this post to view the video.

Here comes the trick.
The like button is a new feature of FB which allows a developer to build a plugin.
Then the users profile details are accessed (ofcourse with permission, nobody's complaining!)

The code on the button click can be customized to show a thumbnail of a page, a picture and title of the page. This makes the trick more authentic.

Before you know, you are transported to a rogue page with malicious content which hooks the trojans on to your machine!

And to rub more salt on the wound, since you like it, it gets posted on your wall for other to see.
And one by one everyone 'likes' it!
This is like a virus which spreads systematically and nobody suspects because so many people 'like' it!

One way to tell the 'malicious like' from the 'normal like' could be that the malicious ones always appear like a button on mouse-over.
Something like this :

The normal ones are generally just like a hyper-link.

All I can say is... just be aware and do not let unknown rogue applications access your profile data.
Forget the people you are spreading you to, you are also, in the process risking your own laptop/desktop.

Some more example pictures(now this post obviously points to malicious content because of the tag line:-) ) :

Britney Spears - one more time please!

2010-08-26T08:41:00.000-07:00

Britney Spears has always been a teen icon!
Back when I was a teen, I followed Brian Adams and boy bands like Backstreet boys and Boyzone.. they were a rage back then.
But most people dished out similar things...
As guys.. me and my friends always wanted some young lady take the lead!
The answer came in the form of Britney Spears.

I remember, Jan 1999, when her "Baby, one more time" debuted, it became a rage in the US and the ripples were felt the world over!
She looked cute, a girl next door.. who was a great performer..
Apart from that her first song had a video where she was dressed as a new college goer! So it struck the chord immediately with us.. who were also just getting over with school. (School in India is till grade 10). Thereafter its college.

The SONY BMG music cassette costed Rupees 180... which was about 4 and half dollars then.
It was big money for me, I got about 50 rupees as pocket money then for my personal expenses.
I saved up for a couple of months, pooled in my past savings, and got the cassette finally!
I was the first among my peers.. immediately my cassette got booked for a few days.. all my friends wanted to take it home and record the songs on a blank cassette!!
That was back then...
when Britney was cute.. she was our age..

Then over albums and years, she became a cult figure... I started losing interest in her albums and songs which became more pub friendly.
Too much of mixing and beats made her voice obscure.
The times of "hit me baby one more time" and "U drive me crazy" were clearly over.
She had become like the rest of the generation and lost her youthful next-door charm. :(

Years later, I came across a song 'Toxic' The video was fun, but she had lost the charm by then.. she had grown up to be just like one of those American singers.

She did crazy things like having the shortest marriage which lasted only 55 hours.
The slide continued, with another failed marriage, Kevin Federline was at the other end this time.
She had kids, I wonder what they think of their mom!
These guys, if they go to school, must be having an equally hard time there with all the kids around knowing of all the stupid things that keep happening with their mother.
She later allegedly hooked up with some driver or something called Adnan Ghalib.
Can it get any worse??
Rumours of a sex tape flew thick and fast... the tabloids were all in anticipation, though its another story that nothing of that sort came.

Now, when I look back, I cringe to think of what the icon of millions of teens back then has done to herself.
She must be close to 30, but already looks too tired of life.
She gets most of her pictures air-brushed when appearing on covers of magazines.

I guess this is what happens when someone can't handle the fame and adulation which comes too early.
She is only a sad shadow of her past now.. I feel sad, but considering her middle class upbringing, expected her to be stronger.
There are lots of such cases out there... rehab is their second home.
But alas, that's what we have come to be.

For years, we yearn to succeed, we work hard to succeed, but when we achieve something quantifiable, we go into the self-destruct mode!

The latest I heard today, Madame Spears, plans to get married again by the end of this year. to Jason Trawick who was her manager! Phew!

Milkshakes - 1987 to Pamela to Mallika to Koena

2010-08-21T23:09:00.000-07:00

My memory goes back to sometime when I was just 5. That was 1987.
My mom must have made me milkshakes even before that, but that's only how long back I can remember.

My mom always told me that they are a good substitute for breakfast and evening snacks, she said that they will give me enough energy to play cricket for 3 hours.
She told me they had lots of proteins and other nutrients.
I used to gulp down the tasty shakes in a matter of seconds.
Back then, in homes, the shakes were pretty plain, simpler and totally not exotic.
It was a banana shake or a mango shake or a strawberry shake!

Milkshakes were loved by kids and elders alike, because they were smooth, creamy and colourful and totally yummy!

I loved the legacy of milkshakes till I was a teen.
Not that I started hating them, but just that I had been out of home for a long while... for higher studies.

Years passed, I hadn't had milkshakes in ages.
One fine day on television, I see an attention seeking Indian actress making her own milkshake on television.
At first I thought it was some cookery show gone glam.
Then it struck that it was for 'Millions of milkshakes' at Hollywood.
Wow, the weird and bizarre trend of naming recipes around celebrities had reached the Indian shores as well!
In amazement I looked on... milkshakes were never 'oh-so-sexy'!
Have a look :

1. Taste the raspberries, unhygienic, but the populace doesn't care, when it's Mallika hissing.. oops kissing the berries.

2. Maximum eyeballs, because it's a banana!

3. Some milk finally..

4.Yup, almost done

5.Some cream to top it up!

6.And here you go!!

The shake is not the centre of attraction here, probably the girl in the frame on the back tasted it already, even her eyes are puking!

This photo shoot became a huge hit in India!
Catching the hint, another wannabe Bollywood actress, Koena Mitra who's out of work back home astonishingly got herself a milkshake!

Relatively, some uninspiring pics of the disaster and her milkshake here :

This trend has caught on.. from the wannabes in Hollywood, Miley Cyrus, Lindsay Lohan, Pamela Anderson, and the preposterous Kardarshian sisters : Kim Kardashian, Khloe Kardashian & Kourtney Kardashian.

Pamela notably, looked the ugliest of them all at her milkshake photo-op.
Have a look :
The poor milkshake is a sidekick here

and OH-MY-GOD!(If you find this appealing, please click on the pic and enlarge)

Had my mum showed me the last picture of the milkshake in 1987, probably I would never have tasted milk ever nor would I shake my cough syrups before drinking!!

The journey of milkshakes has just begun in the eastern world..
The other day, I saw a school kid, waiting for his school bus with google search on his iPhone, the search string was :

Could anyone of you post the recipe of this milkshake? I don't still consider myself too old for it!

One of the cutest ads on Indian television

2010-08-20T22:50:00.000-07:00

Yesterday me and a couple of my office buddies were partying ..
The discussions veered from morality, human nature to aliens to college life... it was all guy-talk, but then when we talked of college, we were all mushy mushy for obvious reasons and then ...
sometime around mid-night, this advertisement came up on the TV.. and 3 of us, got hooked onto the TV set.
41 seconds later, all of us, said the same thing in different languages..
"This has to be the cutest ad this year."
I just love the sitar music at the end.. it sounds so fresh!
The girl and guy have that brilliant look of their 'first-meet-vulnerability'.
All of us were actually transported back in time..
It was truly, madly and deeply a - "Blast from the past".
Have a look :

For those who don't understand Hindi, here's the transcript with the time factor.
Boy : Excuse me, could you give me a small bite of your Dairy milk chocolate? (0:02)
Girl: Do I know you (0:08)
Boy : (Nods) No
Girl: So? (0:10)
Boy : My mom tells me that before you start doing something good, you should always have something sweet. (0:12)
Girl: By the way, what's the good thing that you wanna do? (0:23)
Boy : I was thinking... I can drop you home (0:26)

The thought at 0:12 is a typical Indian tradition of having something sweet before you embark on something good.
The belief is that it will bring good luck and success in the task.

Sometimes, these small things make you happy and bring a smile on your face!

PS : The above advertisement belongs to Cadbury's. This post is just a reference to the brilliance of this advertisement which I wanted to share.

Rumblings of the mind

2010-08-20T07:49:00.000-07:00

Rumbling(verb) - is a deep, resonant and persistent sound that often induces people into a state of trance.

How would you feel when one person whom you have nurtured, believed in, invested in, one fine day without notice start drifting away from you?

Would it evoke a reaction from you? Would you feel sad or cheated or lonely?

If I were that person, I would not feel ‘sad’ because I was the one who nurtured, believed and invested in the person. If at all anything was, it was my mistake.

I would not feel ‘cheated’ because the other person chose to walk away, and 'cheated' is a grave term and should not be used until something is proven.

I would also not feel lonely, because loneliness is only in the mind. As long as you want to feel lonely, you would, the world would seem gloomy, dark and overcast.

But if you choose to forget, then the world would seem green again.

But words are easy to pen, not follow.
Even though I would tend not to feel cheated, sad or lonely, I would feel 'wronged'.

I would feel wronged for the reason that I trusted a person who could not repose my faith.

I would feel wronged because if I held that person whenever she fell, she just walked when I fell.

I would feel wronged because if ever and whenever there was something she wanted to share, she shared it first with me and now I no longer get to see that from her side.

I would feel wronged because of being made a second fiddle.

I would feel wronged because I am a fool who made a bigger fool of myself.

Maybe I was in an 'inceptionized' state where I only dreamt and nothing actually existed.

Maybe I expected too much from her because I am a Virgo... and hence the feminine side always interferes with my 'guy attitude' and makes me feel miserable.

Maybe I should stop, think and listen to my brain.

Yeah maybe..

Maybe it's time now to stop loving everyone around.

And frankly the world seems greener now! Just by writing this.

But I am afraid, the day this person comes back, I am going to melt again.. I am going to forget all that I am writing..

Because someone has said and quite truly,

"Dil to bachcha hai ji.. thoda kachcha hai ji"
(The heart is a kid, a little inept)

And in the end, the great game of human emotions would win again and I would be reduced to being just a character who lost the game.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This is actually a re-post of the same post posted a week earlier, the trailer is attached because a few people asked me if everything was allright!! Yeah yeah.. it's still heaven out here! These are just rumblings. Fiction sounds very true many times!
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Is happiness = M(money) ?

2010-08-15T03:45:00.000-07:00

A very good debate question!
Is happiness proportional to money?

But what exactly is 'M' here?
In terms of physics or mathematical formulae, you could call it a 'constant'
Something like what 'K' is in the below equation for spring constant :

½mV² = ½k*x²

In our case, 'M' would stand for more. Because when it comes to money, nobody gets enough, everybody wants more.
So, the equation would stand as below :

Happiness ∝ Money.
Now, if there is a constant 'M' thrown in, we can equate the 2 sides.
Happiness = M(money).

Now M could be 2 for a street urchin.
It would be 100 for a regular job guy.
It would be 1000 for a well-to-do business guy.
For John Abraham, it could be 10000, for SRK may be 1 million.
For Brad Pitt it would be 100 million, because he has Madame Jolie to take care of and a multi-coloured army too!

3 days back, I had a discussion with one of my friends where we were discussing exactly how important is money?
This is not a straight answer, alas!
His opinion was that when you just start earning, it is THE most important thing in the world for you.
Few years down the lane, when you have just enough... when I say that, I mean you have a decent amount in your bank account and you are still left with some disposable income, then you start thinking... Ok, this is not important enough.

This is exactly what happens to many of us including me.
Typically this state approaches you when you are close to 30.
You know yourself better and are more confident about what 'else' you need from life!
When you have something apart from fulfilling your basic needs, have a decent bank balance, you start thinking about the vagaries of life.

At this juncture, just stop and think,
Is money driving you to do things you would otherwise not have done?
For most, the answer would be yes.

I am just 27, but when I rewind my life, say 15 years, when I was in fifth grade, I find a culture shock, a lifestyle shock between what I was then and what I am now.

India as a country has changed so much in the last decade, that it is almost umimaginable to think that I had a acai-berry tree in my backyard!
I was never brought up in the countryside, all these were big Indian cities which had so much space just 2 decades back.
It was my dad's company provided quarter where we had a front yard, a back yard with a small kitchen garden.
On sundays I picked up 2 brushes, an old soft rag and shoe polish.
I took my dad's shoes, my school shoes and my mom's footwear occasionally and polished them!
The shine gave me happiness.
I played cricket till I dropped. That gave me happiness.
We did not have a car, but had a scooter which was pretty old.
My dad disposed it off and got a new scooter, I used to shine it up every weekend too like an energetic kid. That gave me happiness.
Probably everything that was not money in that age, gave me happiness.

I am sad when I compare that scene with today.
There are no big open yards in houses anymore. If there are, then you gotta be neo-rich to have them.
Plus even if you have them, you would probably employ someone to take care of the garden and the farm.
That because you don't have any time left for all this.
The kids in school these days, and this is a fact, are the most frequent visitors to pubs.
Hardly 15 something, armed with cash from their Arab-like cash rich dads, come in droves and smoke life away through a hukka nozzle!

Nothing is out of reach for the X-box generation.
Their happiness lasts till the time the credit limit on their dads' add-on cards last!

Sigh, its all about money and the constant 'M'.
The money will always be the same, but life has now been reduced to a constant journey of this 'M' from 2 to maybe 100 million.
So what if Jolie is taken, there will always be some local, maybe even more attractive versions available closer home!
Everyone dreams to be a Brad Pitt someday.

PS : I am a culprit of this spending-mela too, but maybe because I am already past being a teen, I spend a lot lesser than the empowered people today!
But, three cheers to the teens! They are what it takes to keep the recession away!

Barack Obama - from torch bearer to a mere president

2010-08-13T06:36:00.000-07:00

This post, I am sure would not go down well with true blue Americans who pride themselves in calling themselves Americans and love everything that is American.

Nov 4th, 2008

This was the day when Barack Hussein Obama became the beacon of a very motivated America.
All the Americans hoped and prayed that this will be the end to all the illnesses of America from the Bush era.
As a schoolboy I had read this proverb in one of school text books :

"Don't lose hope as hope is a rope that swings you through life"

To an extent, Mr. Obama did succeed in filling every American's heart with hope.
His speeches were inspiring and had very good intent, to say the least.
America thought it was a new dawn.

Few months down the lane, Mr. President was awarded with the Nobel Peace Prize, hitherto awarded to someone of the stature of Martin Luther King Jr.
Apart from America, the world, took it with a pinch of salt.
Sir Obama had actually done nothing but talk. If that was the criterion, then Oprah Winfrey should have been awarded before Obama.

With a hiccup, the world still embraced the decision and cheered the new President's victory.
Over the next few months, his charisma grew ..
till the recession hit the world's biggest economy.

People lost their jobs, the unemployment index skyrocketed and America went into shambles with big boys of Wall street falling like eucalyptus trees in a tornado.

The world is dependent on America because of its multi-trillion $ economy size.
Any quake in the mecca of trade world would send tremors across the golbe that reach far and wide.

With this, the peace loving President's image took a beating and so did his popularity ratings. His ratings were at an all time low.

Now, to resurrect some of the lost pride, the politician with his coterie is back at wooing hearts with his gift of gab.
Whipping up political frenzy, rhetoric and jingoism are all traits of politicians across the world.

Simple thumb rule :
When the crown is in danger, divert the attention.
Clinton did it by attacking Iraq in a surprise attack when faced with Lewinsky scandal.
Bush did many stupid things, but Afghanistan and Iraq were his biggest mistakes.
The Iraq war has costed America more than a trillion dollars now!

But, but but.. Sir Obama cannot tread the same path because he has been awarded a nobel peace prize. Damn!
So what does he do? Divert the attention by whipping up frenzy and bringing on the heat on immigrants.

I completely understand that it is needed for America to save its interests.
But the methods are downright cheap and disgusting.

For example, the latest border security bill passed by the senate a couple of days back.
This is blasphemy, you want to charge a couple of thousand dollars extra over what you were already charging.
You are a multi trillion dollar economy, you don't twitch before doubling the amount
for the war in Iraq, you give a billion dollars a year to terror friendly Pakistan, but for the border security of your own country where you need $650 million, you want the fund to come from outside sources?
Is $650 M for a country like America that big an amount?

You want to charge the law abiding immigrant for stopping illegal immigration?

In the name of protecting jobs, the short sightedness of this decision is only going to impair America's razor sharp technological edge in the world.

The US industry has also reacted strongly to this act.

Check this : http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/tech/news/software-services/Chop-shop-remarks-on-Infosys-outrages-US-Inc/articleshow/6293122.cms

The united states of America is a loved country worldwide because it is a microcosm of all races. It has the colours of the world and hence is far ahead of any other country because every country has only a few colours or races to boast of.

United states is a dreamland for people from India, China, Russia(damn the administration, the Russian people love America and its movies ;-)).
The short sighted congressmen will one day ruin this equilibrium with their draconian methods of protectionism.

And Mr President, his highness, Mr. Barack Hussein Obama is endorsing all this in broad daylight.

In my opinion, I can only say, Sir, with all due respect, you are only a shadow of your 2008 Avatar now.

I sincerely hope that you do not end up being 'just-another-president' like your predecessor.

I want to see America transition from the throes of darkness to light again and in the process see you regain lost ground.

From this :

And this

To this

PS : Also ask Michelle to be a little discreet about her holidays :)

Is something cooking Stella?

2010-08-10T08:51:00.000-07:00

Some people are shy.. some sly, some plain stupid and some private.

Put all of them in a situation and give them a girl/guy whom they secretly admire.
99 out of 100 would choose to hide that they like the other person.

Why I fail to understand this trait is another story.
For now, I can tell this from my experience where I have seen 3 of my friends doing this.
First they tell the world, that its just a figment of 'our' imagination.
Then like celebrities, say, we are just friends.
6 months down the lane, they come up with a smile and tell me..
Friend :
Hey... how have you been?? You know something? Well I have something to tell you!

Me:
And though I know what's coming, i sound excited and say, Whaatt?? Dont tell me that you...

Friend :
Yeah, I am getting married to her!

Me :
Duh! You came to know last! The whole of the college/Nagpur/Gachibowli knew that!
Anyways... yippiiiieee!! I am so happy for both of you!!

Now, I am really happy for such friends.. but the thing is that it baffles me why everyone tries to hide it initially when it is so evident to the world around them!
This I have seen thrice!
And it doesn't end here, I am seeing it even now!
Like I mentioned in one of my earlier entries, the 'aashiqui' thread is something that connects all generations, all kinds of people around us.

[TRIVIA :
1. Nagpur is the 10th most populous Indian city in India where a lot of 'aashiqs' reside.
2. Aashiq would mean 'fanatic lover' in Hindi(a popular Indian language)
3. Gachibowli is a suburb in my city where a lot of IT companies are housed ]

5 ways to find a budding 'something-cooking' thing :

i) Person X chats only with person Y continuously.
ii) If some person accidentally lands at his place, Person X scrambles to minimize the chat windows. He starts the 'business-as-usual' as soon as the person leaves.
iii)Person X does not refer to the 'adorable' person with his/her name directly. He/she either create an abbreviation or some kind of a reference-name to avoid prying eyes.
iv) Person X almost creates a scene or makes a face at the mention of the 'adorable' person.
v) Person X has 3 pressing situations where his/her presence is needed. No prizes for guessing the one he/she chooses first!

Hope this helps!
Not the people, but the 'aashiqs' to realize that they are not the only intelligent ones!

Take down ma numb homie...

2010-08-08T05:33:00.000-07:00

Move over X-Gen. The Y or whatever Gen is here.
Some call them Yo-Gen
Mohandas Pai calls them the Facebook generation.
Andrew Symmonds calls them the X-box generation.

Whatever you call them, it's hard not to cringe when you see them.
They are everywhere, they have invaded India and created such a frenzy that even Reliance India Mobile could not in the year 2002.

Recently I went to a coffee shop, there was no space to sit. After a while the guy at the shop showed us a table.. we went in and saw hordes of the 'barely-twenty-but-already-a-star' people.
Everyone was being cool in his way.
A guy with an outlandish hair-do waved at the guys at the next table and said, "Yo homies, hows the fun going?"
The guys at the next table, equally despicable of course, replied - "Koul"
I wanted to pee on them.
Homies?? What the F? Too much of watching the b-grade hollywood movies where every black-goon is a homie to the other ugly black-goon.
And 'Koul'? What the hell is Koul?
Had heard of equally obnoxious terms like kool, kewl.. but what on holy mother earth is koul?
Is it the name of ekta kapoor's owl?

I always had a problem with the word 'cool' too which was a rage back then in the 90s.
X : How are you?
Y : Cool!

What's cool? Are you a reptile or a cold-blooded animal?
Is your body temperature below zero and does it change with the temperature outside?
Total non-sense.
And the Americans call the Brits stupid.
Despite the accent, the Brits at least have a cleaner tongue.
The Americans basically have Mumbai-ised the British English.

But maybe because I grew up with 'Cool' or 'Kool'(like it became in the late 90s), I have got used to it.
But the current breed, the oh-so-SMS-friendly crowd is way ahead.
Their arthritis-ridden fingers are so adept at SMSing, that they could put a piano player to shame. Such is the speed that you sometimes have to go wow, however disgusting it is.

To quote Andrew Symmonds,
"When I mention having a beer to some of the new generation guys, they look at me like I am from another planet. They want to run off to their rooms and play Xbox."

So the concern that I share is not isolated.
The whole generation is getting crippled. The manly and womanly characteristics are vanishing.
Under outrageously fashioned hair-dos, there sits a mind which could have been brilliant, but chooses to be whatever they call 'koul'.
I still cannot understand what the heck is 'Koul'.
I know it must be just that guy. Maybe he wanted to say 'kool' but his oral cavity was so full of hukka smoke that he went 'koul'.

They are in swarms everywhere on the television too.
The gelled hair rising from the centre of the head like a volcano from a burning mountain.
The improvized stubble with a few designs on it, a chest hugging tee with tacky lines like :
"Am I dead, Angel? Cause this must be heaven!"
OR
"Hello, I'm a thief, and I'm here to steal your heart"
OR
"Do you know karate? Because your body is really kickin'"
OR this one for the pencil thin females :
"I'm wearing Revlon colorstay lipstick, want to help me test the claim it won't kiss off? "

Worse still, they are all over MTv and Channel V too.
But one has to concede that they look good. Its only when they open their mouth, that it stinks.
Now don't get me wrong. There are many good, intelligent and brainy people too.. but its just that they have been grossly outnumbered by the 'bubbly-youngistan-ka-wow' generation.

To add to the ordeal, they have made Facebook their mouthpiece.
They use it to tell the world, when they got up, what they are seeing, when they are going to the loo and what they are doing there.
They also tell the world how ugly and idiotic their dad is.
They have to 'like' almost any message that someone posts on FB.

Mr X is bored and wants to scare the shit out of his pet hen.
Mr. Y, Mr. Z and 3016 others like this.

Some more salt on the wound.. i was checking my own FB which is relatively a lot 'cleaner'.
A friend had this written on her wall by a 'kid homie' :
"Take down ma numb and mak sum plan. Lets all cum on saturday"

Take down ma numb and mak??
Holy mother of Jesus Christ, whats wrong with the kids today? Have they been snorting cocaine?
'Ma numb' meant 'my number' for the uninitiated antediluvian creatures.
Why has the poor 'make' been circumcised to 'mak'? Does your keyboard charge you for every letter you type?

And the second second sentence.. "Lets all... whatever... eww... eww"
Your imagination is as good as mine!

The times, then and now

2010-07-30T10:10:00.000-07:00

Have you ever heard the "sarfaroshi ki tamanna" song?
During India's independence struggle, it was the labour of love of every freedom fighter.
The lyrics(if you know hindi) are truly inspiring. Very few people who have listened to it have not been moved by the intensity of the song.
It goes something like this :
"Sarfaroshi ki tamanna ab hamaare dil mein hai
Dekhna hai zor kitna baazu-e-qaatil mein hai

Waqt aanay dey bata denge tujhe aye aasman
Hum abhi se kya batayen kya hamare dil mein hai

Hai liye hathiyaar dushman taak mein baitha udhar
Aur hum taiyyaar hain seena liye apna idhar
Khoon se khelenge holi gar vatan muskhil mein hai
Sarfaroshi ki tamanna ab hamaare dil mein hai

Sarfaroshi ki tamanna ab hamaare dil mein hai.
Dekhna hai zor kitna baazuay qaatil mein hai."

It has been 60 years now that India has been independent.
A lot has changed and people have forgotten what it took for the men of that age to help us live the life that we are living today.

I remember, during my school days, I always was at the school, saluting the spirit of independence and remembering the importance of the people who gave up all to give us this sweet fruit called independence.
These days, the 15th of August has been reduced to being a school holiday.
Ok, now I am digressing from the topic.

If you happened to see a film called 'Gulaal' (an Anurag Kashyap film), one thing that would strike you is the re-engineered version of 'sarfaroshi ki tamanna' song.
It subtly epoitomizes the state of youth in the country today.

"Sarfaroshi ki tamanna ab hamare dil me hai
Dekhna hai zor kitna bazu-e-kaatil me hai
Waqt aane de bata denge tujhe e aasmaan
Hum abhi se kya batayen kya hamare dil me hai

Oh re Bismil kaash aate aaj tum Hindustaan
Dekhte ki mulk saara kya tashan mein, thrill mein hai
Aaj ka launda yeh kehta hum to bismil thak gaye
Apni aazaadi to bhaiya laundiya ke til mein hai.

Aaj ke jalson me Bismil ek gunga gaa raha.
Aur behron ka wo rela naachta mehfil mein hai
Haath se khaadi banaane ka zamaana lad gaya
Aaj to chaddi bhi silti englison ki mill mein hai

Sarfaroshi ki tamanna ab hamare dil me hai…
Hum abhi se kya batayen kya hamare dil me hai"

Need I say anymore? :)
Think about it!

A visit to the Russian hinterland

2010-07-26T01:41:00.000-07:00

Hotel Tsaritsino, Moskva,
24-07-2010, 23:09

The cab touches my hotel at 0730 tomorrow.
I have to attend to my professional assignment at 0815. I have been left tired, bruised and sore after a 2 day trip to Dmitrovsky Pogost.

Yet, what inspires me to write is the underlying fear that tomorrow may not be as beautiful as today and tomorrow’s difficulties may overpower the joy of the last two days.

Somewhere on Profsoyuznaya Street, Moskva,
22-07-2010, 14:38

I was feeling a little sick because of the unusual heat in Moscow, aggravated by the absence of a fan in my hotel. The hotel people probably never anticipated the heat wave.
The office was a big relief because of the AC. I was already dreaming of a relaxed Saturday and a quiet Sunday where I would do nothing & sit like a rock.
Every 6 hours, I would get up to cook something and then get back to the being a rock.

The dream suddenly snapped, Sankar offered that we should make a trip to his fiancée’s country home. Initially I was a little skeptical, thinking of things that general urban idiots think of.
For me, lying like a stone was very important and relieving.
Then Amit pushed.. and when the boss asks, you don’t deny.
I am glad I didn’t. And you’ll soon know why.

Hotel Tsaritsino, Moskva,
23-08-2010, 0600

The alarm rings, like a robot instructed to wake up, I get going. Run to the kitchen, make some Indian breakfast , pack it in the box and head to the metro with Amit.
At Kolomenskaya metro we meet Sudarshan, Divya, Jaspreet, Kiran, Sankar, Natasha, Marina & Natasha Ivanova.
For ease of understanding, let me codename Sankar’s Natasha as N1 and my colleague Natasha as N2.

We buy lots of water at & start the train journey, the heat was getting to us, but slowly the body adjusted, and the country scenery whizzing past only added to the pleasure.
We reached a place called Shatura (N1’s mom tells us that this is very famous for wood and furniture).
The place was looking good and calm, but the way to an Indian’s heart is definitely through his stomach and there was a McD just 50 mtrs away.
Jaspreet and I started making hungry noises, Sankar like a responsible father goaded us to move on.
We then boarded a mini van and made our way ahead to the village.
Pine trees on both sides, a winding and traffic-free countryside road, what else could a city-bred idiot wish for?
This was really beginning to inspire me! I wondered, if the prelude was so good, what would the main course hold for me?

Dmitrovsky Pogost village,
150 kms south east of Moscow.

Few minutes later, we reached N1’s home.
It was over a hundred years old. An old wooden house, very beautiful in structure and in location.
From the inside it just reminded me of my great grandfather’s home that I had seen in pictures. Very nice and cosy.
We were a little dirty, so we got a garden hose and without thinking much started it and the freezing cold water hit Sudarshan first, then Jaspreet and then me, but we enjoyed it.
We made a barbeque and had a wonderful time.
The vegetarian barbeque took a while longer and much to the chagrin of vegans like Amit, Sudarshan and others, the potatoes did not come out that well.
Meanwhile N2 was waiting for someone who could eat meat and me and Jaspreet jumped! This was after a long while since we were denied food at McD’s :P
We were hungry, had our hearts content and set out for a walk.
I had a badminton racquet in my hand which came in handy for killing the flies and mosquitoes.
We were trying to reach the river. The vegetation grew and so did the mosquitoes and blood sucking parasites.
The pine trees towered 50 feet over us on each side and the mosquitoes surrounded us!
The racquet could help only to an extent, there were red marks of bites on all our bodies. Huffing, puffing and jumping like Jitender we reached the river, or rather a rivulet, or maybe a canal, or say just a water stream.
[TRIVIA : Jitender was an Indian film actor who was famous for jumping and dancing]

Vladimir(N1’s cousin jumped and swam effortlessly, Amit followed, but stopped at the shore, me and Sid braved our instincts and said.. why not!
In the river, we drenched ourselves in mud, when we came out, we looked like two fat bears.
Black, huge & hairy. The mud had piled everywhere on us.

We somehow washed ourselves, but we were still very very dirty. My white and green shots had turned black and black. Once I came out, I realized I had cut my feet somewhere, and I was bleeding.
The sight was a little overwhelming while the pain was not.
But N1’s mom just did something that amazed me. She took the bicycle and rode up at least 4 kms and back just to get me an antiseptic and a band-aid.
I was touched, but couldn’t thank her much because of my language issues and I did not want someone to translate because it was not an official matter.

Once back home, I had a numbing cold water shower to clean myself, but the shorts I had worn were beyond repair.
Went in, had some rest.
When I came out after an hour, I saw my shorts on a cloth line almost white and green again!
Puzzled, I enquired and Kiran told me that Marina(N1’s mom) had washed it clean.
I don’t know what went through me, I was feeling like a kid. She took care of us more like a mother than like a host.
I was touched.

Somwhere in the Dmitrovsky Pogost village,
24-07-2010, 00:30

N2 went to sleep, however we all thought we should be having some fun. So we went out for a walk.
There N1 had called a friend of hers, Julia who played guitar.
It was 1 am in the night and we all eagerly sat like children in a row on the road in front of her.
That was the last time we felt reality that night.
Once she started singing and playing the guitar, we were all taken into a different world altogether.
She sang Russian, but music has no barriers they say.
We connected at a level which was way beyond watching or listening to an artiste on television or movies.
I could not believe the talent that was being showcased. It was an out of the world experience.
The songs were all wonderful and her voice – SURREAL.
I have never seen a better singer.

On the bed, Dmitrovsky Pogost,
24-07-2010 07:00

My alarm rings.
Amit : “Hey Akshay, get up man”
Me : “Amit, nobody is up, what will we do.. lets keep sleeping for some more time”
Amit : ”Damn.. I think I have become old, because old people sleep less”
Me : “Oh no, don’t worry… by the way.. look at Sudarshan, going by your theory, he must a 6 month old baby then!”

We all have breakfast a while later and proceed to Belayaozra lake.
All through, I was expecting this to be a secluded lake with little human activity.
Once we reached there, we saw a bikini clad sea of humanity!
This part of the world, the crowd really enjoys sun bathing! It looked no less that a mini Goa or a Miami.
We were all eager to jump in.
I was a little skeptical because of my cuts and bruises, but then it was a fresh water lake and I wasn’t able to resist myself any longer. Took the dive and never wanted to come back.
All of us had a whale of a time playing throw-ball in the water. It was a superlative afternoon spent. We went in, came out, again went in and had multiple rounds of dips.
Very refreshed through the soul and tired through the body we came back home at 5 in the evening and started our trip back home.
Back in Moskva, in my hotel, the comfort and environ is something else, the 1 centimeter mosquitoes are gone, there are no flies.
What there is, is a bath tub, some neatly arranged utensils in the kitchen and a nicely set up living room.

But still there is something amiss.
That thing is a human’s connect with nature.
All of us are so tied up in the daily race that we indulge in, that we forget the smaller joys of life. We had our heart’s fill of these joys in the last 2 days and I have to thank Sankar for that.
I have to thank Natasha who let us in to her wonderful home. We were a bit clumsy because we were too many in number, but never did we even once feel out of place.
Natasha’s mom was the perfect host. She took care of us all to such a degree that we all started feeling at home from day one. She made it a home away from home for all of us.
We would never have imagined being at such comfort in a Russian village 5000 kilometers away from India.

It was a weekend that all of us would remember for a long long time to come.It was Russian countryside explored like very few people had done.
At least like very few Indians had done.
To us, it was a gift, a gift – From Russia with love.

Ye ishq nahi aasan

2010-07-21T23:06:00.000-07:00

"Ye ishq nahi aasaan,
bas samajh lijiye, ek aag ka darya hai aur doob ke jaana hai."

This is a very very profound riddle.
aag ka darya is fine, but doob ke kahan jaana hai? Thats a riddle. The story does not end at a happy love story. There is life after that, a marriage, an afterlife which isnt easy to comprehend.
Kitni door tak jaana hai? Thats also unsanswered.
How far can you stretch and allow your instincts to be elastic?

I think ishq is a never ending battle with yourself and balancing the world around.

Call of the wild

2010-06-28T09:14:00.000-07:00

Finally, after a lot of postponements, we managed the Kanha trip.
It was supposed to be in April, then May, but June clicked and we were on our way.

We reached Nagpur in the morning on 17th June and then proceeded to Kanha by road. The journey was about 260 kms, but the road was quite good and our driver quick.
The sky was overcast and it has rained quite a bit in the last 24 hours.
I was cursing myself for choosing June because of the probable rains. They could spoil the whole wildlife sojourn.

Praying, we started from Nagpur, but the prayers were going unanswered. It started raining hard. The speed of our vehicle went drastically down, this kept happening on and off till we were in Maharashtra.

On the way, we stopped at MPTDC resort at Rookhad, pretty ordinary stuff. If you have had nothing for breakfast/lunch, then probably you can halt there, but don’t expect something extraordinary.

When we cleared the Maharashtra border, the skies started clearing, by the time we reached the Khatia gate of Kanha national park, the sun was shining on us, though very softly.
Finished the formalities of signing the registers, asked the man at the gate if the evening safari was available, he said it was.
He also said that it had been closed for the last 2 and half days due to heavy rains. I thanked heavens and stepped back into my car.
Then we checked into Baghira log huts, the resort maintained by MPTDC.
The best thing is that there are AC rooms available.
The good thing is that the view isn’t bad (though the view is strictly not comparable to the Old FRH at Corbett)
The things I was unhappy about include quite a few.. the resort is just technically inside the jungle, so you don’t get the real wild feeling, there is a petrol pump bang opposite the resort.
Nevertheless, it has lots of Sal trees around.
The food is decent, not much in terms of variety, but decent in terms of quality, don’t expect exotic dishes, its daily Indian fare.
If you are a wildlife enthusiast, you would anyway be hardly bothered about food.

Day 1 – Evening Safari :

We managed to catch the safari on Day 1 at 330 pm, despite the rains on the way from Nagpur.
The jeeps (maruti gypsies) line up outside the gate before entry to the park.
One thing that sucked : because of the heavy rains in the prior days, the gypsies took a single route inside the park, so for a long time, you will find gypsies travelling in a line and this in a word is ‘D-I-S-A-S-T-E-R’ for tiger sighting.
And as expected, we did not see any tigers that day.
But I was pretty happy, that I managed to capture a lot of other fauna on my camera. That, as much as tigers is important to me.
Lots of times, most people do not give an animal its worth.
For example, the deer, which is the main meal for a tiger, is just not noticed by people.
Just try and get close to one of them, they will give you some of the best poses to click. Their jerky movement, the big, expressive eyes, make them a sight to behold.
The Barasingha (unique only to Kanha) is now on the endangered list with just 350 of them remaining.
The park officials have made a separate enclosure for breeding them.
Good initiative.
We spotted the Gaur (Indian bison), lots of peacocks, spotted deer, barking deer and the Barasingha.
The peacocks were kind enough to give some royal poses.

Day2 – Morning Safari :
One thing which I mentioned earlier as irritating, continued. The single route which all gypsies followed.
Most animals stay in a particular area for a few days at least, so but obviously we were constantly being deprived of the chance to watch the other diverse life of the park.
Most of the times, it was the same places we saw the same animals.
Me, my wife and my sister-in-law were having more fun today though. The mood was relaxed, we were passing through the same routes and we were chit-chatting.
All this ended suddenly, the other jeep with our friends in it, came hurtling towards us at break neck speed.
He indicated, we turned back and sped. We knew it was the tiger.
No other animal in the country commands such attention, our driver drove at amazing speeds, his old gypsy, though a little creaky, revved up pretty well.
Ina few seconds we were at the spot, I couldn’t see anything.
Me : “Where is it?”
My Wife : “I am able to see it, woooooww!! Give me the camera.”
SIL : “Where is it ?”
Perplexed, me and my SIL looked at each other, making faces.
Then the driver, pointed, “look carefully behind the grass, can you see now??”
Then I noticed, the amazing sight of nature’s wonder.
A small, about an year old tiger, maybe 3-4 feet in length was sitting calmly.
The colour of his skin was magnificent, it hadn’t turned yellow yet, it was kind of deep yellow tending to orange with black stripes.
I was so lost and engrossed, my wifey said : Click man… what’s wrong with you?
Then I realized and brought my camera.
But the damn auto focus mode, it was focussing on the grass rather than the camouflaged tiger.
In the meanwhile, the word spread, about 20 gypsies zeroed in on the spot where we were standing.
The din was too much for the barely mature tiger.
He just quietly stood up, turned back, gave us a good view and disappeared into the bushes.
A few minutes later, we could hear the growls of the kid, they sounded a little weird, but the guide told us that he was calling out for his mother.
There was still a bit of disappointment that none of us could capture it on cam because of the bushes, the camouflage and the failing light, but the glint in our eyes made up for the lost light.

We had just meandered a little ahead when our guide signalled the driver to stop.
The langoors were calling, he said that there is a cat around, but we did not know which one.
He said it could be the tigress mother. The hearts started pounding again in anticipation.
Looking at our gypsy, many others too stopped.
We got our binoculars out, and I got my telephoto lens out. This time, I did not want to miss it.
Then the guide pointed to a tree, we saw 2 leopards perched comfortably there.
One went into hiding in the thick foliage.
But the second one, like God, gave us a very good darshan, it moved around on the tree, showed us its back ( :P ), then looked through the eyes, then gave the side view, scratched itself on the bark of the tree. All this was a good 100 feet away from us, but since it was on a tree, we had a feast!
I clicked to my heart’s content.
The smile on my wife’s and sil’s face was something which I cherish even now!
I am a wildlife enthusiast, but for their sake, I wanted them to sight something in reality. They got really fascinated.

We stopped at a small eatery in the Kanha range, there was a museum as well.
It was a safari well spent!
The ‘tiger-on-cam’ disappointment was lingering, but the other events made sure we had a happy lunch!

Day – 2 : Afternoon safari :

After spotting the first tiger, we were anticipating a little too much.
But this was a real stress buster safari!
This time we were relaxed a little more, more observant to the sounds of the jungle.
The breeze cooled as the clouds drew in again. We feared another shower, but it remained just good.
The fauna in the jungle was also relaxed, this was a ‘feel-good’ safari.
It ended like that.
Had a nice dinner and then a game of cards and dumb charades at the room.
We were waiting for the last safari the next morning.

Day – 3 : Morning Safari :

We were up at 4 am, the driver was punctual, he landed at our door at 430 AM.
We were at the Kisli gate by 445 AM, ours were the first 2 jeeps.
This day, we told the driver, take the route not frequented by anyone. We just wanted to enjoy the nature in our last trip.
We had barely travelled 10 minutes when a familiar din surrounded us.
Our guide said, it can only be a tiger, there cannot be such a crowd for anything else.
Excited, we drew closer.
It was a full blooded full grown adult male tiger sleeping.
We were a little perplexed, it looked dead because of the posture.
The legs were folded, facing the sky, lying on the back, face to the sky.
Then we saw its belly furiously breathing away.. and we heaved a sigh of relief!
The guide told us that there this tiger wont wake up because its immensely tired and only then do they sleep like this.
This is when they are least bothered. We were too close for comfort, at the maximum about 5 feet away. We were clicking incessantly.
But here, I was hugely disappointed because people were using flashes. I really don’t understand why they do this.
Probably they don’t know how to turn it off
Anyways I had my fill of close up shots! About 50 pics and a few HD videos.
Then he turned, looked at us .. I froze, and then he dozed off again.
All this on HD video!! I was thrilled!
Then the rest of the safari, everything looked beautiful, the gaurs, deer, jackals and peacocks all had their magic!

We had a final lunch in Baghira log huts, and bid farewell to this wonderful place with a lot of fond memories and a treasure of pics and videos!
This trip did not disappoint us at all.

Some pics below :

....

2010-06-20T02:13:00.000-07:00

The human begins to expect too much too fast.
A man may suffer 100 reverses in 100 days, but the moment he comes out positive on the 101st day, he thinks he can break any barrier.. or even cross an ocean maybe!

A man, who is barely into a nice little friendship with a girl for about 6 months... thinks she should call him his best friend just because she tells him everything she does and tells him everything quite frankly.
But then, he never knows if what he was getting to hear everyday from her was because she really considered him her 'best' friend or just because there was nobody else around whom she felt she could converse with.
May be, in her bucket of friends you probably figure in the bottom part, where the water generally is cold.

Some relations are cold where you don't talk or interact, some warmer, where you greet when you meet, but forget them when you don't.
These are relations which are easier to maintain and where you don't suffer heartburn when things don't go the way you want them to.
But, there are relations, sometimes not the 'bloodlined' ones, where you want things to happen in a certain fashion.. but then you forget that a bloodline is a bloodline... no matter what.

The result : You fall against your nose and the other person does not understand nor realize.
You just have to get up, smile, brush off the dirt and move.

The speed of death - is decided by the man himself

2010-05-23T01:36:00.000-07:00

The man physically, is probably one of the weakest multi-cellular creature to have walked the earth.
While a lion has might, the cheetah - speed, lizards - camouflage, birds - flight, elephants - the heft, the man has none of these physical assets.
The speed is paltry with two weak legs, the strength - the lesser mentioned the better. The strongest of wrestlers would be sitting ducks to a lion or a croc.

But what we have is a 300 gram network of 'intestine-looking' bunch of wires. This neural network surpasses any strength possessed by any creature on earth, a fact misused most of the times by humans to dominate the planet.

The man for long has misused this intelligence to hunt/poach and kill the other beings on this planet so that he is secure.
Once the man is secure, the number of people on this planet rises to unimaginable proportions.
To serve the needs of the hordes of people, barbaric jungle law of 'might-is-right' will not work in the human scenario.
Therefore, the civility which is more 'acquired' than genetic steps in and saves the mankind.
The mankind does business, grows crops, sells natural resources and advances technology to build better lasting businesses. All this, to fill the stomachs of 6 billion hungry people.

Technology is a huge catalyst in determining a country's business doing capability.
And who better than USA and Russia fit this bill.
They literally tore into the world's economic scenario post world war-2, when global liberalization took centrestage.

In the relentless pursuit of advancement of technology, the human has created things which are 'beyond compare'.
No doubt, these are things that the modern man uses everyday to further his business interests, build faster and stronger travel methods.
The aeroplane is one such invention that epitomizes everything that is intelligent.

This machine, a complex hard winding of about 30 kms of cable, huge propellers and the mighty engines is but anything that the common man understands.
All the common man knows is the airfare is high during the peak season and low during off season. If I travel now, I get a better deal, else I burn a hole in my pocket.

The wise say, courtship is far less complex than marriage because the former just is a planning phase, a visualization of the rosy future-to-be, a pre-cursor to the life that would be so different from now.
But marriage is when the execution of plans start, the nitty gritties which need to be worked every hour, minute and second to ensure that the machine is well-oiled.
The moment, you forget to oil a part, it creaks, you ignore, and it crashes.

Aeroplanes are not much different.
Like countless Indians, I was shocked and dismayed at yesterday's AI flight crash disaster in Mangalore.
Initial reports suggest it was pilot error because of which the plane landed much beyond the landing zone on the runway.
The result, a hundred and sixty innocent lives lost.

Technological innovation conceptualized is always rosy... but unlike what people think, it takes a lot of attention to detail that keeps the execution smooth.

I will not harp on the tragic loss, but I will salute the thousands of aircraft maintenance engineers, the ATC controllers and the pilots who perform their duty with full sincerity. A lot depends on them.
May they be bestowed with the best of health and alertness which will help them avert disasters like these.

This only again proves the point in one of my earlier posts that Death is above all truths and supercedes everything else in the universe.
In the never ending mayhem that we create to be fitter, faster and stronger, we will at many occasions be at the receiving end.

At the very end now, I would only present 2 view-points to you :
One :
At present it takes 11 days to build a 737 aircraft with about 5800 airplane unit hours of work.
This is the same one which crashed yesterday in Mangalore. There was nothing wrong with the aircraft.
This is victory for the mankind in terms of technology.

Two :
22nd May, 2010, 6:02 AM
The plane lands safely, (Mohan, a passenger with his family coming from Dubai, tells them : "Once we take the luggage from the belt, we'll head straight to the taxi stand, I just cant wait to get to my home town"
His 8 year old son says : "Dad, but then the taxis..."
Booooom.
The fuselage of the plane splits into two, the cockpit separates leaving behind mounds of burning wires and freewheels into a deep gorge.
The rest of the plane hurtles to the same destiny.
The passengers seated in the front row can see the road beneath them whizzing backward at speeds of 200 km/h.
Suddenly a globe of fire blasts through the whole passage incinerating everything in its way.
A passeger manages to jump from the crack in the plane, falls to the ground only to see the huge back black wheel of the aircraft hurtling towards him .. he closes his eyes on the ground.)*

This is the speed of death.
And it has been decided by the man himself.

* The above is just a rendition of the disturbance that has gone through my mind after seeing yesterday's disaster on countless yellow press channels.
The reconstruction of the crash scenario was fictional.

a few things that've kept me busy!

2010-05-09T00:01:00.000-07:00

Yeah.. the workplace now resembles a russian warzone.
Scant respect for ethics and total emphasis on results!
This is how the russians work.. and if we need to make them happy.. then we better do the things they like and more importantly do it like they like it.

This apart, mom and dad haven't been home since a couple of weeks.. so its me and Tina all alone!
Its always delightful to be on your own.. everytime this happens, you discover a new facet to yourself.
This time its cooking.

Now, i have been a non-entity in the kitchen till I was 25-26 maybe.
The only thing I knew to cook was Maggi ( which most Indians would know ).
The tryst with cooking took shape in Apr-May 2008 or thereabouts.
There was a colleague in Moscow, who used to come over and that's when i started learning the basics of cooking.
At the end of the trip I could make rookie dishes like bambino vermicelli, egg bhurji, dal (it was a super spicy andhra variety dal) and rice.
Nothing much to be proud about.. but still, the seed had been sown.

Much later, whenever I got a chance, I tried my hand at small experiments.
None too extraordinary, but I always managed to be kind of above average.

With 3 ladies in then house, my kitchen stint was always a non-starter.
Tina herself never got enough chances to enter the kitchen, poor me stood no chance.
And then, there is also a thought that I could end up making a fool out of myself!
Tina is light years ahead of me, when it comes to cooking.. so I prefer to remain in the shadows. :)

But, this time around, I thought why not try something different.
How long will I sit on the couch and watch Tina make all those yummy dishes... all this when I knew the abc of cooking.
My help never went beyond fetching vegetables from the refrigerator or washing utensils. :P

Now, then Divya was here for a couple of days too, that was when I decided to do a little something of my own..
A colleague from office was coming for lunch too.
That day I decided to make chhole :) and believe me they did not come out bad at all...
That day served as a further inspiration... and I was only too glad from there on to try my hand whenever possible.

The coming Thursday I made some more chhole, this time to be had with puri. So they had to be be a semi gravy kind and bingo.. they turned out exactly like that.
Tina was thrilled and so was I :D

Then today, I tried out Rajma chawal.
The planning from the onion paste to the tomato pulp to all the masalas were all planned and there was Rajma in front of us in about a hour and a half!

Satisfying and refreshing!
Another one of those feelings that money cant buy!

Was so thrilled that I told her in the late evening to watch a movie and not get up from the couch...
meanwhile I went, made some noodles and did some extra garnishing over the Rajma chawal that we couldn't finish in the day.
Got a green chilli too to enhance the contents of the dish :)

It was a wonderful weekend.

Will leave you with some pics of the chhole :

And now, some for the Rajma :

I stand corrected

2010-05-02T09:53:00.001-07:00

I stand corrected on my stand on 'Dancing'.
I now understand. Its not about how the world would feel when you dance.
Its about how you feel.
I have always respected singers.. now i respect good dancers as well!
My wife and her sis are some of the best that get produced!
I felt good today... doing crappy movements... because i was enchanted.
Loved it... thanks Divi and Tina!!!

You guys rock!

All the Mithun's thumkas now work for me!! love u guys!

A life more ordinary

2010-04-28T09:36:00.000-07:00

The below is a work of my imagination. You are free to draw any conclusions from it.
You are also free to conclude that I am an ass.

A life more ordinary.
No, this entry is in no way related to or adopted/influenced by Danny Boyle's 'A life less ordinary'.
However the recognition that this statement deserves is often scoffed at by people everyday, me included.
Why do I want a life more ordinary?
There is no straight answer. There has to be a huge explanation whether the readers like it or not.
If you think this is lecture, if you think this is philosophical, then exit.

For the survivors, the deal is like this :
I would say that there are only, yes, ONLY 2 truths in this world.
Every hour, every minute and every second is spent by every creature on the face of the planet in realizing one of the truths.
How?
Let me first harp a little on what the two truths are :
1. Emotion is supreme. EVERYTHING else is secondary.
2. The Cosmic truth will supercede Truth 1 (any emotion).

How on earth do these 2 lines make sense to anyone? I'll tell you how.

1st Truth :
When I say emotion, i will talk about human emotion because I consider myself human :)
Human emotion is the be all and end all of everything.
What does a human work for?
When he is a kid, he sees his friend who has a cricket bat. He too wants one.
He can use his friend's bat for playing, but he wants his own. Why? Because of the emotion which drives him.
When he finally manages to get a bat, he is satisfied.
There is nothing that compares with this emotion at this stage of his life
Checkpoint 1

Fast forward 10 years.
He is preparing for a board exam in 10th Standard. He is nervous. He thinks his life is complicated. He starts cursing the education system, hopes that his college building collapses, hopes that Pakistan declares war on India and his exams get cancelled.
Now, this is again his emotion which speaks for him. He is least bothered about what happens to the world, least bothered about India and Pakistan. All his emotion wants is postponement of exams.
This is also a kind of emotion.
There is nothing that compares with this emotion at this stage of his life
Checkpoint 2

Fast forward 5 years, he joins an engineering college.
Everything around him is new, he joins a college in a new city. He is new to college life. His adrenaline keeps him jumping 24*7.
He starts the first day, saying to himself : I will be the best student, make my parents proud.
But is that nature? Is it a law which nature has decided for you? Is that something that evolutionary cycle has decided for you?
No. He goes to his class. Sees a girl.. and instantly falls for her.
This is what evolution teaches a human.
Everything else that is human is only built around it by the society.
He goes to college before time everyday now, just to get a glimpse of her and maybe a quick chat before the classes begin for the day.
This liking for her, is emotion.
There is nothing that compares with this emotion at this stage of his life
Checkpoint 3

Fast forward another 5 years, he manages to get his dream job.
Here too, the opposite sex chapter remains open.. albeit for a short while.
Work piles on. He is taken advantage of by the greedy bosses.
He has to oblige. Smiles in front of them and mouths the choicest expletives once he is a few feet away.
He really does not care, does not see the big picture. He does not know the goals of the company or the unit he is working for.
All he knows is that his boss has given him a small job to do, once he is done, he leaves for the day. Life is so simple :).
For everything bad happening to his life, he has his boss to blame for.
Hating the boss. This is also an emotion. A real universal one.
There is nothing that compares with this emotion at this stage of his life
Checkpoint 4

Few more years down the line, he becomes more responsible at his job, maybe a tad over-committed. He works late for most days a month.
He spends time during lunch and tea time talking about work, his drive back home is boss-bitching time. He hates a few colleagues for the way they work.
He is ultimately tired of himself, tired of the routine he follows and finally wants to break free.
But cannot. Because this is what he does for a living.
Living in this highly commercial world is tough...
This internal ambition of breaking the shackles but developing cold feet at the time of execution is also an emotion.
There is nothing that compares with this emotion at this stage of his life
Checkpoint 5

This is just a sample cross section of an average human's life that I have put in front of you.
If you notice, all 5 check points here, have very very different and contrasting human emotions.
All these emotions are THE ONLY things that a human has and works towards.
If its a positive emotion, he works towards it, if its negative, he will display it.

Whatever it takes to achieve these emotions, is what we do everyday in our lives.

People work hard so that they can be achievers, they want to be achievers.
Being achievers solves 2 things. It gives them a status which is a happy emotion.
It also gives them a good rating in their appraisals. This gives them good money.
Good money helps them achieve the material pleasures.
This is again a happy emotion which everyone wants to achieve.

To get this, the human also overdoes things. Does things which the nature never prescribes. Tells lies, cheats, tries too hard.. to reach the top.

Come to think of it, all of this is man made. All of it is just a sugar coat that the society has built to continue life.

If we are just monkeys with an advanced brain, the nature would want us to be like that.
Eat & mate. Thats it. That's life.
Everything else is a sugar coat.

2nd Truth :
Cosmic truth.
This is a truth which is outside our control.
This is a truth which wiped out the dinosaurs.
This is a truth that none of our advanced monkey scientists can ever resolve.
This is a truth which says that every few million years, the earth will be wiped out.
This is a truth which turned the trees and dinosaurs into fossil fuel that we use today.
This could be a truth that would turn us into petrol.

This would mean an untimely death for all of us on this planet.
This truth is DEATH.

This would supercede all the other truths.

So I strongly feel there are only 2 truths.
One when you are alive, your emotions.

The second. The inevitable.

Once the second arrives, all the bats that you have accumulated, the colleges you have hated, the girls you have loved, the bosses you have hated and the shackles that you have wanted to break cease to exist.
It will all be a big void.

Ever wondered why animals dont go through this drama?
The homo sapien is also an animal.

They don't because they haven't evolved so much.
They really dont care if the financial ledgers dont tally in a bank. They really dont care if they get a good rating or a bad one. They dont care what their boss thinks of them.

All they care for is food and a partner.
Life becomes easy. Simple. Non politicized.

That's what I dream of.
A life which is easy, very simple and uncomplicated.
A life which I can live and be happy with my emotions which nature prescribes... before the 2nd truth catches up...
I dream of a life more mediocre...
A life more ordinary.

A few unsolved mysteries about 'Dancing'

2010-04-24T08:25:00.000-07:00

To begin with, it is very needless to mention that I am not a good dancer.
This topic intrigued me ever since I was a child.
I have grown up watching bollywood dance, the dirty thumkas, suggestive matkas and 'lachkeeli kamariyas' all through.
But then that was a fun activity.. something that people enjoyed seeing actors and actresses do.
I am sure that dance was never meant to give the actors any fan following nor was it fun for them.. the Indian audience just felt lighter after watching the buffoonery.
That's all it did.

From a kid, when I was growing up, I started getting more and more inquisitive about this form of expression which has swept the globe.
I wanted to understand what is so unique about 'dance' that everyone is possessed with the idea.
When I was in 12th, I used to see guys in my class dance in some random meet organized after the exams got over. Boisterous dance, meaningless moves and totally illogical expressions.
It wasn't dancing. It was more of a case of ants in pants.
God I hated dance.

Few more years down the line, I joined college in Nagpur. After every year, people danced in college fests.
There I saw something unique.. there was a fat rope tied between 2 poles.
One side of the pole, guys danced and the other side, the girls.
And oh my god... people went crazy... gujjus, mallus, panjus, telugus all dancing like they just won a million each for failing in exams.
I had not fully recovered from the shock... when I saw a couple of my lady friends dancing.
Dancing with girls... and doing what.. the hugely overdone dandia step.
I cringed and left the venue.
I was... what do i say.. devastated.
Not because they were my friends.. but because.. I just could not imagine people moving and swirling like coffee in a mug in a dirty, muddy and sweaty place.

Few days later, very intrigued, I asked my friend, why do you dance?
She said.. it relieves you completely. It makes you 'mast' and makes you forget everything.
I was again.. what do i say.. devastated.

Girls still are a little graceful, but I just hated the sight of guys dancing with guys.
It is soo.. well.. so rustic.

Then over the next few years I did some more analysis.
What i came to know was.. most people that I met over the years danced because they wanted to be 'IN'.
They always wanted to be part of the happening crowd.
How I wish, they knew what 'happening' was.

I have absolutely no problems with dance. With 28 years of 'dance-watching' experience.. I can easily differentiate the 'wannabes' from the diamonds.

Just yesterday, while surfing thru' the TV channels.. i saw the PFMI finalists.. about 24 beautiful ladies who had let their hair down during some crappy bash.

They were dancing, swinging and supposedly enjoying themselves.
This logic fails me.. they want to be Miss India.. and they have to go through all this. I thought Pond's always wanted a 'woman of substance'.
Not a yo gen.. youngistan ka wow woman.
Some of them were so uncomfortable.. but were faking it.. flashing broad smiles while they were just moving 2-3 degrees in different directions.
Put your foot down and say - "I dont believe in dancing".
Will someone hang you?

I would love to see people who dance to learn the art.. but I absolutely despise people who start swinging, grooving, moving wherever they hear just any noise.
I mean, how can people dance in a pub? all so sweaty, smoky and absolutely stuffed.
There are a zillion people around you.. but still they dance.. dance for what?
Do they really enjoy it?
All beyond me.

Nacho jab man kare...jab dil bole.. this is it! yeiiiah!!
Maybe when you get a distinction in an exam where everyone around fails..
Maybe when the team you support wins after 3 years of close matches.
Maybe when you win a lottery.

But I really do not comprehend people dancing wherever they can... whenever they can.
Maybe the fault lies in me...
Because out of the 6 billion people on this planet, at least a fourth of them would disagree with me.
With so much opposition... I cannot win.
I give in...

I will continue my research. Will always welcome people who can answer my questions on dance.

Till then, my dance God is Mithun Chakraborty.

Good intentions cannot make life lovable

2010-04-16T10:01:00.000-07:00

If they could, then everyone would be a priest.
I, all the time have a difference of opinion with so many people around... which includes my near, dear and no so near ones.

Is this difference in opinion a problem? Surely not, but yeah, it does leave a bad taste 99 out of 100 times.
And who's responsible for that taste. Unfortunately me.

Why?? because I let things affect me.
I am reminded of an interview I watched of Abhishek Bachchan in which he was asked, how he reacted to adverse things happenings around him all the time.
Simple answer : He said, he had 2 kinds of approaches :
1. For all the people I hardly know, I ignore all feedback, good or bad.
2. For my wife, I just say "Yes ma'am".
That's it.

Now at all points of time, all of us, encounter both these situations.

It's actually easy to get out of all these situations.. but on most times, a big ego or plain reluctance to accept comes in between.
There will always be millions of occasions when you want to bash up someone for making a point that you don't like.
Normally I react, and get into trouble.
If I follow Abhishek's first advice i would steer clear.

There will be many occasions when you plan a nice weekend trip and have it in your mind, not really sharing it, expecting the people that you love would love it when it unfolds .. and suddenly office work and colleagues would play spoilsport on a weekend.
Sometimes it would be zealousness to prove a point that plays a spoilsport.

There would be too many things that wait to get on your nerve.. and there is really no liquid that could cool you off or some 'Navratna tel' that could give you some thandak.

Life isn't fair, get used to it.
It's really difficult to walk the talk.. but there is nothing wrong in 'trying' to walk the talk.
Abhishek bhau.. have to give it to you.

The mantra is 'Let go'.
Just said it... and I am feeling much better already :)
Thanks man!

The search for the great Indian stag!

2010-04-05T09:27:00.000-07:00

This is one thing I wanted to write about since a month or so.
I don't know if it has been lack of motivation or just lack of will to accept that my words cannot match my emotions on this topic.
I feel it is the latter and it's time I accept it!

Feelings are difficult to decode like I mentioned earlier... but in a case where you are indebted to a person from your soul already, it becomes your aim or ambition to pay back the person in some small way that you can.

In my case, it is my sister in law I am talking about...
She is the single biggest contributor in facilitating my match at her place.. I couldn't be more indebted to her...

Now its time for her to get married :)
And me, I am all over the place... I get so involved sometimes in the process that I fear I don't become too judgemental.
The truth is I so badly want the guy to be 'just-the-perfect-one' that I sometimes become too critical :(

But then, I think being critical also comes with being a Virgo.
I have started experiencing this feeling where I feel that waiting and watching is better than committing wrongly.
It's maybe the kind of love that fathers would experience towards their daughters at this stage in their lives...
I know the gravity of the statement I just made... its huge.. but then.. i feel it!
It would be hard to comprehend for most people my age, but that's how some relations are.
My wife is my most prized relationship... I am the closest that 'close' can be, to my wife.. and who helped me do that? a big push from her side.. then things like convincing the parents was a cakewalk... couldn't have imagined a bigger favour someone could do for me!

Ah.. it's so easy to take a favour.. but 10 times more harder to return it.
Sometimes, when I think about the 200 odd profiles that have been subject to profiling in the last month and half... there are just 4-5 guys that could potentially match up... potentially only!!!

In a country where the males are on the stronger side of the male:female ratio, it is but ironical to find so little on the sifter once the sieving is done.
On a lighter note, it's also another law of the nature, that where there is quantity, the quality suffers :)

Thinking on the sidelines, I feel that MASTERCARD is a great service to the planet. The two things it has given mankind are :
1. Ease of transacting anytime/anywhere.
2. Giving the world an unforgettable line.

The second one echoes in my heart right now..
The kind of feeling that I am talking about matches so nicely with the famous line.

/*There are somethings money can't buy*/
Yes, very truely.
There are somethings money absolutely can't buy.
Money cannot buy someone the feelings that I have nurtured for a person.
Money cannot buy the emotion I am going through these days. Money also cannot buy the decision which ultimately will see her happy!!
Oh yes, there are many many things money can't buy.

So yeah, I know the road ahead is tough... I would quote Robert Frost in these oft-repeated but full-on meaning lines :

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

Yes, many promises to keep...
Promises to keep!
All the best my dear... we were, are and will always be one in front and one behind you!

KJo - naam toh suna hoga

2010-03-11T07:52:00.000-08:00

I happened to be another victim to the monstrous hype that was created around a film called My name is Khan.
I don't know why, but after watching KCK on Friday night, i asked my parents if they would like to watch MNIK on saturday!
My luck too was on leave that day.. they said yes.. and we set out in my gaadi.

We reached the theatre half an hour in advance.. that was a sign of things to come, maybe God wanted us to get bored and leave the place before the ordeal started... but nahi.. we are destiny's children! and our destiny that night was KJo.

The movie started promisingly with the protagonist getting frisked on the airport.. for reciting a few muslim verses.
The intent was good. I thought I had done justice to myself by breaking my 2010 resolution of not watching SRK films.

A few scenes later, SRK started getting repetitive. Whatever sympathy the audience had gathered for him were now turning into uneasy oohs and aahs and uncomfortable shifts in their chairs.
He was now royally irritating people in the theatre.
Whatever the syndrome was, I really dont think KJo researched it enough.
At the end of the movie you dont even remember what the disablility was called. To add to the pain, it was so horribly potrayed in the script that Khan was only too glad to make it worse by multiplying the pain by 10.

Whatever the disablity was, all he did was repeat the last two words of every sentence he spoke. There was absolutely nothing more to the character.
If you minus those 2 repeated words, he just seemed like his usual 'Rahul, naam toh suna hi hoga' avatar.

He is always so hopelessly affluent and so cool that he forgets that this is not a stage show or an awards night, but a film where he should be getting under the skin of the character.

To draw a parallel, it is so easy to say that SRK can never ever in this life play a progeric Auro or even a Ghajini. He just cannot, he does not possess the ability to.

To be different, everyone in Bollywood these days plays a disabled character, so how can this hyped Khan be left behind?
But to everyones horror, he neither seems disabled nor is interested in pretending to be disabled.
He is the cool Rahul in every film with the same hairstyle and with the same dirty smirk on his nicotine blackened lips.
The problem with him is that he just doesn't want to try, he is happy in his zone where the mindless supporters love him for being a fool.
He is in Madame Tussauds too... err.. but then so is Salman. So that doesnt count as an achievement.
He is very very obnoxiously repetitive. Thats is all I want to say.

Moving on, the film was no better. How could it be?
It was made by the stupid coterie of Khan, KJo and Kajol.
Kajol just continued from K3G. She was too loud in that movie and she just took over from there.
In MNIK, she was so loud that the people in the adjacent screen couldn't follow their film properly.
She keeps yelling when she's happy and also when her son dies.
Yelling is what she does to keep her weight in control. After K3G, she hadn't got a chance to yell, so she put on weight like a water hog.
But now she's determined. She's determined to scare the people of this country by yelling, yelling day and night, yelling in health and death, yell, yell all the time .. yell so much that we get scared and settle in Pakistan.
The Taliban too are scared of her now.

Ab aaya KJo... bhai iske liye toh koi kuch bhi bole kam hai. He is like a bucket of emotions, a bath tub rather.
I thought it couldn't get more heavier than K3G.
All the people, hail Kojja.. sorry KJo.. here comes MNIK. (By the way Kojja in Telugu, a prominent south Indian language spoken by more than a 100 million people, means hijra, a colloquial word used for the term eunuch).
Sorry to get personal KJo, but that is what you deserve, because of what you subject us to.

You have one Kojja friend with whom you make all the films, which are all affluent, which always show people crying out of love and ruling that love for friends/mother/father/neighbour/dog/cat/sheep/wolf and love for anything that is human or non human is everything in the world.
You are such a bucket of mush.
You are sooooooo sweet. Your films are also sooooo sweet that they generally taste like a concoction of cocoa and sugar syrup.
You were born in a sugarcane field.

But wake up man, what do you expect us to do? expect the common indian to do?
what do you expect the average progressive NRI to do?
Sit with you in the sugarcane field every 6 months and weep with you for the sugar shit that you dole out for us?
Enough of this coochie coo friendship with the superstar.
People call you gay.. do you know that? (Oh yeah, you must be knowing that.. not too long ago, people did a graffiti on SRK's mannat wall calling him gay).

You cannot change your image by showing hapless people crying in your movies...
what did you want to do in MNIK? Show a disabled fellow, swimming through the swirling floods and saving an african community.
What was with that african community who were crying with SRK?
Crying with SRK?? My god, this is nonsensical.
The 10 yr old african kid starts singing 'We shall overcome' .. hum honge kamiyaab when the flood comes.
What the fish??
Why would he sing 'We shall overcome'??
He loves shaggy, akon and 50 cent... but then KJo uncle ne paisa diya and bola.. beta bolo.. We shall overcome...
ok uncle...
We shall overcome...

To all the shit in this world, you are much better than MNIK.
Hail your existence because there is something far more inferior existing in this world.

KCK .. an unlikely winner!

2010-03-06T07:18:00.000-08:00

Watched Karthik calling Karthik yesterday night...
Loved it!
Loved the witty lines in the first half and the gripping second half... there were people who gave it a bad review.
To all of them i have a thing to say. This is not a Govinda movie.
You need your thinking cap to be on top of your head.
Its a nice intelligent movie.. not meant for the average cine goer.

There were lots of unbelievable moments throughout the film.. but then as Indians we deserve a few of such moments even in an art movie.
The shots were professional and the script crisp.
Deepika was stunning too. But as usual, she disappointed the country with her acting skills or rather the lack of it.
Watch out for the scenes where she slaps her 1st boy friend in the movie.. those expressions are there even on my security guard's face on demand.
Also another scene in a song sequence when Farhan pulls the ciggy outta her lips and flings it away.
She looks ravishing as long as she is not asked to emote or even talk.

Farhan did a fine job yet again.. and though he is not blessed with good looks like conventional heroes.. there's something about him that carries off a film solo.
He also acts quite well and there is no tinge of inhibition like Deepika.

On a lighter note, i liked the scene where Farhan transforms for the first time and comes out in a smashing suit all decked up.
The way he goes and beckons his boss.. "Kamath.. we need to talk". That was a nice break from the otherwise 'safe boy' image of his.

The film delves into the mind of a person who is low on fuel so beautifully that you almost feel sorry for Farhan.

A phone call changes his life forever. He doesnt know who's on the line. All he knows is that its a well wisher.

And with that, when he transforms, & instead of pooh-poohing, you tend to celebrate with him.

From then on, everything's goody goody in his life.

The second half takes a complete turn and builds a complete suspense which carries itself well till the end of the movie.
I'll leave it at that.
Don't miss this one.

Verdict : Highly Recommended.

Mockery of One Day cricket on 24-02-2010 by the Indian Superman

2010-02-24T09:08:00.000-08:00

He's done it again.
I have run out of words. I definitely cannot reproduce similar text to what I had written on his 175 runs in Hyderabad.
But what I would, if I were the prime minister of India, is dedicate the country of India to this man.

This man, Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar, has what it takes for a human to be happy with life.
He is world famous, he has 90% of the batting records in the world.
There is no peak left for him to scale.
And yet everytime, he defines a peak for himself 10% higher than the one he scaled a while ago... and amazingly at 36 years of age, scales it.
What do I say.. I am short on words, but full on emotions.
Amazement is something you have, when you witness the man doing the unachievable.
But he achieves the unachievable so often that you are bound to be wordless, speechless and blinded.
Yes, he leaves a blind spot in my eyes and a hemorrhaged brain every time he does this.
He gives me a high that nothing can... and all this, when I am not certainly ‘attracted’ to him.

That’s what I call aura. Aura is not just a make-believe phenomenon, aura is ‘Sachin Tendulkar’.

Again, this time, the 200.. something that was so effortless to him, definitely is something which seems unattainable to any other living creature in the world.

200 in a one day international is like blasphemy in ODI.
But when he is blasphemous, the world loves it and the country bows.
Today all the Aaj Taks and the Star News Hindis of the world would be performing theatrical poojas of him. They would make him a deity.

But to people like me, he was always a deity.
Always the one person I would give my eye tooth for just to earn his autograph.
This man is something beyond my comprehension.
Today, I am just all shaken up from within. Shaken up because I never thought that anyone could ever score a double in a ODI.
But when I think that it was blasphemy by my favourite man, I feel the pride gushing from my blood.
This is the Kohinoor Diamond of India.

24th Of Feb,2010 is when my Dad retired from service and it’s also the day the master chose to shake the world of cricket.

The day belonged to both my heroes.
Salutes and Bows.

2010-02-14T08:30:00.000-08:00

Every action has an equal and opposite reaction.
22 mins of treadmill, 45 mins of pumping iron in the morning : one balushahi in the night.
It doesn't get simpler than this.

2010-02-10T08:32:00.000-08:00

My paunch(as the people call it) is sore from a workout after a couple of weeks!!
My response to them :
People sometimes mistake 8 swollen abs to be a paunch.

A trip to Lakshadweep - the emrald islands

2010-02-07T02:10:00.000-08:00

The below journal is a travelog which will help fellow surfers in knowing more about Lakshadweep islands.

We started our Lakshadweep trip after the trip from Agra.
Reached Kochi airport at noon, from there we proceeded to Willingdon island(that’s where the ship starts from).
Willingdon island is 40 kms from the airport and a simple, no frills indica cab would charge you about 700 bucks to reach the island.
At willingdon island, we had booked accommodation at a place called Maruthi tourist home, which was a decent place to stay, not too expensive either.. the main plus point was that it was just 1 km away from the SPORTS office(SPORTS is the organization which controls the tourism at the Lakshadweep islands).

The introduction done, time for the movie to roll .
We were booked on the ship MV Kavaratti which runs from Kochi to Lakshadweep islands on designated days.
We collected the boarding passes from the SPORTS office.
From there, they arrange transport to the jetty for boarding.
Now, this place resembled a war torn country area where people were lining up for free food.
One of the foreigners with us quipped that this resembled a refugee camp.
Picture this, a small walled area of about 200 sft and about a 100 odd people waiting to rush in through a small door.
Everyone had luggage, but we were stunned when we saw the islanders. They generally travel from Kochi, which is their only source of shopping.
Everything from vegetables to blankets to cartons full of provisions to LCD tvs were lined up as luggage.
Me and my wife shuddered at the thought of all this luggage being scanned and then each person going through the small door one by one.
There is no separate line for tourists. You need to jostle your way through.
Just then, the small door opened and one by one, all the luggage belonging to the islanders was put in.
But, we were amazed that in about 10 mins, all of it was checked in and we were at the counter with our luggage.
It felt great, the staff was efficient, if only they had managed the crowd outside the counter too.
Then we got our luggage scanned and we were quickly taken to the jetty.
There stood the impressive MV Kavaratti.
Majestic from the outside, we expected it to be the same from inside as well.
The luggage was efficiently tagged with room numbers and whisked away by porters.
We boarded the ship and by the time we found our cabin, we saw that our luggage was already at the door.
Impressed! We had nothing to complain about the ship and its staff!!

The ship then waited for I don’t know what… by the time it started moving, it was 2 pm.
The first class cabin allotted to us was quite nice, it had bunker beds, a table, a fan, cupboards, an attached bath and was air conditioned.
Don’t expect it to be of the class of the star cruises, but then its not bad either. I would say, it does justice to the amount charged.

Now, there are constant announcements on the ship which are audible in each of the cabins.
The first announcement was for lunch, the horror was about to begin.
It was now that we realized that on the ship, were 2 groups from 2 states which were about 20-30 people in size each.
The groups were also aged between 50-70.
They were also ignorant of basic rules like following queues etc and this is where ship crew failed badly, there was absolutely no attempt from their side to rein in the mob.

We were aghast at the aunties pushing and prodding their way through like they would at the local sabzi mandis.
At times, there were a lot of intrusions in the queues, they would reserve places for their brethren. They were loud.
People from state X thought that they were the only people on the ship and made loud noises… they made fun of the state Y people in their language.
The state Y people reciprocated their feelings.
Caught in the cross hairs were a few couples like ours and a sensible uncle aunty from Gujarat.
Somehow we managed to withstand them just stopping short of retaliating, because our traditions teach us to respect elders. How I wished, elders followed basic rules of civic sense.
I was a little upset with the way the trip started, thinking that this would mar the whole trip ahead because we would be spending time with these people.
Then me and my wife thought, why should we even care?
Believe that you are on your own and things would not seem so bad after all!

And yes, this worked!! Ah, we were so happy. When we went out for dinner, we cared a damn.. when an aunty tried to break the queue, we kept her a name(just for our consumption) .. and had a hearty laugh.

One important info about the food.
The food at best can be termed bland for the Indian taste buds. Food is decent, but you would be much better off carrying some pickles along with you.

Day 2 : Minicoy

The ship reached Minicoy early in the morning, we all disembarked and were taken in smaller boats to the island.
All the worries about the crowd and other things got sidelined when the island started approaching, it was amazing!
White sand beaches were visible from a distance.
The lighthouse made a perfect setting too!

All too excited, we were welcomed on the island with tender coconuts.
We spent the first few hours on the beach, clicking pics, sea bathing and swimming in the ocean.

Then in the afternoon we went scuba diving, which was 750 bucks per head for a 20 mins dive.
It was great fun! The corals and fishes amazed us. But according to the instructor, the visibility in the sea wasn’t that great on that day because of the strong currents. However, I found it quite good because I had only seen the sea water elasewhere in India 

After the scuba diving trip, we had lunch, it wasn’t that great, but since we were very tired, the hunger took precedence over taste.
We then toured the lighthouse. To reach the top you would need to climb about 200 stairs.
Most people backed out. My wife said we should do it, and when we reached the top, we were glad we did it.
Those were the best views of Minicoy island. The island had already amazed us, but the all round view of the white sand beaches along with the cast coconut trees are too good a sight to be put in words.

The lunch and evening tea were served on the island.

Once back on the ship, the journey resumed, we were to reach Kalpeni island by the next day.

Day 3 : Kalpeni island.

This is the most low profile island on the trip. To be frank, there is not much to do on this island.
When we reached there in the morning, it was beautiful, but nothing compared to Minicoy.
Minicoy had set the expectations so high that we were a tad disappointed.
Then came the snorkeling bit, that was when some pride was salvaged and this island too looked interesting.
There is a huge lagoon near the shore rich in marine life and coral reefs.
They give you the gear which can be used for snorkeling.
We did it for almost 4 hours, there was a huge variety of corals and fishes.
Initially I was overawed by he size of the things in water, and I swan cautiously, but as the first hour passed, all the cautiousness turned into curiosity and I was swimming away with ease on the surface exploring the coral reefs and the marine life.
But there is a caveat here, this should only be done by people who can swim. If you cant swim, its better to walk and put your head in the water as soon as you encounter a coral reef.
This walk too would become difficult in time of the high tide.
So its better if this thing is attempted only in supervision of someone. The problem here is that there are instructors, but the number of people are too huge to control. They start moving in all directions.
I have been swimming for many years(in the pool of course), but I was overawed by the sight of ocean grass and corals spanning over large tracts of the ocean floor.. initially all that looked scary and I stopped every now and then and stood on my feet… imagine what would an elderly person do at this sight.. coupled with the fear of the marine life… although everything there is harmless.

One very sad accident happened at this place, when we finished our snorkeling after exploring different areas in the lagoon, one of the instructors spotted a floating life jacket drifting down. It was an elderly lady in our group who had strayed too far away from everyone’s sight.
She was rushed to the hospital and was put on ventilator, but couldn’t survive it. Her lungs were full of saline water.
Nobody knows what exactly happened, but the most probable reason is that while watching something, she must have bent too far and water must have entered from the top section of the snorkeling pipe. Then there could have been a panic attack which prevented her from raising an alarm.  Really sad.

That is why I would stress again, that all these sports are very interesting, but they come with their own bit of risk especially for the old people.
I myself have seen the lagoon, nowhere was the water over 3 feet. But when there is panic, the depth doesn’t matter. The life jacket also did not help.
If you know to swim, then you are at ease. If you don’t know how to swim, then make sure you walk on the white sand and only put your head in water when needed. Make sure you are around the instructor at all times, so that he can spot you in times of distress.

Everyone was oblivious to this accident till evening, we then went to the beach on the tip of the island. It was totally untouched and beautiful.
One of the few interesting places in Kalpeni.

The ship then sailed to the last destination, Kavaratti, for the last day of the trip.

Day 4 : Kavaratti, capital of Lakshadweep islands.

This was by far the best managed part of the trip, everything from the welcome drinks to the boat rides to the lunch and further program was very well managed.

The beach was again amazing with white sand. We clicked a lot of pics here again.

They take you for a glass bottom boat ride also into the sea for a coral reef tour.
The water is absolutely crystal clear.
You can clearly see the aquatic life and the corals from the bottom of your boat. I shot a few videos of it.
The trip lasts for about 45 mins.
Once back, we lazed on the beach again.
Then I went kayaking, this was really cool.
The sea breeze was on the opposite side to my kayak, I thought I would fall into the sea
But with practice I managed to stay afloat!
I spotted 3 turtles swimming from my kayak too… had a small race with them, but they outpaced me
After an hour of kayaking, I came out tired, then the lunch was served.
The lunch was good here.

There are paid options for snorkeling here. I did not go snorkeling here because I had done it in Kalpeni, but the corals and marine life seemed better here, so if you wanna do it, take a shot. They charge reasonably. 200 bucks.
Then there are other options like para sailing, water skiing and scuba diving.

You name it, you have it at Kavaratti.
But if you ask me, Minicoy was the most beautiful island.

There was bon homie all around. The last day, people were all friends by now.
On some stupid reason, one member from the state Y picked up a fight with one member from state X.
Immediately, people played the song “Tum rootho nay un hasina” from an old hindi movie…. Some people danced and the mood was light again 

The ship then sailed back to Kochi on the fifth day.

Lakshadweep is one paradise of a place.
Totally untapped, untouched. Very serene.
The water always so clear at all islands…
This is nature’s beauty at its cleanest best. By the end of the trip you would be left gasping and asking for more.

If you are going with your wife or girlfriend and you are below 35 years of age and want to be alone or want to be yourself, I would strongly suggest you not to book the Samudram package because of the company you would find. Although if you can ignore the people around you and have fun, just like we did, then there is no place like Lakshadweep islands.

There are other packages like swaying palms etc which offer you accommodation on the islands. That would save you from group travel.

Either ways, the thing that cannot be ignored is Lakshadweep.
The most amazing beaches and as good as the best in the world … coupled with a totally non commercialized setting where you would find only nature and the islanders who love the nature.
Miss it at your own peril.
You would have missed a paradise on the Indian map.

PS : The SPORTS staff in the ship and the islands is one of the most amazing staff I have seen with total regard for efficiency in service. They are always courteous inspite of the annoying tourists.
They will never ask you or even hint for tips. Very well mannered too.

Few pics here (quality severely downgraded because of size restrictions):

The amazing Bharatpur bird sanctuary trip

2010-02-07T01:22:00.000-08:00

Bharatpur, inspite of reviews of birds not being spotted this year and the water problems did not disappoint me. I am not a bird connoisseur, but still I could see many birds.
We started the trip at about 12 pm.
I had hired a guide to take me around the park.
The bicycles were out of stock by the time we reached. So the only option was to take a cycle rickshaw.
My wife and sis-in-law on one rickshaw and me and our driver on the other, we were all set to begin the journey.
The only loophole is that the rickshaws tread on the main roads in the park. So a good part would have to be covered on foot if you really wanna capture the birds on cam.
The guide was knowledgeable and helped us spot birds.
It also made sense for me to keep noting the names of the birds which I spotted because there were many I did not know of.
So, do keep a piece of paper and a pen handy when doing such trips.
We spotted a total of 23 different species of birds, most of which I managed to capture on camera.
Few pics and names are available at the end of the page.

We had already spent about 4 hours on the park bird spotting.
Then when we returned from one stretch of the park, I asked the guide how much of the park was left because we needed to get back to Agra before darkness sets in.
There are a lot of accidents on the highways because of fog these days.
The guide said that we had 2 options, one was where there were bigger birds like cranes and many other birds near the watering holes in the park.
The other option was the Python point.
The difference between these 2 points was that, bird sighting was guaranteed, but Python sighting was quite rare.
I asked him a few more details like what’s the probability of sighting pythons especially with the sun beating down .. because it is winter season and the pythons too would love to sun bathe.
He agreed with my logic, but still said, that there is no hard and fast rule.. and moreover to sight pythons you will have to walk about 4 kms one way.
I looked at wifey and sil(sister-in-law) .. they looked tired and wary, but they were aware of my instincts and that my day would be made if I captured a wild python moving on my cam.
Very sweetly, they said yes, I felt bad bad because that would mean that both of them would have to walk 8 kms up and down at the risk of not seeing a python.
But then, the same feeling was there even when I was at Corbett, wild life spotting is all about taking chances
All of us started off, it took roughly about 30-35 minutes to start reaching the first burrows where Indian Rock Pythons hide.
Porcupines make these burrows, but during monsoons, when the rain comes down hard, the pythons have nowhere to go, so they occupy these burrows.
One, two, three, four, we kept on spotting burrows, but no pythons…
I knew, the chances were bleak.. but I was only feeling bad for my wife and sil.
Then we spotted a skull of a cow, our driver excitedly asked if it meant there was a python around?
The guide brushed aside his question and we kept looking.
Then the guide said, there is another place, but that’s about half a km inside and there is thick dry grass all over.
I agreed to go, but I asked my wife and sil to stay put on the main path, because the terrain looked scary.
Me, guide and the driver set on the path full of tall dry brown grass.
I asked the guide how he would he able to sight it? Because it would easily camouflage itself.
The guide said that they are lazy creatures and would be near the burrows only.. so you would need to spot the holes.. not the pythons, that’s the trick.
We kept on walking and after 6-7 mins, saw a burrow, empty again ..
I kept standing there, reluctant to move further, the guide was moving and as I turned, I saw him quietly signaling to me to come over.
Amazed, I asked, if it was a python or a bird that he wanted to show… his expression was very cautious.. immediately without asking another question, I moved silently to him.
I saw four fully grown pythons basking in the sun.
Totally awe struck, ,my driver ran back to the main path to call my wife and sil.
Meanwhile, the first python made a movement and started slithering to the burrow and in no time disappeared.
Now, the second also started moving, I knew that this would enter the hole too.. so I ran to the burrow as quickly as I could with my camera.. and waiting for the second python to come to the spot.
As soon as it came, I clicked a few pics of it along with the third one.

Now, I wanted a video, there still was a fourth python which was unperturbed by all this activity.
By this time, my wife and sil also came to the spot.
I moved swiftly again back to the burrow.
I was ready.
In seconds, the fourth python came, tongue wagging, probably seeing the camera too
I was too close for comfort, hardly couple of feet away, but the joy of capturing the video kept my feet glued.
Finally it started slithering down the hole and the trip to the python point was a success.

On the way back, all of us were happy and satisfied that the last leg of 8 kms had paid off.
We left the park by 630 pm and reached Agra on time.
For all people who wanna visit this park, you definitely should consider visiting it.
It’s not all that well managed, but its not bad either. Birds would leave you smiling at the end of the day … and if you manage to spot an Indian Rock Python, then that’s a welcome bonus.
Also, the rates have been fixed and are to be paid as per the charts.
Please do not pay tips to either the guides or the rickshaw people. This is also clearly stated on the ticket windows there.
Because if people start this trend, then it becomes an expectation from their side, they keep pestering tourists at the end of the trip. Personally, I feel, this leaves a bad taste at the end of an eventful trip.
The standard rates are as below :
Entry : Adults(Indian) : Rs 25/-
Rickshaw : Rs. 70/- per hour
Guide : Rs. 100/- per hour
Bicycle : Rs 10/- per hour

Video of the Indian Rock Python available here :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JU3pPBm9Gyw

Pics available below (quality severely degraded because of size restrictions:
2 Indian Rock Pythons trying to get inside the burrow

Common sparrow having his bajra lunch

Common sparrow again

Green peas

green peas again :)

flower bud

Mynah

Indian Roller - commonly called neelkanth

Purple Sunbird

Common Parakeet

Dusky eagle owl

Indian Hoopoe

Indian Hoopoe 2

Collared scops owl

Monitor Lizard

Spotted Owl

Brain Fever bird

Oriental Magpie Robin

Blue Throat

Kingfisher

Kingfisher Silhouette

Water hen

Ibis

Kingfisher Silhouette

Common Pigeon

2010-01-11T07:58:00.000-08:00

Been quite a while since i blogged last.. ah well! Life is crazy.
It was benchmarking time, its that time when a hundred thousand people have their destinies written for the rest of the year by a few thousand people.
Fortunately or unfortunately, I was a part of both the sects.
When I was a part of the 'few thousand' people I gave a lot of gyaan on what to do, what not to do, though in my heart I knew that the people whom I was telling all this, knew this, they were good people, doing quite good things.
As a part of 'karma' cycle, I got back the gyaan I gave * 20 from the one above, a lot of it unwarranted, but I'll leave that for another day...

Now, this was the boring part of my life.. the fun is yet to begin!
And bet ya, in as little as 3 days from now!
Pretty excited to be taking a 'rebellious' optional off day after. I wasn't planning to, but then even Columbus never planned to reach America.
Have also taken a few resolutions, not as a part of new year, but as a part of the benchmarking exercise... must say that the 'rebellious' off was one immediate resolution :)
Then there is the GOD of all movies which i am catching again this weekend.. AVATAR! This time, again with a couple of office friends... waiting for the IMAX experience.
And then, in a few days, i am off for vacations!!
Wow, what a month! it has had everything so far.. and I expect the year to be no meaner...
This is the Chinese 'year of the Tiger'.. and that's my favorite creature.
So I expect myself to uncover some surprises, pull off some quick ones this year..
and yeah free myself from the clutches of the KGB.
Now, before this blog gets intercepted by some intelligence sleuth, I need to make a point.
I am a harmless creature and KGB is just a metaphor for Россия.
Don't get me wrong, i love them! :)
It's just that its been too much of togetherness.. i wanna break free.

A few resolutions that i could think of :
-->Do not be an emotional fool and over commit yourself to the job. Yaad kar, rocket singh ne kya bola tha..
-->If the average working hours per day exceed 9:15 minutes, try every trick in the book to bring it down to 9:15. Bahut utha liya fayeda, ab mera number hai.
-->Do atleast 2 holiday destinations every year from today.
-->Film a wild tiger in the deep jungles. If you manage it, then you are worth your weight in gold.
-->Do not watch films starring Salman Khan, Shahrukh Khan, Zayed Khan, Fardeen Khan, Saif Khan and Kareena Kapoor even as supporting actors.
-->Lose the prosperity in the belly and get flat.(The neighbour's kids are already calling me uncle)
-->Click some pictures from my new camera, which people could just go 'wow' about and show the world that not everyone needs a full time DSLR.
-->Chuck the old & ring in the new. Applies to clothes & friends. Conditions apply.
-->Show the dirty people their place, the pig sty.
-->Keep ma and pa of both north and south smiling! As KJo(cheap acronym) says, its all about loving your parents.

2009-12-20T03:37:00.000-08:00

1 day, two movies.
10 AM : Huffing and puffing, reached the cinema.. got the 3D glasses on and quickly settled into the seats. That was the last time before intermission, that i looked at Tina and another dear friend.
The concept was new and the movie was AVATAR.

The name sounds pretty Indian, but that's where the similarity ends.
After that the way we were taken into a dream of fantasy was so fulfilling that were left gasping for breath by intermission.
The visuals, the world, the creatures were so stunning that maybe God could take a cue and create a new planet like this once ours comes to an end.
The Na'vi tribe had a language of their own language to speak.. they had customs, love for the fellow creatures.
It made me cringe to feel like a human being.
We are, yes we are the most hypocritical race ever produced.
We lie to ourselves when we say that we want to save the planet. We kill all other living things in our sight, so that we could reign.
We are 'THE ALIENS', we pollute the world and if its anyone who doesn't deserve to live on this beautiful planet, it is us, it is you and it is me.
Every single thing that we do, pollutes our planet.
This feeling of mine, was vented by Cameron too, through AVATAR.
And that's why I respect him. He showed a mirror to the world by making a film which shows the human race's real ugly face.
We are the villains.

Now the technical brilliance part : This is THE BEST cinematic experience unfolding in front of you in terms of stunning visual effects, dramatic 3D, hair raising fights and the oh-so-brilliant creatures.
Nothing might be real, but the intent of the film is...
So real, that it tells us what garbage we actually are and how we are proud of being this garbage.

I liked a few lines from RGV's(Ram Gopal Varma, a weird and erstwhile intelligent indian film director who gives a few good ones in between) blog.

"When someone asked me if the special efx of AVATAR will inspire other filmmakers, I said that on the contrary they might have a reverse effect. What I mean is that we can only aspire to become someone when we can atleast have a belief that we can reach someone’s potential but James Cameron in AVATAR created a bench mark so high that it will take years for us lesser folk even to comprehend it let alone attempt to execute it.

It’s like if you aspire to be a runner and somehow hope to run at a speed of 20km per hour which may be the world record and then when on the track you see a guy running at 200kmph you would rather give up and come back and make family dramas and TV serials and leave the running to James Cameron.

Titanic was fantastic but it did not shake me up inspite of everyone else around me back then saying that James Cameron is God of cinema.

But with his second coming “AVATAR” I have surely turned religious.

I want to pray to him for making “AVATAR”.

I hate him for making all us so-called filmmakers in the world feel like ants. (Read ch*****)"

When I came out after the movie, the hangover remained for a few hours.
I am still ashamed of being a human.
The human being is the most intelligent creature on this planet, but also the most selfish, calculative, manipulative, hideous, ugly, sinister and unfriendly creature on this planet.

Avatar is par excellence. If you miss it, you miss knowing the real face of being human.
I give it a 10 out of 5.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Movie over, had nice lunch, chatted, bought a new carry case for my nice 'near -professional' new camera!
Time to head for another movie now..
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Avatar had taken the wind out the the sails of other movies and that's the reason why another brilliant movie "Rocket Singh" was 'easily-available' on a weekend.

The movie starts with Ranbir Kapoor, who's a duffer at everything passing his BCom just marginally.
He thinks of taking a sales job. He gets rebuked, beaten, bruised and screwed all in the first few days of his job.
He does everything he can for his job and his boss, but he cannot be unjust to his job and this rubs his boss the wrong way.
How Ranbir puts every piece together to make a company of his own to bring his boss's company to its knees is the main plot of the film.
I wont give away more.
Now talking about this boy, Ranbir, I somehow am impressed by him, he acts, dances well, looks good and is confident.
All these are really difficult to find in today's actors, more so in star kids.
He manages to pull off the whole show on his shoulders.
The scenes where his boss finds him doing some odd job in an electronic store really touched my heart.
My heart went out to him when he said to his manager "har aadmi ke paas do qualities hoti hain.. upar jaane & neeche aane ki, aapne mere liye sirf neeche aane ka raasta chhoda, what could i do? what did i come to you for? just one chance"
Now at most times, all of us working in any industry have felt this against our bosses.

Bosses are not friends, they just pretend to be friends.
Kaam nikla, fir tu bhi nikla.
That's what bosses are about. Aah.. let me not get started about the boss thing..
These days there is very high amount of negative polarization against him and if someone just nudges me, i will burst out and spew ash and lava like volcanoes :)

So lets stop here.. Ranbir Kapoor was brilliant.
A must watch for all people who feel that they can do something and hate their bosses for not letting them do it.

Some days are just not meant to be yours..

2009-12-09T07:57:00.000-08:00

Had a hectic day at office! The joy of a breakthrough in an issue quickly evaporated.
Was witness to a marathon fight in which i wasnt directly involved.. but it was between 3 members of my team...
My personal opinion.. the way the younger members see things is not right.
They need to just improve their vision.. all this poisoning is not helping them in their careers.
The way they deal with things, they are only doing more harm to themselves...
And it was also sad to see that they managed to poison others' ears as well!

Saw a video sent by another colleague. This is about sixth sense computing which was showcased at TED, Infosys Mysore.
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/tv/TED-India-Pranav-Mistry/videoshow_ted/5231080.cms
The capacity of the human mind amazes me!! I mean just look at the idea. 10 out of 10 for the idea.. and an additional 10 for the simplicity of thought process.
Another 10 for making it opensource.
So that makes it 30 out of 10 for this guy Pranav!

And we choose to waste our mind in fights! that too trivial ones.
God! bucketing.
Painful.

V Day

2009-12-02T06:42:00.000-08:00

I remember the college days in Nagpur.. 9 years back.. the first year in college..
the excitement in the dudes of our hostel was palpable.
I was way too timid in the first year to do such things :P
The guys were all getting ready... in the morning.. gelling their hair and making plans to go to the law college square in the evening (That was one of the happening places with a young crowd).
Few guys thought this day would change their life.. buying roses from florists across the road.
Few had cards and goodies ready.. one guy even came into my room at 630 am, woke me up and showed me his card asking if what he had written was fine...
Me :"heck, she is your target.. not mine.. how would i know?"
Friend : "dekh le yaar... meri english achchi nahi hai"
Me : "hindi mein likh de yaar, uski bhi english aise hi hai :P"...
Believe me, the euphoria in the hostels of the colleges was so huge... people just expected that 'The day is today.. the time is now.. if not now.. then never'.
There V Days were more about showing someone.. that i am with Ms. XYZ ... marking territories.. showing off.
All that hoopla.. and then popat.. instances of a few girls.. rejecting.. few guys not able to say anything at ground zero and getting the cards back..
Finally at EOD, all of them came back dejected... mouthing expletives.. and then a crate of beer from the bar across the road ordered generally to drown in... and bunk the college the next day..
All the 4 years, 15th feb was zero attendance day in our college.. poor lecturers always wondered what the students were upto on 14th. Most of the lecturers were SRS sympathizers.

I really wondered where the students got all this enthu from..
Then one fine day during second year... i fell for a girl from another college... and the funniest part was i started beahving in many ways like the guys from my hostel... thats another story though..

V Days in the college were really funny.. but the spirit and never say die attitude - exemplary. It was one of things that money cant buy.

Fast forward 9 years.. and now I am married, will celebrate it in a more civilian way :) with my wife. Life is a lot more organized now.. but I still miss that fun.

aashiq banaya.. aashiq banaya... aashiq banaya .. aapne!

2009-12-02T06:41:00.000-08:00

The generation has moved ahead! and i feel like a grandpa already :)
there is a post on the BB...
How to make my girlfriend miss me soooooo much!
not so long ago, people used to think twice before posting such things on general BB... forget about bigger & better things like PDA! :D
People are replying left right centre... buy a bouquet and switch off the mobile for a few days... then call her and see.. how she tells you how much she missed you these 3 days!
mind blowing yaar!!
The talent for aashiqui has always run deep in our blood... right from the days i saw anil kapoor wooing madhuri dixit in the 80s and 90s.. or aamir and juhi coochie cooing and saying... 'tumhein pata hai... aaj maine tumhe kitna miss kiya??'
All these years, from the transition of India from the age of scooters to mobikes, from landlines to cell phones, and from girls to chics... the 'aashiqui' thread has remained common!

There is an undying spirit... which says... when a lion also needs a lioness... what wrong am i doing??
Perfect sir! You are doing no wrong... i am just discussing the bird's eye point of view.
I remember.. while in college.. all this was pretty normal... infact guys of the same hostel.. same room try to upstage each other to win the lioness!

I salute the 'aashiqui' spirit.. just like India salutes the Mumbai spirit.. i love the fact that no matter what the odds.. no matter where you are.. no matter how many people are there around you.. no matter which platform you choose(including the BB) ... the famed 'aashiqs' just 'do it' anywhere!

Salaam.

Yuck aaj kal

2009-12-02T06:39:00.000-08:00

i knew what was coming my way.. when i saw the tacky guy naming his tacky production house 'Illuminati'.... what?? does he operate that secret society or something?? or is he Robert Langdon??
Fine.. i have a negative bias against the one time national award winner... but then i thought deepika and rishi kapoor might neutralize the strong negative undercurrent.

but no... 1st scene of the movie.. deepika and saifoo (sounds like a dog's name... saifoo - sheroo .. nahi?)
main pile on nahi karna chahta... bullshit.. i know where this is going... bloody youngistan lingo.

Deepika had a plastic expression.. her voice never conveys the feeling that her face wants to.
She is a perfect depiction of a plastic doll gone famous!
She would now have to learn acting after becoming a superstar!
Similar things were said about Aishwarya 'Plastic' Rai... during her 'Taal' days.. but now she has brushed up her skills and also got herself the tag of first lady of Bollywood... so what's wrong with Deepika.. so i discount her! afterall she is a newbie.

But Sheroo.. sorry .. Saifoo... man this guy amazes me.. i sometimes think i shouldn't be discriminatory about his Donald duck voice modulation..
but then his acting pisses me off so much that i end up targetting him :)
His dances so badly that i can dance better than him.
he looks old now... and when he does the youngistan lingo.. it pretty much looks like the neighbourhood friendly uncle trying to flirt with the girls on the streets.

The sardar scenes were quite nice .. though sheroo looked unconvincing as a sardar.. but the intent was good and the romance looked fresh.. so liked that part.

Apart from that.. pretty avoidable fare.

holiday planning is so much fun!

2009-11-29T05:25:00.001-08:00

Yeah some of the things i love!
done with the holiday planning for this year.. somehow it just reminds me of the holiday last year..
It just feels like yesterday.
Though the holiday consisted of Corbett, Nainital and Agra.. for the sake of my love for wildlife, i would call it the Corbett trip.

Lots of planning had gone into it. Right from the bookings for the trains and flights to the stay in the forest.. everything had to be taken care of.
Thankfully for me, Tina my wife, also has an eye for detail and that makes the planning part a lot easier. Had even one of us been the causal, 'chalta hai' traveller who is content with 'flight-nahi-toh-train-and-train-nahi-toh-bus' attitude like the current XBox generation, our holiday life wouldn't have existed.

We readied the plan for March in December itself. Took half a day off from office to go to the KMVN office at Hyd to book the forest lodge. Got the air tickets to Delhi done and we were done to go!

Day 1 : Flight from Hyd to Delhi -
4 people, me, Tina, Vijay(my college pal) and Vyanks(the Finacle wonderboy) were onboard. Night flight, what else could you expect? Dozed off till we reached Delhi.
There, my overzealous cousin picked us up from the airport and took us home for the nightstay and we were served yummy home food.

Day 2 : The trip begins -

Early morning, a decent looking car picked us up from our house and we started the trip to Corbett. The journey was dusty as expected on Indian roads.. but the highway was pretty good except for places where we encountered villages and overcrowded towns. We stopped somewhere in UP hinterland at a dhaba for breakfast which was amazingly cheap and good in terms of food. Paranthas aren't the prescribed food for road journeys but with a Punjabi foodie on board.. paranthas were the way to go!
The journey lasted for about 5 hours and we kept ourselves busy by talking ... mostly about college :)
Once we reached KMVN in Ramnagar, we were taken to a decent looking but old guesthouse where we were asked to wait for getting the permits. It pretty much functions the old sarkaari way, but then they cannot let every tom dick and harry into the tiger territory :). I just couldnt wait to get in, the wait was killing me.

Half an hour flat, our over friendly driver, Sunil got us inside the gates of Dhikala which is one of the four zones that the park has. Do not confuse Dhikala to be a small area... it could be of the size of a small city like Mysore or Pune.
The entry was symbolic. Something like this :

Once inside, the feeling was surreal.. our driver was over enthusiastic but had a very good eye which amazed us. He kept spotting fauna which were camouflaged. We then had to use Binoculars or the video cam to zoom in and see...
He also tended to exaggerate a lot.. he said that the last time he came here, he saw a tiger on the road which we all just laughed off :)

Dhikala FRH(Forest Rest House) is about 40 kms inside the jungle from the gate.. the road is anything but motorable, so dont take your car :) .. but if you are in a taxi.. then there are very few things that you will ever compare to the nature beauty on platter.
We reached FRH by 3 pm. It was a nice decent block with a few buildings. The mistake people make is that they book resorts.
I just wanna say, are you in tigerland to do the sauna? You need to be close to nature and feel the pressure of living in the dark. Thats what makes the experience worthwhile.

Anyways, had very nice tea with some snacks and the person at the front desk was kind enough to us.. he was ever smiling.. the pahadi people always do. Thats why i love them!
He got us an elephant safari arranged for the next morning.
We wandered outside the cafeteria when we saw some commotion in the grasslands in front of us.. people said.. "Tiger, Tiger..."
I got my binoculars out and saw a tiger chasing a herd of deers and scaring away a few kid elephants far away...so far so good..
It was dusk and darkness was approaching.
The beauty was surreal...

We had dinner and were walking to the rooms.
Then the fun began. Suddenly we realized that we couldn't see the path. The darkness in Corbett is to be seen to be believed.
To add to that, there were all kinds of sounds and calls of animals. Tina was afraid if there was a snake on the way to the room or worse still if there could be a tiger looking at us with his night vision eyes.
But then it was just about 10-20 metres which was dark. We heaved a sigh when we saw our rooms :)

Me and Tina went into our room when Vijay called out from the other.. "Akshay, do u need odomos??"
Boom.. not again.. i stepped out of my room in total darkness.. and before taking the next step jumped back in again.. "Vijay, you get it in my room please" I shouted back..
Vijay : "No ways"
Then i just took Tina to the door and showed her the darkness. It's hard to believe but i haven't seen anything as dark as that night ever.
Somehow i managed to go to their room and get the damn thing.

Day 3: Corbett -

Next morning, elephant safari was wonderful.. we got onto an elephant whose name was 'Chanchal'. I wish i had a better camera.. there were so many birds and other species that my point and shoot couldn't click.
Just before the end of it, we saw couple of other elephants which had stopped in the middle of the path.. just waiting and doing nothing.
The mahout told us that there is a tiger around. We could see the deers in alert state ready to sprint. The sound of the air was twitching their ears. The hunt was on the cards and the silence deafening.
But nothing happened. The king was around but chose not to show up in front of so many people.

All great beings on earth are solitary. I am solitary too :)

We went back dejected, but the feel of the jungle had gripped us by then.. our hearts were pounding sometime back but now we were having the yummy breakfast in the middle of the jungle.

Evening 3 pm :
We were ready for our jeep safari... we roamed the grasslands, the riverside and the reservoir.. clicked some amazing snaps.

Few of them :

We were more than happy with the sighting of the herd of wild elephants and hyenas and deer.
Just then our tour guide got a call on his walkie talkie..
watering hole 24.. he asked the driver to rush.. watering hole 24.. 24.. quick...
our jeep zipped through with amazing speed.. it was a 4*4 drive.
We were asked to hold ourselves firm.. the ride was bumpy but we were there in about 3 mins... We saw an elephant charging towards the bushes.
We were told that whenever a tiger is sighted all the resort elephants charge and create a huddle so that the tiger doesnt get violent.

Everyone waited with gasping breath. Minutes passed.. one .. two .. three... there was a countdown.. so silent. Nowhere do a group of Indians sit in such silence.
and then, an overwhelmingly idiotic moron from Delhi who had lost his senses in his Alto just before us got down from his car. People yelled at him.. "Kya kar raha hai be?? Mar jayega(What are you doing man? Wanna get killed?)"
And as lightening strikes, yellow stripes leapt 10 feet maybe couple of metres away from the lost Delhiite.
It had leapt 10 feet from one side of the path into the deep jungle the other side.
It was a tigress.
Our day was made. People were spellbound.
But that guy from Delhi, i am sure would now never get down from his car even in Delhi. His pants were wet.
But we were happy. We just saw the king of the jungle in his territory in full glory.

By now, we got used to the rules of the jungle. We thought like animals. The feeling had sunk in and we were happy that our holiday was so successful.

We had our dinner and slept peacefully.

Day 4 : Corbett -

We got up to another jeep safari.. This time we went to the other part of the jungle.
Had a long drive of about 3 hours.
By now, we were so mesmerized by the aura of the king, that we anticipated it everywhere.
But then, if the sightings were so easy, the fun would be lost. It was like an Indo-Pak match of the 90s, which happened once a year and the tension was palpable.
The joy of seeing the king in its territory is something which cannot be explained in words.
Catching him in his habitat is so different from watching it in a zoo.
We saw a lot of pug marks which indicated that he roamed the territory not so long back.

We did not get to see the king today, but our holiday was so enriching that we had forgotten the mundane city life by now.
We just did not want to leave the place.
But as they say, parting is the most difficult part.. and we had to part.

We recorded our sighting on the tiger sighting board too :)

With heavy hearts and very refreshed minds, we took leave of the king's territory.

We asked the king for permission to leave.. and he gave us a 'Roar of Approval'

PS :
We proceeded to Nainital and Agra thereafter which were beautiful too, but were holiday destinations that people generally do. So you would get a lot of matter on that elsewhere too.

memories.. the ones that leave a sour taste

2009-11-10T11:26:00.000-08:00

i was thinking about the past..
one of my past friendships seems so stupid now.. there was a particular person who gave so much gyaan about everything and everyone around thought that the person was a genius.. the mature one among the bunch of immature fools...
but in retrospect.. i realize how much of a bore and an idiot that person was...

Like they say, what you see is not what you get sometimes...

I just feel like going back and doing an erase.
urrrgh....

The mind is so bloody immature during the growing up days... just want to do a Ctrl+Z of many things....

Relationships.. can they be decoded

2009-11-08T10:00:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, me with a few friends had a very interesting argument over dinner which brought me to a question about relationships.
There is a friend who doesn't take kindly to Sachin Tendulkar's achievements. There was another person favouring him.
Similarly there was one person on my side.. goes without saying that we were supporting Tendulkar.
Now call it hero worship or pure emotional attachment or plain data in our favour, we were very forthright in our arguments. They, understandably were towing the opposite line. We asked them for data to back their line of argument, they couldn't and we said you cannot.
Typical argument eh!
But wait.. we all were running high on emotions.. whether for or against him. An emotion is still an emotion.
As much as they love to loathe him, no force in the universe can ever make me give into it.. and i will hold the fort.
But why?

This brought me to the next question.. is it inbuilt in our DNA to get emotionally connected to a person whom you have grown up watching... does it affect you to such an extent that you will simply dismiss any counter argument against him or her?
If yes, then why is it built?

And why do humans have this tendency of bonding more than any other species? Why the 'tera mera saath rahe' concept... why the 'saat janmon ka bandhan'? Was it a massive attempt by our ancestors just to keep the race together?
or is it actually inbuilt in our genes to live and let live??

I agree there will be exceptions always.. there will be terrorists who dont care .. there will be rebellious kids who dont think the way their last generation thought.
But in the end, peace will prevail.
Why?

Why do the most stable relationships have the maximum number of conflicts? I feel its the nature's way of ensuring that the spark is always there.. that it doesnt die because of mundaneness of life.
All the mature dads and moms say... jahan ladayi hoti hai.. wahin pyaar sabse zyaada hota hai...
I dont think they have formed this opinion about the relations.. they have learnt it from the nature.

Just my opinion though...

I have digressed a lot from the topic.. but then you see there is a connect between each of these legs...

The Sachin factor... for and against.. this had to do with emotional attachment that we developed with him over the years.. more importantly the formative years.. and on the contrary.. the other guys saw something they did not like about him and have carried on with that sentiment. He would have proved them wrong a zillion times with his bat.. but that few things that 'the other guys' saw in their childhood.. for whatever reasons.. will be hard to erase.
Same case with us.

Now how is this case linked to the next case about human relationships and making peace?
The atmosphere was charged up... the groups were divided and equally vociferous.. infact i should say voci'ferocious'.
People giving their own arguments.. getting pissed off and pissing people off.
But finally what happens? Nature takes over... calms things down... makes you realize how small you are and these things are in the 'larger scheme of things'.
And suddenly it dawns on you that what you have been doing might have been stupid.. i mean its good for passing time.. but its still stupid in the 'larger scheme of things'.
So what do we do next? As an automatic process without anyone making a genuine attempt.. out of nowhere comes out an olive branch in the form of a smile or a sentence which calms everyone down.

I might be hallucinating.. but I am intrigued by the ways of nature.. if at all what i am hypothesizing is true.
So much for the human brain and we still fight over things like Telangana.

The man, the legend, a living one

2009-11-06T07:47:00.000-08:00

I thought I wouldn’t write this at this unearthly hour. Its 1:30 AM. But I would lie to myself if I thought I could sleep without putting my words in writing. The match refuses to get out of my mind.

Home sweet home,
1:30 AM,
technically 6th November.

Me, Abhishek, Alankar and Sankar set out from office in the afternoon. We were disappointed with India’s bowling effort which cost us 350 runs.
We thought we would watch Sehwag blasting the bowlers and leave the stadium once Sachin got out.
But boy, God(the real God) proves everytime and rightly so that we humans are just dust. We have no idea about whats gonna happen the next second, and we start planning big things like we have taken over from him.
What awaited us was not thought about by the billion minds in India and the paltry number of minds that exist down under.

If ever there was total hysteria, if ever there was utopia, if ever heaven existed then it was here, here in my city, here in Hyderabad.
The 5 feet 5 inch man came close to the real God when he started waving his magic wand. The wand which earlier was a MRF and now is an Adidas.
But if it were just for the 2 companies, then it wouldn’t have created 31,000 runs. The man has magical skull deep under which exists a brain that is unfathomable by human intelligence.
The brain that can bamboozle Ricky Ponting in sleep mode, the brain that can traumatize the number 1 team in the world, the brain that can make a daunting 350 look like a college team score.
The brain that is the lifeline of a billion hearts.
Yes ladies and gentlemen, he is still the man India looks upto.

Two decades after he rose to dizzying heights, he is still climbing up the stairs. If ever there were a CRR for him, he would blow the CRR meter. 1+ is pittance.

The crowd of 60,000 was a puppet in his hands. When a catch is taken by him, the crowd billows like they have triumphed over an alien planet. When he waves back in reciprocation, they miss a heartbeat.

To any person watching it on TV, I would sound pompous, I would sound like an idiot who is writing peans in his name.
But to me, it was the one of most memorable evenings ever. I have never seen a cricket match more exciting, I have never seen an innings more flawless.

Critics don’t deserve a mention, so I am sparing myself the pain. Chuck the critics.
He remains unparalleled after 20 years.
This man still commands the country.

After the match ceremony was over, he was the last cricketer leaving the field. I had been cheering for him and India all through the day. My throat was sore, my eyes tired and my heart disappointed. But one last time, I pulled in enough air in my lungs and yelled
”Love you Sachin”.

He might or might not have heard me, but the feeling of contentment I had at the risk of sounding gay is everything to me.

Cricket is his life, but he has grown too big for it.
He made my day, he made India’s day.
That man, Sachin Tendulkar, is still the one.

- An absolutely awe struck fan of 20 years who was witness to his 186 and 175 at Hyderabad.

PS : The loss India suffered disappointed me, but I take heart that my country tried and tried so hard that it beat the daylights out of Ricky Ponting.

Things are changing... life is getting busier

2008-06-19T06:02:00.000-07:00

Been a long time since i penned down something...
Things are changing... life is becoming busier...
No longer do I get the previlege of having hour long lunch breaks like I used to when i joined work... no longer do I relish my food... i finish my food rather.
Things are changing... life is becoming busier...
No longer do I blog, not that I used to frequently earlier.. but I dont get time to log into it for days together..
Things are changing... life is becoming busier...
Life is mechanical... days are plastic... tasks are monotonic... weekends are a different luxury alltogether...
Things are changing... life is becoming busier...
I was a shy and reserved guy earlier, talking to only those i liked, now I interact with every Ravi, Ram & Shankar
Things are changing... life is becoming busier...
Watching TV, playing cricket were my favourite pas-times like every starry eyed boy in India... pity I get time to do neither
Things are changing... life is becoming busier...
Happiness drove people to be more productive at their jobs... but now, productivity drives the appraisal and appraisal drives the money and money drives happiness... the cycle has turned 360 degrees over...
Things are changing... life is becoming busier...
You like it or not... this was meant to be the order.. order of a day that commands its people to be ahead in the rat race.
Win.. win.. people say... else you shall not survive, people say... i run.. i run.. i ... but then i remember there is a cat at the end of the race and i am running right into it... right into its open jaws...
i still realize i have some distance to go... let me slow down... i tell the people by my side... some listen.. the others run...
the winners reach their end faster...
we realize and reach slower...
please slow down.. let the world get busy... let the world pour its unhappiness on you... just grab an umberella and dont get wet ever...
slow down to such an extent.. that the cat gets bored and goes away...
live the same life of the 90s... and be happy forever
and then you shall never say again..
Things are changing... life is becoming busier...

sleep is more enticing than women...

2008-03-26T05:21:00.001-07:00

Believe me... right now... after a great indian dinner (we had a project party yesterday) in the midst of a boring routine in Moscow... and lunch today.. i feel like dozing off in the office could just be the best thing to happen to me ever.

reminiscent..

2008-03-24T07:46:00.000-07:00

Last weekend was one of the laziest weekends ever.. i generally tend to do something good on weekends.. i reserve my best for the last two days of the week...
but the last 48 hrs... i was lazing around on my couch... I could put a sloth to shame.
I watched 6 movies in all... but the one that took the cake was 'Happy Days'.
It was a surprise winner.. nothing great about it.. no dramatic sequences.. no superlative performances... no high flying effects.
But it had something which every college going guy/gal in India could relate too... it was so humbly down to earth that it walked with reality hand in hand.
It surely reminded me of my college days.. I could laugh, be sad, feel bad for the guys so genuinely.. and yet i say it was not a great story.. it was an ordinary one... but the subject is what had all the aura..
The formative years.. those years of fun at the hostel... those friends who care a damn about everything...
Those lingering walks and discussions with friends... claiming who liked whom and why....
Those evening samosas... and cursing the hostel food at night....
Those were the best days of my life...

bored

2008-03-24T07:40:00.000-07:00

Monday's are so damn boring... got new work to do... my tasks are no longer related to my tasks alone.. :(
i have to track other guys' tasks.. do the tracking and stuff...
its no more carefree...
i somehow feel the best days are the initial parts of every phase.. in school... i felt kindergarten was fun... in college i felt high school was fun... in the job i feel college was superlative fun..
and now i feel the initial days in my job were fun..
Anyways i have become more responsible now... at the cost of my more carefree times...
With great power.. comes greater responsibility...
Yes... maybe.

Experience of a lifetime

2007-04-25T01:14:00.000-07:00

mood: thoughtful
Dated.. but still..

Wednesday,
27-Jul-2005,
INFOSYS guest house,
Mumbai.

It all started on a cloudy Tuesday afternoon in the outer areas of Mumbai.I was seated comfortably coding away the requirements of ICICI bank HQ, BKC.All was fine. Some of my colleagues smoke, so I advised them to do it quickly as it was threateningly cloudy. The heavens were issuing warnings every few minutes and finally it came….it came with all it could, the one above used all his might.It was as if he was bent upon showing his supremacy and reiterating that we are nothing without his mercy.Cats and dogs would be very euphemistic, I should say even dinosaurs would have feared that lashing downpour. BKC is quite highly perched on the Mumbai terrain. But it too could not escape the fury of ‘The One’.FM radios started issuing warnings. That was the only source of information. The internet was down, the phones weren’t working either.I just about managed to call one of my friends before the network went off. She said she was leaving and had no idea of how’s she’s going to go back.I was still too indifferent to understand that the situation was already alarming.Most of the people in my office were having a good time looking at the water logged roads from the HQ of ICICI. I too didn’t find it foolish to be a part of them.Finally I went for snacks and then, common sense, for the first time came face to face with me. I heard people saying that their cars were floating in the basement.Then I took a decision, my colleagues were still in a party mood as none of us had seen such a thing before…I told them that I would be leaving irrespective of their plans.They too took notice of what I said.We were 7 people in all. All of us left the building in a jiffy only to be stranded at the bus stop for 2.5 hrs.There was absolutely no sign of autos or taxis, the taxis that were visible were flooded and the drivers had left.I took a brave step and crossed over to the other side of the road hoping to find some auto. I was knee deep in water. But the kid in me was not complaining. I never managed to find anything on that side of the road too.Despaired, I came back. It was very dark. The clock had gone well past 8pm.I just jokingly mentioned it would be fun walking down all the way to Santa Cruz….not realizing that my fantasy was just about to come true.We finally started walking on the main roads to avoid water and invisible manholes. We knew that it would be the toughest walk of our lives but we also wanted to prove that software engineers aren’t that bad at anything apart from programming. We walked, walked, walked…it was tiring, troublesome, really irritating and very very dangerous.We saw all kinds of accidents on the road… but kept on walking. After walking for about 1.5 hrs we reached the linking road, we were a little happy, we could call that our home ground. We lived and died by it everyday.Kept walking and walking. The water was getting dangerously high but we dint bother.Finally after about walking 1 hr on linking road we reached santa cruz. That was the worst place someone could ever buy a house at.The water started to climb over my neck. Absolutely dark, and everything covered by water. I even climbed over the bonnet of a car accidentally which was totally underwater.Few drops of water tried to enter my mouth too, but I somehow sustained.My bag was on my head and I was in water.I knew that my guest house was close, I could even see it, but reaching it was not as easy.My PL and I were holding hands, together we reached guest house. As we climbed towards the gate our bodies came out of the water. It was such a victorious feeling to have walked 11.5 kilometers and have reached safely. We were shouting, people were looking at us!! Mostly Infy guys and gals… cheering us on.There was a huge pool of water in our reception but we were too excited to notice it.My PL almost fell down in the water but I managed to hold him up.Finally when we reached upstairs, it was celebration time!!Most of the Infy guys had the same story like ours.Guys and gals reached home walking from BKC, neck deep in water.One by one everyone was back.Today things are much more peaceful, the water is still there but we are safe.I thank God for this.
Terribly exhausted still, I remember all those moments, I feel that yesterday was hell, but one hell of an experience…
This was ‘THE EXPERIENCE’ of my life.
An experience which teaches the value of human life.
An experience of a lifetime.

Why am I expected to do my job perfectly?

2007-04-25T01:13:00.002-07:00

mood: frustrated

Nobody in this country does their job perfectly...Why am I expected to do mine perfectly then?Trivial it may sound, but according to me.. bad food leads to bad mood which leads to bad productivity and many other ills.The disappointment i face in food court everyday is the reason for this entry.The caterers never make the food properly.. its their job to. They are paid for it. But they always come up with some junk.Bad taste, bad items, half cooked cereals which are as hard as ice cubes.. and cheap imitations of famous dishes...For God's sake.. if you dont know how to make Rajma...please dont attempt to... the Punjabis would be cursing you like hell.. Do you even know what chinese stuff is about? Its not about maida noodles and a mud like tasting veg machurian with gravy. Why dont you include asparagus soups with banboo shoots? Why dont you include marinated chicken in sour gravy? Let me tell you why... because you dont know how to...Thats the point then... just stick to what you can cook properly & please dont experiment with the taste buds of 8000 + people everytime the clock strikes 12 pm.We will be better off if you cook 10 items properly instead of making 50 non edible items everyday.The only thing edible i look forward to is 'Amul Masti' which i have everyday after the lunch.God save the corporate catering industry in India.

BB - Crazy kiya re

2007-04-25T01:13:00.001-07:00

mood: crazy

I sometimes fail to understand why people get desperate to get noticed.There was this post which eventually turned into a chain mail.Side effects of IT on junta.One guy just started a conversation asking for weekend gateways and the path to the places recommended. His mistake or not - he asked for 'path' instead of 'way' or 'route'!!Now the population of 8000+ have a reason to go berserk! and they do.. in characteristic BB ishtyle!Now some actual action : One guy goes home late in the nite and flashes his ID card at his gate to get inside his own house...goodness me!! u need sleep!Another guy was wondering why his mobile doesnt feature the Ctrl+Alt+Del.Advice ... please go join Motorola and change the rules of the game.One guy goes to his home and places his hands in the wash basin and waits for the water forgetting to turn something on!! Aaah... BSNL Broadband effect... jitna istamal... utna bill!!One guy wants to decide the name of the restaurant 'runtime' ... now this was where i started to feel that its getting overboard.Some people looked for an Alt+Tab feature to switch channels on their TV.Buddy.. there exists something called TV tuner card... Put it on ur comp. It may not help u changing channels... but surely will satisfy your fancy to switch... albeit between TV and PC.People want Ctrl+Z in their life when they are in trouble..Man i wonder if people really feel like this!Whenever I am in trouble ... i never feel like havign a Ctrl+Z ...
I just run from there like hell...I guess the abnormality lies with me!

I feel like going to the dorm :(

2007-04-25T01:10:00.000-07:00

mood: bored

For the uninitiated : BB --> our official bulletin board in the company.
FC --> Food Court

Just arrived a hour and a half back... and already i feel like going to the dorm to escape the mundane routine.Supposedly I am into a project.. but practically I am as unemployed as the people in our political system.Last month has been unkind to me.. I come to the office, switch the PC on..then fill my water bottle and wait for outlook to pop up a new mail message...and it turns out to be "Cloud 9 wishes XYZ a happy bday"...My senses again prod me to move to the lower food court.. but i bravely wait for the next mail...and pop... HYD_XYZ Relations .. please update your details on sparsh.Goodness me, I updated that when I was officially on bench 3 years back..Now let me enjoy the virtual bench in peace for God's sake.Then chai/coffee time-->wait for mails-->BB-->lunch-->BB-->BB-->BB-->BB-->BB-->BB-->BB-->BB-->510 pm...oh i should be running back home.Why does the daily routine have to be so unforgiving??I envy a few of my friends who finished off their MBA when i was taking pride in getting a job straight after college!Its all alike... they get paid for doing nothing now... and so do I...
The only difference is the quantum!