Yours Truly....

Starting A Revolution - A day's Work

2009-06-21T07:55:00.000-07:00

I just realized that my friend has gathered more than a thousand supporters for his cause within the day over his facebook page and what’s more, someone actually has put him in touch with a really influential person in the field that he is venturing out. Who knows, he might actually realize his dream before he has a chance to dream it. Welcome to the world of starting a revolution in a day’s work.

In an age where communication has become more a domain of the written than the spoken word, the age old picture of a leader over a microphone motivating his troops has all but remained as the profile picture of the movement you are gathering support for. Today it happens to be the a few strokes of the keyboard, a click of the mouse and viola! A chain reaction that is only limited by the number of people that you know and are answering your call at any waking hour which we know is anytime today, tomorrow or yesterday!

While this is great news for people with a fire in their belly and that insatiable urge to change the world while climbing Mt Kilimanjaro on a single liter of oxygen carrying an injured dog on one shoulder and realizing the cure to cancer on the way to the base camp, my ilk of the round belly and the portly countenance is greatly perturbed. These specimen of the human world whom I call brethren have now had the last excuse for not giving their posteriors the regular exercise much like the rest of the contacts on their facebook profiles taken from. This entire initiative of being able to reach thousands at the click of a button no longer lets us hide behind the excuse of a sore throat for not being able to really voice our opinion and take a stand for what we really believe in. Well I am assuming that carpal syndrome is really a lame excuse to replace the sore throat of course!

I would have liked nothing better than to be allowed to spend my days in peace knowing that the worries of the world were in better hands and voices with loudspeakers but damn this phenomenon of social networking, I have to look and act interested at the beck and call of all my those who I so happily (and absent mindedly in hind sight) accepted as my friends over a single request on orkut, facebook, etc. if I had had any way of knowing the amount of responsibility that I was inviting by the very act of opening an account on facebook, with God as my witness I assure you, my faithful reader, this god fearing soul would have cut off his typing fingers before they chose an available user name.

But the one thing that might be a silver lining in all this is the fact that the ubiquitous-ness of campaigns on the net seeking support has allowed the signee to actually hide behind one to explain inactivity regarding the other while it has given a psychological comfort to the petitioner who opens his account and takes heart in the ticking counter of signers to his efforts. In a true sense of the word, this happens to be a win-win relationship.

Which then brings me to the point of this entire rambling – people are now voicing their opinions more freely and frequently than ever before and expecting a lot of the audience to react to the same. However, just like moi, how many sign on only to be able to life their thumbs and acknowledge the next time they see the petitioner that they are behind them….BEHIND!! I wonder what the active rate of interest is really. Social networking may be a fantastic phenomenon, but what part of it is actually active and what part of it is just a response to a customary roll call?

Well whatever it may be, I am sure people will try even more to be more like my friend in the first paragraph than just rely on mere flesh mounds like me to take their endeavours to the next level and realize their passions. I am sure there will be someday, something moving enough for even the likes of me to sit up and take notice but until then, my dear facebook contact, count me standing in a queue behind you. My click confirms my presence and my friendship. Do not ask any further of me for I fear I may start a revolution of my own against this establishment of revolutions. Viva la revolucion!

Indian Idol

2006-01-03T06:10:00.000-08:00

The past few days have seen a host of Indians having more than their fare share of stardom as they are quite ceremoniously crowned an Indian Idol on some channel or the other. So it was time I decided to define for myself what exactly an idol was. As far as my modest education would permit, I found myself coming back to the same conclusion that an idol was someone that I was supposed to emulate in some form or the other. With so many people waiting to be emulated, I feared that at the end of the day, I may not have progressed in any direction other than schizophrenia if I decided to accept all of them worthy of emulation. I was getting quite disturbed trying to figure out the criteria for catapulting someone to idol status when I had this idea – a true Indian Idol would be the one who could talk on a one on one with Prabhu Chawla and still smile at the end of the interview. Here are the ones who made the list

A B
Not the beginning of the English alphabet (though I bet if they waited till the time this person made his appearance, the paradigms would have been much different as I would beg to explain a little later). Of course they stand for Amitabh Bachhan (I have a good mind to add one more to the overflowing libel folder of Microsoft for not recognizing the big B’s name as part of the standard dictionary but that can wait). Any one whose body had been meeting the basal metabolism rates for the past few days as the great man’s intestines decided to play a trick on him will realize what I am talking about here. In this age which has been dubbed as one of the most selfish and self centered, it was only a testament to the tremendous influence of this person as the entire nation glued in to their TV screens to hear news of their favorite actor as the doctors tried their best to put those pesky jejunums and duodenums on track. I am generally quite a skeptical individual and I have this rather presumptuous gesture of dismissing all forms of hero worship with a Wodehouse-esque “Ha” but something made me sit up and take notice this time as he fought a bitter battle against those dastardly innards of his. Though I stopped quite a few feet short of setting up a shrine and praying for his well being, I will confess to have wished quite a few times for him to rise once again and wave his Subhash Nagre waive from his balcony for the millions of junta waiting to get a glimpse of their IDOL.
Actor par excellence, a man of few but worthy words, anchor extraordinaire, a picture of suavity and sobriety, a representative of the flamboyance of aristocracy as well as the familiarity of the masses – there will hardly be an Inditan who hasn’t spent hours glued to whatever form of screen devouring his Bairon-Bhairon-English-comedy, anti-gravity-villain-gut-crushing kicks, make-you-cry-alongside emotions. He has enthralled generations of this country with his mere presence. A person whose fan base is larger than the voter base of the country is someone who is truly an Indian Idol.
If an idol is all about setting an example in whatever he does, then this person truly personifies all that and more. Someone who can mean so much to a man on the road that he will leave his daily chores and pray to God so that he may rise above all troubles has to be one who is worthy of emulation. Actor of the Millennium in a poll by the BBC, he beat out heavy weights of the likes of Charlie Chaplin et al and it is once again a testament to his popularity that a country like ours where it is a foregone conclusion that online surveys are beyond the reach of the majority of the people got off its butt and put him on top (something that even the seductive gestures of the Miss India world failed to do). The other day, a group of us were sitting around the lunch table and discussing about this scientific community survey in some institute where Newton scored above Einstein as a scientist. The discussion was getting quite heated when someone quipped “Unfortunately it wasn’t India otherwise Amitabh would have won hands down”.

L M
If Amitabh Bachhan would have stood for A B, then the English alphabet would surely have done very well to put up L and M for Lata Mangeshkar or as the people more affectionately put it Lata Tai. Accolades have faded in their glory in trying to sing praises of this female whose mellifluous melodies have filled decades of India with joy, fulfillment, sorrow and hope. If there is any physical manifestation of the word haunt in this physical world, then it has to be the sound of her songs. The entire line of her being an institution in herself seems so clichéd that I cringed before typing it but such is the magnitude of her presence that couldn’t do without it. Entire generations have grown up and passed away swinging in the melodies that she has sung for them. It is a testament to her long standing achievements that my mother tells of her favorite Lata Mangeshkar records she won in a contest on Binaca Geet mala at the same time I plug into my MP3 player listening to Veer Zaara (the only good thing in the film. Couldn’t they just have released the album and spared us the pain of that India Pak slug fest?) It is not for nothing that she holds the world record for having sung the most number of songs in the most number of languages in the world. Coming from a history of 23 years which consists of many hard-to-forget memories of moments on the quiz stage trying to figure out which singer was it who would fetch me those 5 points, hers is the one voice that no quiz master other than probably Derek or a certain Princeton pass out cares to put in a quiz purely for the reasons that no person who cannot recognize her voice deserves to actually call himself as part of a sub species of the species named so very pathetically as HOMO sapien sapien. And those two would also have their reasons for doing so. While the former was most probably looking for avenues of distributing t shirts to the audience (because that of course is what a quiz is meant for isn’t it?), the latter was definitely looking for avenues of going down in history as the only person stupid enough to proclaim Lata Mangeshkar’s voice as Alka Yagnik with a throat infection in broad nightlight at some Technical College quizfest to bleary eyed numb minded quizzically bedazzled dudes who couldn’t care less if he said that the song was actually sung in Swahili and was meant as a tribute to Idi Amin.
Someone who can make the likes of Karan Thapar wait for a response in an interview before launching the next question has to be worthy of the title of Indian Idol. It is truly extraordinary for someone to have the audacity to refuse further awards and make it look humility. Jawahar Lal Nehru is reported to have cried at her rendition of “Ai mere Watan ke logon” and let me tell you that though I am no JL Nehru, the feelings on hearing that evergreen melody about the soldiers of India brings feelings and emotions of patriotism like few other. This diminutive looking lady stands tallest among the various whose voices have graced the playback scene in Indian music and it is not a surprise that she would always and forever figure in the list of Indian Idols.

S T
Some could argue that I was trying to pull off a marketing gimmick by this play on consecutive lettering thing but believe me, this is some sort of a weird coincidence. Continuing in the traditions of greatness defined in this passage, comes my last Indian idol – Sachin Tendulkar. 16 years ago, a 16 year old walked onto the field against Pakistan and the cricket field has never been the same again at least not for India. That young boy is today’s cricket superstar and demi God - Sachin. In a country crazy for this game, it is quite easy to make fans and it is even easier to lose them. But he has been the one person who has seen his following grow even when the chips have been down. There have been so many instances when cricketers once feted for their achievements have found themselves on the wrong side of the boundary rope and the crowd baying for their blood but Sachin has been one of the very few for whom the crowd has not only applauded wildly when the bats have been raised in the elation of a hundred but also prayed in the second innings when the first has yielded a naught. The only one close enough to actually have any passing shot at a century of centuries in the entire world, this short statured man has won the hearts of people of a country where love is scarce and hate sells dime a dozen in your nearest flea market. Sachin has truly been an Indian idol in the manner that he has carried himself both on and off the field. While his bat has done all the talking that needs to be done, his mouth has scarcely let off anything other than those boyish high pitched cries of elation. Unlike his batting, flamboyance has scarcely been a part of his personality and though loose shots have been few and far between from his bat, loose comments have never darkened his doorstep. Be it the worsest of situations, this is one guy who has always retained his dignity and come out unscathed and that is what makes him a true Indian Idol. If simplicity were to be the forte of someone, then that someone would have to be called Sachin Tendulkar. Even in today’s world of Channel 7 where you wonder if your next comment could become Shiv Sena’s electoral campaign 2 days from now and where dirty linen of the stars has been stolen from the laundry and displayed in public, this is one person who has given the country a reason to be proud that he is a son of this soil.

Meow

2005-11-18T07:57:00.001-08:00

They say that the CAT is out of the bag. Which leads me to the inference in true deductive logic style as expressed in the Data Interpretation section that the bag is now the safest place to be in order to escape its wrath. It has overrun everything that I see and hear about. I open the newspaper and there on the front page are two bamboozled looking guys contemplating over a sheet of paper as if they were chalking out the latest strategy to storm Osama’s cave and capture him alive. Turning to page two or three or four… is no respite either as the darned institutes have overrun them as well with their 2 pennies worth on the subject. Wishes abound from all quarters to the candidates who have filled up the form for the paper and set this great ball in motion which has finally come to bear on this morning’s newspaper ruining my morning cup of coffee. So I decided to host my own take on the matter a la Saurabh Dey SimCAT. Rules for the examination are as follows:
There is no attempt absolutely towards sanity
The following represents the pent up emotions of a disgruntled individual. No channel dare subscribe to them either in part or in whole. If any of them do, help them god.
Any resemblance to any question paper anywhere means that you are watching Channel V and MTV too much and spending a fortune on SMSs trying to answer their questions in an attempt to win a three wheeler scooter for your beloved.
Every question however has at most one correct alternative (if at all).
Number of questions is as of yet nebulous. Depends entirely on my mood and occupation with other pre occupations. Lets see as we progress

And yes almost forgot – if any of you raised a hand at the end of the instructions to ask about negative marking, please stop right now. I fear reading the following will increase your shrink bills and I don’t want your pocket to blame my poor blog for this.

Q1. Select the correct alternative from the following
you gave CAT
you took CAT
you delivered CAT
I never said that every question was going to have 4 alternatives did I?

Q2. What is the phenomenon called CAT?
a religious congregation organized by the national integration front as a show of secular strength of the country
a well organized country wide traffic jam at pre determined locations
a fashion parade at least in cities like Delhi
why does your fickle mind always search for the fourth option? I am not in the business of delivering this part of the question again and again

Q3. Who benefits from CAT
coaching centers that are now finding their founders on hot chairs in talk shows across channels
24 hour news channels that have thankfully found something to cover their schedules now that Osama and his kin have decided to take a week long break
Newspapers that have something besides the glitterati to fill their pages with.
Once again your eyes are on this part of the question. Shoo!!

Q4. What are the aftereffects of giving CAT (attempt this question only if you have answered question numbered 1.)
intense drowsiness
a mind that cannot stop trying to find the remainder after dividing the 8 digit number with another 6 digit number correct to the fifth decimal place
hands that cannot stop filling up circles at the very touch of a pencil
eyes that are searching for the fourth alternative while filling up their father’s name.

That has more than taxed my already dim wits to the end of their tether and therefore I call it a day in terms of the paper. No doubt you would like to know the answers to the above and so they are presented purely for entertainment purposes below:

A1. As the answer seems to be unobvious at first perusal, lets adopt that famous approach that has stood so many in good stead through all the multiple choice papers till date – deductive reasoning.
Option 1 - states that you gave CAT. Now unless you think that CAT is a gift item that can be gift wrapped at the nearest curio shop, I cannot fathom you could give it. Another possibility for this to happen could be that the CAT is indeed of the Tom variety and that you gave it off for some reason or the other. Still no definitive outcome to the veracity of this question. So lets park our thoughts on that for the moment and move along to find a better one. In case nothing else fits, we know where to come back
Option 2 - states that you took CAT. Now in case the first option is correct, and we are agreed that the basic physical law of conservation of mass takes precedence over all other matters, this option has to be correct. Did not understand that last part? Well here’s the explanation – if someone gave CAT, then there has to be someone who took it!! Much like those questions about shaking hands at a party (as if all that anyone attending a party ever does is shake hands with every other person and then stands to contemplate how many hands did he shake so that he can go and earn a penny for every hand). But but but !!! there is the all important instruction that says that there can be at most one correct alternative and in that case both these options are ruled out.
Option 3 - states that you delivered CAT. Now according the evolutionary rules and laws, this option restricts itself to the female population of the living world and the male sea horses. Even among this restricted solution domain for the answer, further cognizance is required of the fact that only the feline females qualify and if there is any exception, then they belong inside an X-Women movie or a bio lab. Sorry not correct this one as well
Option 4 – If you are still in the business of looking for this part of the question, no comments.
A2. You might think that the answer to the problem lies right in front of you in developing an addendum to the problem in terms of developing the fifth option as none of the above and mark it but let me present my case first.
Option 1 – If you have seen the people waiting to enter the examination centre, then you know that I have hit the nail on the head. The guy in front of the third grill of the gate from the right just took out the photograph of his family deity when asked to produce his I card while the girl on the third seat from the front looked heaven ward instead of the question paper when the invigilator dispensed with her duties. And I will definitely swear by the observation that all religions were represented in equal measure by all those gathered at the location. It has also been debated that some guys were garnering unfair advantage by two timing gods as they prayed cross-religion just in case the primary pantheon had decided to go on a picnic at the opportune moment.
Option 2 – If you are one of the people who had to drive to the place of examination then you are going to tick this one without even looking anywhere else. The entire set up reeks of a well organized crime mafia. This is a well orchestrated plan by the petroleum companies that want your car to guzzle more fuel as you wait for the light to turn green and then give up on the last hope of reaching anywhere when everyone else decides that the traffic light was just a fancy idea that someone at the municipal council put forward so that his cousin running the traffic light manufacturing business could get some work. Anyway hold that pencil till you hear the other arguments as well.
Option 3 – Guys in chest hugging t shirts and the latest designer jeans and females dressed to make CAT the quintessential fashion get together on that fateful Sunday morning – tell me if you need anything else to make a fashion statement. The remaining honors are of course served by the snazzy wheels that ferry the divas to the performing arena (read exam center). If you were ugly dressed gate crasher at this high society do, tick this one.
Option 4 – Duh!!!

Going quite well with the answering procedure aren’t you????

A3 – Beneficiaries as if CAT were an exhibition cricket match. But let’s dispense with our duty of presenting the cases in favor of the options.
Option 1 – Suddenly the CEOs of the coaching centers are finding themselves as hot properties and talk shows are lapping them up by the hour. Change the channel and you find another founder principal of another tuition center extolling the virtues of the paper and the ingenuity of their profession in operating a mass assembly line of Management students. The thing that really gets my nerves at their extreme end is the tone with which these management gurus counsel the distraught students that use the helpline being run by the channels. The amount of voice modulation that one person out on show really made me think whether he would have made a better career option out of being a radio DJ or a politician’s lip sync-ing background aide.
Option 2 – If the above is true then along with the tuition center executives, then the talk show hosts hosting them are also finding themselves enjoying a particular enjoyable time under the spotlights. Suddenly they are having a rather nice experience playing agony aunts to the millions of agonized nephews and nieces all across the country and repeating everything that their esteemed guests are saying as if the people that are watching their show have minds that can only process information that has been relayed twice! But they are getting their sponsorship money aren’t they? And that makes them pretty good candidates for the position of the correct answer.
Option 3 – If options 1 and 2 have caught your imagination, then this option is bound to be correct through all forms of induction, mathematical or otherwise. No need for any further explanations, I hope.
Option 4 – (Duh!)^2

A4 – This one has a rider already inside the question so the applicability is of course to only those who have once in their lifetime come across the phenomena of CAT (the type that is not listed inside the Oxford English dictionary)
Option 1 – I confess to having lost my senses sometime between the 35th and 36th minute as the section on verbal drew to a close according to the time management routine that I had set up for myself and therefore, I at least am all for this option. Also contributing to this part of the answer are the fact that the people in charge of doling out the admission cards make sure that the exam centre is so far away from your home that you are already asleep by the time you reach that place. So yeah at least for me this is a correct option but as already evidenced, wait.
Option 2 – I cannot for the life of me understand why they insist on giving preference to non recurring non terminating unreal specimen of the number line. They could have tested the same mental faculties of the people by asking them to divide 4 by 5 but they insisted on adding a further 3 distinct non consecutive digits to the numerator and 5 of the same to the denominator and just so that there fun was not hampered in any manner, they decided to chuckle at the poor examinee when he read the question only to find out that all the digits except the 4 and 5 already mentioned had been kept secret from him. Imagine the chagrin, when someone confronts the question’s remaining part thus – “the product of the digits of the numerator is a number that is twice the square root of the number of cows that the Delhi Municipal Corporation has not dared to remove from the roads till date and that of the denominator is 2 more than the numerator when it was wrongly copied by someone who was looking at the paper upside down. Find the probability that the quotient happens to lie somewhere in the brain of the questioner” (now damned you are if you don’t know the number of cows that find the Delhi roads so amenable to their otherwise sensitive hooves)
Option 3 – At least one hangover that this examination leaves behind is the itching to fill up circles at every possible instant. I still remember the time when some days after attempting the paper all I could do was impatiently scan the papers for Os just so that I could fill them up and satisfy my mind that the day’s quota of questions had been attempted. Trouble began only when I needed to analyze the choices.
Option 4 – Ummmm… haven’t we had a discussion before on this??
That more or less concludes my commentary on this SimCAT. Somehow I have a feeling that the explanations were rather inconclusive and left the reader searching for my address in order to inflict some physical harm. Guess by now you have reached the feelings that I had as I reached for the paper this morning. What can I say other than “wish you the best of luck”.

Bawda Boys

2005-11-18T07:57:00.000-08:00

Kolhapur’s answer to the Spice Girls of the world. The sign post outside this particular hair cutting saloon would in the strictest traditions of phonetic transpositions from Marathi to English beg you to consider the insides of the shack as “ B-A-V-D-A B-O-Y-I-J” – the best salon in the entire good god’s creation to get a haircut (strictly for men). That was the first sight that greeted me as I sojourned into the Maratha heartland on a quick recon mission to know more about the place that I would be calling home for at least the near future. Kolhapur comes across as quite the quaint little town that you would think of it to be. It comes replete with its set of “you-call-them-roads?” roads, obnoxious spelling neon signage, tremendously ritualistic Mahalakshmi temples, surprisingly board-able cheap hotels, shacks which pass themselves off as supermarkets (of course they still insist on spelling it as supar-markit) and last but not the least scores of shops selling those marquee Kolhapuri chappals. Nothing out of the ordinary at least to someone who has spent a good part of the entire of last year in the by-lanes that make up the rural map of the country but still there’s something in the air that makes this place stand out among all the places that I have been to yet.
The first reason for Kolhapur to be in the special mantle would of course have to be that for the first time in more than one and a half year, I have been stationed at a place long enough to unpack and lay my toiletries on the shelf. The company finally decided that enough was actually enough and it was time that the menace called me was fixed to spot so as to localize and try to minimize the disastrous consequences of my bare minimum presence. So I found myself taking up the post of a design engineer at the machine building unit of the company which they could have located anywhere in the world actually but then thought of the most non descript locale to make people rot and thus this unit was born. The town boasts of an airport which has the silliest reason for existence till date – a single flight! Yes that too an Air Deccan (aptly renamed Air Dhakkan by the enterprising souls of the place) which decides to land or not purely on the whims of the pilot or the stewardess or any other passenger! Lore has it that they actually have a raffle on board (you know Deccan. They are too “no-frills” to organize a lottery) to pick up the passenger who gets to decide whether they want to stop over at the place or not. Once you are over the initial shock of the airport, the national highway number 4 – part of the Golden Quadrilateral (the signpost tells you in decaying letters – much like Vajpayee’s knee) greets you and you realize that this has to be the birthplace for all traffic rules in the world. You know how they tell you that the scientific method to solve the problem begins by defining the problem first? Well then this highway happens to be the very definition of traffic chaos. They have a notional divide for the left and right side of the road but someone forgot to mention to the drivers here that this separation was not meant to make 2 roads out of one. I guess they took the entire ideal of buy one get one free a little too far.
The highway gives way to the town road and every bone in your body is tested for fatigue failure in a stretch of about 2 kms. Guess where the army got the entire idea of obstacle courses from? If you survive this shock and your heart is still somewhere within the rib cage, then “Welcome to the City of Chatrapati Shahuji Maharaj”. Thankfully they only used the highway to hell as an entrance to the city and decided that the souls brave enough to have weathered the road deserved better treatment once inside the city limits. So they paved the roads. God bless the local authorities. As you enter the place, it’s like any other town that I have seen till date. Dhabas lining the road waiting for the truck drivers to have their breakfast greet you with their “in-your-face” banners, petrol pumps doing brisk business and of course long abandoned police posts. The scenery that greets you inside the confines of the town are reminiscent of any town that was forgotten when they decided to follow the Gregorian calendar and thrust upon its existence the fact that the rest of the world is now in the 21st century. Given a fruitful representation in the Gregorian council, I am sure the Chatrapatis of the place would have bargained for a derailment of the process of setting the clock of human progress ticking by a good couple of centuries. But here I am one of the most optimistic of the gods few good men and I always look at the bright side of things. So let’s forgive and forget and move on shall we?
Next on the list has to be dwelling for the initial few days and I am pleasantly surprised (an emotion that has all the more significance for me because of the amazing rarity with which it decides to manifest itself in my life) to find hotels that are not only cheap but eminently board-able. The rooms are airy and best of all, the hotel staff has not yet come to realize the ideal of all men being created equal the effect of which is that you are treated nothing less than a god or a semi/ demi version of above or in my case a pay per use customer (who in most cases takes prominence over the previous two). As remarked earlier in some post or the other the cellular revolution seems to have caught up well with the junta here too and they are well on their way to a revolution because of the same. I am sure that your eyebrows have done their arching exercise at the mention of Kolhapur and couture in the same sentence but let me elaborate. I am convinced by the very rate at which Kolhapuris are answering their mobile phones that they are well on their way to designing a dhoti with a pocket for the same and if that is not a fashion revolution of the highest order then I don’t know what is.
While I am still considering the ins and outs of Hicksville, I am surprised to note a Mercedes Benz zip by. I tap my head on one side and dismiss this as a hangover of Indonesia where they were plying as lowly taxis. A few steps more and I am distinctly made aware that a Prado wants me to scoot my heavy frame off the road so that it can cross over. No doubt mere hallucinations these. Another few steps and I dare not say those words for I am afraid that I might have to search for a Marathi shrink before anything else in this place. Is it a streak of light, is it a phantom menace? No it’s a goddamn DC redesigned Mercedes S Class in all its splendor jostling for space on the road with a cow who has decided that the particular piece of tar it is presently standing on contrasts with its complexion quite nicely and that this is where it shall attain nirvana. So hell to all the humans and redesigned Benz’s can go jump into the lake. The riddle gets solved next morning when I learn that the region happens to be extremely prosperous on account of the cash crop farming especially sugar cane and so it is that Prados and Benzs are quite the short change for these fellows and had the road authorities been kind enough to build ones that had a lifetime more than a 16 day insect, I am sure all the hullabaloo over Tendulkar’s Ferrari would have gone quite unnoticed.
Slowly the image that emerges from the dust of the roadside is not very rustic if I may put it that way. The string of pleasant surprises pleasantly enough continued through the rest of the sojourn as I discovered a Smokin’ Joe’s Pizza outlet and a Café Coffee Day inside the municipal limits of the city (and for someone who goes by the name of Saurabh Dey, the discovery is as epochal as Newton discovering gravity or Archimedes’ Eureka moment albeit with clothes). So it is that the last few days have been not at all bad even though I am in constant fear of losing the touch with Bengali (my mother tongue) what with all the ikdun and tikdun Marathi that I am constantly having to mouth for daily subsistence. Another thing causing a tremendous amount of concern is the red as oxygenated blood mixed with iron oxide for added effect Kolhapuri cuisine especially the dum biryanis that these fellowa dish out with such fanfare. For someone who is not accustomed to these parts, my insides have on their own learnt that red means danger. (take that you biologists – claiming that cell differentiation took away the power of rationalization from all somatic cells of the body other than the brain. Guess their insides never shook hands with Kolhapuri dum birayani.)
The coming days promise to unravel a lot more about the place and am looking forward to reveling in the friendly winter sun of the place. And of course there is the unending excitement of being an esteemed customer of Bawda Boys isn’t there?

They Burnt My Home

2005-10-31T06:55:00.000-08:00

I come back daily from work to news of bomb blasts and terrorist attacks in the Kashmir valley and it all just melts into the background of the Channel V’s and the MTV’s. They are now as much part of the daily news as the weather update and my mind doesn’t even give it a second glance. Today there was something different as I reached back home from work. As I turned the TV to the news channel, the reporter was bailing that Delhi was burning. My city, my home, saddi Delhi was reeling under the terrible carnage of serial bomb blasts. To find out that one of the sites directly affected was hardly a kilometer from where my house is was the biggest shock in my life. I always was aware of the danger of the terrorists ripping apart the place but somehow, it never occurred to me that the placid and congenial surroundings where I grew up, spent my evenings playing on the roads, took those long evening walks with my mother talking about everything from the latest math test scores to the recent love affair rocking the cousins down the street would become the graveyard of today. Those tense moments as I dialed the number of my house were probably the longest of my life and the news that my family was safe was the biggest relief that I have felt in the recent past that I can recall.
As my mother laughed on the other end and allayed my fears, my nerves calmed down and my mind wandered to the rest of the people who have been affected by the horrendous act of barbarism. It set me thinking about how the son who has lost his mother to this horrendous crime would be feeling. And I cannot even begin to imagine the pain of the father who had to pull the lifeless body of his child out from the mangled debris which served as reminders to the dance of destruction that played itself out in the evening. Scenes of the brother who had lost a sibling, a husband who had lost his wife passed one after the other on the TV screen and as I watched the wailing people line the hospitals, my eyes were filled with tears for this travesty of today’s reality.
The festival of lights turned killer today. Diwali brought death and destruction in its wake. Hundreds of unsuspecting people stepped out to the markets to shop on the festive occasion. Little did they know that the Diwali dhamaka posters on the windows of the shops were grim soothsayers of the oncoming doom. And I ask you where is the sanity of all this? We call ourselves the social animals. We call ourselves civilized human beings. And we dismiss the notion of cannibalism as a grim reminder of a so called uncivilized past. I tell you we might have progressed leaps and bounds in terms of "Science and Technology" but at the end of the day we are no more civilized than the most cannibalistic of creatures that end up eating their own offspring. Mind you even the most unsocial of creatures suckle their young till the time they are ready to fend on their own. And here we are the most well behaved of the lot that God sent down to populate this Eden killing our own brothers, butchering our own children, raping and pillaging through all that we created with our own hands. I ask those who proudly lay claim to having undertaken this inhuman cruelty in the name of some or the other equally insane motivation – how do they sleep at night knowing that the cause that they so proudly claim to endorse just gave birth to another that proves how wrong their fight is? Someone is fighting for a piece of land, someone wants revenge for how his people have been treated, a third wants a certain nameplate at the entrance to his home and there are ones who are pure mercenaries ready to do some hoodlum’s bidding to fill their own coffers. And so continues this never ending dance of hatred and destruction. In this insane march towards God knows what, scores fall by the wayside who never even got the chance to understand what it was that they laid down their happiness for?
What was the crime of the small girl who lost her legs before life slowly ebbed out of her mangled body in the arms of her father? What injustice did the mother commit in trying to get her son the ice cream he so wanted? Was the mistake of the wife who went to the market to buy a gift for her husband so costly that she had to give her life for it? I dare those barbarians who are celebrating this tragedy in their lairs to justify their cause in the light of something I don’t even have the words to describe- my vocabulary just doesn’t have the expression to depict this… this tremendous loss.
I am not saying that the people who did this started out just like this. I would still like to believe that inherently man is a good being and that only circumstances cause him to commit indecency. There must have been a just cause for causing heartburn originally for these people to have turned such barbarians. But someone somewhere has to start forgiving and someone somewhere else has to start acknowledging that gross injustices have been committed in the past and start asking for forgiveness. Only then can this vicious circle of hate be pacified. Otherwise, there is no reason whatsoever that in this world where love blossoms on the internet and people communicate across language, religion and caste barriers as freely as if sitting side by side in a hotel lounge for distances to creep in. There is no validity to the existence of notions of genocide when campaigns for saving people in the throes of crippling diseases find donors and sponsors from across latitudes and longitudes. I am not willing to submit to the fact that the only way to end this reign of terror is to foster more violence. Violence begets violence, terror begets terror and one Bush begets another Osama. Are the feelings of hate and destruction so enmeshed that even the innocent eyes of an infant cannot melt them away? Or are the feelings of harmony and compassion so fickle that the slightest of snubs can reduce them to mere figments of speech on the Aastha and God channels? They say God is all forgiving. I ask him to start punishing. If Brahma wants to see his creation not disintegrate into squabbling rats, Kali has to take centre stage. Its high time for Kalki to comes riding and restore sanity. If there is any truth to Vishnu’s tenth avatar, let him come now. If there is any more delay, I fear there may not be anything left to defend.
Today people laugh at the Gandhian philosophy of non violence to the extent that its formal usage is now within inverted quote marks in a sentence. The word only finds mention in order to garner votes in the name of the father of the nation or in the nostalgic reminisces of someone’s great old grandfather who fought by the great man’s side and won us our independence. For all other purposes, the natural reaction to terrorism is another act of violence. And then all is justified in the singular mission statement which says "One man’s terrorist is another’s freedom fighter". So at the end of the day, peace and harmony for man reduces to a zero sum problem where for one to gain, the other has to lose. When will this achieve its saddle point? When will people realize that enough is enough? When will one man’s terrorist acknowledge his victim as his own brother and lay down his arms in respect of humanity? Not till the time we are still divided over political boundaries of control. Not till the time we are concerned about increasing gross Domestic produce at the expense of another nation. Not till the time socialism, communism, capitalism, democracy, autocracy, monarchy, oligarchy and all such ideals of "civil societies" acknowledge the root of human existence as co-dependence. Only then will the zero sum game truly reach its optimal solution and the imbalance of the world start to orient itself towards a static state of social entropy. When the entire world stands as one and counts itself as successors of a single species will brotherhood become a reality. If it takes aliens from outer space to come raining laser beams to unite us then be it. At least then we can say that my brother was killed in defense of another. If it needs a cataclysm on the global scale to embed the notion of commonality among humans, then I invite the ten plagues of Egypt to over run the entire earth. At least then all temples, mosques and churches will rise in unison to pray to God and save humankind and not India or Pakistan or America. If for Lashkar-E-Toiba to fight alongside the Indian Army it requires atomic weapon toting Martians, I myself invite this calamity. At least tomorrow’s newspaper will not curse Kashmir for today’s loss.

Connecting People

2005-10-31T06:47:00.000-08:00

I have spent the last one year wandering around in the heartlands of hitherto unheard of territories to this mind of mine. Thanks to my employer’s policy of setting up offices with a mission "To boldly go where no sheep has ever gone before", I have witnessed life at quarters I never thought possible while I was rotting away in the lap of luxury in my early years in the National Capital. But saying that living in these places has cut me off from civilization would be farthest from the truth. In fact in these past few days, thanks to the daily updates at 8:30 p.m on the Ma News Channel, I now know more about the curious human specimen that call themselves my relatives – bloody or non bloody.
My first three and a half months in the employment of the company were spent in the service of manufacturing soaps and detergents in a non-descript place called Silvassa. I was acquainted with this place earlier on in my life only because as a kid with too much enthu to go quizzing, I had spent hours learning the capitals of various states and union territories. Though various "anchals", "khands" and "garhs" have made sure that the entire attempt is a wasted endeavor in today’s context, it however gave me a brief idea that there was a place by this name existing on the western coast of India. Trepidation happens to be one of my most constant companions at all points in life and this was no exception. The only difference this time was that it was accompanied by jitters about a job, exasperation about life alone and since the entire posse of morbidity, turbidity and all things conveying a certain sense of "lost-at-sea" were thoroughly jobless, they decided to join in for good measure. So it was with quite a hapless feel to my existence that I entered this place and took up my position among the various plodding and packing machinery churning out washing bars by the millions. Even though the place was sleepy hollow in real life, thanks to the imperialistic ambitions of the Ambanis, Mittals and their tower erecting brethren, I was quite confident of getting the all important SIM card. What was a point for concern was the signal strength in the remote area. For a person who has experienced Banaras mobile connectivity in the initial days of the cellular revolution in the country, I was painfully aware of the twitch-and-you-lose-it signals. I still remember my consternation upon being told that the signal strength was weak because my mobile phone antenna was under the sunshade! But anyway, those were the days when the teen aged Delhi school goers were celebrating Valentine’s Days without the need for photographic documentations. No doubt much water has flown in the Ganges since and I am happy to report that by the time I left college in Banaras, even Nature’s urgent calls were no deterrents to the virtual love lives of my classmates. But initial reports suggested that Silvassa was evolving at a rate that was woefully behind the national average let alone the worldly datum. I mean when the place actually has a humanoid tribal species living life in the manner of the early man, you can hardly accuse me of being at my pessimistic best. Wonder of wonders then that I was only interrupted in connectivity owing to the battery run out rather than failure of the signal at the place. In fact what became irritating in the usual course of time was the monotonous drivel which went "Tamhe je number dial kari rahe chho, teno hal mein sampark thai shaket nathi. Thodi bad pachi phone karvabhinanti" or in other civilized words, "The _____ mobile you are trying to reach is unavailable. Please try later". And of course there were times when I wished that the damn thing would just conk off like when I would have my hands full of grease from the confounded pump meant to deliver the foulest smelling liquid to the foulest looking tank to make the foulest felling slurry which would finally have some perfume added to make it into the not so foul dish wash bar but was obviously sleeping on the job and my boss of course wanted the latest update on the same. The phone gave me minimal reasons to complain and I was more than thankful for its unembellished performance even during the floods when the ceaseless rains caused the damn dam to break and caused mayhem all around. So it was that Silvassa was a true revelation that even though a part of our population might still be cooking food over firewood, they might just be downloading the recipe for the latest roast from the information highway. Wonders never cease you know!
Leaving Silvassa, I thought that I had left remoteness far behind when they dumped me in the Marathi hinterland at a place bereft of water and overrun with Sunshine called Khamgaon. It was only upon reaching the factory that I realized that it was possible to locate human habitation 20 miles behind the back of beyond. Seeing the desolation all around, thoughts of marooning with only a day’s supply of rum and a gun with a single bullet once again swarmed my mind. But thank goodness for India shining that even though the info screen on my phone showed that I was standing at a place that was 20 miles from where I actually was, the signal bothered least to locate my exact postal address in order to connect me to my near and dear ones and of course my Ma (no amount of nearness and dearness depicted in "near and dear ones" can describe her. Therefore, the separate mention.) Agreed that the backend of the mixer was a blackout area for my phone but I think that I can pardon the service for this. After all I am sure that neither Airtel nor Hutch anticipated Cockroaches to be potential customers ever. (That could however be a costly oversight. They are after all going to inherit the earth once India and Pakistan decide to shove the No First Use policy up the Siachen). When even Khamgaon failed to keep Ma from relaying the freshest scandal dogging my seventh cousin thrice removed in the city of Timbuctoo, I rested assured that as long as batteries stood their stead, Nokia would be justified in their corporate mission perennially.
Since then, I have toured the wilderness of Bhuj, stepped gingerly onto the soil of a place called Orai, trekked across the mountainous terrain in the Himachal, taken evening walks in the air of Surabaya, Indonesia, ambled across the aisles of the Singapore airport, trudged up to a non descript fort in the western ghats and crossed highways in Kolhapur but the familiar ring has never deserted me. It hasn’t taken me long to realize the importance of empowering people through connectivity. Nowadays, problems in factories get solved through single phone calls to engineering back offices cutting across time and geographical boundaries. Firing subordinates through a single e mail is as easy as apple pie. All my friend needs to keep his girlfriend happy is to keep her inbox inundated with lovey dovey SMSs and if ever he decides to spend his life with the female in question, I think he could be excused for counting Sunil Mittal as an important wedding invitee. When my rickshaw driver pulled out his cell phone and curtly told the person on the other end that he was driving and he would call back when he was free, I realized how indispensable a part of our lives this pint sized device was now. Thanks to Graham Bell’s clumsiness in the laboratory and people who have kept spilling this invention over the hurdles ever since, even though it has been about a year since I have seen my mother, her voice still takes me home every night. And one last message before I sign off to the indispensible cellular service providers - "May your network always follow us wherever we go so that we may keep expressing oursleves and forever stay connected" . Amen.

So I am Fat....

2005-10-11T07:15:00.000-07:00

You say that it’s my fault that I am fat and I say that you are wrong. You say that I have not tried to keep myself in check and I challenge you to prove my intentions inappropriate. You say that I am what I am because of long years of neglect on my part and I say lets have a debate.
So let’s start with the first step towards a more socially acceptable figure also known as the "Optimum diet". Numerous people I have talked to have told me to watch what I eat with the promise that I would be better off. So I did. I took a rather hard look at the piece of cake before downing it. For added effect I gazed at the fries for a whole of five minutes and only ate it when the growl of the stomach reminded me of the disappearing lions of Gir. Just to double check that I wasn’t missing out on the watching part, I made sure I took an absolutely unflinching view of the entire process of the food being cooked right from the part when my nani diced the raw materials upto the point when they made the hissing entry into the frying pan. I did not take my eyes off the entire event till the time it was cooked and ready to devour. The result – I was heavier by two pounds after the lunch than before it. And you said I didn’t try.
But something tells me that you are far from satisfied at my efforts. So let’s try the next one shall we? That ever popular routine of "exercise". Let me assure you that I have left no opportunity to dispense this ritual daily. I exercise my will, my rights, my understanding; my whole goddamn existence is defined through exercise I tell you. Just to make sure that there was nothing that you could hold against me, I actually went to the extents of lifting this abnormally heavy frame of mine and trudging across to the nearest polling booth to do what else but exercise my right to vote. Though I knew that it was going to serve the same purpose of choosing between the one promising to murder me by increasing the petrol prices and another promising to starve me to death by making LPG costlier, I still did it. Come to think of it, I should have actually given a valid vote in favor of the second one. Probably would have "leaned" me towards the path of "well toned six packs". Drat, so you have one point. But that does not mean that I was found wanting in my efforts towards the holy grail of "fitness".
But I guess that is still not enough for you was it? You are still not willing to let me off the hook and agree to the fact that it is purely God’s will that my girth has assumed planetary gravitational significance. You still think that I should have done more to help my cause. So let me make it abundantly clear that I am sick and tired of trying. I have no inclination to win this debate. So what if Kofi Annan might find in me a valid reason for pinning the starvation of Ethiopia? So what if they embarked on that marketing gimmick of buy one Pizza get the second free so that people of my size could have a satisfying meal experience? So what if Levis and Lacoste do not target my segment because the manufacturing costs would never justify the production exercise? So what if you have to specially reserve a 2X2 grid space for me in your vision sphere when I come into the viewing window that defines your ophthalmic range? That’s all your problem isn’t it. As long as I am happy with how and what I am, nothing that you jibe or sneer at is going to cloud my sun. As long as there are sinful cuisines ready to delight my sensory perceptions, the fit and fine routine can take a hike. As long as I can justify my appearance as a well fed existence, I am abdominally opulent and you my friend are just plain chicken – to admit it.

Wanted.... Increasing Waistlines

2005-10-08T08:11:00.000-07:00

Gone are the days when the well toned waistline was the envy of millions and my tribe with the bulging midriff was relegated to the backend of the social "exercise". Gone are the days when those six packs could garner all the glory and the only gainful employment for the pelvic bone was to help trousers do their job of saving our "you-know-what(s)". True that some ultra special specimen of our species of the superhero kind manufactured in the courtyards of the Marvel(s) and Kings syndicate(s) did give this long neglected body part some respect with that utility belt of theirs but then again you cant pin the hopes of survival of an entire species on a glorious few can you (look what happened to Superman’s planet!!)? Agreed also that the true blue boys of the law enforcement agencies also showed some respect to the waistline by stowing their firepower in heir hip hugging holsters but well then again I believe people like me were in the majority and the waist still wallowed in the depths of obscurity only to surface in times of ridicule when those usual run of the mill jokes about the commonality between chocolates and a man were discussed by utterly inebriated party hoppers or just plain engineering college undergrads soaking in the sun in their hostel lobbies.
It would be unfair to say that nobody had taken care of the waist line till recent times. The credit for bestowing some credibility to my dear friend goes to the ubiquitous traveler. The ones with the waist pouch entrusting all their passports, cameras, money, etc to that small bag clipped around their waist. But then again the waist only got the attention when the entire family enjoyed the LTC and how often was that? Once in two years or so? Not enough, absolutely pitiful I would say. And even in times of this sabbatical from oblivion, only the waist on the member of the family carrying the case was in prominence while the rest still were in the relegation zone.
It wasn’t long before a certain Japanese fellow realized the missing music in his morning jog and it was fate that he had a company and an entire posse of thoroughly unoccupied engineers at his beck and call to deliver his requirement for a better early morning running experience. Out came the walkman and our friend had a peek at stardom that was sure to come. But this invention proved to be a fickle friend itself, but all its future cousins in the forms of Discmans, etc kept our waist in good company.
The revolution began silently for our dear friend and though the rest of the world took notice of this new development in an entirely different light, the biggest beneficiary of course was laughing behind the curtains. The true turn around for our protagonist began with the advent of the mobile phones. Those trendy little communicating devices which occupied much more than just a share of our talk time. In time they have come to control almost every aspect of our lives from our phone numbers to our bank accounts and of course who can live by forgetting his wife’s birth anniversary? In the growing indispensability of the mobile phone, we unknowingly began the quest for a suitable place on this skeletal frame of ours to carry it. And the one who rose to the challenge was of course the waist. I am truly honored to note the tremendous entrepreneurial skill shown by this otherwise inactive part of the body to grab the opportunity by the horns and tame it. Very conveniently we started clipping our cellphones to our belts and freely trotting about everywhere.
With the cellphone, the waist had arrived but wasn’t truly in the limelight as yet. The next step was taken with the PDA! Now people were no longer content with opening that laptop of theirs and working away from office. True mobility was defined as working on the move literally and the PDA found its way onto the waist firmly beside the mobile phone. The waist was gaining in real estate importance with these two figureheads keeping good company to the traveler’s pouch when up came the mp3 player. Looking around for a place to rest, it too decided on the now upgraded and plush environs of the waist and shook hands with the phone, PDA and the traveler’s pouch.
Around this time, space started becoming increasingly scarce on the waist and it was then that my tribe with the girth of a little planet assumed some form of significance in being able to arrange all our important companions neatly around the abdominal circumference. So you see the electronic revolution gave the people with that extra pound of place the reason to smile that we have so long been looking for. So much is the attention on that waist space now that waist clips have become standard accessories to almost any new electronic invention. It is when we see the troubled executive hunting for his PDA in the depths of his jacket, that we withdraw ours in a flash from the left hip in a flash. And how’s that time when that flustered female keeps hunting in her handbag for that ring-your-head-off-with-embarassing-ringtone-set-by-kid cellphone while all that us well fed discerning users of technology need is a vibratory alarm to receive the call? It is now with the advent of technology that people have started realizing the importance of having a rather fuller waist to accommodate all those utilitarian requirements. Bon apetit! Your waist needs space.

Idle Mind... Interested Observer

2005-10-08T08:08:00.000-07:00

As I sat down to a long wait for the plane ride at the newly furbished Mumbai Airport, I heaved a huge sigh of relief. The day had not particularly gone well for me and for some one who is conversant with my "days", he/she will realize that this must have been one of those when the higher being had answered yes to all prayers in his inbox (I have of course been listed under spam ever since birth) with the result that my boss got to kick my you know what from earth to the seventh moon of the planet doubledoom in the Galaxy Ultra-Despondency and back and my colleagues got to watch me trudge out of the office with a face longer than the Trans Siberian railway line. This was of course right after the head stewardess on the Singapore Airlines flight had made my miserable existence reach a newer low with the totally demeaning baggage weight problem. And so it was that as I made my way to check into the Jet Airways flight, I was acutely aware of a nagging thought that they might just have instructed the guard at the entrance itself to kick me out to save the time and embarrassment of them having to do it themselves. But nothing of that sort happened and when the lady at the other end of the counter actually waived me through without docking me for the tremendous amount of excess baggage (once again) that I was carrying, I sheepishly looked around half expecting Yamraj on his bull waiting to relieve this world of my burden now that my last wish had been fulfilled. After a thorough recon of the entire premises where I made absolutely sure of the fact that nothing untoward was actually in the offing, I settled down into the lounge and for the first time in a particularly long time observed the people around me.
Right across my seat was this young woman traveling with her father. What caught my eyes wasn’t the fact that she was probably the most beautiful girl I have ever come across but her interactions with her father. She doted on him as only a daughter could and "Uncleji" for his part could not have been more grateful for the fact that she was there by his side. They talked about a hundred different things ranging from her love life which she vehemently denied to his over growing abdominal opulence which he vehemently defended. Their make believe bickering between the constant reminders of soon to be forgotten medicine doses had me in a state of trance when suddenly walks in this newly wed couple all decked up in their marital brilliance. The two were inseparable and it was almost as if her hands had been somehow welded to his. Thank the lord for the guy’s bathroom break and the airport authority’s good judgment in building separate toilets for males and females or the people of the lounge would have actually thought of them as Siamese twins joined at the palm. This bathroom break also allowed my eyes to wander from them onto a group of Japanese ladies obviously touring the country. What made this senior citizen group interesting was of course the fact that they did not speak a single letter of English. So for the first time in many days I got to see what I might have looked like during my interactions in Indonesia. They went from pillar to post trying to figure out when there flight was taking off and every time they asked someone new, the inquisition invariably ended with all the people involved squealing in laughter at the utter helplessness of both – the ones in need of help and the ones wanting to. But what struck me was the fact that when you are with a group of people in the same predicament as yours, somehow the worst of situations are comic rather than tragic. All the Grandmas of course were successfully bundled off to hopefully their correct flight and the lounge returned to a ground state.
My roving eyes were once again searching for some fodder when they fell on this stumbling toddler who thought that every new pair of trousers was some different species worth exploring the girth of. So it was that this little guy barely reaching upto the knees of all those gathered there at the lounge kept on hugging leg after leg after leg with his bemused father keeping a close look from 2 steps behind until he came to the one leg that belonged to his mother and then he hugged no more. The little blob of flesh knew instantly without even looking up that this sari belonged to the one person that mattered most to him and that his search for the elusive specimen of humans was over. Lifted from the ground and lovingly admonished for his thoroughly despicable behavior, he craned his neck over his mother’s shoulder to make sure that his smiling father knew that he was back home. A blink later he was snoring soundly as his parents went around proudly displaying their little gift to the people whose legs had been hugged and wanted to know more about Mr Explorer there.
All this while there was this gentleman sitting next to me looking as if he had returned home to find his apartment robbed of everything except a broken wash basin which he would have to reimburse the landlord for. Hello brother I said!! This is the one person who would know what it was like to be me. I could probably have looked into us having been separated at birth in a mall (Kumbh is so clichéd) but his flight was announced just then and he scurried off at a speed that would have done India’s chances at some Olympics a world of good. Hope he finds some sort of peace in life. Will remember you my friend every time my lips curl up happily and will be more than happy to share it with you.
I still had an hour to go before my plane was scheduled and by this time the place was getting crowded with all sorts of people. There was this "socialite" female dressed to kill through eyesores and next to her was this power suit clad businessman ready to strike the next million dollar deal right then and there. Of course no airport is complete without the quintessential Gujju pariwar returning from some foren land with gifts for the entire Garba dancing community of theirs and we had our share of them as well. But of course everything is after all "saru chhe". Another constant fixture at the lounge has to be Bunty puttar with mummy te daddy – our boisterous cousins from the land of Beas and they were not found wanting in their share of antics on this day either. The usual posse of low hip jeans wearing girlfriends chatting on their fresh off the shelf mobile phones to their boyfriends and metro-sexual males making Shahrukh Khan look justifiable in the role of Asoka "D Grade" strutting across the hall was not left behind either.
So it was that I kept myself entertained till the time they actually announced my flight and then also this peculiar circus did not stop playing itself out. One last piece of entertainment was left yet as an aunty got hauled up for her handbag at the final door before boarding the bus to the plane. It would have been a no contest had either of the parties relented but the aunty wouldn’t let go of her purse because she was of the opinion that whatever they had observed now should have been checked in the security check while the authorities were obviously onto something like Tom onto Jerry. The entire episode culminated in a high intensity spilling of the contents of the hand bag and believe me the number of things that came out, Jack could have in that box and I wouldn’t have been surprised. The first off the bag were the lipsticks followed by some weird form of hairbrushes. Pretty soon cluttered on the table were compacts, 3 different handkerchiefs, papers of all kinds, passports of the entire family, specs to suite every occasion and I finally stopped counting when an entire array of Maybelline products made themselves at home on the table as if it were a showroom shelf. But it did keep me enthralled I must admit.
The flight to Pune was quite scarcely populated giving me ample time to reflect on all that I had seen at the lounge. Flashes of the girl with her father, the newlyweds, the toddler and his doting parents, the entire gang of Japanese tourists, the harrowed businessman and the entire cast and crew of all others who made that particular afternoon at the Chatrapati Shivaji Domestic Airport Terminal 1B so memorable just whizzed across my eyes. And it was then that I realized the power of faces and actions. Human faces in every shape and size, every emotion, every line and eyebrow telling you something, every lip curl denoting a different notion altogether, every twitch of the forehead saying an entire passage, every blink of the eye spilling the events of the entire day like a bestseller to the avid reader, every nod of the head telling the person next to you your feelings, every step presenting you in your unadulterated best. All it took was an afternoon of miserable idleness for me to make an acquaintance with at least twenty different people I have never met in my life and will most probably never even see again. Without saying a word, I was privy to the deepest, most intense secrets of a score of people and they waltzed into mine. All it took was an afternoon of total abandon in an airport lounge to realize the greatest show that is life. Play on….

A Letter... Amongst Other Thin(k)s

2005-10-03T21:11:00.000-07:00

Date: 1st October 1, 2005
Place: A weirdly named building called Puncak marina on the island of Java more specifically in a place called Surabaya and very specifically on the 16th floor of this particular building and to be Google Map specific, the double bed in the master bedroom of the apartment numbered 5 by the Foul mouthing (read Bahasa speaking) management of this building presently occupied by Yours truly…
Time of start of catastrophe: noon, 15th June, 1982 (oops I forgot we were talking about this particular event and not the cause of all troubles of the world. Cancel that one out. Do send me cards if you will to celebrate your superiority over at least one specimen of the humanoid species on this particular date every year) anyway correct that last piece of information to read 6:30 a.m.

Dear God,
This is for your kind information that iPod and me have safely landed in India. I hope this letter finds you in the pink of health though I am sure that the news of me plaguing the country of Bapu on his 136th birth anniversary will not leave you in the best of spirits but for that travesty of fate kindly direct your wrath on the Singapore Airlines not me. I can see that you have already bombed Bali to express your displeasure against the fact that the confounded country was unable to snuff out my existence when it had the chance and please accept my condolences in this hour of grief for you. Better luck next time.
At the risk of inviting further wrath (like that has a chance of getting bet on) may I congratulate you on some pretty commendable minions that you sent across to make my journey back home a living hell but I guess your torture school will have to up the ante a little to extinguish this plague. The entire routine of getting me late in the morning by making me forget to set my alarm on the one day that mattered was an absolute stroke of genius I must admit. And may I take this opportunity to tender my apologies for starting the day with three unforgivable F***(s) but a man has to motivate himself after all. And while we are in the process of mutual admiration, you must admit that I outdid myself by turning in the apartment at the cost of just one broken glass within half an hour and within the security deposit. You must have really felt bad on seeing that superintendent have to let me go without laying a finger on me and accepting the apartment back but you did live to fight another hour didn’t you?
I must say that I was surprised to find that you didn’t go to the lengths of depriving me of a taxi at the opportune moment or at the least bring down the mother of all traffic jams to leave me stranded without even the linguistic capabilities to mouth communicative expletives to the people that mattered. Now that you look at it, I think you realize that was the biggest mistake wasn’t it? You could have had me right there. But hindsight is after all 20/20. No harm done. I must admit though that you did more than make up for your mistake there.
Ready though I was for your Halloween tricks on the airport, I did not appreciate that one about making me trudge the entire length of the place without any one game for dumb charades. That was a cheap shot but I guess we do have to be bigger men and look over this. I forgive you for that. I would really like to know though your thoughts at the time I discovered that your camouflaged entrance. I am sure it must have been disappointment to see me achieve that task without the need for Hercules but I guess I did provide enough entertainment later to help you get over the shock.
At this time I must acknowledge your brilliance. I mean that thing about you being the ultimate strategist does have some truth in it after all. I doubt if the worst Jaffars in history could have upped the following villainy. Stupendously fantastic I must admit. I mean who would have ever thought up of making me almost cry on account of the baggage that I was carrying. You are after all God aren’t you? You didn’t make me have excess baggage. No that wouldn’t have been your style. I mean where’s the supremacy in that? You, on the other hand presented me with an optimization problem. I must tell you though that I did not realize that you were spying on me sleeping in Mausi’s class. How else could you have known that Newton-Rhaphson iteration that she droned about and I only dreamt about would be the one thing that would save my life and I would of course not be armed with the correct tools for the occasion. Man I got to hand it to you. Let me just word the problem for the benefit of the uninitiated reader here
“Cabin bag plus check in luggage within the total weight limit. Check in baggage more than twice independent weight limit. Weights of shirts, pants, underpants, half used bars of soap inside cabin baggage unknown. Optimize the weight of the check in bag and the cabin bag so that the chief bitch of stewardesses would allow you to board the plane.”
I could have so made an excel sheet of the same problem but all I managed to make was a sight of myself. Sprawled on the floor of the check in counter with my bags spewing knickers and snackers all over the place, I could have cried if someone had just asked me to. That reminds me – thank you for not asking me to! An overly obese extremely dark unpolaroidworthy face has difficulty in justifying its presence in public as it is. Coupled with salty tear droplets and I am sure I would have nudged the Bali bomber from the top place in the news that day purely for disgust value.
Must have been a pretty sucky feeling to see your perfect plan go a begging and me walking into the lounge but well a man’s got to do what a man’s got to do. No hard feelings I hope (I know that’s wishful thinking but no harm in applying to your better judgment is there?) Tell me something though, that spilling of the entire Pringle’s pack was planned or was that entirely on the spur of the moment? If I didn’t know you better I would say that you had planned this also but I guess this had you at your improvisational best written all across it. I guess seeing me do the mop up was a pretty satisfying experience but you would have definitely wanted to do much better.
What happened to you in Singapore? I mean an entire 4 hours and you didn’t conjure up any dark force to pick my guts from within the depths of my gastrointestinal cavity? Not even when I was having my burger at Burger King? You could have made me spill the Sprite at the least but no nothing. I must admit I was pretty scared at your inaction. Kind of like the lull before the storm. I will not lie about not enjoying your period of siesta but I did expect the computer to return my photo as an Interpol most wanted any time. Thanks for not ruining the Changi experience for me. It was amazing. You have a heart after all. Nice to know that.I guess you gave up on me kicking the bucket during this trip of mine inside Indonesia. Must admit I was pretty cagey all the way to bed that night in the guest house. Half expected the AC to blow in my face or the fan to crash on the bed at the least but I guess you have decided that I am too important a source of entertainment to be let go of so easily. So I hope that the show was to your liking. Pleased to be of service. And I know you wouldn’t hesitate to call on me but could you cancel me out of your schedule for tonight? Am meeting a long time friend and he does not know about our special Jester-Master relationship. Would hate to get him involved in it. After all he is not named Saurabh Dey is he?

Yours Introspectively

2005-09-28T23:18:00.000-07:00

How many times have we done that routine about soul searching and come up with really mind numbing profound statements about life, the universe and everything else? I am sure everyone at least once in his lifetime has sipped on a cup of coffee occupying a place that to him signifies his inner self and retrospected, introspected and emerged a thoroughly pooped human being at the end of it all. For take it from me, when you put yourself in a microscope that is your inner self, you get magnified beyond any limits that you can imagine (SEMs and EMs be damned). And in this picture when you come to realize the lines on your forehead caused through years of manipulation, obsession, passion, all contributing to that basic fight for survival, believe me that your ideals of how perfect your world is will lower themselves by notches faster than the stock market the day Mukesh Ambani files for bankruptcy.
And we all so flirtingly refer to it as philosophizing. Blame my bad mood because I just realized that I was the one surviving member of the family of the big bad wolf who huffed and puffed and blew the poor piglets’ sty away. And then trace the root cause of this blame to philosophy. Damn you Socrates, may god consecrate you to hell Plato and Aristotle – you can take that path of golden mean of yours and shovel it. But believe me, at all naturally occurring times, introspection is the bully that gets you down not the oft blamed philosophical mood.
The other day I had this fellow renouncing all compliments to his survival on this pitiable planet because he was overawed by the fact that greater men have walked on the road where he believes he is stranded in a traffic jam. Upon sending my congratulations to him for what I considered to be his standout strengths, he shied away from the compliments citing personal clashes with the images that I was projecting and those that he had projected for himself (once again that “inner self” funda). That sent me on my own retrospection trip. A journey which I was thankful when it ended because any further and I would have myself sought out the almighty and slapped him for committing this grave mistake of sending me to live amongst human beings.
But I have this one shrewd conniving constant companion spending a lot of time on my shoulder calling himself my “happy face” and he does to me what Jeeves’ cocktails do to a life threatened Bertram Wooster. I was thankful to find out that for every 100 snide comments/exasperated prayers that I had passed regarding Kareena Kapur’s unnecessarily prolonged existence on this planet, I had also put down 3 regarding the greatness of Satyajit Ray. For every score of insults I had hurled at Ludlum for making me read “Sigma Protocol”, I had prostrated twice in front of “To Kill a Mocking Bird” and sung hymns to Harper Lee. For every dozen rocks I had thrown at my adversaries, I had presented my parents with a bouquet.
Introspectively “Philosophizing” is not bad till the time it assumes the form of an absolute performance appraisal. I have no aversions to becoming aware of my fallibilities as a human being as long as I understand that this in itself lays out the path for my progress towards a better one. I can live with a mental image of me as a rotten egg as long as I realize that the other eggs in the basket are also way past their expiry date. So the question about whether we should totally do away with introspection, retrospection and the entire motley crew which provokes one to utter phrases like “hold that thought”, “park that image” and “take out from this session (as if my past were a Chinese noodle soup!)” or wallow in self pity and renounce all “maya”, rent ourselves a cave in the Himalayas and go on a lifelong unpaid vacation to introspect in the midst of yetis and yaks; is actually a no contest. The key to a practical quest of life is moderation.
The motto to seek is “live a little, learn a little”. Its not that we don’t need no education but I am not applying for a Phd on self realization anytime in this stint on earth. Know that every person in this world is a schizophrenic – the one that he shows the world, the one he knows he is. The mistake that people make is realizing that they are suffering from this omnipresent disorder and pop the red pill to extradite themselves from the matrix that is this society. Live your life as an un-curable patient and you will be quite at home in this asylum of the world. As long as both the faces of your personality are absolutely believable to you and you accept this practice as a basal necessity for playing your part on the world stage and playing it well, there’s nothing wrong in introspectively gaining acceptance in your existence and philosophically acquiring means for continued subsistence against mortal torture.

AOB: Age of Barefaced-liars

2005-09-27T17:48:00.000-07:00

Been lying left right and centre. Been at it since the time the first syllables came out of my mouth. It’s getting so bad now that the inner me is now lying to who else but me. Trying to desperately convince that all is well and that all that isn’t will soon be. Yeah sure! Play that game on someone who doesn’t know the gig. Me? You are talking to a pro here. You are talking to someone who makes his living selling soaps which promise the buyer that she is going to become Aishwarya Rai the next time she steps under the shower (whoever understood what jojoba oil and orchid extracts were doing in a soap in the first place. And what is jojoba oil? Sounds like some hair oil my grandma would use and buy off some street hawker on a bi cycle.)
This mound of flesh here gets up in the morning telling himself that this is going to be a beautiful day knowing pretty well that he hasn’t seen anything quite like even a span of time that could qualify as a day let alone a good one at that. A beautiful day – that will be the day this bugger will be crowned Mr Universe and Catherine Zeta Jones will divorce Michael Douglas to take him out on a date in a chartered plane….. to her Irish castle…… for a seven course dinner….. with drums of heaven starters….. mulligatawny soup….. Russian Salad…. Italian main course…. French dessert…. there was a point to this but I am forgetting it now. Great dinner though.
Anyway we were talking about my straight faced stretching of the truth till the point that it became a very very tolerable and believable lie. The boss calls telling me that he is going to put his foot through my esophagus if I don’t get the job done within the next four hours. I know that even if I were to scream out loud enough to make Indralok experience tremors of 8 on the Richter scale, the work would not get done inside the day. So what do I tell my boss? You got it! A simple in your face smiling answer. Three words that get him off my back for the next 4 hours. Rest assured after that 4 hours have passed, the E mail server will be down for a couple and then my hard disk will have a problem with detection for about an hour. If it still isn’t quitting time by then and he is still sitting on my head like betaal on vikram, then quite sorrowfully, the third party valve supplier will have to take the stick. Gotta sacrifice the weak for the strong to live on. Not me, blame Darwin.
I meet up with my counter part from the opposite foyer of the building over a cup of coffee in the canteen. We both hate each others guts like only we can. But I need the information out of him so that I can complete my presentation for the meeting the next day. Needless to say I am absolutely professional and ruthless in dealing with this utter disgrace of a techie, a scallywag, the backstabbing guttersnipe, a snooty faced pockmarked villain whom hell itself spat out. What, you ask, do I accurse him with? I go “Hi! Loved that technical evaluation on the new powder manufacturing facility. By the way what exactly was the capital expenditure on that beauty? Guess you must have done a great job on optimizing the process flow. I mean that figure for a project of this magnitude is just unimaginable. Can you pass me the breakup with the supplier’s contact details and the Project Gantt chart regarding the important datelines of completion?” Sweet, simple, honest to God flattery. Don’t take it otherwise; my personal take on the man’s character has nothing to do with the fact that he is the only source of information on which my behind rests right now. Spite is good; the only problem is spite isn’t always right!Barefaced lying - the art of saving barenaked bottoms and more. The science of live today fight same time, same day next week Outlook schedule permitting. The process of having your cake and selling it too. The joy of smiling at your nemesis and calling him your best friend at the same time. The tool to getting most things done the way you want to but the rulebook doesn’t. The one skill to rule over all others for the one who masters this craft can easily pass off about the rest cant he?

Don't Turn Around.....

2005-09-26T17:28:00.000-07:00

Or you just might run into yourself. And take it from someone who does it quite often, the head bump can be quite painful. How many times have I told myself to forget whatever absolutely embarrassing abominable thing that I did, pick up the pieces and move on? But the image just sticks to you like…. like the overlapping fold of the envelope which you have to rip off in order to see how much money your grandparents left you on your tenth birthday. I mean I have a hazy recollection of what my eighth standard teacher said while congratulating me on topping the entire class but I distinctly as hell remember my second standard teacher slapping me on the back of my head just as I was about to launch into the second stanza of “Hathi mere Saathi…” during the third period on a Monday in front of my entire class as I was demonstrating my newly honed skills on the table drumming front. And every time that thought runs through the 65k colors fully functional mental LCD projector that I carry around in my cerebellum, I can swear to god I could just melt and disappear through the crack in between immaculately laid out matching tiles which are a part of a mural on an ostentatiously rich man’s shining bathroom wall.
Why is it that we can file our achievements so easily but our failures haunt us to the ends of the world and back? Why cant I just accept the fact that the first time I ran the 100 m for my physical examination grade in class six, half the girls of the class beat me and had it not been for the burst of speed (yeah baby!) I put up in the concluding 9 m of the race; I believe it would have been a lot worse? I mean I have always been this anti establishment guy in terms of sports who believes the sole purpose he was ever let near a sporting arena was to cheer and jeer in that order respectively. Why then does the thought of my Physical training teacher saying 35 sec at the end line bother me even after so many years? I thought I was a much bigger man than that. Guess I was wrong.
I think the reason why I can’t let go of my failures is that they constantly remind me of all that I could have done differently and been a more successful person today. I keep replaying that entire sequence about multiplying 9*3 in the Maths oral exam in class 1 and answering 18 and hope against hope that maybe just maybe today in the drawers of my mind that kid standing in front of the teacher would answer 27 and get a perfect score on the paper. The sound of the mishit snare in the final roll of the all important solo of Stairway to Heaven still resonates in my head with the intensity of a speaker system with tweeter woofer, sub woofer at full bass even though nobody in the entire audience even noticed it. I guess what makes this a particularly nagging thought is that it ruined what would otherwise have been a near perfect copy of Bonham and boy would I have been proud. The very reason that I missed perfection by the hundredth of a millimeter makes the fault stand out so glaringly. The fact that I keep turning around and stubbing my toe against myself is because all these moments make me painfully aware of the fact that I am what my mistakes make me.
Ever heard of that saying which goes “you are only as strong as your weakest link”? I believe that is the entire origin of these repeated visits to the darkest moments of my life. I don’t want to remember them but these memories are here to stay. They are never going to leave me and so it is that my only chance of survival lies in befriending the devil. I can’t wish the images of me tripping over myself away but what I can definitely do is take lessons from them so then I don’t add to the archives. But come to think of it do I really need to go through so much pain of learning from mistakes just so that I can have mental peace and no haunting memories for the rest of my life? I have to exert my mental faculties with retrospective effect so that I don’t have to exert my mental faculties with retrospection in the future? Am I running around myself in riddles without understanding what I am typing here? Come to think of it, I have had quite a good time at laughing over myself remembering these mishaps. Have had quite a few successful dinner conversations with that 100m “dash” of mine. So I guess as long as I can laugh over my misfortunes and stick the middle finger at all the doofus impressions that I have put up for the world to see, I really don’t mind….. turning around.

Will the Real India Please Stand Up?

2005-09-25T17:47:00.000-07:00

I am fed up of watching salvation movies. Movies that have their theme as the return from the brink of extinction for the entire mankind. Why is it that the US of A always manages to save the day while we Indians are portrayed as chumps dressed in dhotis, kurtas and turbans posing as the worst of the beggars standing in front of Taj Mahal with our heads skywards chanting in some odd chorus calling for “who else” to save our souls? When will we ever have our own brand of a credible ultra suave super ass kicking Gentleman spy? When will Bollywood step onto the mantle of making a crisis movie with India in the thick of soup and one where our very own pilots can kick the guts out of the invading aliens or one where our scientists can churn up some potent lethal gas that can snuff out the lives across all of Asia and winds favoring, hit the shores of liberty within 15 hours and our very own Brig Sharma can step up to the challenge to prevent the evil Mr Dong from playing Dr Doom (and by the way I am sure we can provide enough eye candy for the role of Miss ass kicking damsel in distress in climax needing salvation before bomb diffusion. We did win a handful Miss Universes and some Miss Worlds. Didn’t we)?
I realize that it is not that we haven’t had national crisis movies before. We have had our share of Mr India(s) and Krantiveer(s). What we have lacked is the determination to take it to the global platform. We have underplayed our potential by retaining our talents within the subcontinent. I think I can provide one reason for our failure to become the global cynosure. You see we picked our enemy quite close to home. I mean there are only so many other than the interested parties that you can endanger when all that separates the opposing forces geographically is a picket fence. Our nemesis (in the cinematic ventures) on the other hand decided to pick fights with someone who lives across an entire continent. (Come to think of it, could cinematic interests be one of the causes of both the cold war and the gulf war? Who knows but somebody should check up on that. Probably could be a great storyline for a Brad Pitt starrer flick in the near future. Anyway back to the main show). What it does is give Hollywood an entire playing field across Europe and parts of Asia. Gives them that much more possibilities of staging Air Force One emergencies over a wider geographical expanse. Our poor cousins sitting in Mumbai on the other hand have to console themselves with just the SAARC limitations barring the few exceptions where our problems are exported to the land of possibilities a case in point being Jo Bole So Nihaal (God cant get that movie out of my head.) So am I saying that we should urge the Govt to bug someone across the continental demarcations for the benefit of the silver screen back home? Wouldn’t hurt but we can do with much lesser exertion I think.
How about an alien invasion movie where Infy Bangalore can come up with the all important virus instead of Jeff Goldblum in NASA? Or how about a futuristic fight to the survival for the human species led by Sabyasachi Mukherjee instead of John Connor? I think we can definitely have a winner in an accidental leak of highly confidential designs of fusion bomb developed by a group of researchers in IISc and a cross continent chase of the baddies by an international consortium of super sleuths led by who else but Brig Sharma of the first paragraph fame. And for once can we have an Indian satellite picking up the all important first contact with Extra terrestrial beings? Can we just be creative enough for making one of those darned UFOs land in the Thar desert instead of the Patagonia or the Atacama? Will be a good change of climate for the aliens also don’t you think? I understand that given the Katrinas and the Ritas making Bush look quite the chimp that he actually is, a perfect storm theme quite catches the fascination in the land of opportunities but didn’t we have our own share of Tsunamis? Just because we didn’t name the damn thing Padmavati doesn’t mean that we let go of the billions that could be gained through a successful screening of the same.
Come on people, pull up your socks and let’s not pull any punches here. Let’s for once get our heads down and deliver a knockout performance of our capabilities in saving the world in times of crisis. Let the world know that in case the green hostile aliens actually come raining destructive laser beams, we will be wearing more than dhotis and kurtas, chanting more than hymns ominously sounding like “aa jaa aa jaa….” and our hands will be used for much more effect than raising them heavenward for help from god knows which quarters. Let’s for once show that the nation playing host to one sixth of the world’s population can successfully shoulder the responsibility of the rest. So here’s to our first Bollywood venture of India the world savior. Hope Bollywood’s listening.

Surprised?

2005-09-24T19:22:00.000-07:00

Don’t get me wrong but that don’t impress me much. I have somehow developed this attitude of not getting surprised at anything. Everything that otherwise would elicit that eye popping, mouth gaping response from a reasonable specimen of the human genome is somehow lost on me. I have come to that point of rationalization that my motto on responses to almost all situations is “If it happened, it was possible. If it was possible, it is explainable. Where is the surprise?” Surprised? Read on
This somehow has worked to my advantage at times. Many a soul has confronted me with what he/she has thought to be a truly cinching piece of information but my blank face has drowned their enthusiasm to the point that the cynics labeled me as the dumbest of all creatures and some have actually concluded that I was just too well informed to be unnecessarily astonished. My utter absence of response or retaliation to these have further fuelled controversy over the actual range of my intelligence. Let me come absolutely clear on the topic then. I am neither too gifted nor too deprived. My faculties are reasonably well developed to acknowledge all that goes on in this world and I do not claim to have any sort of super sensory perceptions or abilities that would qualify me as a living relative of Professor Shonku or Uncle Sidhu (only for the fans of Satyajit Ray’s works). It is just that I have decided not to scare my already diminutive wits any further. You say that Charles Lindberg’s crossing of the Atlantic in the Spirit of St Louis was truly remarkable. I don’t entirely disagree with you but the fact that it was accomplished means that it was physically possible and therefore should the muscles in my forehead really need the exercise that you so want to give them? I think not. You want to exclaim the utmost surprise when you learn that Greer Garson’s acceptance speech was the origin of the need for the time limit at the Oscars. Be my guest but it could as well have been the janitor at the Kodak theatre requesting the audience not to litter the place in the most eloquent manner and the result would have been the same wouldn’t it. It is just a piece of trivia and let’s leave it that, shall we? How many people have gaped open mouthed at the very sight of the pyramids and been blown to bits upon hearing that manual labor was employed to haul the rocks to the top and build this architectural wonder? I am in absolute agreement with the fact that it was a monumental task to have been achieved and for that it deserves a standing ovation and not an overarched eyebrow. And tell me if I am terribly out of place when I tell you that the fact that Paul Allen owns the Portand Trailblazers is nothing out of the ordinary. I mean as long as we are decided that a human and not a chimp were to own the team, it might as well be him mightn’t it? And so it is that my refusal to let any piece of enlightening information startle me out of my state of mental dereliction is to many others quite an enigmatic revelation.
But this particular practice is not all bed of roses I tell you. It sometimes leads to a great amount of misunderstanding as well. While it may make you appear as an ultra intellectual super intelligent human being, it takes away that fundamental right to question. I don’t know why but a nod of the head is taken to be a sign that all further questions have been stymied. I might not be surprised to learn that Rutherford got the atomic model out of the solar system but that does not mean that I understand why his model is faulty on account of an electron continuously losing momentum and finally collapsing into the nucleus thereby violating the primary stability of the atom. And nowhere does this make a greater impact than in dealings with the boss. Recently we were discussing a certain project when he passed on a certain piece of news that had just arrived and which would prove to be a major roadblock in the progress of the project. Everybody seated around the table dropped from the sky except for me. I retained my all-knowing-one-with-universe look. One look around the table and my boss decides that I was the one to handle the situation. Heck of a time I chose to raise an eyebrow!

Engineering colleges: Satan’s into Retail

2005-09-23T17:42:00.000-07:00

If you want to become an engineer, take my first advice – find a way to do it without going to an engineering college. If you are too late to take the first one, take my second one – don’t graduate. Ever. And if you are late to take that one too then you know what I am talking about. They play a cruel joke on us engineers especially the ones they keep in the hostels for 4 whole years. They let you into a paradise. Show you that life is one big playfield. Tell you that you don’t need to worry about a thing in the world. Make you believe that you could sleep as much as you like and pass exams that came once every six months sounding a foghorn before their arrival by studying for a night or better still motivating the roll number next to you to do your bidding. And just when you thought life couldn’t get any rosier, they give you your degree and kick you out of wonderland.
I still remember my first day at BHU. That memory of my first 90 (a quintessential engineering tradition of bowing to the seniors during ragging) is still as vivid as it were yesterday. Past the horrors of ragging (which form great fodder for all jokes in future life), you came into a world which was nothing short of Neverland. Discovering the thrills of a nightout and the joys of bunking just because you could was true unadulterated bliss. Sitting at Limbdi corner munching on samosas and downing umpteen cups of tea while vehemently discussing any and every topic from the latest crisis in ones unreciprocated love life to Clinton’s celebrated one was the very anvil on which lifelong friendships were formed. Those all night jam sessions playing anything from Led Zep to Nirvana and then trooping into bed when the rest of the world was getting ready to get out of it are somehow some of the best memories that come to my mind when I start to think about all the good times that I had. And just when you thought life couldn’t get any better, they promoted you to the fourth year. I am sure that it is a well known secret by now that they pulled the greatest coup by making engineering a four year course. If any outsider were to ever find out what a thorough waste of time the fourth year in engineering is, I am sure the rightful authorities would promptly cut it down to size. And then you suddenly snap right out of the dream the day you realize, your visa at Disney land has expired.
The entire set up reeks of conspiracy I tell you. They give you a hard time at ragging so that you start to have some doubts about your life outside home and all and just when you are about to renounce the world as one bad place they jab you in the ribs and say “Just joking my man. You really think we are here to work?” Then begins the whirlwind experience that is an engineering college. All through the first and the second year, you are more concerned about which guy hooked up with which girl and then trashing their romance over a cup of coffee (a great way to make your sagging egos boost by the way. This comes personally recommended) than which partial integral equation is variable separable and which is not. A music fest holds more juice for your senses than a mechanical engineering workshop and your feet would much rather find their way into a common room than the class room. Just when you are getting a wee bit too comfortable with your surroundings, they up the ante a little in the third year. Just give you a little jolt from the blue to test your nerves. You sit up and take notice that maybe the world is not all that good. Maybe now is the time to separate the men from the boys. Maybe just maybe now comes the time when I show my mettle. If only they let you out then. If only they told you what you were thinking was absolutely right. But no, conspiracy I tell you. It is all one big game that they are playing with our heads. They give you (what they would like you to believe) a hard earned promotion to the fourth year. And much like fattening a lamb before the slaughter or the lull before the storm or getting the hero high before pinning the murder on him, they raise the curtains on the biggest fraud that engineering has to offer. They give you, the fourth year. The seventh semester passes like a blimp on the horizon for a jet going at 900 miles an hour what with the highs of getting a job or that all important admission into the grad school, etc. The eighth semester is what I call the Garfield semester. You relax, you chill, basically you could be lying on a beach in Goa for the entirety of the period and not have a better time. And all the while the wheels of time are turning, the machineries of monstrosity are at work and rest assured the rug is going to be pulled from underneath pretty soon
You graduate from college, have a huge certificate to show for your efforts and a grade card saying graduate, summa-cum-laude (which is just a fancy way of saying that I find writing my resume harder than the end semester) and you are feeling pretty good about yourselves when they give you a taste of the corporate life. And then all the sins that you were forced to commit during that forced carnival period of 4 years at engineering comes bearing down on your soul unlike any bad karma that you have experienced ever before. Where you were accustomed to bunking classes at the drop of a hat, try getting into your cabin a minute later than your boss! Where you thought procrastinating on the assignment was actually a way of showing who was the boss, try pulling that off on the latest presentation that you are supposed to deliver and rest assured your boss will truly show you who the boss actually is. While you thought that night outs were “Kewl”, at work they are more on the lines of being an “Owl” a very very tired overworked barn variety at that. Where you believed that holding an intellectual discussion with the professor was akin to putting your head on the guillotine with your head facing the blade, you will absolutely feel at home in the corporate environment though because of entirely different reasons. And where you thought that work was something you did to break the monotony of playing, the monotony and the work still retain their place, just that the play part is woefully absent altogether.All this makes me feel that Satan is indeed playing with our souls. He shows us the joys of the world only to make us feel more wretched. He gives us the demo version and just when you are about to reach the final podium, asks for the registration number for unlocking it promising 32 different levels at same time. While in the Eden of college, he shows you the apple of a “better corporate life” and you bite only to fall and never rise again. The dark lord holds fort at all our repositories of education and knowledge and sends forth his dark forces to haunt you for the rest of your lives as you leave those exalted shores for the doomed pastures of beyond. He makes sure that whenever you remember your hostel room, you always feel a tinge in your heart and a longing to go back only to realize that your soul is trapped forever in the whirl of corporate politics, impossible deadlines and frustratingly shallow Microsoft Office tinkering. So don’t fall into the trap. Don’t enjoy your life for it is not going to last. Don’t make merry in the campus. Lead a life of virtue and astuteness and your soul will not be found wanting at exit. But wasn't that what they told Adam and Eve?

Tom and Jerry: The Story of Life

2005-09-23T17:39:00.000-07:00

I am pretty sure that the instant I was born, God made sure that there was a dinosaur whose existence would also be defined by this very moment. And the primary reason for this beast to come to life would be to chase the hell out mine. And rest assured we have been at it ever since. Dinosaurs! you say? You knew that I was off my rocker by a long way but prone to hallucinations that too of the Barney kind? And I ask you; don't you see this great, big, spiked, fire-breathing, paw-trampling monster snapping at my heels at all moments? Don’t tell me that this dragon called Woe-e-Saurabh is not visible to you. Maybe not behind me but take a look at my face and you would know that utterly-bamboozled, plain-confused, not-at-all-polaroidworthy, please-get-me-out-of-here look was proof that I was Jerry and he was Tom, I was running he was swatting, I was horrified and he was gratified.
Now you may realise my love for Tom and Jerry. It has nothing to do with the cuteness of Jerry's tail (as if I give rat's ass for that) or the funny situations that Hanna Barbara create (nope they don’t catch my wits either). I like the cartoon series purely for the fact that it’s so poignant. I identify with the squirming Jerry as he finds himself in the thickest of soups for apparently no fault of his. Here he is merrily walking down the streets trying to make the best of whatever little legs God gave him as the curtain goes up and not a minute would have passed when out of the blue all the worries of the world would be attributed to his existence and there would be the bane of his life straining its breath to snuff out his. My situation exactly. Here I would be waking up in the morning to a beautiful sunshine and no sooner would I step out of the house, something would sound the horn that the one idiot to take care of all the blame of anything that has gone wrong today or will go wrong in the next 24 hours has left the building. So it has come to be that I have resigned to this cursed existence with my Tom on my back. It manifests daily in the form of make-me-late-for-office traffic jams, has-there-been-an-idiot-like-you-before boss' stares, not-at-all-you-are-the-biggest-one-yet boss' lectures, I-know-you-want-it-but-I-gotta-procrastinate subordinates, gawd-just-kill-me deadlines, wish-I-could-extract-Bill-Gates’-gut Microsoft presentations and a hundred different things but these hyphenated adjectives are becoming a pain.
But if you thought life was all tears for me, then you need to hit those cartoons in all earnest. You have definitely missed the endings. Jerry always makes it to his hole in the end. He might have received a red behind or a bump on the head on the way but at the end of the day, it is Tom who bangs his head on the wall as Jerry prances into his lair. Jerry might be cornered but then again “a cornered mouse is one of the most dangerous creatures”. So you see my dinosaur friend may find all the satisfaction in chasing the living daylights out of me the entire day but inside the confines of the four walls I pay rent for and call my home, this dinosaur is off limits. Yeah I am the king of the universe at the end of the day and didn’t Shakespeare, the great bard himself say “All’s well that ends well”. Ha so there you have it. Who’s your daddy?

But why do I have this sinking feeling that as soon as I step out in the morning, the dinosaur is going to squash me with a fly swatter? Sigh that’s life I guess

Wish You Were Here....

2005-09-21T17:36:00.000-07:00

How’s that for something that I would like people to remember me with? You know all these rich and famous get called onto the TV shows and at the end of the interview they are asked “so how would you like others to remember you?” and you get all the well rehearsed answers like “as a good human being”; “a great person”; “a kind person”; “a good friend”, yada yada yada
So I started thinking what would my response to the above be. You have to keep in mind that I have had quite a long time to plan this response. So, I began with the same old crap about being “a good human being, a great person”. Upon a little analysis I found nothing so special about being a good human being. Needed were two opposable thumbs, an Ok brain to body mass proportion (I know I know, I probably lost out on that criteria) and an upright walking posture and yes I almost forgot a passport proclaiming that you were a part of some social structure. So I thought about the second part, the one about being a great person. Now what exactly was a great person? There were so many things to attribute to a great person that by the time you went through the entire list, it was impossible to actually qualify as one. I know I probably cannot even fathom how to begin on the path of the greatness as a person but I would certainly be very very surprised to find more than a handful who have any idea of where the path actually leads let alone where the end lies. So it was after much thought that I scrapped this one and moved over to something different, thoda hat ke!!
My next well researched response was “a good friend”. Cracked it I thought I had. I mean how could you find a flip side to that one? A good friend! Jackpot! Until that is I realized that how many people would actually be there whom I could be a good friend to? Did I actually want to be such a good friend to so many people that a sizeable mass of people gathering around behind my back would call me a friend at all let alone a good one at that? Heck no! I want to have my share of enemies and spiteful rivals. I want to compete against all odds and have the feeling of being victorious against some and experience the hollowness of losing to others. No, I would not want so many people saying that I was a good friend that the very meaning of the word would have to be distorted. I am accused of many things as it is, please let this one not be on my head. Thank you
Now that I had two seemingly good looking options down the drain, I was once again on square one regarding the all important response. So it was a long time till I hit upon another great sounding line “I want people to remember me as I would remember my parents” ha! Take that you all. Final word. Home run. But I have this pesky conscience that keeps turning up on the most inauspicious of moments primarily to burst my balloons. All it had to say for this statement was “you sure?” I mean how can anyone else understand what my parents mean to me? How do you describe God to someone else? How do you even begin to describe the attributes that define your parents to another person? Caught at the boundary by a flying Jonty Rhodes I felt like. Another brainwave washed down the ditch.
The next seriously good line I came with was “the king of good times” (ok I did not come up with that line but the association of this to the burning question was absolutely mine.) But this fell flat when I considered that not all times were good times and was I going to restrict my remembrance to such a limited and not at all reliable time period? As it is I am kind of not very well known for my wit and let’s not even talk about his neighbor charm. This option was lost from the very beginning due to practicality and feasibility issues.
It took some doing but I slowly put the thought out of my mind. It was partly due to the fact that I was getting nowhere with the answer and partly because I came to realize that the TV interview was increasingly becoming unlikely. So I said why bother at all! And then it happened. I discovered Pink Floyd and I discovered this song called “Wish you were here….” If there were a group of people anywhere in the world at any given point of time who would in their lives feel the need for me to be there for them, it would have to mean that my cause after all not entirely lost in this lifetime. There was still some reason for me to consume my daily quota of food grains. If only some people felt that I was important enough to share their joys and sorrows with me, to include me in their achievements and consult me in their hours of distress, my existence would still be justified. I was still wary of zeroing in on this one. My previous answers had still left quite a painful backstabbing experience. But the more I thought about it, the more I liked this one. Apart from the fact that the tune is simply heavenly and the guitar has a life of its own, these words themselves convey so much more. They encompass that entire bit about being a good friend, human being, person, good times, bad times, everlasting memories et al. And I have a certain tingling feeling in my stomach that I have finally hit upon the one truly defining statement about how I would like people to remember me. Don’t call me your best friend. I don’t mind. Don’t say that I was he the greatest person who ever walked on this earth. I don’t feel bad. Don’t consider me fit for being an important person in your time schedule; I won’t even bat an eyelid. Just for once say “Wish Saurabh was here…” and rest assured that Saurabh would be wishing the same.Long live Pink Floyd.

The Sigma Protocol comes to Bollywood

2005-09-20T20:37:00.000-07:00

I was just finishing up on Sigma Protocol by Robert Ludlum. To say the least I was hooked. Following the exploits of agent Anna Navarro and Ben Hartman crisscrossing through Europe and America, I actually felt quite sad when the book ended. I had almost gotten used to the last minute edge of the seat turn of events and just when either of my two favorite characters (of course hero and heroine) found themselves at the wrong end of the gun barrel/pole/knife (Swiss army as well as the normal kitchen)/sniper gun/shoe/hammer/knuckle/grenade, my faith in god was justly rewarded by their timely extraction to safety. I was truly bitter when my hero’s twin brother had his brains splayed all over the cabin and his lovely wife had to die in the cabin explosion. I am not quite sure about my emotions in the latter one though because my hero escaped unhurt and it eliminated a probable love interest (you know lovely distraught twin brother’s wife, obligation to protect, etc) thereby avoiding any complications. I had my heart already set on Anna Navarro as the heroin. Period. I totally agree with Ludlum on this one.
As the book ended I thought of it in the context of a movie (am still not sure whether they have actually made one or not) and not the usual slick Hollywood production with Ben Afleck (Matt Damon was already taken as Jason Bourne so I chose the next best one) playing the wronged Ben Hartman and Eva Mendes (Latino, hot, DOJ agent.. ok disregard the last requirement and do the math) turning up as Ms Navarro and joining them would of course be John Voigt as Dr. Lenz (German, man of steely resolve and amazing temperament… I think we have our man). Instead I dreamt up of this plot in our very own desi Bollywood pot boiler version. Here’s how it goes:
Zurich and Vienna can retain their places (for obvious want of foreign locales and lesser headache for scriptwriters) in the script but of course New York and Hartman Capital Management would have to be replaced by Mumbai and Parekh Industries (just makes me wonder how many films have we had where the rich heroes have taken refuge behind this ubiquitous word “industries” without any rhyme or reason explaining what it is that the industry is engaged in. Whether it sells T shirts or car radiators!! Nothing. Zilch. Just the omnipresent ABC industries – the biggest most respected firm in all of India with over 20000 staff and offices in all the capitals in the world. Yeah that profile sounds ok). The premise of world management and control of human history post the Second World War through a corporate tie up across enemy lines sounds flimsy to me in the Indian context. Here it is that the writers will have to work overtime but I guess the situation can be easily remedied by setting up an economic tie up between the founding fathers of Pakistan and India and setting up some diabolical scheme to control all the events that have shaped the history of the 2 nations so far through means of corporate stratagems. So we will have some emotional heart rending scenes from the Bombay blasts and Kashmir violence while the unscrupulous businessmen in the background would be shaking hands and having an underground lair meeting in the Swiss Alps. Now that the basic plot is somewhat set, we must turn our attention to the cast and crew. Here’s my pick for the same

Ben Hartman – Raj Parekh (The first part of the name guarantees commercial success and the surname… well.. because I have already named the industries as Parekh Industries in the preceding lines) played by Abhishek Bachhan (yeah baby B)
Anna Navarro – Priya Joshi (Mumbaikar honest female Crime Branch officers are so much more acceptable and believable. I think the name should stick) played by Preity Zinta (I would have begged for Gayatri Joshi but just because the surnames match doesn’t mean that I should give personal preferences priority over pragmatism. After all we are making a commercially viable venture here)
Max Hartman – Dinanath Parekh ( The name itself justifies the philanthropy part and I know you must be thinking Big B because of Abhishek in the role of Ben but wait, I have better use for him.) played by Amrish Puri (no explanations required or given)
Dr. Lenz – ( so tempted to go for Mogambo or Dong or Shakaal but I fear that era is passé) Dr Lee ( I could have easily portrayed someone from the wrong side of Sutlej in this role with the all pervading surname but thought against it in the summer of our friendship. So if Sutlej wouldn’t do the trick, Mansarovar it had to be) played by Naseeruddin Shah (I can just feel the steely glint in his eyes as he slips into the role of the scheming genius. I know there’s this small problem about the nationality part but that can be so easily explained by the fact that he knows all about genetics and has matched his appearances with the normal gentry found in the region of his heroics. For extra effect we can throw in some terms like protoplasmic nucleofusion and mitochondrial intermission. What say? ).
Alan Bartlett – Commissioner Vijay Chauhan (I think I have revealed the actor beyond any doubts whatsoever).

The rest of the cast can just amble in and out whenever they want though I would love Rani Mukherjee to make a cameo reprising the role of Maya (Leisl) and Milind Gunaji as the utterly-irritating-refusing-to-die assassin Suleiman (“The Architect”).

For bringing the venture to the screen I would not trust any one other than Rahul Rawail. Who else can handle the subject with the required amount of maturity and subtlety (see Jo Bole so Nihaal if you have any doubts on the matter). Of course the movie has to have at least 6 songs for Venus cassettes and TIPs industries to file their income tax returns at the end of the year. So we must have one of bereavement right in the opening sequences when Raj is remembering his twin Ram killed in the plane crash. We can have another one echoing the sentiments of betrayal and confusion as Raj escapes and Maya dies. Introduction of Suleiman can be met with a dhinchak item song (there we have even accommodated Koena Mitra in the script) in a Mumbai dance bar (see we even addressed burning social issues in the film. For further current affairs relevance and filing for tax benefit we could probably rope in Muralitharan and Aditya Panscholi to make a guest appearance in this song and Koena Mitra could be listed in the telephone directory under T). Surely a love song is not out of context in the hotel room between Raj and Priya and wouldn’t the audience feel deprived if Raj weren’t to have a signature tune to signal to Priya that he had come to save her from the Jail-cum-castle-cum-evil laboratory-cum-lair extraordinaire of Dr Lee? To round up the list of possibilities of remixes, we must have a blaring, in your face, bass thumping opening score (what better time to jangle the audience’s nerves than the very opening).

And before I end, I mustn't forget to name the venture. My pick for it is "Fisaddi Joshilay" though you can definitely suggest some better ones. Leave that to the higher echelons

There.. that more or less rounds up my contribution towards this year’s revenue for Bollywood. For further queries read the book by Robert Ludlum or go and drown yourself (not much of a difference in the experience really)

i (Pod), Robot

2005-09-19T17:37:00.000-07:00

Scene 1: I am feeling absolutely over the moon as its payday and my pocket is feeling particularly warm. So I hit the electronic mall opposite my house in search for something to take the burden off my little pocket. So it is that I am moving from shop to shop in search for that all important purchase. I had to literally hop skip and jump out of the PDA shop because just hearing the prices burnt a hole in my pocket. Hearing the prices of the new Sony handycams gave me some hope but I found out that I would have to feel over all of Saturn’s and Jupiter’s moons and then for good measure high jump over the ones of Neptune and Uranus before I could get a decent cam fitting the budget and giving me a recognizable picture at the end of the day. And after about an hour’s ambling through all the aisles, it seemed that all that I was good for was not the laptop but its carry case, not the camcorder but its stand, not the digicam but its memory stick. So I was on the verge of kicking the bucket in this fruitless expedition of mine when I noticed this little beauty called iPod sitting pretty on the shelf. Carter would not have been happier at seeing Tutankhamen’s tomb as I was on seeing this priceless piece of art. After making sure that I would not have to pawn myself to own this thing, I gingerly stepped into the elite club of iPod owners.

Scene 2: I am sitting inside the apartment opening the box. I must take a moment here to describe the packaging of the product. Being employed in an industry where packaging is all about grabbing shelf space attention, I daresay I have some understanding of the need of innovation in this field. And there is just one word to describe the box that the iPod comes encased in – “Brilliant”. Buy one yourself to experience the joys as you discover neatly tucked in USB cords, stereo head phones and manual. After eagerly completing the formalities of transferring the songs through iTunes and charging it for the requisite amount of time, I plug in the headphones and get ready for the experience of a lifetime.

The very first thing that strikes you about the whole thing is the simplicity. There is no clutter, no unnecessary buttons. No frills which are not required. The click wheel is a revelation of sorts and just holding it in your hands tells you that this beauty is special. My good fortune that I began the iPod experience with Led Zep’s “Stairway to Heaven”. Let me just say that this is one song which I have heard probably once every week for the past 6 years. But the one that heard on the iPod was completely different than the ones that I had heard all these years. This pocket sized wonder brought out riffs and plucking that I had not imagined possible. I could almost picture Paige and Plant in front of me. Being a drummer myself, I am always kicked when Bonham joins the party around 4:16 into the song. But the kick that I received on hearing the opening roll on the iPod is something that I cannot even begin to describe in words. I could clearly make out every note of Paige’s solo and Bonham’s every snare hit. I just sat there dumbstruck through an eternity of elation that lasted 8:01.
Thank god for shuffle because next came U2 with Beautiful Day. I have never before noticed the bass on this song but it just jumped me on this day. And I don’t even have words for how the chorus sounded. With 16 preset equalizer settings, I could definitely swear that is was indeed “A Beautiful Day”. And so it was with every song that this thing played. It gave me a whole new reason to dump this horrible song called “Lets do balle balle” other than the self justifying factor that Kareena Kapoor is eternally etched into the memory of the beats somehow. The iPod told me how one could ruin a perfectly ok tune. You just had to add a lot of background vocals each having a separate entity of its own so that a recording studio would resemble a Bong Fish market on a Sunday when the shrimp prices have headed south because East Bengal has lost the match against Mohun Bagan. Let it be recorded for posterity to note that iPod gave me the clinching reason to hit the delete button to erase this from my hard disk (anything like this for Ms Kapoor??)
It was about half an hour into this magical journey that the playlist shuffled onto Vincent. I have no knowledge of Vincent Van Gough except for his paintings but I swear to god that for the 5:21 that the song played, I had a tete-a-tete with my man. A couple of Denvers and Macleans later I was feeling kind of drowsy when Chopsuey hit the ear drums. And boy did it hit. My pupils have not dilated that much in their lives. I literally woke up if you know what I mean.In short what I am saying is that you might have a lot of reviews saying that good and bad things about an iPod but to me this has been the single most satisfactory buy of my life and if this is the feeling that females derive from every outing to malls, I retract my earlier remarks on their shopping habits but then again we cannot, dare not compare an iPod to anything else should we? Of course not… its official, the grudge remains.

When You Say Nothing At All

2005-09-18T17:52:00.000-07:00

Years of loquaciousness have quite left bereft of appreciation for the language of the unspoken. Recently when someone put it to me so tacitly and in no uncertain terms that I generally gave my vocal chords the exercise that the rest of body needs, I decided to pay a little more attention to the inaudible and give M/s. hammer, anvil and stirrups with offices in my middle ear a much deserved and well earned respite. So it was that I began a personal mission to take cognizance of the unsaid all around me and I discovered for the first time in my life the existence of an interaction super highway at levels I had not even thought possible of crediting the human body with before I began this little experiment of mine. In fact I became so acutely aware of this ultra high frequency mode of emotion and information transmission that I began rummaging through the drawers of my memory to search for signs that I had somehow been subjected to this routine sub consciously even though I might have not realized it and suffice it to say that I was pleasantly surprised
The earliest that I can remember me being subjected to inaudible conversations is actually quite a painful occurrence. It refers to those big terrifying eyes that Ma would make to deliver a succinct, clear message “you are dead”. The message was loud and clear, clearer than you could hope to get on a 64 channel mixer amplifier system employing 50000 watt Bose speakers. In fact the amount of dilation of the pupils would actually relay the intensity of soup that I had landed myself into. A cursory flash of the eyes meant that there was still hope of salvaging the situation and I would do myself the greatest favor by evaporating into thin air. Any stare longer than 5 seconds meant that nothing less the tear glands working overtime would be sufficient to buy me passage into the rest of my remaining loath existence. Things have since then evolved much between us and now the pupil dilation has been nudged out of prominence by the eye roll and exasperated hand splaying to distinctly convey utter disappointment. But what I still live for is the smile that tells me that I am home. What still sets the worst disappointment in my life right is the phone ring at 8:30 sharp whatever part of the world any one of us may be in. What still gives me the courage to go on is the nod of my father’s head saying that he is there to catch me when I fall.
I would credit my fourth grade teacher as the person who would list second chronologically in my list of unspoken conversations. One look at her face at you could gauge the score in the latest test. A buoyant look on her face while she handed you your paper meant a certain perfect score while an extended frown and a snap of the wrist as she tossed the paper in your direction meant “your parents are going to have a heart attack this PTA”. How’s that for unspoken conversation in shorthand? Her facial expression as she entered the classroom would be enough to tell us whether the day would be god level fun while understanding the social sciences in our society or a scornful drone over how we were neglecting our studies and fritting away the chance to a better life. Looks like I was much better at this when I was a kid than I am now. Much like a skill lost due to disuse.
Now that I put my mind to it, I can clearly see the intensity of emotions as Bhupathi bangs his chest against Paes’. How could I have missed Tendulkar’s sentence as he took stance against Warne? It seriously offends me to find my faculties found wanting so much when I realize now that my best friend’s pat on the back as I won the first prize gave me more joy than anything else in the world. Just wish I had done that more often to more people. How could I not have understood this potent mode of communication when the most glaring example was staring me in the face? Did any of us living in the hostel trying to wade our way through engineering have to proclaim brotherhood to become a part of the family? The understanding that we would see other through thick and thin and each other’s joys and sorrows would be taken as personally as possible was an unwritten unsaid oath that bound us together as strongly then as it does today.And today as I earn my livelihood as a manager, nothing drives home the need for the unsaid better than the little pat on the back and a little nod which just says that a job was well done. I don’t know about you but my day starts better if my Boss greets me in the morning with a smile. Tells me that at least the hour before he starts checking his e mail is going to go ok for me. Now who gets the stare today? I’m also somebody’s boss you know!

The Queen of My World

2005-09-16T17:51:00.000-07:00

She will most certainly sing. Her voice will be as clear as the sound of ripples spreading across a calm water surface. And when she sings, the entire world will stay transfixed. Her voice will need no accompaniment; it shall have a life of its own. Words will come alive in her songs and the night shall dance to her tunes. As she sings, you will feel the softness of her voice touch your soul and leave it begging for more. Her songs will be of joy and laughter. There will be no sadness in them for gloom dare not darken the place which resonates with the sound of her voice.
She will have the most wonderful smile. Something that touches the heart and in your darkest hour lifts your spirits and lets them soar. She will have the power to lift you from the darkest depths of despair and fill you with all the happiness in the world with just a little smile. When she will laugh, the sound shall carry to the farthest corners and spread joy to all who hear it. The wind will carry the sound of her laughter far and wide and the trees will sway to its music.
Despair shall fear her for where she decides to step, her light shines the way. She will bring hope and good cheer to all who are fortunate enough to see her. Children will love her for she will be a fairy to them and elders will shower her with all their blessings. Her friends shall envy her for there would be no one like her in the whole wide world and she will be the darling of everyone everywhere.
She will be the queen of all that God created and her reign will be one of gaiety and nobility. She will be just in her disposition and fair to all. She will not fear to reprimand the unjust nor be found wanting in her reward to the true. Her wisdom will be her constant companion and she will be renowned for her constant vigil of truth.

Ok Mr King-of-Wishful-Thinking, now that you have described The Queen of the entire universe herself, do you really think that she would hook up with a hick like you and elevate you to the position of the de facto King of the Universe? She might be able to lift your spirit from the darkest depths of despair and all that but let’s not let our imagination run wild here. You? Really? You sure you’re not drunk? Drugged maybe? Just plain whacky?
Lets then get to the brass tacks. Now that we have made Shakespeare proud of ourselves in the preceding sentences, what would really be my dream woman like?

She would be no Lata Mangeshkar but she would definitely be able to carry off a ghazal perfectly and I would lie in her lap and spend the entire night listening to her voice as she moves effortlessly from Raag malkaus by Parveen Sultana to the latest AR Rahman song sung by Chitra and then sings me a Janis Joplin or Dolores O’ Riordan. She will most definitely laugh heartily and yes that includes my wisecracks too. She will have her share of woes but she will have a spirit that is truly indomitable. She would definitely be my pillar of strength and therefore she would have the strength to bear the worries of not one but at least two people. She might not rule the entire world but her kingdom shall definitely have one faithful subject… me. She will not be the picture of perfection for I shall not want her to be so faultless that I am myself ashamed to confront her. But she will have an unwavering sense of right and wrong and her analysis of the situation shall be objective as it can be and still carry with it the warmth that it needs to give. And while her judgments in all other fields may invite criticism rarely, her culinary prowess will most definitely be beyond comparison. She will create the most sinfully delicious dishes ever and I will happily be the lab-rat for any of her gourmet experiments. Most of all, she would be willing to listen to all that I have to say and I know that can be quite an earful. To be my perfect companion, she would definitely require some pots of patience in her kitty.
Will she then be the most perfect woman in the world? Do I want the best woman in the world to be the one who I finally love? Did I just hear someone say “Dream on buddy!”? Well no she wouldn’t be the grace of Princess Diana, wisdom of Jijabai and courage of Laxmibai all rolled into one but what she would have to be is “just right”. She will not be Juliet for Romeo but Monica for Chandler, not the goddess Aphrodite but the plain Meg Ryan for Tom Hanks in “You’ve got mail / Sleepless in Seattle”. All she needs to be is the perfect foil to my inadequacies (I know that’s asking a lot but then we are imagining here aren’t we?) and I am sure I will still have the ending of a “happily ever after” etched into the story of my life. And what, you ask, shall I sing for my significant other?
(Ahem… cough cough)You fill up my senses, like a night in the forest……….. (this is where she picks up and I lie back to close my eyes and listen to her)

Comfortably Dumb

2005-09-15T17:34:00.000-07:00

I don’t claim to be the sharpest tool in the shed. No I have no intentions of being the most intelligent being on the planet. What is my intention of life then? Remaining just the way I am. And prey what is that you ask. Well I like to call my state of stationary mental evolution as the state of being “Comfortably Dumb”.
Of course you want to know the symptoms of such a degenerate state for fear of relapsing into it yourself but don’t worry it isn’t so bad after all. Once you realize that all the people surrounding you have faculties that far outstrip yours in whatever sense you wish to imagine, there comes a time in your life of profound realization that no matter how much struggle and kick, you are never going to make the cut to the podium anytime in the foreseeable future. It is then that you succumb to reveling in being the average Joe (hope Joe doesn’t mind). And I know it sounds like the lamest defenses ever but it really isn’t all that bad. Not having to live up to any expectations or conform to any standards of performance actually has quite a charm of its own. Of course you get to sip the soda from the sidelines while the actual superstars garner all the glory but who said clapping for the players on stage doesn’t have its own advantages? For starters you can hoot and pass comments. How’s that for compensation? The journey to such a profound realization though has been long and winding and a little hard on the small ego that I harbor but reality has taken so much of a toll that it now rarely ventures out into the open. Here’s how it went for me.
When I was a kid, it was quite the fad to be an all rounder. Back in school, you were standing in a row of uniformly clad zombies in the morning assembly when suddenly out stepped this guy all smartly decked to receive his prize that he had won for reciting the third verse of the fifth chapter of the Bhagvad Gita in the fifth note of the third octave at the 23rd All India Geriatric Convention. What I neat idea I thought. All I had to do was do something that the other kids were not thinking of and go and win a prize in some obscure event organized by the street’s rummy playing association and of course stand up to receive the prize at the morning assembly in front of the whole congregation. What my small little brain failed to foresee was that the kids next to me in the x and y coordinates had also latched onto the same idea and just my luck that we all aimed at the same Rummy player’s association. So went my first crack at stardom
By the time I hit middle school, I realized that physically it was impossible for me to have the remotest possibility of performing in the sports arena without endangering the entire neighborhood with a 7.8 earthquake. So I decided that I would seek specialty in the game of the mind which is so popularly called quizzing. Big mistake that one. Realized quite late though and I was once again left clapping as the guy who was able to correctly identify Mel Gibson in drag from the visual clue claimed the prize.
By the time I hit high school, I was getting desperate for my shot at success. I wasn’t doing too badly in class and fortunately for me my parents had decided to put me through some musical instrument training right from childhood. In my desperation to be conspicuous, I hit the road to the school orchestra and decided to make my mark there. Oh I was conspicuous alright and the only reason my music teacher didn’t kill me was because I left the school.
College was where the realization that I was a good for nothing hick finally beginning to sink in. Being constantly around guys and gals whose IQs were always more than double the square of mine was quite a humbling experience. But I guess there was still some strand of DNA in me which thought of giving it a final try. So I hit the drama circuit as a, would you believe it… background musician. Doesn’t get any lamer than this. I wasn’t Romeo romancing Juliet on stage. I was just the guy who played C# when he did so. I wasn’t Ram battling Ravana in front of the audience. No siree, I was the all important drum beats of the Monkey army! Finally it hit me that I was doing some irreparable damage to my already non existent credibility by continuing on this path and some drastic measures were in order.

I took the leap of faith alright. I leapt into oblivion. I left the stage never to return. I took my seat in the audience and started watching the masters at work. And finally it dawned on me what I was good at. I was a keen observer and a good critic. So what if I couldn’t gather up the courage to face the crowd as Seleucus Nicator, I could trash the ridiculous skirt this guy was wearing. So what if I couldn’t for the life of me appreciate the fact that Don Mclean’s Starry Starry night was a tribute to Vincent Van Gough, I could cheer my classmate when he gave the correct answer and grab the chocolate as he came down from the stage and decided to share his loot with his roomy. So what if I couldn’t keep the beat in even the simplest 4 by 4 routines, I could tighten the last bolt on the snare of the drum set and feel elated as the lead guitarist let me hold his E string when he needed to take a leak. Yeah baby I had truly arrived! Some people might have seen me hamming as the drummer of a rock band but believe me that was just a passing phase. So you see that I had finally found my calling in being…. Nothing! All my life I strove to be something and I found peace in quite the opposite. I had existed in the hope of making excellence my credo but realized that a change of credo was the order of the day. All my life I thought of scaling “The Wall” but today I am “Comfortably Dumb”.

Mechanical Engineering: A study of Life

2005-09-14T17:44:00.000-07:00

There is something they teach you inside a Mechanical Engineering classroom that neither the teacher nor the student is aware of but sets apart this breed of engineers from the rest. There is something in the pursuit of robustness of equipment design and greater efficiency of a heat engine that teaches one more about life than anywhere or anything else. I recall a certain movie which said “A Mechanical Engineer has a certain fire inside him”. While we just adopted the slogan as a vindication of our superiority in as childish a manner as we could, you cannot escape a certain truth in the statement now that I look back at it. There was something about being with 40 other mechanical engineers for those 4 years that I believe equipped me for life better than anything that I have experienced before or since.
This is one art of science which teaches you that something as fragile as glass can withstand the pressure of a hundred elephants given that the design is right. It is here that you realize that if you sucked the air out to create enough vacuum, water would begin to boil at room temperature. There could be no greater education in toughness than an experiment on what else but toughness! As you realized that hardness was just a surface property and that toughness was generally inversely proportionate to it, some secrets of behaviors of people suddenly became crystal. No sermon on perfection could be as telling as a lathe job turned to micrometer surface finish. The lesson about striking when the iron is hot does not come alive anywhere other than a Black-smithy workshop. And right next door in the carpentry one learns that the slightest wrong stroke with the jack plane can ruin a carefully crafted job in a second.
Where else do you see the latest computers with the biggest and fastest processing capabilities engaged in the force analysis of…… a shaft. The newest technology analyzing the oldest problems. Kinda demnstrates the interdependence of things and the fact that everything whether old or new can and will make its mark in this world. The wonder of realizing that a 3 D cube when viewed at angle that is equally inclined to all the axes and represented on a 2 D plane paper will actually have the outline of a hexagon makes you realize the fallibility of appearances like nothing else. All those reams of notes on microstructure told one in no uncertain terms that unless the grain size was right and all the slip systems had been locked at the grain boundaries, the subject matter would keep yielding to pressure. I lay no claim to be a master of turbo machinery but my biggest take out from the entire course was the vulnerability of an equipment rotating at 3000 rpm to something as inconsequential as an air bubble and insufficient pressure, kind of a humbling experience to realize the potential of even the most innocuous thing to cause the greatest harm. The music of the gears moving in sync is a perfect analogy to the rhythm of life when everything is going just right. A sudden sound out of place and you know that something has interfered.
I remember the amount of cribs that we used to come up with because we saw ourselves rotting away while filing that confounded piece of metal in oppressive environs of the fitting workshop when our counterparts in the Comp Sc deptt were busy developing codes for multimedia applications sitting in air conditioned laboratories. But I also remember the joy on my face which more than made up for the beads of sweat on my forehead when I saw my finished job at the end of a grueling 4 hours. Kind of taught one the real value of a hard work.
In many ways, Mechanical Engineering taught me more to face the world outside than anything else. I was pleasantly surprised to find that the same principles that I used to make the most robust designs would keep me steady in my personal life also –

“Design strength must always be greater than maximum applied stress otherwise failure will result.”

Forgive them Lord for they know not what they do

2005-09-13T17:41:00.000-07:00

They did it. They went and trashed IIT-JEE. The one sense of pride I had in qualifying arguably the “toughest undergraduate selection procedure in the world” has been taken from me. What is being touted as a replacement is nothing less than a slap on the face of all those who spent restless hours spread over innumerable nights trembling with trepidation over what was going to confront them inside the examination hall on that fateful day. The day you gave the JEE. There was no escaping the gravity of the moment. The absolute elation of coming out of the hall and discovering that you got at least one of the 10 questions right and that put you right in the top percentile of all the gawking trembling guys on the campus. I ask you, will the guys giving JEE now have any of the amazing memories to share that we have? Will they ever understand the joy of spending an entire weekend to solve just one question of Irodov and exulting at the thought that they had just entered the Physics’ extremely-long-walk-to-the-hall-of-fame?
And I haven’t even started to trash the explanation that they have come up with to justify this travesty. Apparently they feel that this drastic (try foolhardy) measure is absolutely necessary to cull the “Influence of Coaching Classes”. They are trying to tell me that all my God level friends who made it to the topmost percentile among all of us (try top 100 AIR) were bumbling idiots who made it across the hurdle of those measly 30 questions (10 each in Physics, Chemistry and Mathematics) just because they got together in some stupid little classroom for 2 years and practiced hard to crack the paper. Let me tell the esteemed people right up there trying to make life easier for poor little students that if I had strained all the muscles that make up my brain and added the ones in my peripheral nervous system just for extra effect and just as a contingency plan prayed standing on one foot to the entire Hindu pantheon for 2 continuous years and then gone to give the paper while my friend had just woken up from a year long slumber and come to give the paper in his nightgown, his position would still have been AIR 1 and I would still be passing off mine as my ELO rating! The people who made it across did not do it because they were coached to do so! They did it because they had it in themselves to understand the magic of complex numbers and the beauty of interfering light waves. These geniuses (and I am proud just to have been able to hang out with some of them) could solve linear differential equations in their sleep. Now I went to these so called “Education Sweat shops” myself and believe me that it took me an entire day to close my jaw once I saw an AIR 3 give the correct answers to 10 straight integrals in a MATHS QUIZ RAPID FIRE ROUND. If the gravity of the above situation doesn’t strike you, consider this. The time span for the answers was 60 seconds. That means that the guy heard and answered 10 integrals at the rate of one per 6 seconds! Hell, I can’t draw the integral sign that quick.
If anyone benefited from these coaching classes, then yes I raise my hand. My muddled wits were cleared by attending these places where just by being around smart people made me take a peek into the fascinating world of Organic bio-molecules and their electron affinities. Kind of the best example of a Pygmalion effect. And I ask you – is that so wrong? Just because I got “tutored” and got better at science through hard labor with some guidance, is it justification enough to turn a winner’s circle into a dance floor for all? By this particular argument, I would recommend that all Corporates roll up their HR departments and ask them to go home because isn’t skill improvement of employees through relevant coaching an integral condition of their employment? Hell, by that same argument, I would call upon the Government to close up first its HRD ministry and then the entire education system so that only the meritorious shall rise to the required positions by displaying their ingenuity. By that same argument every person should rediscover the wheel and the theory of relativity in his lifetime. If coaching were so bad, then we should abhor transfer of knowledge. Every wannabe engineer might just as well stay back home and demonstrate that he can understand the meshing of gears and then he wouldn’t need to go to the college to become a certified Mechanical Engineer would he? And it is not that these Coaching Classes are running a Mafia racket or anything where either you go to them or leave your dream in the garbage. Last I checked they still operated within the limits of democratic principles where the choice of enrollment was with the student! I have myself known quite a lot of people who have made it through the hallowed portals on their very own. So where is the all pervasive problem I ask you?
This entire situation is like hacking away at the problem that never was. If you wanted to reduce the stress associated with the exam, try and reduce the exclusivity that is so associated with being an Engineer or a Doctor in this country. Try to make a scientist as glamorous as a Computer Engineer and you will have a good start to a healthy solution. You cannot hope to reduce stress at the cost of meritocracy. It is like giving the same passing grade irrespective of whether you scored 100% or 80% or 50% because the criteria was that you need to get more than 40%. How do you separate the geniuses from me?
If only parents would realize that the IITs weren’t the end of the world and that my friend who went to DU is earning the same big bucks as my other friend who graduated Summa-cum-Laude CSE IITD some 10 years into their respective careers, there would be lesser hue and cry about exam stress. There would be a more level playing field. There would be happier faces inside each home and lesser phone calls to the psychiatrist! If only the Government would decide to make other fields more lucrative by giving them the necessary infrastructure instead of having meetings on how to reduce examination standards, we would retain the best of both worlds. What we are witnessing today is an attempt to scale Mount Everest. Only, instead of climbing the required 8848 metres a la Tenzing and Hillary, we are trying to blow up the mountain base to bring the peak to the ground.

Happy selecting. May the best brains still win!!!!

Venus is a Shopping Mall

2005-09-12T17:45:00.000-07:00

This comes from a lifetime of experience of going to the market with Ma. I would have never stumbled upon this topic as a writeable material but a chance e mail from a certain friend gave me the idea to pen it. I only used to grumble when Ma would drag me all the way to the market any time there was any requirement of amusement but when this particular friend of mine described a certain Sunday that she had entirely spent within the confines of a shopping mall as pure heaven, I decided to take up the cudgels. So here goes.
If that thing about women coming from Venus holds any water, then I am willing to bet my last breath that they have the biggest shopping mall that man can ever imagine somewhere underneath that sulphuric acid atmosphere of the planet. You don’t believe me? Talk to any woman about the experience of shopping and I dare you to come back and tell me that deriving joy from this seemingly trifle activity is not ingrained in their genes. It’s almost like the operating system that is installed in the computer at the time of its assembly. It is almost the single most important BIOS instruction that was embedded into the ROM chip that goes into a female mind – “Thou shalt exult at the sight of a shop”
What beats me is the joy that a female can derive by ruminating in front of a shop just looking at the thing of desire and picturing herself in a position of using the thing. Well if it were me, I would either get in, buy it and demonstrate physically the elation of owning that certain piece in question or decide that my pocket had not yet achieved maturity to handle the responsibility of owning that and move on. Yes I would dream about owning it but that would be in the confines of my own room while my eyes would be undergoing R.E.M. I have no joy in making shopping a vocation. I cannot for the love of me understand how can someone spend 8 hours inside a mall and call it a fruitful exercise at the end of the day? I mean I know what I want to get. I know where to get it. In this day and age of the internet, I can even get onto the net and find out how much this darned thing costs. Hell if I were a bit more enterprising and a little more courageous to trust the Paypal system of electronic money exchange, I would have happily renounced this absolutely jocular task of going to the market.
Still not satisfied? Well in that case, riddle me this – how long does it take for you as a male to buy a pair of trousers and a shirt once inside the store? My dear how much choice do you have? It is the same old pair of jeans and your shirt can just not get any more imaginative than the chromatic deviations that you can take your pick from. Be my guest but my guess (and I daresay it is quite a good one) is that you would be in and out of the activity in a matter of minutes. Let me now educate you about the various stages that are involved when a female (for example my own Ma) decides to undertake the monumental task of buying a piece of clothing.

Stage 1: Recon – This is the most important part of the entire process and serves as the prep stage for all future courses of action. If you are the unfortunate soul acting as the sidekick in this expedition, then prey you would do well to pay attention at this point of time. This is the stage when the scene is thoroughly evaluated for potential. Many a times further interactions will be nipped in the bud because of the failure of the ambience to enthrall the audience even when the thing required is right under their noses and at others just because the air was just right, a totally new quest will be launched entirely on the spur of the moment. It is the latter that has been so famously documented as “Impulse Buying”. Be whatever the case, this stage is the one that has the potential to snowball into a major time pass. So if you are in the mood of catching the all important last ball of the innings on the TV back home, you had better roll up your sleeves and show some enterprising attitude to convince the centre of discussion of this piece that she would do well to stick to her product and this place. Pay attention to the seemingly trifle words – “Her” and “This” in the last line. While the former will cause your pocket to thank you, the latter will be instrumental in getting you back home in time for what we discussed above

Stage 2: Umm.. – This part of the passage is brought to you courtesy of the keen observational tendencies of yours truly. Umm.. indicates that choices are being evaluated. The number of umm..(s) is a very important nuance in the subtle art of managing shopping (some might also call it a science). It indicates the number of variables that are going to be involved in the final solution of the fragile partial differential equation called “Purchase”. And any mathematician worth his salt would tell you that the more the umm..(s), the more are the chances of your suffering a nervous break down right in the middle of the shop.

Stage 3: Hmm.. - Let us now concentrate on Hmm.. If you thought that umm.. management was all that you had to worry about, meet his big brother, the esteemed Hmm.. Hmm.. indicates that while a decision has been reached, it is still nebulous and it is now that the ball is in your court. Take it from me when I tell you that now you will decide whether you want to axe this thing or axe your own foot! She will turn to you now and want your opinion on her buy. Attention my dear friend. If your response is too quick, she will know that you just want to get it out of the way and so your powers will be vetoed and the entire unending loop of evaluate, frustrate storekeeper, evaluate again, frustrate storekeeper more will start again. If you on the other hand take too much time to come out with the response, you have lost the game once again. So you must have a very measured timed response which should be something on the lines of “excellent choice. Nothing could be better. Pack it”

Stage 4: Hasty retreat – Don’t rest on your laurels until you have truly finished the race or in other words don’t take the shopping expedition for over until it actually is. Make sure that the exit is absolutely un-enthralling and nothing remotely interesting dots the sides of the path of retreat. This will require careful consideration and scan when you enter the place to find the best escape route and if I were a little bit overly cautious I would actually recommend visiting the area a day in advance to plan this part better but let’s be rational beings here. With a little practice I am sure you will do well in this part.

So was this entire thing to mock the living daylights out of the entire female species? Well I did start out with the intention of doing so but I just realized that the entire process of shopping I just described was for buying a pair of trousers for …… me. To be absolutely honest I have not had the courage to buy a single piece of clothing or shoes or ok anything without my Mom accosting me to the shop and making me do the needful. Come to think of it I would have been an absolute pig had this person not taken it upon herself to make a decent human being out of me. Yes she can be a pain when she is in her elements inside the confines of a shop. Irrespective of the item she is buying, she wants the buy in of the entire entourage that is accompanying her on this visit. But I am kind of pressed to realize that it is not always that she undertakes these trips for her personal benefit. In fact that happens to be quite the minority. At most times, I do happen to be the beneficiary of these expeditions. So am I still going to grumble over this entire episode? You bet I am but I am going to love her all the same for it.

God: The Eternal Debate

2005-09-11T18:28:00.000-07:00

Do I dare think that I will be able to solve this question that so many have tried to answer before me (and all of them have been endowed with such better faculties that mine)? Why then have I chosen this topic? While I may definitely not be able to settle the debate that I have decided to rake up here, I will answer the later question. It is just a last ditch attempt to salvage some pride by adding an entry to my blog. While I do not credit myself with being a penner of any great importance but I have definitely been able to enthrall most of my English teachers through school with my compositions at the drop of a hat. The trend did continue through college where I contributed with great enthusiasm and zeal to most of the mags that circulated in the campus. So it was with much glee that I opened up this blogging account hoping to fill reams and reams of megabytes with my thoughts. But supposedly the electric medium does not quite agree with me. So I have kind of hit a writer’s block (if I can legitimately use that phrase for my caliber) for the past few months with the result that the blog has been mostly ruminating blank. So thought why not start with something simple to bring back the spark. And what could be easier than our dear Ol’ Almighty?
So who is this great person (just to be politically correct) that we turn to at every nook and corner of our lives? Some say God is the supreme human being, the one man/woman capable of doing all that is natural and supernatural, the supreme commander of all the forces good or evil, the ruler of the entire Universe and any other if they exist, in short he/she is THE ONE. Some others have remarked that God is formless and shapeless and any attempt to classify as him or her is fruitless. God is nothing but the pure energy. They go so far as to enlist Einstein (yes the great man himself) as one of their chief protagonists who so famously declared that all matter is eventually convertible completely to energy. So this school of thought is quite scientific in declaring that God is indeed the one single control centre of all the energy that flows in the entire Universe and all the parallel ones that may or may not exist. So it is but natural that this source of energy controls the course and flow of all other matter that dares to stamp its existence in its presence. And then there are of course the pesky agnostics who have so rebelliously declared that there is after all no such supreme majestic being or force who can lay claim to authority over all shapes and forms that exist here. In short they have said THERE IS NO GOD.
So am I trying to take sides here and point out which school of thought is correct and which is not? Am I that off my rocker that I am even trying to hazard a guess at that? I assure you that I have no such fascination or inclination. The reason I am writing is not to doubt or confirm HIS presence but to ask why in a personal frame of reference. Why is it that I want him to exist or not to exist? What will happen to me if he does or doesn’t have a presence?
We as human beings are quite fickle creatures and I daresay no one would challenge me there. So it is quite natural for us to fall prey to our petty natures and make numerous mistakes. I would sincerely be hard pressed to find a single individual who claims to be above the need for absolution and still be made of the same blood and flesh that governs my constitution. But what is happening to me here? Why did I suddenly take refuge in the comfort of the plurality of humans instead of referring to my singular follies? Didn’t being part of a larger mass of failing individuals give me a valid reason for my mistakes, something like a passport to failure? After all I did start the inquisition for my personal reference. That is exactly the reason I feel that I need the higher being to exist. To take the blame for all my shortcomings. I don’t know about others but I feel very comforted by the thought that I can look heavenward at every small mistake I make and transfer the blame for my inadequacy.
The same is true for the opposite situation also. I would also like to have someone seated at the supreme pedestal whom I can thank for all the successes in life in the hope that I will continue to receive his graces in future and scale new heights. It kind of gives me hope for future successes to know that today God is on my side.
So while my rational mind tells me that this belief in God at least for me stems from my inner need to depend on someone and that this need would go away if I had been emotionally more independent, the same consciousness is also blessed for the fact that there is this refuge in my mind that I can turn to for anything and everything that happens to me and emerge a stronger individual after a conversation with him/her. So do I really need to answer the question for any piece of mental satisfaction? I guess not. He might be real or he may be a figment of my imagination; He may be energy or he may just be the same nucleolar composition as me; He might be present on this world or on the next or not at all. The fact of the matter is I don’t really care as long as I can still utter those divine words – OH MY GOD!!

Amen!

Living Alone: Born to be Wild?

2005-09-11T18:24:00.000-07:00

I have been living alone for the past one month now and let me begin by acknowledging that I haven’t learnt this much about life ever before in my life. By living alone I don’t mean just staying away from home. I mean managing your entire life yourself. The whole deal! The entire thingy about washing clothes, ironing them, washing utensils, drying them, cleaning the entire apartment and yes the greatest bane of all – cooking!!
I have been so pooped with all the responsibilities of living alone that I started doing some real intense contemplation. About the absolute necessity of all the abovementioned items and here’s what I came up with.

Washing Clothes: yeah! Unless you have oodles of money which enables you to buy a new set of clothes every day you live, you have to wash them and dry them so that you can wear them again. Unless of course you have resolved to live like a pig which I can assure you is not very welcome socially. So unless you want to be an absolute social outcaste, washing clothes is indispensable. Yes there is the obvious option of outsourcing this job to a hired maid or the local laundry but in the absence of a regular time table like mine, both the options are a tad difficult to maintain. So the best deal is of course to lay your hands on a washing machine and hold off the activity till you run out of the last good set of clothes that you have. Then when the opportune moment arrives, gear up all the steely reserves of resolution that you have and plunge headlong into the task.

Ironing clothes: This one is not a particularly disturbing problem in India because of the abundance of the roadside press-wallahs but once you have stepped out of the safety of the country like I have and land in a place like Indonesia, you will come to realize the importance of the innocuous press wallah in your life. Believe me when I tell you that my manhunt for a press wallah in these lonely streets of Indonesia has been nothing less than Bush’s for Osama and suffice it to say that we are both relentless in our pursuits. But while the latter is at a point of no return-or-progress, I have had to resort to “do-it-yourself” for a socially acceptable survival

Cleaning the Apartment: It was a day of great revelations that I finally understood why Ma would get so angry with me eating on the bed or the sofa? I thought she was being overly fastidious in my education of etiquettes and manners but what I didn’t understand then and I am woefully aware of now is that it is all a part of a much bigger picture. The joy of curling up on the sofa and eating that pepperoni and cheese Pizza while watching your favourite TV show disappears when the next morning’s reconnaissance yields a pig sty where last night’s dining area was. Even for someone who does not quite mind the whole deal about being a pig inside the confines of his four walls which he pays rent for, cleaning the place where one lives is not an escapable affair. I mean I could shirk the responsibility for a week but when the glass top centre table lost its ability to refract light through its thickness, I decided it was time I took up the mop and restored some credibility to the apartment. So yes, even this checks out in the list of bare minimum acts of survival.

Key watch: Never before in my life have I realized the pain of losing a key. It’s worse than the most humiliating day in your boss’ cabin. At least there you know that you can get back at him in your mind once the day is over and you are curling up back at home cursing his forthcoming generations to baldness. But what do you do when you realize that after that horribly long workday you have come back to the one place which you call home and God Almighty! You have lost the keys to the apartment? Once the initial phase of four letter words is over, the truth dawns that some action is called for. So unless you are Al Pacino in “The Score” or Richard P Feynman, you are in for a very trying time – one that will test the very core of your values and tell you whether you are a man or just that goddamned idiot who has to live alone!

Washing Utensils: I am absolutely sure that this task is an act of God to drive home the fact that no right comes without a corresponding duty. You have the total right and freedom to enjoy that bowl of dinner but beware for you have to wash the utensils so that you can eat again the next night. It is like the sword of Diocles. I could never quite enjoy my food because of this particular doom that awaited me after that sated belly. That was all rectified when I resolved not to eat until I had cleaned up all the dishes before I sat down to enjoy my meal. I now have a much more satisfying meal experience knowing that at least the cooking utensils are clean and only the ones I am eating in right now need to go under the tap. Amen!

Cooking: I can understand the man who developed the science of detergents to give us dish washing powder or laundry powder (though I would very much like to see him serve a life sentence for the same) but it was definitely a fiend in human form that first discovered that food needed to be cooked!! I mean Early Man was quite content in plucking fruits from the trees and killing his prey and devouring it without the need for “simmer for 5 minutes. Stir till light brown and serve with a garnishing of grated cheese”. And this becomes all the more frustrating for someone like me who has been brought up on a diet of some of the most aromatically stimulating, taste bud exhilarating, sinfully delicious cuisines (that’s the primary reason why Kofi Annan might just decide to pin Ethiopia’s starvation on my size). It is only someone who has been in my place who can identify with me in my reverence of Ray Croc (Mc Donald’s) and Tom Managhan (Domino’s). It is now when I have to taste the utter rubbish of my labors on the cooking range that I realize the root of my love for my Ma and my Grandma. It is here that I publicly acknowledge that you people were placed on Earth so that I could distinguish between good and bad (food). Thank you God for these 2 angels for I may have never known what any food other than instant noodles tastes like. Amen!

I heard that it was highly unusual for American kids to stay with their parents once they had hit the later part of their teens and most of them rent their own places to live. It was there only that I also heard that they did this to emphasize their independence. I bet that these poor fellows given the chance to speak up their internal feelings would just like to pack up lock stock and barrel and crash into their lovely bed back in their parent’s house. I know I would.

A Nobel for Instant Noodles

2005-09-11T18:22:00.000-07:00

This goes out to the man who came up first with the idea for instant noodles. Buddy, you are God’s greatest gift to a Bachelor who has to stay alone. I am writing this to acknowledge your genius, your absolute brilliance and want to tell you that they committed the greatest injustice by not awarding you with a Nobel. So what if there was no category perfect enough for this particular invention to qualify in, I am sure if a little effort had been made, all the Nobels in that year would have been bagged by this gem of a discovery. I bow to thee o great one for saving my life and giving me the confidence that I require to step into the kitchen. So what if the only award that this product ever got were a thousand clones and a measly industry worth a few billions, in my book you are always the biggest winner.
How many bachelors have confessed to coming home to a bowl of steaming hot instant noodles and having the best sated tummy experience of their lives? How many days have I myself spent curling up on the sofa after a hard day savoring a bowl of my favorite food in the whole wide world? I shudder to think what I would have done in a world without this particular product. Not only would I have been forced to eat out every single day of my existence alone, I might even have had to go the whole distance and learn the actual art of mixing flour and rice and all things nice to cook myself an eatable meal! May I once again take this moment to kneel down to my man’s (no offense, it could very well have been a woman! Still trying to find out the trivia related to the origins. Would be very interested in knowing the same) greatness.
How do you show your reverence to something that holds such a wide variety of possibilities? This amazing product is a playground for both the gourmet maestro and moi – the bumbling idiot in the culinary arena. While the former may decide to accentuate the delicacy with something a la extraordinaire, I am quite content to add a few scrambled eggs and I am damn sure that at the end of the day, the levels of satisfaction from devouring the end result would not be very different in either case. If ever there was some truth in that story about Ambrosia, I am nominating that this as the closest cousin of the same. God you might be reveling in your nectar and stuff but we on earth have our very own supply of divinity. It comes packaged in a flow wrap along with sachets of flavoring agents and all it requires is warm water and 2 minutes of stirring on the stove.
I would like to end this by saying that whoever it was that came up with this amazing idea was someone who understood bachelors better than anyone else in the world. And if he/she is listening, I would like to tell him/her that he/she brings a smile to millions of singletons like me all around the world everyday. If it were in my power, you my man would have a NOBEL for your efforts any and every year possible. May god bless you for all eternity. Period.

Gizmos anyone?

2005-09-09T23:47:00.000-07:00

As I wait to catch a flight at one of the numerous airports of the country, I find myself surrounded by the various specimens of human beings each different than the other and exhibiting that rare trait that distinguishes him from his fellow brethren in not only his fingerprint but also his electronic signature. Yes! I am talking about the electronic revolution that has taken us by storm in the last few years. It is now no longer enough to distinguish yourself by sporting a crisp suit and carrying a Mont Blanc while you board the plane. Nowadays what counts is which mobile phone are you carrying on your self and what is the size of your laptop screen? For the discerning connoisseur, a further differentiator is how many! of these gizmos can he seamlessly integrate into one single conversation? If one is not able to hook up his latest blackberry to his hands free and shout at the top of his voice about the latest 5 million deal he struck today and then pull out his wide screen laptop to check if he had the number for Nimmo mausi in his outlook folder, he finds that all his precious possessions have been far underutilized and an opportunity to firmly establish himself at the top of the social chain among the assembled motley group of people at the lounge has been lost.To further drive home the point that he is with the most "in-things" at the present moment, our fellow being also obliges the rest of the people at the lounge with a peek of his shining new I Pod belting out his favorite hits. Thank the lord that Apple did not put a loud speaker on the little devil otherwise, god knows which Beethoven symphony would have lulled me to sleep in the lounge and I would have definitely missed my flight. After all, one does not profess to being a Govinda fan with a gizmo of this defining superiority.Another species closely related to the above showman is the discerning businessman who can just not unwrangle himself from his work. Time is money they say and what better way to demonstrate it than the relaxing environs of the airport lounge? An innocuous sounding call from his office makes our very enterprising hi flier pull out his P900 and flip open the flap (would make a great tongue twister that one.). I mean is there a better way to engage in technical directives to the most nincompoopest of his staff than on his PDA? Almost, as if the mere usage of the instrument would carry that extra weight required for driving home the point in the most efficient manner.If you thought that the social web had been completely defined in the above paragraphs, then think again. And if you have put your imagination on full blast and transported yourself back to the airport lounge in your memories, I am absolutely certain that you have definitely found out that one last remaining tech savvy genre that we have missed so far. I am talking of the fashionably tech conscious people here. The ones that sport the latest gadgets in the matching combinations with their trousers or skirts. Don’t for a moment think that I have taken the discussion too far. Hear me out here and I am sure that I will have the cynics seeing the stylish side of truth in this matter. Don’t tell me that you did not notice the impeccably dressed female in high heel shoes and low hip jeans sporting a designer hairdo and the latest make up at 6 in the morning. Now put a little more strain on your memories and I am sure that you would be able to pinpoint the laptop that she had slung over her shoulders. Now if you were unfortunate enough not to be privy to the stylish gadget inside that bag of hers, let me take you into the interiors of the innocuous looking leather case that she has on herself. The Luis Vuitton bag that she carries has inside a laptop of the highest possible configuration that money can conjure up replete with video conferencing facilities, etc and the high point of all this is that the laptop is color matched to her dress (just makes you wonder if her wardrobe is color coded to the laptop or she has enough to match her impeccable array of clothing?). She uses this to hold video chats with her boyfriend standing at the airport on the other end of the aero plane ride that she is going to take. After the sweet nothings that have elated our dear fellow on the receiving airport, she uses the time left to catch a glimpse of the latest Hollywood movie stored on her hard disk. So you have it - The idiot’s guide to the gizmos that people play with. Though the passage may make it sound like a fashion and style statement to play with these things around, it is a little more than a necessity in our times. What if my phone gives that extra facility of being able to shoot movies and making stylish presentations along with looking incredibly good and stylish? Why should my high end laptop not be able to deliver the highest end of entertainment besides being useful for my work? Why should I feel ashamed if my watch can do a complete health check and advise me on my present sugar levels? After all didn’t somebody very qualified once say – If you got it flaunt it?

Resolution in Indonesia

2005-09-09T23:46:00.000-07:00

i always wanted to write an amazing blog. you know mindblowing.... something to shake the earth and hundreds of comments pouring in and stuff. Alas! that remained a dream and i was facing a task of filling up these huge Mbs that i had so naively reserved for myself. so i did me a little exploring to find out what it was that others were filling up their blogs with and it so happens that people are trying to put their lives on paper. and it does happen to be an interesting read. not a bad idea i think. of course i might have the unusual sparks once here or there and those will be posted on the other thread called ramble on.. but my shattered ego does need some material on this journal to start writing again. so here goes nothing...at the time of writing this i am posted in the second biggest city of Indonesia called Surabaya on the island of Java. doing what you might as well ask. so here's the answer. i am kinda trying to understand the intricacies of the soap manufacturing process in Unilever Indonesia (i work for HLL back in India so that explains it i hope). at the same time i am trying to come to grips with existence in an alien land without the linguistic capabilites, financial prowess or physical attributes to attract any sort of agreeable company. so generally put in a nutshell, i am getting thoroughly bored with life. so it was this spirit of boredom that forced me to retrospect and introspect about whatever little i had seen of Indonesian life. pretty interesting observations these...

1. Islamic State = Talaq + Burkha (??!!?!?!?!) - Prior to setting foot on the land i had heard that Indonesia's population was around 80% muslims and i had conjured up pictures of burkha clad women on the streets and every man on the street sporting a beard. i even half expected the factory workers to be in the traditional Arab dresses (that was just an exaggeration).but the first sights were probably the best description of "pleasant surprise" ever. if i were correct in visualising females in burkhas, then somebody did a double take on me and redesigned the burqa as a sphagetti top and a mini skirt (i have no idea what the former looks like. just read it off a fashion page in the newspaper once so guess it must fit the description). and women were as much empowered as men. in fact i was totally taken aback to find such a sizeable female contingent working in Unilever Indonesia that my visual associations of an Islamic state have turned on their head. i took a weekend trip to the biggest mall in town (and the best tourist attraction here. woe is me!!) and i could easily have been standing at the trendiest plazas in South Ex or Gurgaon with all the fanfare of the terribly-rich-teenage-brigade that saddi Delhi is so famous for. so much for my mental image conjuring capabilities.

2. Religion meets Technology - if the above paragraph made you believe that Indonesia was not an Islamic state and i was factually wrong... think again. every day every person in the factory prays an absolutely unimpeachable five times!! and then returns to supervise the fastest and the best packaging machines that the world has seen till date. to me even the situation of the prayer room is symbolic of this. it is located right next to the process control room. in one room man controls the process of manufacturing soap and in the next he goes and acknowledges the supreme being's control over him. and on Friday...... yes you guessed it. the factory is off for about 1 hour for the noon time Namaz

3. Grass is for cows..... and cows we can eat - if there was one thing that i would not touch after landing in India it would have to be non veg! i was born into a Bong family and therefore with my birth certificate came the no objection certificate to eating anything (albeit with the obvious Hindu limitations. a custom long dispensed with among the travesties of life in Delhi). but the amount of meat (and the varieties of it) that i have consumed over the past 5 weeks has been enough to make me do a serious rethink on the diet. once back home i am living off roti and dal for the first week and then slowly graduate to some form of sabzi or the other. i might return to my omnivorous tendencies sometime in the far future but it seems highly unlikely right now.

4. No Bahasa... know Nothing - My father has been posted in Korea for sometime now and his stories of how difficult life can be in places which don't give English the place it deserves in the primary curriculum for someone who has unfortunately been born in the wrong country to be there were always a constant source of amusement for me. guess who is the family clown now? i stare blankly at the wall while having lunch because everyone is cracking jokes in Bahasa, i stare blankly at the wall while attending the weekly production meeting because it is proceeding in Bahasa, i stare blanky at the wall during get togethers because everyone is singing in Bahasa and what do i do when i go to the market..... (no not stare blankly at the wall, there is no wall) i try out my proficiency at dumb charades!!! the various contortions that i have effected till date of my body parts to mean things like bread, eggs, cold drinks, etc have renewed my faith in my body's agility (and thats for the ones who doubt my figure). vocab till date consists of Salamat pagi Nasi Goreng Ayam mie which mean Good Morning Fried rice chicken noodles respectively.

5. Booked under Indonesian Penal Code for being Fat - Ok! its official now. i am not going to be awarded the Indonesian Passport if they nuked the world and i was the last man on Earth and i wanted to be an Indonesian citizen. the reason you ask... well apparently it is a crime for one in Indonesia to look well fed (that is how i justify myself back home). every damn person on the street has the bestest figure possible as if there weren't reasons enough to make me feel a complete outsider. i fear deportation on those accounts any day now.

thats all from the Indonesia diary for now. hope i will return soon

Conclusion to the Weather Series

2005-09-09T23:44:00.000-07:00

I have now more or less resigned to my fate as a lifelong tormentee of the Weather God. Doesn’t look like a change of religion is going to help either. Since leaving Pune i have been unfortunate enough to weather the harsh conditions of a place called Khamgaon where the afternoon sun shines as if he has opened a bakery and we are the hot cakes. The only thing that brings a smile to my lips when somebody talks about the weather is the fact that I am presently in my international stint at Indonesia and the TV is presently relaying news of Tsunamis at work in the place!!!!!

---The fight between HIM and me continues---

Chapter 3: A Foggy Event at Pune

2005-09-09T23:43:00.000-07:00

By the time I was posted in Pune for my Central tech Functions stint, I had come to realize the full force of God’s displeasure with my activities here on Earth. The rate at which I was inviting his wrath was worrying me to no end and the following happened as a climax to an especially bad week on earth for me. Well to set the narration rolling, I would like to tell you that somewhere in the middle of my stint in Pune, there came an opportunity for me to go off and visit a certain factory that the company has decided to put up in a place where no-sheep-has-ever-gone-before, a place which sports a very nondescript name called Baddi (Surprisingly, this version of Windows does not recognize Pune as a correct word and cautions for a recheck but is very fine with the mention of Baddi. Strange are the ways of Microsoft). Anyway, I was very happy to be going to Baddi because, the route was via Delhi which meant that I could scoot home for a couple of hours after some 6 odd months on the road. So it was with great glee that I chalked out my itinerary and marked out in perfect detail the events that I would be doing on this trip of mine. I was very disappointed though to find out that Air Sahara does not give the air corridor of flight from Pune to Delhi and that was the only detail that I had missing in my otherwise detailed schedule of events. To put the well made document in a nutshell, I was taking a flight from Pune to Delhi in the morning and spending the afternoon at home before boarding the evening Shatabdi to Chandigarh where I would halt for the night. In the morning, I was due to ride to the site. Now lets get to the events of the actual day….The morning was quite a pleasant one and this should have warned me of the impending doom but well I am a sucker for pleasant mornings. I had packed up for this occasion a full two days in advance and so immaculate was my planning that I was going to be at the airport a full 2 hours before the printed take off. My luck began to backstab me some 2 kilometers from the airport when suddenly the auto I was traveling in became engulfed in a fog so heavy that you could hardly see 5 meters in front. As I stepped into the airport lounge, the first glance at the schedule as enough to make me realize that once again God was in the mood for mischief. The expected time of departure was delayed by about 2 hours because of the fog. My faith that all of this was definitely the doing of the supreme being was further cemented when I could hear the people sitting next to me in the lounge exclaiming that they had been in Pune all their life and nothing like this seemed to cross their memory. And believe me when I say that these people looked the kind who would remember something if and when it happened. The auntiji in question looked the kind that give the Police the accurate description of the framed hero who was seen departing the house of the vamp after she had been murdered by the villain in Bollywood movies. So I was absolutely sure that Pune was experiencing this fog not because of some westerly disturbances as those dastardly news channels would like you to believe but the sole reason for that day’s misfortune was well my presence. As time went by, the expected time of departure changed as if it had taken upon itself the responsibility of showing the current time of Thailand (IST + 2:30). After about a wait of 2 hours at the airport, I saw my delicious lunch at home go abegging in front of my eyes and I was in a situation that if I somehow made it to Delhi, I would have to rush directly to the station to catch the evening train. As some more time went by and the flight got more delayed, I realized to my utter dismay that even if I made it to Delhi, there was no way that I was going to get to Chandigarh in the night. Add to this the fact that I was supposed to deliver a layout of the final plot plan to the Vice President Engineering next morning at Baddi, and you can realize the tremendous force with which my heart was going flip flop.After waiting at the airport for about 8 straight hours, I was finally able to board the plane to Delhi. I had called ahead to make reservations for the next morning train but upon reaching Delhi, I found that the ticket was wait listed. I was spending an amazingly restless night at home dreading the next morning’s showdown with my boss when I decided to check out the status of the ticket on the net. At this very point of time there was some sort of a deal struck between the Weather God and the God of Road and surface transport to elongate my misery (believe me I swear upon the above with all my honour). As luck would have me expect, there was no let up in the constant flow of bad luck and I was left to rue the next morning’s events as well (all the above psycho babble means that my ticket was still waitlisted). Anyway, early next morning I woke up at an ungodly hour and made it wearily to the station and checked the status of my ticket for one final time at the information desk. What followed was entirely contradicting to the run of luck that I had been having recently. My ticket was confirmed!!!!! At this point in time I should have stopped, gazed thoughtfully at that confounded piece of paper in my hand called the railway ticket, looked heavenward, given a thought to the recent events again and doubted the sincerity of the information that was just disseminated to me across the glass counter. But as I told you earlier, I am a sucker for pleasant mornings! Imagine the mother of all horrors that I would have experienced when the name listed against my seat number on the train was spelled as Gaurabh Beg on the reservation chart pasted neatly across the coach body. Immediately scenes from an old DD commercial warning passengers of getting tickets from touts and landing in jail for traveling under false identities flashed in front of eyes and had not the fear of being a no show at an extremely important meeting at the site been more frightening than that of landing in jail, I would have quietly retreated home and laid the matter to rest. But thank someone up there that the final deal between the God of Weather and the Road and surface transport supremo seemed to have broken off due to some differences over the methods to be adopted for my further punishment and somehow with my forehead sweating and my eyes and ears constantly on the lookout for any plainclothes policemen out to haul me to jail, I reached my destination. As I got out of the platform at Chandigarh and looked up to the sky to punch my fists in victory of having got one over the root cause of all this trouble, it rained. It rained for just 4 minutes and it rained with all the biggest water drops that have ever completed the hydrological cycle and it rained with all the force on me till the moment I could board the taxi. So it was he who had the final laugh.

Chapter 2:The Rain Dance at Kolkata

2005-09-09T23:42:00.000-07:00

After getting my release letters from Silvassa, I gleefully went off to Kolkata for my sales stint. This was a big relief from the factory stint that I had got bored of and was looking forward to having a great time. The first few days in the city were simply awesome and for someone whose basic assumption in life happens to be – “have food; will live”, Kolkata is the place to be. Anyway, that was where I made the biggest blunder of my life. You see I have come to realize over the period of this past 9 months that gods have set a certain threshold value of happiness for me and whenever I cross that limit, they let me have it. So it was that on a bright sunny pleasant October morning, I made my way to the Ballygunj market to sell soaps and detergents with my very congenial TSI. The fellow in question was a very pleasant looking, happy go lucky chap who made my life very easy and used to give a good overall perspective of things happening in the market place. That day we finished our rounds of the market a little early and after visiting the RS point, I decided that it was time that I got some work done back at the Branch. So I picked up my bag and baggage and made my way to the office. At this precise, the weather god found the window of opportunity that he had been waiting for and as I stepped out of the Taxi to enter the branch, there started a storm that just came out of the blue. Storms I can handle, but couple them with drops with the ability to make a hole in the bucket that they fall in are a little out of my league. Couple them with the small fact that there was some construction work going on just at the gate of the branch which would make me take a ghastly detour and you have a weapon to bring Saurabh Dey down on his knees and start crying profusely. Having made that detour and looking worse than a street mongrel from a roadside puddle, I sought refuge in the Security lodge at the gate. As I looked towards my destination some 50 meters from me, I could see this huge shade running all across the length of the building that would provide the perfect cover for me to reach the branch main gate. I am sure that you must have by now come to expect that certain piece of inconspicuous factual data that turns day into night and in my case opportunity into disaster. Well here it is ….. there was construction work going on under that shade and there was no way I could make it across without getting more dripping wet. Well it was a good hour later that I emerged from the security shed having resolved to get across come hell or high water. I grit my teeth and with tremendous amount of determination made it across the wall of rain that separated me from my work.Does this chapter end here? You bet whatever part of your body it does not. Not without the last and biggest irony of the event. As soon as I stepped into the doormat to wipe my muddy feet clean, the sun came out smiling from behind the clouds. No, I used the wrong verb in the last sentence. The Sun wasn’t smiling, it was smirking. Yes that’s right. And the clouds departed as if now that they had got me wet to the maximum possible, they had done all that they had to do and their mission in life was accomplished. Do I need to say anything further to make you believe that the Weather God indeed has some burning agenda with me?

Chapter 1: The Deluge at Silvassa

2005-09-09T23:41:00.000-07:00

As part of my first factory stint with HLL, I was posted at the Silvassa factory. The place was idyllic for the first week, great for the second, good for the third and considering the fact that I had to be there for a total of 15 weeks, you can imagine the relief I had when I was out. This particular incident happened somewhere mid way through my stint when the adjectives I was using for the place were hovering between “dump” and “please-get-me-out-of-here”.

On a certain very wet morning in the place previously mentioned, I was preparing to go to the factory at about 8:00 a.m. Considering the fact that I originate from a very dry part of the country, I was thrilled to have the rains when the season started. But by this very eventful day, I had begun to look for avenues of getting a transfer to Egypt probably for the good part of the rest of my life selling knick-knacks to the Bedouins in the Sahara desert. Anyway, work was worship at the time and I was as mentioned earlier all geared up to meet the challenges of the day at the factory. The car arrived at the guest- house I was putting up and we began our usual 30-minute ride to work. The car in question here was a Tata Indica (a very important fact as you will realize as you progress into the passage). Well after about 10 minutes into the trip, we encountered a pool of water as a result of the incessant rains in the past few days. Nonchalantly, I egged on the driver of the car as he gingerly crossed the water log (do notice the contrasting attitudes of the two characters in question and then try to guess who is vindicated.) The first small obstacle out of the way, I was feeling very happy that I had got one up on the weather (at this very precise moment, it is well documented in the logs of the upper reaches of heaven that the gods were rolling around in laughter at the antics of a certain human on earth. The identity of the human has been kept secret for security reasons.)As we progressed onwards, the big brother of the log that we had left behind confronted us and he did not at all seem pleased that we had defied junior and botched the family honor. Well at this point all my nonchalance flew out of the window and driver and me decided to make a quick getaway. The driver made a quick turnaround and we were on our way back. But the logs had decided to have a family reunion of sorts at precisely that moment and so junior had drawn in a lot of resources that would definitely make any Tata Indica feel a good two feet too short to make it across. Spotting an incline by the side of the road, we decided to halt there thinking after all the rain was going to stop in a few moments and then obviously the water logs’ family reunion would be over.

Hour 1: The rain showed no signs of stopping and the level of water was continuously rising. The water logs were doing a kind of victory dance at that point of time and the weather gods were obviously just getting warmed up. Suddenly the radio cracked to life only to inform that an old dam built across Daman Ganga (the river flowing through the city of Silvassa) was on the verge of failing because of the rising level of water and that they would have to open the gates to relieve the pressure. As a result of this act of the incompetent nincompoops at the damn dam office, the water level in the river rose 15 feet inside of 20 minutes. It was almost as if the small family party of the water logs had out of the blue gained the status of a national congregation and guests were not found wanting. As I sat there in the car parked on the incline, I could see the river flowing onto the street and hordes of people just running helter-skelter to save their skins.

Hour 2: The rain had intensified since the last hour and I had abandoned all hope of ever getting out of this self imposed car arrest in the near future. So I decided to sleep out the fury dance of Nature.

Hour 3: Still sleeping

Hour 4: Absolutely exhausted by sleeping and had to do something to keep myself alive at this point of time. So I asked the driver to put on some music and tried to relax my jangled nerves. With a start, the strains of the world famous multi-platinum album “Bihar Mein Bawaal Karela” burst out into the stifled atmosphere of the car and all the grogginess I was feeling from the nodding of the last 2 hours vanished as if I had just taken a dip in a pond of Coffee. 2 stanzas into the crooning about how the singer’s girlfriend’s anatomy was the moot discussion point among all high and low gentry of each and every street corner of Bihar, I could bear it no longer. What I had hoped to be Jagjit Singh’s soothing voice turned out to be this cacophonous cackle with the background orchestra so enthusiastic at having got their break in front of a recording studio that they had abandoned all norms of music. They had decided to use this opportunity to kick-start an entirely new genre – the “You-do-your-job-I-do-mine-listener-can-go-to-hell” category. Well after a stern look towards the driver who was a very intelligent fellow and quickly grasped the point that continuing with the anatomical discussions of the female on air could have serious implications on his physical well being promptly turned the blare down.

Hour 5: Stifling silence inside the car. It was beginning to get to me. The outside chaos was in perfect contrast to the eerie tranquility inside the closed windows of the car. And there were these two pairs of eyes dolefully looking out into the fury of Nature hoping… just hoping for some kind of a response, a sign that the gods had had their laugh, their appetites for destruction sated and their afternoon playtime was nearing an end. The pitter -patter of raindrops continued unabated through this hour too.

Hour 6: By the time this hour was ending, I was beginning to feel that if I did not do something soon; I might as well never do anything else in life. It was almost as if I was ready to dare the gods themselves. So after having been exhausted from sleep and more than startled with Bihar Mein Bawaal Karela and utilizing my entire quota of hope for seven lifetimes, I signed off the car and stepped out gingerly into the thumping rain. Well I had mentally prepared myself for the piercing raindrops that were going to hit my head once I was out of the shelter of the car but what I had not prepared for was the “huge” (and I am using this because my vocabulary is found wanting to describe largeness at this point of time) puddle of water in front of me. Anyway, I tested the water height with my feet and to my utter pleasure it was only knee deep. Calling out to the entire Hindu pantheon and then for good measure making sure that there was backup from other religious figures in case the Hindu deities had decided to go on a picnic, I stepped into the water. I am sure that by now you would have guessed that luck was not one of my strong points on this particular day. Therefore as was to be expected, the knee-deep water lasted only the length of 2 knees and thereafter became chest deep. If know the kind of physique I carry around and the fact that I have no knowledge whatsoever of swimming, you would realize the kind of thoughts that were running inside my head at this very moment. Thankfully there were other people who had taken the plunge as well and I followed these godly souls across to land.

Hour 7: It was by now around 3:00 p.m. and I was weary, tired and hungry and yearning to get back to the shelter of my guest house. As I turned the corner which would bring into view the road leading to the Guest house, I realized that not only the Hindu Pantheon but the entire community of beings that have been given place up there by all the religions in the world had decided that today was the day they were going to show solidarity in making my life hell. Wonder of wonders, the road leading to the guest house was flooded till such a height that later when the water subsided, a bus appeared from under. So I looked around for salvation and thence I saw an HLL accredited Hotel to my left. Finding that the ATM was also above ground and fully functional and making sure that I would not have to make a cameo appearance inside the kitchen of the Hotel washing utensils, I entered the place.

Hour 8: If you are of the opinion that the Gods had by now had enough of their obsession with making my life miserable, then you need hit those religious treatises once again and learn more about the almighty. As I entered the compound of the Hotel called “Greenwood” I could see my General Factory Manager along with the entire posse of managers from the factory stranded at the same Hotel frantically waiving out to me. So it was that I found myself a moment later dripping on the carpet like a wet dog explaining my daredevil stunt to the man who could make the strongest of Samsons go weak in the knees just by casting a glance in his direction. The rest of the hour went by in trying my best to dry myself and having a very welcome lunch.

Hour 9: The managers decided to leave for their houses as the ways had cleared but of course as usual, the road leading to the guest house had not received the memo. It still clung tightly to all the water that it had accumulated over the days length and there I was standing in front of it entirely perplexed as to the amount of wrongdoings that I had committed in my past life to merit a karma as this.

Hours 10, 11 and 12: I decided to club these hours because they were spent in standing in front of the road wishing the water away.

Finally at about 8 in the night, I was able to gingerly step into the guest house and have a bath after which I had a delicious dinner cooked by the caretaker. At the end of the day I simply crashed onto the bed and woke up the next to day to another moronic wet day. But I had learnt my lesson the previous day ….. I had made sure today was a Sunday.

Whether Weather God Hates Me??

2005-09-09T23:39:00.000-07:00

There is something in the environment that does not gel well with me. I mean the earth’s atmosphere is not at all amenable to the fact that I exist (I know that some people also would say Amen to that but that is a story for a later time and place.) I had always thought that there was something in the air that was bothered every time I respired but never before has the truth been hit so hard home than the last 9 months. It seems that my employment with HLL was some kind of a catalyst that triggered off a bad reaction the repercussions of which have been terrifically drastic on you know who. Probably the following posts will serve to drive home the point.