My Melee

You want to beg ?!!

2006-07-09T17:59:00.000-07:00

Some things never end, and some things we never stop talking about.

Accent, arguably, is one of them ! It almost always has one in splits when someone mimicks an accent, or when a word is pronounced so wrong that it gives the sentence a completely different and silly meaning...

I live in this place, where the strength of the indian community is, shall i say, pretty accent-uated. The other day i was at the groceries store to buy some kulfi. After placing it on the counter, the lady started entering the details on the system, when she looked up at me and asked:

Lady : "you wanto beg ?"

i was sure i heard what i heard .....ok, i know i get paid less, but an offer to beg ?? Wow !, and i thought begging was a self-inspired profession all the while !

Me: i am sorry! i'd like to pay!
Lady: "yes, but do you wanto beg ?"

stumped by her insistence, i almost gave it a thought, before i shouted out

"No, i don't want to !"

Lady: "ok!", she said, peacefully removing the kulfi out of the carry bag she had put it in, and handing the kulfi to me!

"here you are, no baeg !"...striking me at that time that she meant "you want a bag ?" !!!

I've always believed that teachers are probably the most important reason students develop an accent in the first place. Not that the teachers do it intentionally, but well, they have been taught that way !

At school, often, we were introduced to the gay and the 1-dimensional world simultaneously, by our math teacher, who wouldnt as much as flinch when she used to direct us saying "please all the gerls and boys, draw a straight lion !", while some cheeky blokes would hiss at the back "wonder how a gay lion would look like"!

Lecturers and profs in college usually used to be the butt of the jokes when it came to accent. more often than not, the bad ones used to have a bad accent to go with, which would not only make them look dumb, but atrociously funny to discuss!

Sometimes they twisted and rolled the words so badly, it's got innocent people in a tight situation on many occasions. We had this lecturer in college, who spoke in thick malayalam accent, and looked like an adult midget. Roll call was the worst, since she pronounced numbers like she was frying something round in her mouth before uttering the words. My cousin, had 412 as his roll number, and unfortunately for him, the teacher always pronounced it as "for toll" !. well, it did take a toll on him, if you think about it, since he took ages to comprehend what she had said, answer out of turn, and get kicked out for giving proxy ! that's the unluckiest one can get - Roll number for toll!

...and there were some who pronounced a specific letter differently.

Our lecturer in college couldn't say the letter 'P', and would instead say "Fee". Unfortunately for him, his 'P' vocab was better than his 'F' !

One gloomy day he caught my classmate Premnath sleeping in class, and launched himself on him,

"Hey you Fathetic Frame-nath !! are you sleefing in class ?" ...to bring us all back from sleep...

Before foor frame-nath could get back to his lenses and senses, a tight blow landed on his head, with another blooper on it's way...

"You are feeling so sleefy, someone else has to wake uf for you ?".

...i'd like a job where someone else could wake up for me, while i slept!!

Another prof of mine had an issue with the 'T's, often coming out as 'thi' or 'tha', and the evil mind that we were, we had named the prof "thomatho-pothatho". she'd go "you guys are therrible, whaths the need to thalk in the labrathory ?" during the microprocessor lab sessions...well after this, we couldnt talk, more so because we tried hard not to howl in laughter!

...but the one that takes the cake was this lecturer who couldn't say 'sa', and would say 'sha'. Imagine the look on this new girl in the second year, when he asked her almost smilingly to "please shit down where the girls are shitting" !, directing her towards them!

much as i would note layke to be kyencerned about these, shumtimes it becomes fainfully unbearable !

Accent proves to be a little hard to digest when you are in a serious situation though. You can't really laugh at times, more like just be green faced trying to control it, but it's funny nonetheless !

There's this colleague of mine, another fellow indian, who pronounces "Brian" like its "Brain". ok, it's not very funny, and could be a compliment in many cases, you'd like to think! Well we had this serious client meeting one day, and Bob wanted the status for a given task, when my colleague spoke, in a slightly surprised tone : "I sent a message about this to brain an hour ago , but haven't got any response yet !". I can swear Red faced Bob pinched himself once to check if he wasn't sleeping since he was hearing things, while i was knocked off my chair trying to control my laugh! That's one cheeky brain which not only knows it is slow, but brave enough to tell it out !.

well all said, these are but innocent mistakes people probably can't do much to change. That's way better than the ones who try to put up an accent, and half way down the line forget to continue it, and start sounding like they've eaten crab legs.....that's a different story to be taken one at a time!...that's when "you'd wanto baeg" to puke into!

Catch him if you can !

2006-05-07T12:01:00.000-07:00

"malkolo bega ! kalla bandu ethkond hog bidtaane ilandre !"
(sleep soon, otherwise the thief's going to take you away !)

...the characteristic war-cry aunt used, to scare me when i was a kid, to put me to sleep...now now, i couldn't solve linear equations at the age of 6, but who's she kidding anyway!...i'd rather be awake while the thief's trying to steal me, than be a sleeping duck to make his job all the more easy !
...so while aunty's magic mantra used to work on normal kids my age, she'd hopelessly complain to my mother :
"aahahaha nin maga bangaaara !!!! kalla bartaane andre inna joraagi kann bitkondu eddidanae !" (oh what a son of gold! the mention of "thief" has made him all the more active!)

I've had quite a few brushes with thieves, and apparently, i noticed, not many were even remotely concerned about whether i slept well, or for that matter find any good use in taking me away if i didnt !...while the incurable liar that my aunt was, SHE was left petrified at the sight of him on quite a few occasions.

some of my earliest encounters with thieves have been rather disappointing....owing to a lot of construction work around my place, petty robberies were the norm of the day. people would come up with innovative ideas to trap the omnipresent thief, while robbers would come up with counter ideas to trick victims in turn. Once our neighbour got this brilliant idea of planting glass pieces on the free end of his 4 feet high compound wall, so that the robber would "bleed to death" while trying to cross it. pea-brain uncle would sharpen each glass piece on the wall with a chisel every weekend, visibly satisfied playing the "guardian" role!...no one in the layout wanted a robbery more than this dumbo, just so that he could test his wares ! after months of waiting, he gave up when his equally dumb kid mauled himself while trying to scale new heights with a "baby anju" long jump over the compound wall.

One guy thought it was a groundbreaking idea to place a few mouse traps near the gate, in the hope that the thief would step on it - a sorry version of land mines, if you like. i did hope that his oversize wife would step on it one day....alas he got wind of it and removed it in haste...

Washed clothes, hung up to dry, being robbed was a common occurance in the neighbourhood. Mother had come up with a brilliant idea against this by appointing me to guard it. awfully boring and time consuming this job, she had scared me into believing that if my school uniform shorts got robbed I'd be the one who'd be going to school without it !...the trick had to work !.

With a stick four times my height i'd sit there guarding the clothes. The stick, on the other hand, far from scaring the thief away, probably compelled him to steal it instead, so he could use it to pole vault high rise walls.

All these meeting with little or no success, neighbourhood boys now turned to the gorkha, by over-tipping him to do more rounds of the neighbourhood...for once, this worked, and peace reigned for sometime.

..until the thief struck again...this time sweeping off stereos from cars in the neighbourhood. This was about 10 years ago...Getting up early in the morning, i saw the car's rear glass neatly removed and placed on the bonnet, while the left door was ajar. at first glance, i thought my father's obsession with cleaning the car had reached new heights, only to see a police sniffer dog peeing near the pole outside with a burly cop next to him.

"en saaar nim manelu kalthaana aitha ?" ( has there been a robbery at ur house too ?)..the cop questioned.

"ah!!! ....oh !!!!" (...the realization dawning on me!)

after filing an FIR, and taking my statement, the cop advised me,

"next time crime scene hatra hogi hand print bidbedi !" ( dont leave your hand prints on the crime scene the next time !)....

...and i was like, "you moron, you expect another robbery or what !".

...with insurance paying up for the stale stolen stereo, it was a good deal actually.

vigil increased again in the neighbourhood...the gorkha was getting richer by the day....the elusive thief never returned....

....until about 4 years ago, when one thief caught the fancy of our tenants shoes. The first time he siphoned of two pairs of his shoes, our tenant boy had no idea what had happened, concluding that it was the temple where he had actually forgotten them!

Exactly after 2 months, the prompt thief showed up again( as though that is time he gave the victim to buy himself a few pairs), and this time walked away with another pair, just two months old. The feverish pace at which the thief was working, one would think he had a deadline to complete!

If there is one profession where one should NOT be on time, robbery definitely is one. Very sure that the thief would turn up in the next two months, night vigil was on the cards., and there i was manning our house gate albeit at a safe distance, within the comforts of the house, and watching out for the unknown to materialize.

Surely enough he came.

The clock struck 2am, when a sudden thud jolted me out of my slumber. Immediately running towards the door, i peeped outside the window to check what had happened. The thief, had done a good job of stealing the shoes, but had tripped while trying to scale the compound wall.

"kaLLa kaLLa...appaji kaLLa bandidane !!!" ( thief ! thief ! dad, the thief's here !)....i had latched the doors so tight, i could hardly turn them with my shivering hands.

"kalla kalla antha maney olgaade kuthkondre sigtaaneno goobe !" (will you be able to catch the thief, if you shout sitting inside the house , you owl ?)

now, now this is no way to thank the guard !...a classic case of shooting the messenger !

Father was quick, and he opened the door, while i tried hard to look at the direction in which the thief ran...

"neen eekaade hogu, naanu aakade hogtini....kalla madhyadalli sikakothaane" ( you go right, and i'll go left, we'll catch him on the other side of the block!)..my father ordered.

with little or no experience in catching a thief, and elementary skills in self defence, i'd be safe trying to catch him, than actually catch him, i contemplated. That way i'd dry him out, and then deal with him better. I ran towards my right, shouting as loud as i could, more out of fear....

The limping thief, a skinny torched bloke in his late 20s, with a pair of shoes hanging around his neck, scampered off even faster at the sight of me. His fear was a saving grace, for if he had shown even an ounce of resistance to my chase, the whole scene would have been completely different, with him chasing me, and my father chasing the both of us !

Such was my conscious effort to chase him but not catch him, that if he had ever decided to stop for a sec, he'd be shocked to see that i would have had done the same too. i could see my father on the other side of the block, running hand in hand occasionally appearing and disappearing behind the houses. The thief took a swift right turn, to run right in the direction where my father would be waiting to pounce on him.

However, the sudden ruckus created by my shouts disturbed the street dogs, which apparantly took offense of this, and started chasing me instead. i never approved of street dogs as security guards, and this time i ran vindicated !...taking this opportunity, the thief ran into the neighbourhood park throwing the shoe away, leaving me helpless with the street dogs, while i ran around to collect a few stones to chase them away.

2 seconds later.....THUD !!...one tight blow on my head...turning back, i saw my father, red with anger,

"ello kaLLa ??? kathe !!!" (WHERE's the thief ??? you donkey !!!)...

muffled words, came out.....'hidiri nodona!' ('catch him if you can!')

Putting it Shortly!

2006-03-21T12:30:00.000-08:00

for weeks now i hadn't as much as had a mosquito bite - a far cry from those bygone days when every midget that could walk on two legs could pull my leg if the situation so warranted.

It was fishy to say the least, and i did feel something was cooking, only this time i was the cook!
Trying to keep a low profile, just to let the sweet moment continue i spent quite a few weeks trying to be indifferent to the good things happening around.

....the lull before the storm isn't a saying to impress the storm....., it actually works!

Come last week, one of my friends enlightened me about a saloon that's started operating recently in our company and the various services it offers, including haircut and hair-color. impressed by what i had heard, i decided it was time for a makeover. Spike and burgandy is what it would be, i decided, both relatively new words i had picked up recently.

"Saturday bandbidi saar, neat aagi maadkotbidthini" (Come on saturday, i'll make sure it's done), the barber announced, when i enquired about the appointment.

visibly happy on seeing the barber's confidence, i dreamt of a dramatic look, that would make heads turn...

....well turn they did, ....mine!

Getting up early in the morning, my enthusiasm knew no bounds. The prospect of a Beckham look looming large, i had almost started practising handing over autographs. Hopping onto my bike, i drove past the busy traffic to reach the office 13 kms away, and the barber's den on time.

a swanky area with two king size seats, the saloon was an eye-catcher. The barber letting me in, asked me to check out the colors handing me a book. With only burgandy on my mind, i flipped through the book, that had bunches of hair in different colors stuck on each page with names written below, and i announced "burgandy irli"....The barber looking a bit contemplative, said "brown color maadskoli saar, chenaagiruthe "....(get it done in brown, it'll look fantastic), and showed me a color, with a number written "5.6" on it....
...The color looked fine, but the barber's ability didn't, so i confirmed with him "idey color barutha ?" (will the hair color looks exactly like this ?)..Turning his head like a ball on a pinnion, he nodded saying "aadre nimge 4.5 haaktini, adey chenaagirathe" ( i think 4.5 will be good for you)....

Assuming no harm with that, i agreed to it, asking him to first give me a spike cut, and then color the hair.

"Heg beko haag maadthini neevu araamagi rest thagoli saar" (rest assured saar, i'll get the job done!), he promised.

While he did some adjustments to the machine, i went into a slumber to let him get along with his job.

Running his machine all over my head, pieces of my well kempt hair fell off without a protest.

Opening my eyes a few seconds later, i saw a bald human staring at me, looking quite funny.....until i realized i was staring at the mirror!

"Spike heliddu naanu, yaakri ella cut maadbitri ?" , i protested ! ( i had asked for a spike, why have you cut everything ?)

tapping his machine to let the stuck hair fall off, the barber in characteristic coolness replied, "yaak saar bejaar aitha ?" ( why saar, are u dissapointed ?)

"bejaar aaa ?? koodle illa, spike antha helidde alva ?" ( Dissapointed ! there isn't any hair left! i had asked for a spike cut!)

"illa saar, naanu inna mugsillla, mugsida mele heli hegide antha" ( oh! let me finish, then you can judge me!)

"spike ge standing irbeku saar, standing-u, adikke short beku" ( for spike the hair should be cut real short, so that it "stands"), he continued...

After what looked like 10 minutes of incessant chopping, the barber dropped his axe down asking me to review his work. with a little more than a centimeter of hairs length above my forehead, and no hair above the ears, i looked like i had been robbed off my hair by a novice thief.

gaining composure soon, i shouted back "Yenri maadideera ???? kooodlella hogbittidyalla!" (what have u done, there isn't any hair at all!)

"Saar, next time banbidi neat aagi maadkodthini..iga first time alva adikke swalpa jaasthi cut aagoithu" ( come next time saar i'll do it better..it's my first time, so i cut a little more!)

...oh first time bonus i presumed, literally fuming !

"first time aaaaaaaaaa ??????".....

The cheeky moron sheepishly accepted "Howdu saar, inobru raja"... (yes sir, the other person is on leave!)

DAMN !...what had i done with myself...i was thinking fast, deciding and re-deciding whether to shave the head completely...and then holding back thinking of the fate my friend had to endure when he had had his head shaven for the first time...

the barber sensing my distress, spoke "Saaar color maadkondbidi ella sari hoguthe" (get it colored, it'll become allright)

"koodle illa, color nun thale ga hatchtheera ?" (there isn't any hair left, will you color my head ?!), i retorted...

I couldn't believe the reply i got back for this...

he said "Alla saar isht doora bandideera eraDu maadkond hogbidi.. thirga yaak barthira.." ( Oh ho! you have come so far, get it colored..why do u want to come again !)

....coming again was out of question, but fixing the current disaster was ..

"Will the color help?" i asked, hoping for yet another emphatic reply, and yet another disaster...

"Oh yes, you'll be shocked to see when it's done", he replied back in kannada...

"ok!"

....45 minutes later, he washed my HEAD, since there wasn't any hair left anyway, and put the dim yellow lights on....bleary eyed i looked at the mirror, and saw what looked like an orange that seemed to have planted itself on my head....

turning to another customer who had come in for a haircut and coloring, the barber asked "Chenaagi kaanthaare alva ?" (doesn't he look good !)...

face tightened, the guy replied back "just give me a shave, i'll come back some other day..."

..i got the drift....

A few faces did turn on my way back home, but i got nothing of it until i reached home when my father opened the door and announced "Eno biddide nodu thale mele kempage!" (something's fallen on your head..it's all red).... innocently....

:(( ...... it wasn't working at all...

mother came in shortly, and although stunned by my looks, chose not to speak until questioned...

invariably, i asked "hegidyamma cutting-u ?" ( how's the cutting ? )

"swalpa belkalli hodre onthara kaanuthe, illandre kathlalli jaasthi gothagolla bidu..HAHAHA" ( it looks a bit odd in light, but i think it'll look just fine in the dark..HAHAHA)

...ah that's a consolation..imagine looking bad even in the dark, with that blaring color on my head....

The next few days went in endless teasing and mocking ..mails were shot to all the near and dear ones by colleagues at office, and people made a beeline to observe the phenomenon. One girl calling me up said "eh elloo hogbeda igle barthini iru! HAHAHAHAAHAHA" ( hey don't go anywhere, i'm coming right away ....! HAHAHAAHAHAHAA)..how insensitive, one might argue..while another friend replied back to the mail "Jags, whom are you hiding from, by getting this hair-style ?"

...and the torture continues....

....tring tring....... "HAHAHAHAHAHHAAHA.....a little curl of what is left, and u'll enter the endangered species list"...

"Any time Saar !"

2006-02-20T10:12:00.000-08:00

After bidding goodbye to cold weather and chilly winds 3 weeks ago, it was time to turn on the heat.

The last three weeks have been hectic. The mind's been crawling, and i've caught myself snoring on the keyboard almost everyday between 2pm-6pm. The eyes simply shuts close during this period. I escaped the first week blaming it on the Jet-lag, while looking up the dictionary for words with the same meaning, so i could use it during the coming weeks. After 3 weeks of torture, it was time for a break, i thought.

with four of us planning to hit pondicherry over the weekend, it seemed like good days ahead. The last time i remember touring India was when bullock carts were advertized on TV as the finest means of transportation and about the only thing the traffic police did then was wear the right uniform for the day.

with enthusiasm touching record levels, myself and karthik got into an auto to drive us to the railway station.

the auto driver : "Saar meter haakla, athva haage rate helala ?" ( shall i turn on the taxi meter or shall i estimate the rate without that ?)

...while i kept wondering whether it was a game the auto driver played to amuse himself by guessing the taxi rate, or did he accidentally notice cauliflowers behind my ears, karthik replied back:

"meter haaki, nimge yaak kashta" (put on the meter, why do you have to go through the trouble)

..it did take me sometime to realize that it was a sarcastic remark :P...

i guess the driver took offense of it, for he seemed to go slow enough for us to actually get down and smell-the-flowers.

Reaching the railway station, where praveen joined us, we moved around for sometime before finding our train. I ran to a nearby makeshift shop on the platform to buy a bottle of water.

Me: "idu olley brand aa ?" (is this a good brand ?)
seller: "Any time saar!"
Me(slightly shocked at the emphatic reply): "Oh wow! sari kodi!" (give me right away!)

Happy about the deal i had got, i sat down looking at the bottle, and turned it around to read the letters printed on the bottle "Any Time Mineral water"....Ah ! ok.

The travel was uneventful with all of us dozing off as soon as the train picked up speed. Reaching Chennai Central at 5am the next morning, pradeep picked us up from the station and we got into a taxi to start our short journey to pondicherry.

pondicherry, a french colony earlier, is a place quite different from many other. With very little recollection of a place i had been to when 2 feet pygmies competed with me in height competitions, i only hoped that the place hasn't changed much since.

Reaching pondicherry at about 8am, we searched around for a hotel to find one just off the beach.

Walking down the streets filled with sellers and tourists, the bustling marketplace was busy as ever. sale everywhere with confused tourists blinking at dilapidated buildings trying to make sense out of it.

"Nah Dear! this one's just another building...the book doesnt mention it"

with a tour guide book in hand, often tourists try to make sense of what's in it with what's not there than what's out there.

Deciding to go to auro beach in the evening we tracked back after baking ourselves for a little longer in the scorching sun. Hungry like ravens, we walked along the streets looking for a hotel....and found none other than "Hotel Ananda Bhavan"...."Ananda Bhavan" is such a popular name for a hotel in this part of the world, some hotels paint the name in different colors just to differentiate themselves from fellow ananda bhavans..

Walking into the hotel, we planted ourself onto the nearest dining table, when praveen muttered loudly "Oh man! i can drink 6 coke bottles now!". No sooner had the waiter heard this, than he jumped towards refrigerator and voila! 6 bottles of KOKA's KOLA. It was like a wish come true, but only this time it was the waiter's wish. The next 2 minutes went in explaining to the waiter how badly we didnt want the drink, and that praveen habitually shouted this way whenever he was hungry!

With all 6 KOKAs out of sight, we ordered "Veg north indian meals".....the food did look like veg, and the only thing north indian about it was the bill. thoroughly unimpressed by the food and the lack of service, pradeep tried to act smart by leaving a 1 rupee tip. enraged by this, the waiter called him back just when we were about to leave and dropped the one rupee into pradeep's pocket, like it was HunDi. laughing out loudly at the rotund thug, we ran towards the door with the booty.

After a nice afteroon siesta, we hopped back into the car where the driver lay drunk and sodden. exchanging nervous looks, we sat in the car asking him to drive us to auro beach. hoping to catch a nice evening sunset, we stay put in the car, watching the driver zig zag past the cows and humans with utmost indifference. after about 30 minutes of driving us through narrow lanes, he dropped us at auroville ashram ! the drunk moron had confused auro ashram for auro beach!..one in the west, and the other in the east, 10km apart...with still time in hand to catch the sunset at the beach, we hurried into the ashram, to get a quick glance, before we ran back to the car.

Zooming along, we reached the entrance of the beach, where a huge board said:
"Aurovillians and guests only"...cursing the place for discriminating so blatantly, we took the other entrance meant for indians. At the beach, a long rope separated the foreigners from the locals, with a board that read "Please protect the privacy of the people at the beach. Do not Stare!", while the guard, supposedly posted there to make sure this was followed, was busy staring himself.

Well we did realise one thing really late.....Damn! we were always going to miss the sunset over the beach...we were in the east! The sun was quietly setting behind the coconut trees.

At the sight of the beach, i had turned half-mad and it didnt take long to go that extra mile to turn crazy, when i decided to try and float on my back. while i was busy trying my tips and tricks to float in this fashion, a huge wave gobbled me up and threw me towards the shore, leaving fans laughing hysterically at the sight. My honeymoon with the sea was now over.

dipping ourselves until it was dark, we returned to our hotel room. We decided to roam the city, before we stuffed ourselves with pizza.

pondy did seem to have changed a lot, with shops of all sizes and shapes everywhere. the excess population seemed to have destroyed the city, but the charm was there. french looked well at home, with "rue" stamped on every street board..."rue" is french for street, i was later told.

With praveen the only tamil link, the rest of us simply nodded in acknowledgement to whatever answers we got vis-a-vis directions.

The next day we got up early to start our journey towards mahabalipuram. I wanted to go to the beach once again, but was assured that mahabalipuram was nothing but miles of beach, and i'd have ample chances to try my tricks.

The ECR or the East Coast Road, is a long stretch of road along the beach and is a brilliant 1.5 hour drive to Mahabalipuram. With cool breeze all over, it was fantastic to be sitting in the car watching the beach on our right, and the long stretch of salt harvesting fields on the left. 1/2 an hour into the drive, we spotted a beach area that was devoid of people, and we decided to stop in, to hop in. we jetted towards the beach, that was, simply put, awesome! with a few fishermen trying their luck on our right, i jumped into the water. pondicherry has got the beaches ! some of the best i've seen. Stopping at places either for a pic, or for a tender coconut drink, the entire drive was highly gratifying, which also put me to sleep as we headed to mahabalipuram by noon.
"Eddolo Mele, banthu ..." ( Get up ! we are here !)

waking me up, the other three ran out with their cameras, while i took time to collect my stuff for swimming in the bay.

I followed them, while they rushed towards what looked like a shack that was selling some kind of tickets. well i was too excited to actually care to see what they were trying to buy, as long as i am let into the beach.

...a few seconds later

"Lo Eno Thandidia ??" (what the hell have you got with you ?), shouted pradeep looking at the swimming trunks in my hand.

still drowsy, i replied back "unlike you, i am planning to swim in the beach!"

pradeep startled and enraged, "unlike you, others go to the temple here! there isnt any beach nearby!"

"WHAT!!!!, arent we at the beach ??"

....While the rest went in with cameras, i went in with swimming trunks in my hand, trying to hide it from prying eyes! After loitering around for sometime we headed towards the shore temple to finally head towards the beach.

I had bought a huge beach hat, which i wore, but somehow the driver couldn't stop laughing at me. The Drunk moron was weird in many ways, another one to add i thought.

The beach as before was great, and clean!....after a few photo-ops, we jumped around in the water till dusk. packing our stuff, we walked down the rows of shops near the beach. I planned to buy a few shells that was being sold.

"Evolo ?"..( how much ?), i tried to, in tamil..

"moopathanji saaar" ( !!!! )

"Lo praveen, eshto adu? " ( praveen, how much did he mention ?)

"35" praveen muttered..

bargaining has never been my forte, but i'd not shell out 35 for shells!

"evolo, kammi solri ?" ( @#$%@#$ ), i tried to get some words out..

seller : "!!!!"

"saar kammi ille...ok 20 kuDungo ..." ( give 20)

i had started off to hand over the money, happy about the deal, but pradeep interjected...

"Lo 15 ge kelo" ( Ask for 15!)

"Lo hogo, i cant try again in tamil..more over i dont know what 15 means in tamil, praveen's already in the car"

"pannajji ge kuDkriya ?"....pradeep tried now...

wonder what pradeep had asked, the seller was visibly angry, snatching the shells away from me unceremonisously from me, while i was busy trying to check out the design.

"pannaji kuDkraanda iva, POYAYO POYA !" shouted the seller, pointing at pradeep and later at me !, with the "POYAYO POYA" markedly louder and echoing all over!

well i didnt get what was happening, but it looked very funny the way pradeep shouted back something in half baked french, while i mumbled "BEDA BIDI, NEEVE ITKOLI" ( I dont want it, you can keep the dumb shells to yourself!).

the fiasco notwithstanding, we searched around for more things to buy, and finally got into the car to drive us back to chennai. Reaching chennai, and after having dinner at "Saravana Bhavan", we finally made it to the bus terminal to board the bus to bangalore.

Long beaches, clean shores, countryside view....all we had asked for, and a weekend well spent.

for now, i am all ready for more of such trips, and any proposal would recieve a thumping "Any time Saar!" from me :D...

Credits :- Picture support from Karthik and Praveen.

Innocence and Bliss

2006-01-22T09:18:00.000-08:00

Sometimes, it is good enough to know you have been through something, than actually experiencing it.

With winter peaking, temperature here was falling by the hour when disaster struck. I got up early last monday to find my jacket stuck to the heater pipe, and a gaping hole formed in it in the process. I guess i had carelessly swung it across, the previous evening. Having no jacket to wear, i struggled the rest of the week on my way to the office.

Colleagues later in the week decided to do some shopping at the factory outlets 70 miles off our city. Come saturday afternoon, we were on our way to the outlets. After an hours drive, we reached the place with a slight drizzle accompaining us. After about four hours of running around shops we decided it was time to head back home. I had found myself a Jacket after scavenging quite a few outlets and was only too pleased to put it on immediately.

We were ahead of schedule and hence decided to visit a temple that was on our way back home. The unplanned detour would take away from us 2 hours of time, which at that time we didnt know we required. Nevertheless, excited about the sumptuous food at the temple, we zoomed our way to the temple, with frequent showers keeping the wipers busy.

Curd rice sitting steady after the meal at the temple, a sudden announcement warned : "Warning ! Freezing rain ! Please be on guard! ". I had no idea what a freezing rain meant until the droplets of rain hit me on my face, freezing on impact ! Running into the car, i cuddled into the back seat, with the public address system still shouting hoarse asking people to drive safely. We started towards our city when the clock ticked 7:30pm.

With five of us in the car, it was only too easy for me to doze off while the others entertained each other. My new found jacket was warm enough to support my cause. After listening to the discussion about the sudden change in events, the curd rice had worked it's magic on me. With conversations slowly giving way for a sound sleep, my decreasing consiousness was aggravated by the shopping i had done earlier in the day. In no time, i was sound asleep, unawares.

After what looked like a really long sleep, i woke up. Our car was neatly parked on the highway shoulder, with rain still pouring. With my mind only half awake, i asked my colleague : "Why have we stopped ? there isnt any traffic signal here!". I got a few glances, or that's all i could make out, but not a voice from anyone. Strange as i felt, my slumber got the better of me, and i went back to sleep. We reached our house, when i was woken up with a shudder. Walking into the house, i looked at my watch.

It read 1am. in sometime we were all asleep with noises outside i had never heard before.

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PS : Colleagues say we 'escaped death' twice that night, when our car lost control in the icy rain with near zero visibility, and skidded all over the state highway. The sudden storm was one of the worst in recent times.

I wouldn't know.

(.....did i mention i got a good bargain on my Jacket ?...well, yes i just did.)

Veggie Delight

2006-01-13T18:14:00.000-08:00

My views on non-vegetarianism is not different from that of vegetarianism. Everyone has a right to choose their food in a buffet ! I needed a red twisted ear to choose mine, unfortunately.

"NO egg, NO meat, NO mushroom. Is there anything ?"...is my usual reply to the question "what would you like to have sir ?"... though grammatically incorrect, it is the only genuine and most direct way of asking a person what i want. Much of my energy over the next ten minutes is wasted in confirming with the waitress about the contents of a particular delicacy.

"One VEG Pizza, no egg, no meat (duh!), no mushroom.", the waitress would repeat confirming my order, with a slightly puzzled look on her face. May be she was wondering what ingredients to put in when it looked like i had asked her to take out everything except the pizza base. Ha ! she's lucky i stopped there, otherwise someone did mention even the cheese wasn't entirely "vegetarian" if one includes the process that is used to make them!

Of course one can't blame me for this, and i am only too happy not to hold myself responsible either. Many here find my display of vegetarianism offensive, but so do i when Yong Lee asks "NO egg also ?!!!" when i order for "VEG Fried rice, no egg". From where i come, a similar order would have been understood and assimilated in a jiffy while the hotel guy happily rakes in the moolah.

One has to be very clear while mentioning what one wants over here. The other day i had ordered a Veggie delight at subway, and asked the lady to "bake it" for me...( i forgot they say 'toast' )...the lady with a weird look, started filling in small pieces of what looked like dried meat!...puzzled i asked "hey i ordered a veg burger, that does not look like veg to me !"

lady: "me neither! it was kind of weird why you asked me to put bacon in a veggie burger!"
me : "eh ? i wanted it baked! not bacon!"
lady:"oh :D...."

Much of my shopping initially over here was based on thought and gumption ....

"PEPPPA-ROO-NEEE.....hmm, i think it's a kind of pepper they sell here....why does it look like carrot pieces though ? put it in, we'll ask the lady at the counter!"...

It's an odd concept - vegetarianism. i am doubly sure we are all born non-veggies of which some choose to be veggies; at least the stomach's sporty about the idea of a non-veg diet. As in its like owning a car that can do 150 mph while most would be ecstatic to reach 30 mph in bangalore. So while i get entangled into a leaf eating routine for the rest of my life and save the "crores" of goats and sheeps, my alter ego munches over the ones i "saved", in absolute bliss.

In due time i realized though, that it's a choice we make more than anything else that determines what we eat, and has nothing to do with whether we go to hell or heaven, if there was one in the first place!

As a kid, i was brainwashed and hand ironed into thinking that being a vegetarian was the only logical step in my eventful life as a human being. My grandmother was the veggie-cop at home who'd sniff around even the slightest smell off us, often ending up dissapointed on finding that it was my sock that needed washing more than my belly that needed cleansing.

My Granny had taken the veggie thingy way too personally ! It used to be an absolute entertainer to watch my grandmother use the choisest words in kannada, tamil, hindi and sometimes even in urdu to berate the fish seller who'd dare to lurk around on our street.

"Shiva shiva ! en thandyo belge belge ! badmaash ! nin maneg benki haaka !"
( What have you got ! you rabid thief ! hope someone sets your house on fire!"),
would come the volley of curses from my granny, while only 2 seconds ago she'd be chanting "Shiva shiva, paramaathma, olledaaglappa ellargu!" ( Dear Lord, let everyone live happily!)....the fisherboy would be at his wits' end to comprehend the reason for such a sudden outburst of anger.

while we used to enjoy rolling and lauging at the puzzled fish seller , we'd make sure our nose was tightly closed with a thick towel. I'd even tuck my nose into my t-shirt just to leave my hands free, so that i could point at the fish seller and roll in laughter. Unable to stand my granny's taunts he finally came up with a clever idea. He'd leave the fish box at the end of our street, walk to each and every house tapping their gates, shouting "MEEEN MEEEEN !!!"(fish!, fish!). It made his job all the more difficult considering that, earlier, propective customers on our street would come out to buy the fish at the smell of it rather than his shouts!"....and needless to say this change in his strategy gave us bouts of laughter even "non-stop nonsense" could'nt manage. Our neighbour, an american lady on tour, must have wondered why he taps at her gate and calls her 'Mean ! Mean !' when she had no recollection of ever offending him!

Granny used to go to great lengths to protect the 'sanctity' of our place and the surroundings by trying to keep it free from anything non-living as possible. I had secretly vowed to sleep less while she was around, lest she take me for dead and throw me out unceremoniously like the dead rodent brought in by the neighborhood cat. She'd not let anyone into the kitchen if she got an inkling of doubt that he/she was a non-veggie. Considering that my kitchen was a place i frequented most while at home, i could not imagine not being let into it because i laid hands on something non-veg!....the fear did sink in well!

Nonetheless, it did not deter me to use this idea to irritate granny whenever the opportunity came up that had the potential to disprove her theory. One day i was watching this kannada movie called "bedara kannappa" ( kannappa , the hunter). I pretty much was enjoying the movie until a scene in it required the protagonist to present Lord Shiva with something to eat. I was quite sure that as always it would be the usual offering of milk with some fruits and stuff, but fate took a different turn that day.
out of the blue, kannappa shouted in the movie,

Kannappa : " Oh Lord, please accept this dead rabbit as my offering to you and bless my soul!"

Shocked out of my skin, i immediately turned towards my granny for an answer, who looked as puzzled as the fisherboy was when my granny had chosen him to use her huge vocab of curses. She had convinced me that not only were humans born veggies, Lord Shiva was a veggie by birth too !...now that's taking things too far, one might argue.

I knew granny was thinking fast, so i decided to play spoil sport..

me : "nodaajji !!!, shiva goo maamsa thinnok aasey, adikke kannappa kottidanna thagond bitta! Iga parvathi shiva na aDuge maneg sersolla !"
(Look granny ! Lord Shiva happily accepted the dead rabbit, now parvati will not let him in her kitchen!")

offended and beyond speech, granny screamed to my mother,
"nodey ee jaggi ododanna bittu TV mundgaDe kuthidaane !"
(Look, your son's watching TV instead of Studying!)

with a badly twisted red ear i spent the rest of the day reading "ajanta caves" with leaves for dinner. Smartness isn't an asset if one does not use it smartly, i thought of myself, yet thanking kannappa just for the heck of it.

My Questioning spirit somehow didn't appeal to the gods either, and i'd innocently get into things i'd rather be away from.

It was a time, when teachers didn't expect me to be able to count more than 10 and clapped for spelling my name correctly. My intense liking for dosas is a fact many can't say they dont know. One day i had been to this neighbour aunty's house while she was busy making dosas. How could have i resisted that ?! i pestered aunty to give me some too.

aunty : "Nodu jaggi, idu special dosey, nim maneli maadodilla...sari na ?" ( This is a special dosa they dont make at your house)
me: "sari, dosey ne taane aadre ?"...( but it's dosa only right ?)
aunty: "howdu, aadre special...parvaagilva ?" ..( yeah, but it's a special dosa, is it ok ?)
me:"sari" ...(ok!)

after two hot dosas, which tasted way different from the usual ones mother made at home, i decided that it was time my mother learnt to make such dosas and went back home.

Me: "amma, ivath aunty maneli dose thinde...aunty special dosey andru" ( I ate special dosa in aunty's house today)
mother:" yaav aunty no ? padma aunty na ?" (Which aunty ?!!! padma aunty ??!!!)
me :"Howdu, dosey chenaagithu!" ( Yeah ! it was great !)
mother:"special antha heldra ?"( Did she mention 'special' ?) ...now concerned

me:"howdu. num maneli maadolvanthe....yaake ?" ( Yeah !, and also that we don't make it at our house.....why, may i ask ?)...now almost agitated.
mother: !!!!

mother :" hegitho adu ??" ( How was it ?)
me:"upppupp ithamma, mathe yellow ithu" ( it was salty salty, and yellow)
mother:" madhyadalli billee itha ?" ( was it white at the center ? )
me:"howdu!! ninge madodikke barutha ?"( Yeah ! do u know how to make it ?)....full wide smile !
mother: "ayyo ayyo paapi omelette thindu bandyeno ?!!" ( You evil sinner ! you ate omelette at aunty's place ????")
me: "eh ??? oh!"....shell shocked
mother:" ammma, nodu nin mommaga omelette thindbandidaane!!!" ( Mother !! look your grandson's eaten omlette and come home !)..... Fuming like a kettle...

now, now..this was not required! granny had had her quota of curses in the morning!

granny: "ene adu ?" ( What is it ? )
mother:"jaggi motte thindu bandidaane !" ( Jaggi has eaten EGG !! )
granny: !!!! "ayyo ayyo paapistha motte thindyeno !!! shiva shiva" ( oh you evil sinner !! did you eat EGG ???)

ME : kannappa, kaapadappa !!

me: "dosey ajji thindiddu naanu, motte alla !" ( No granny, it was dosey ! not egg !)

what followed was a sequence of slaps on my cheeks alternating with pinches on my ears, with tears rolling like there was a hole in my eyes. mother had already gone out to kick aunty, while granny took time off to give me some good old spanking.

well, rest as they say is history, but it was a evil day for me...probably that time of my life when i permanently switched the "to non-veg mode" off out of fear.

eons later, one day

while NEC's ad "anDe khao monday Khao, murgi ke anDe" was titillatingly well made, one news bit announced that day "now we get vegetarian eggs!"

i couldnt believe my eyes !!!! so finally the egg decided to be a vegetarian after all, i convinced myself, while turning towards my mother who also was keenly listening to it.

"ammma, motte non-veg alvanthe!" ( Look egg is not non-veg !). ... Almost sounding like my point was just vindicated.

Mother was quiet :D.....granny was busy driving the mosquitoes out.... and my taboo stayed on...
It's Veggie Delight ever since for me( with the exception of cakes :D), though it could have easily been V-egg-ie Delight had it not been for that fateful day!

We were there !

2006-01-01T20:08:00.000-08:00

Saturday morning wasn't exactly the right time to wake up considering i had just shifted to a new house the previous night after some frenzied packing and unpacking. so i didn't. I woke up at 1pm , shivering and cursing the room heater that had decided to take a break. got down to see roomies in a state of slumber. kicking each other and later taking turns to get ready, we finally got to the train station at 4:30pm to catch the train to nyc on new year's eve.

The 1.5 hour journey to the city was enough for me to take a short nap while occasionally opening my left eye just to make sure my umbrella wasn't stolen - gotten used to checking stuff like this thanks to travelling by buses in bangalore. While my umbrella stay put, i did notice that one of my potato rolls was missing, only to realize i had munched on it before curling up like a caterpillar. The travel was pretty uneventful except for the frequent entry of hordes of college kids at every stop.

The train finally made it's way into the city, and came to a halt at the station. Everyone seemed to be in hurry with people running out of the train. Getting down the train, we moved along to the exit to reach the 32nd street.

Though i have been to the city a couple of times, it's a nice feeling to come back again and again. I guess its because it is more closer to cities in india in terms of the busy life people lead here. 42nd street would be times square we concluded, and started walking towards it. As we walked it became more and more apparent that the event as always would be a big drawer this time around too. police platoons, all in their blacks, and armoured vehicles were scattered everywhere, directing people to specific streets to decongest the traffic. By the time we were on 38th street, we knew we were late by a few hours, when policemen started announcing "This Street's filled, take the next one !". running in every possible direction, we finally reached the Broadway Avenue. 42nd street was ten streets away now, and a sea of crowd in front puzzled us no less. The clock still showing 7pm, we had a long way to go before we could actually reach the point where "The Ball" drops. Cold as it was, in no time we were stuck in the crowd, without an inch to move, literally. I have to say, i have never seen such a crowd in my entire life. It seemed like every street was filled to the hilt. 750000 surely definitely could. i vaguely remember ulsoor festival in bangalore bringing in such huge crowds.

Security was tight, with police asking us to unzip our jackets, and in a few more places stopping people from getting backpacks. While a part of every road was cordoned off for free movement of the security personnel, the mounted police did take some time off to show off their well kempt horses to the crowd. The mounted police always draws a crowd, but this was no time for a photo-op. Huge Screens were put up on every street intersecting the broadway avenue. while a lot of stuff was happening on the stage put up on times square, which we saw on the screens, i hardly knew anyone who performed except mariah carey. Well at -2 Celcius, one has to commend her for wearing what she wore ! A big sign atop the stage screamed "MC" in stylized writing.

It was still 9pm, with no sign of the crowd moving any closer to 42nd street, while we were still stuck at 51st street. It did look calm and serene until then, what with people chatting away to glory all around us. Then came the big push from behind. whether it was a simmering energy that built up in due time or it was a deleberate push, i was thrown like a ping pong ball towards the huge man in front, falling flat on his back like a mosquito zapped by a net. with the fat man having nowhere to go he decided to push me back instead. Grrrrr. The rampaging crowd was merciless, and i had to virtually wriggle through my way sidewards to get a breather. the fat man stay put, giving a weak smile mumbling a "sorry". Without an inch to move, my friend, stuck in the crowd, later confessed to swallowing the gum he was chewing after failing to reach the side of the road to dispose it.

The crowd was now restless and crazy. while a lot of people started losing stuff, a few were losing their mind too. a few college girls jumped on to people to perch themselves on hapless shoulders; it sure gave them a clear view of the crowd. Shouting out incoherently, most were trying to call out their dear ones who were either stuck streets away, or had no idea where they were. Buildings along the street had turned into platforms for novice artists to show their talent, with a few standing behind glass windows trying to act weird and draw attention.

With every hour that went by, the temperature went down. Finally one college kid spotted "The Ball" , but only it's tiny reflection on the facade of a building. In her enthusiasm, she started pointing at it while drawing curious onlookers. funny as it seemed people were more happy watching the small reflection, than the huge screen that showed the same thing ! hell, we might as well have watched the whole thing on TV, in the cozy comforts of our home!

Back home in india, on new year's eve 2005 and before, whenever i saw celebrations at times square and the streets filled with people, i used to think that everyone there were having a great timeout there. I was here this time, and was slightly dissapointed. chilly as it was, was'nt the best time to be out, apart from being hungry, shivering, and having less than an inch of space to move on a street that wasn't even times square!

New year's eve celebrations in bangalore concentrates on Brigade road which is lit all along, and the crowd parties all night. However, the crowd goes berserk after 12 and we have had to run for cover to escape the hooligans who will not stop at breaking anything they find on their way. Our group of friends used to get together for a good dinner before zooming past home as soon as the clock struck 12.

After a long wait, the clocked ticked 12 and the ball dropped, flares jetting out of it in all directions with fireworks filling the sky. It seemed like the crowd was just waiting for it to get over, and dispersed almost immediately. wishing each other we started running towards the station again. caught the 2am train to reach by 4am.

Much as i would like to brush this off as a dissapointment, i can't but help acknowledge the efficient way in which NYPD handled the whole event. The amount of planning, the sheer strength and the kind of emergency systems that were in place...hmmm that was a first for me, otherwise i have been used to seeing policemen in bangalore wading long thick sticks scaring themselves more than the average individual during such events.

The other thing that was great was the crowd. Though i missed the actual event itself, the crowd was entertaining, and well behaved, which i hadnt expected at all.

That was new year's eve for me, not at times square, but near times square..... but, we were there !

Busing Around

2005-12-25T07:15:00.000-08:00

The need to travel has always captured the imagination of the human race. While we race towards faster mobility, the omnipresent bus connects the city like no other.

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circa 1980s

"eddolo, nim ajji maneg hogbeku ivathu !" ( "Get up, we need to go to your grandmother's house today !")

"esht bus hathbeku ?" ( "how many buses do we need to board ?")

"eradu, 7D sikre, ondey" ("Two buses, but if we manage to board the '7D' bus, then it'll be just
one")
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The often repeated sentence at that time, was a cue for me to feign illness and stay back, for it meant a long journey including boarding a series of buses on time, to finally reach my grandmother's house. The 7D bus coming "on time" would turn out to be my prayer and wish for that day, at a time when my vocabulary left a lot to be desired.

Buses in bangalore have one thing in common - they all come late. Hawkers usually used this to their advantage to test commuters patience and their tastebuds. The enchanting smell of groundnuts while ensnaring our senses also helped the hawker make a quick buck. unable to bear my pestering for money my mother would curse the groundnut guy for being so opportunistic while handing me over the 50 paise.

Often buses are victims of their own fame. Much as everyone would like to use the service, it's poor maintenance makes it look like carcass on wheels. Either the seats have been cut mercilessly on the belly to expose its insides or the headlights have long stopped working and are merely reflecting the light from the oncoming traffic. Smoke from the bus is enough to dispel any doubts about us screwing the eco-system, while a dingy looking board in the bus meekly spells out "No Smoking" with a badly drawn skull next to it showing the result if one did. Sitting in the bus is no more advantageous than standing in one, and only makes the person standing more jealous instead of the one sitting any happier.

The need for travelling by bus as a student didnt arise in my case until i started my engineering course, since our Pre-university college was just a stone's throw away, while the school i went to was just a kick away.

My introduction to buses was a rude shock. Travelling alone has not been the strongest of my qualities.

"201 is your bus number, and you'll need to get down at banashankari 3rd stage", my father repeated for the nth time, like he was giving a minute by minute weather update that was subject to change.

Scared out my boots, i mentally summed up the number to see if it was lucky for me...rats !! 3 can't be lucky i thought, given that the '201' bus was an all-rounder, literally.

Being one of those buses which travelled the length and breadth of the city, 201 was more like a jampacked boat of survivors gasping for breath by the time it reached my stop.

The next day, after being already behind schedule, the bus slowly stopped, with passengers dangling precariously to it . I had almost made up my mind to ditch this bus and look for a free-lift, when passengers started boarding off the bus like there was some kind of a bomb scare. I couldn't thank my stars more when the bus was nearly empty in no time, only to realize that it was a ritual commuters followed to let the CO-poisoned passengers stuck inside to get down at their stop. 2 seconds later, there was a mad rush into the bus again ! while i didn't understand what was happening, i was quickly pulled into the bus by an old man who probably thought i was his grandson.

Stuck inside the bus, i lost all hopes of reaching college in one piece.

Jampacked as it is, conductors usually didn't dare to walk the length of the bus due to the danger of suffocating the already dying passengers and also the possibility of being siphoned off by pickpockets. Well the whole bus was so delirious, i'll not be surprised if the pickpocket stole from his own pocket without ever realizing it !

As for me, i could move around in the bus, stuck between people, without the need to touch the floor; such was the gravity defying crowd.

Added to this, the concept of "Women only" seats in buses. While men would haggle and fight the crap out to get a seat in the bus, women would scream their throats out, if anyone as much as dared to even come close to "their" seats....

Travelling by bus did help improve my reflexes though what with the bus driver braking like he was hammering a nail into the floor. The sudden braking would take many off-gaurd and commuters would fall over each other with inertia playing a crucial part in the melee. Newton 'stood' vindicated starkly during these times.

Conductors, as they are called, would do crazy things to fleece money from people....tickets would be more like 2.25, 3.75 rupees which meant we would end up giving 5 rupees expecting a change in return. Instead we would get a ticket with weird markings on it's back denoting the change due, to be collected on reaching his/her stop. Since getting down the bus was as big an event as getting onto one, passengers were forced to forget their change in exchange for their lives many a times.

Dealing with so many people is a task conductors prepare for everyday, by either being completely drunk and marginally coherent, babbling curses or just being plain indifferent to the happenings.

Not all Conductors were bad though, a few had even turned humorous with age. Quite a few of the buses i used to travel used to pass the NIMHANS hospital, famous for housing mentally ill patients. So whenever the bus stopped near the hospital, the conductor would shout out :

"yaar ree illi hutchru, nim stop banthu" ("all those who are mad here, we have reached your stop")

The goverment later introduced buses called "pushpak" which was moderately well built, and a tad bit more pricier than the regular buses, but was crowded no less, and helped people die in peace slowly and luxuriously than the regular buses that worked like cyanide.

Hanging out of a moving bus was a simple pleasure everyone indulged in, sticking their head out trying to get a breather, and on many occasions being their last one too...

If getting a seat in the bus is one tough task, holding on to it is another. prying eyes latch on to you like that of an eagle on it's prey. An inch of visible space near the already occupied seat would immediately be filled up with either a empty tiffin box, or a school bag and a cunning smile from the fellow standing commuter. Its an unwritten rule that expects people sitting in the bus to offer to carry the tons of luggage, including broomsticks, carried by those standing in the bus. I conveniently used this rule to dump all those loads of Engineering drawing paraphernalia onto midgets sitting in the bus, while i enjoyed the scenic beauty outside. Sitting in the bus comes with another disadvantage, that of dozing off to sleep. Nothing can beat the sleep inducing capability of a bus. I for one have dozed off quite a few times only to be woken up as result of my head banging into the seat in front, courtesy the bus driver.

Buses have long been oppressed and punished for no apparent mistake of theirs. While the city fights on whether miss world pageant should be conducted or not, one fool gets this clever idea of pelting the buses and lo behold ! some dozen buses are burnt that day !. While miss world happily enjoys a sumptous evening snack in her beach outfit, buses get stripped off their armor by hooligans !. Buses generally have this tendancy to get into trouble. Awfully late when needed, they are the first to be present in the midst of a simmering riot, more like "AA Bhail mujhe maar" ( "Bull, please hit me") as the saying goes.

All said, buses still provide that necessary link to the city and it's people. It's been a while since i used the bus to travel, but i know that it'll be around when i need one, a few hours late, but it'll be there... busing around..

God Promise !

2005-12-02T14:15:00.000-08:00

If there is any time when strong emotions run between god and its student disciples, it should be during exams, and more so on the eve of the results.

Clearly, i have rather been a chicken when it came to exams, and distress calls travelling upwards were shamelessly sent by me at unearthly hours, either to rescue me from a sparse matrix or the 8086 microprocessor. inane as my effort to please god on the 11th hour, i had partly considered then that he was personally responsible for my welfare, and hence preparing for the exams all alone was not what i was prepared to do. God, i insisted, should equally work hard in areas of luck and memory management- exams where he had to come clean every semester.

Exams usually brought out the worst kind of paranoia in me. Starting off with taking a month long hiatus from getting a haircut, before and after the exams, to which side of the bed i got up on the day of the exams, to the grumpy face i would need to wear lest i displease the god of luck. Love for god usually peaked during exams to extraordinary levels, with early morning visits and circling around the temple while my mind shuttled between recalling "system call to create a file in linux" to the number of times i had circled the temple. An inkling of doubt on whether i had completed circling the idols a magic 9 times, would push me towards making another - not the one to displease the gods, and face their wrath.

My mother didn't help the cause either, often advising me to take the entrance to my house that faced east while going for my exams, instead of the main entrance that i usually took. While this was rather a burden, if starting in the east direction gave me luck in the 'analysis of algorithms", i'd rather take it than try acting smart, i reasoned.

God, i observed, seemed to be particularly liberal in fishing out luck for me when i prepared well for the exams. Then again, what's the point in him trying to be goody goody when i had done all the hard work !

Our appetite for cheap methods of obtaining easy-to-read materials was a boon come true for the photocopier-boy. In his late 50s, he spoke in one direction and looked in another direction. That was still better than the peculiar way he used to say "Zeeraax" to denote a photocopy. The 30 paise per copy that he had mastered not only gave us notes for cheap, it came with a stink which even the mongrels standing nearby used to detest. Not the one to take this cheap trick of mine easily, my mother had forced me into hanging all the papers in the balcony, like wet clothes, to drive away the obnoxious phenomenon.

Voracious readers that we were, books were photocopied including the copyright page :) (okay okay, the previous post notwithstanding. Irony has a weird sense of humour). One subject which we had to study went by the name "Computer Ethics and Society" which spoke of copyright infringement, ethics, patents etc., and had three text books for the subject and ironically was probably the most photocopied book ever in our college history. While we read ethics and copyrights to our hearts content, it was insignificant that it was coming from the stinking 30 paise photocopy :D

Exams were tough, and even tougher were the irritating practicals labs. The programs used to be a big dud, but the external examiners were a pain sometimes. Half the ICs and chips in the lab had breathed their last breath, and the other half waiting for salvation. computers looked like they had been beaten to death, with keyboards rampaged by rats. External examiners generally came to labs to have a nice lunch and enjoy the lush greenary in the campus. programs were but a reason, working or not working, examiners went on gut feeling chosing a number between 75-95 if the program worked, and a crossed look if it didn't, with wierd markings on the paper suggesting evil intentions.

While we used to take turns to secretly try and overlook how much they had marked us for the program, it would be the wildest fire on campus that day "who got how much ?"...one fool had come running down to me after the Myu-P lab shouting "Hey that external examiner took down your name and was discussing about you. you are done for good"...well, at that time i didnt know if she was impressed by my program and was trying to find which star i was born in, or she was so pissed off with my answers that she wanted to do some voodoo stuff on me. Not the one to take it without a fight, i made an emergency visit that day to the temple promising god an 'archaney' and a coconut offering, if i scraped through the lab. That i didn't earn money enough even to buy a matchstick was totally unimportant at that hour.

Even funnier is the extent to which lab attendants used to go to rag us, and we inturn them...

one particular lab attendant, a dud by choice, used to berate us :

"Do not keep your book on the processor ! it will get heated !"

one clever guy had convinced him one day by saying :

"no sir, the processor is inside, this is just the cabinet. See it says here 'Intel Inside' !" :D :D..

needless to say, the attender gave us permission to keep our 1gm books on the 'Processor' without much ranting after that !

Invariably every semester had one 'black sheep' subject that would run down our throat like a cacti scared stiff. Most of us used to leave the sleeping beast for the last day, fearing it would take its toll on the other exams. I had resorted to what i did best: doubling up my presence at the temple, just so that god gets a second helping of the carefully picked flowers, and force him to remember my face well enough so that he could recall it while distributing lucky coupons during the exams.

It was the 7th semester .... and there was this particularly tough subject on linux internals. An elective we should have rather not taken, our lecturer had famously tried hard to talk us out of it before we decided to nail each others head with a doornail.

On the day before the exams, plugging my ears with the fattest finger i had, to cut down all extraneous noices, i tried hard to concentrate on the bad omen better and went on :

"the bootstrap program loads into the memory, and that in turn loads the OS."
"the bootstrap program loads into the memory, and that in turn loads the OS."
"the bootstrap program loads into the memory, and that in turn loads the OS."

Hopelessly falling short of memorizing stuff even worth a mark, i tried to do a bit of a Mckenna and decided to picturize the whole page, hoping to remember it like a painting !...that i rushed a couple of telegrams skywards 2 minutes later conclusively proved that not only was Mckenna's 'Photographic memory" a stinking lie, it was a deliberate attempt to influence young impressionable minds.

The day of the exam was one of mayhem and confusion, with half contemplating suicide after the exams, and half not even turning up on time, making us to think if there was a holiday rush to the heavens.

The poop-brain examiner stood on the ramp, emotionless, trying to beleive that he had suddenly acquired a halo, acting like an angel guardian, swooping down on anyone who would dare as much as wink an eye at anyone except him. The need for copying was never so greater with some using their toes( as kiran puts it ) to turn the pages of the book kept on the ground, to a few looking at others desperately for help. I had gone to the exam hall with a certificate-of-visit from 3 temples in the morning, the proof of which lay on my forehead with the 'kunkum' blaring. If god ever passed by, he'd have no reason to say that he didn't notice me.

I had already started emotionally blackmailing god about the consequences of him failing to sail me through this exam. While the coconut, i believed , was a huge temptation for god to grant my prayer, i did have doubts whether i had been stingy in my offering. After 3 hours of writing how linux's ability to screw-up was as good as it's ability to boot-up, i dropped the pen down.

"15+8+12+5+10"... that would be my score for the exam, i mentally calculated...for 50 marks i'd write another operating system, god only had to make the examiner a bit drunk while evaluating my paper. Optimistic as my calculation was , the code i had written for the bootstrap program might as well be used as a virus to infiltrate it.

God would have to choose between me and linux. He had no choice as far as i was concerned.
Spending the holidays until the results were out was a nightmare...any building that even remotely looked like a temple would get a full bow from me, and "Jai hanuman" by Sanjay khan and "ganga mayya" by dayanand sagar suddenly had a avid follower in me.

After months of worship, the d-day arrived, and LI was the only subject anyone cared to check out. One last prayer shooting upwards, clicking the results sheet, the page loaded slowly, as though someone was sitting behind the monitor, virtually painting line by line...

.and then the result showed up !

... FCD !!!! yippppeee !!!!.... Long live the creator, LI had been successfully conquered.....54 it said was my score in linux internals.... i was by now sure that god had given a few extra shots of tequila to my evaluator, while having a vodka-martini himself, before asking the evaluator to evaluate my paper. Linux was now "been there done that !"

While many a Exams came and went, LI brought in more TV ratings to that one-eyed bat ramanand sagar's weekly pain-in-the---- serial than any of his other promotions did.

My fear for exams is still intact, but hopefully god will always be there to save the day :).

I kept my promise with the customary coconut offering, though it was God's Promise in return that had been more alluring !

I never thought i'd write this post one day !

2005-11-28T08:09:00.000-08:00

Have been getting quite a few comments on whether IT is not Like That was written by me, or whether i lifted it from some other source. Well this post should put to rest any such questions, present or future.

well first things first : The post IT is not Like That is MY ORIGINAL WORK. It is not "...yavaag foreign ge ?" that is the title of that post, instead it is "IT is not like that" and it shall remain that way !. It is my experience that is in the post and mine alone, unless i have specifically mentioned otherwise.

The post in question has been doing the rounds for quite sometime now, and quite a few have posted it in their blog as their own work. While some have mentioned that they got it as a forward, a few more though have taken the trouble to find out who the original author is and have got back to me. Bloggers such as Pradeep Kishore, Arjun , Bangloreguy and Jaison are among the few who took the trouble of giving due credits for my post, on their blog.

What pushed me into writing this post on plagiarism was a comment thanks to Ambar, directing me to this site http://vijireflections.blogspot.com/2005/07/eppo-foreign-pore.html which has my post translated in tamil(without my knowledge of course) . The link took me to the copy-cat-blogger who has tried her best to make the post look like it's her original composition. That she has failed pathetically at it is something one does not need a microscope to prove.

For those who do not want to believe that i wrote the post in question, i cannot do much. However, for those who are prepared to see reason, i'd like to show a few obvious flaws in her translated post. Oh by the way, she claims that she wrote this post an year ago and later deleted it to add it back again two weeks after i posted mine !. While she also claims a lot of things in the post as her own experience with people, the above claim is as much a bunch of crap as the ones in her post.

Check this out....

In my post, i write :

"Recently one of my cousins went onsite, and i being the scape goat "

She changes it to :

"Recently one of my friends went onsite, and I being the scape goat "

Oh , yeah i got it, that's because her cousin apparantly didn't go onsite, while mine did and going by what she has claimed my cousin is definitely a friend of hers!

-----------------------------
In my post, i write :

"I was being murdered inch by inch, neat and clean. My reputation in tatters."

In her post, she changes it to :

"Despite the fact that I only finished B.E last year & started to work, I was being murdered inch by inch, neat and clean. My reputation in tatters."

Oh got it, she wants to add some flavor of her own in the post while still conveniently copying what i have written.
-------------------------------------------

In my post, i write :

"I have been most unfortunate in this case, so much so that if i had got a call to abort the travel 2 seconds later than what i got, i might have had to jump off the plane mid-air."

In her post, she censors it to :

"If I had got a call to abort the travel 2 seconds later than what I got, I might have had to jump off the plane mid-air."

Guess, she didn't like the initial sentence i wrote. how thoughtful. bliss bliss...

-------------------------------
This one nails it ....

In my post, i write :

"well one aunty even had the nerve to ask me "did you have a fight with your manager ?"..well i was kind enough to say "no aunty, project got scrapped "

She changes it to :

"Well, one aunty even had the nerve to ask her son "did you have a fight with your manager?". well he was kind enough to say "no aunty, project got scrapped "

I wonder who that person is who calls his own mother "aunty" !

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

this one is a snippet of her post :

"My friend made the blatant suicidal mistake of attending a social gathering full of aunties and uncles, and asked company he worked for, and he answered him hoping he would stop there. however , uncle had no such intention and carried on " endha language ?"...though stunned, i replied back "c sharp uncle"

first she claims her friend made a suicidal mistake, and then she makes a suisidal mistake of eating up one word and just writes "and asked company he worked for". Oh and when uncle asks her friend a question, she answers for her friend instead "i replied back "c sharp uncle"". guess she forgot to change the "i" to "he" here !

------------------------------
while i go on to write a few more paragraphs later, i guess she was too lazy to copy those, or probably she ran out of friends whom she could claim had had those experience and instead she cuts short the post by not inluding a few paragraphs. phew ! there, what an angel !, she spared me a slice of her non-existant pie !

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

That is enough proof i suppose that SHE has not written the post, though i am pretty sure that the blatant mistakes in her post are definitely her own doing. I'd be a fool to say she copied my post, a more better word, to convey what she did to my post, would be a word i cannot print here !
I'll not ask her to delete the post, instead i'll direct those people, who doubt that i didn't write the post on my blog, to her post and let them decide what to believe.

I am sure if she reads this post of mine, she'll be in a position to rectify the humungous mistakes in her post, but is that all ? so that means she'll copy a few more of my posts and claim it as either her's or her friends. In effect she'll have my persona in no time. This probably amounts to identity theft in a weird sort of way. Guess the next time i have an headache, she'll be the one who'll be writing in her blog "Yesterday my friend had a severe headache, and I took aspirin !"

I understand that this has not been very pleasant read, as it has not been for me to write. Though i did restrain myself these many days while quite a few people used my post and claimed it as theirs, this was the last straw....

Like David Spade shouts out on comedy central : "There i said it !"

Feeling Gid(d)ish

2005-11-17T08:06:00.000-08:00

Dear GIDISH,

This letter is to inform you that your application for residential electric service has been denied.
Please complete the enclosed affidavit, and get it signed by a notary, and provide proof for name and age.... blah blah blah

Thank you
----------------------------------------------

Got this mail from the power department yesterday.

apparently my ssn number didn't match the name i had given, and going by GIDISH standards i am probably an imposter in their records by now!

oh damn this problem ..... even after spelling each letter and giving out names of dogs and cats for each of them, nothing seems to have helped. Now they have resorted to deleting the letters they have a confusion about !

May be i should ask someone here who speaks in american accent to record my name for me, letter by letter, so that i can play that back and forth, whenever i need, over the phone !

Yesterday i had to call up the alitalia office in New York to confirm my tickets to India.

"apriete uno para italiano...glub glub glub"....followed by the english one... "please press thoo for eenglish"...after trying to follow the instructions i went blank for a few seconds, when a lady on the other side spoke in thick italian accent :
"ali-thalia airlines, whath can i do for you ?"

thalia thalia ... !!! i got the connection !

Me : "I need to confirm my ticket to bangalore, india, flying from newark"
lady : "Sorrie sir...can you repeath ith ?"
Me: " confirm tickets from newark to bangalore,india"

...another boring saga of thrying to explain !....2 mintues layther, ith became verry annoying !

Lady: "verrie sorrie sir, i could nath geth you..."
Me:" me neither !"
Lady : "sorry ?"
Me : PHUTAAK and cut the call...what else could i do, an indian speaking in indian accent to an ithalian speaking in ithalian accent, and both trying to decipher english spoken in pseudo american accent !! somewhere queen of england is having a roll laughing at us !

These automated phones which ask for verbal confirmation too call for a kick. Hopeless as the idea is, its by no means less irritating than the normal customer service agent.

automated voice : "Please say 'My Service' for service related enquiries...."
Me : "My service"
automated voice : "I am sorry, i could not get you!"

Damn it .....even the automated voice !!

automated voice : "Please say 'My service' for ......" and another hour of lecture on the services offered....

Me : "My Service"

automated voice : silent for a second ( probably it thought what i had just said was optic fibre disturbance, or was just biding time so that i'd just give up !

automated voice : "Please press 1 if you want "My Service", 2 for ...."

Me : Stunned !

bloody automated ragger...why couldn't it give this option earlier !

after another 5 minutes of going through all the leftover options the automated teller decided that a manual intervention was required, and hence transfered me to an agent. That it went to the voice mail is a different story alltogether, and i left my voice message which i was sure no one would return.

I wonder what's with my name, huh ? .....my parents did have the option of naming 'shiva', if they were so touchy, but why jagadish ?, and make it look like yagabish....who knows shiva could have become shy-vah ...better yagabish than shy-vah !

yesterday my client mails me saying :

--------------------
Hi Jagadish

Please check the blah blah blah...blah blah...

Thanks vinay,

Tony
---------------------

My name got completely transformed into another name !
Apparently my client confuses my name to another person who used work here 6 eons ago and went by the name vinay !

May be instead of beating the system i should just surrender to it...change my name to yagabish. May be then everyone will start calling me "yaggi" !.

I can't just think of a good idea, damn !...

oh boy need to go and get that electric connection soon, otherwise gidish will get into trouble !

Feeling very Gid(d)ish right now :(....Grrrr..

Through the Lens....

2005-11-14T09:03:00.000-08:00

...is my new Blog on photography. Hit on the idea to avoid posting pics in this blog.

They now sit at Through the Lens

Feel free to post comments on the pics :)

Say Cheese !

2005-11-10T16:18:00.000-08:00

Thanksgiving's nearing, and the excitement is running high, and so are my expectations. Haven't bought as much as a door nail since my stay here, all energy and resource concentrated on the four day deal many promised i would get.

Moved to a new apartment yesterday, and hopefully it'll bring in some moderate savings which i could use to fufill my cherished dream of owning a camera. When karthik bought his first camera, a Sony DSC-F828, i was astounded by what it could do. A near SLR, it had mind boggling features. While it got me interested in photography, it was way too annoying for my friends to see me fiddling with it, when our gang met :D. quite a few of my friends later bought cameras which i would pester and snatch from them...pothnis's nikon was a good bet, and it gave me the option of coaxing him or karthik...one would agree sooner or later and part with it :). while many started pestering me to buy one for myself, i was happy using theirs and instead ask them to check out good deals for me :D

I have a camera which i consider a family heirloom; that's how old it is. Well the camera must be as shocked that it can take photos, as i was when i first saw it.

for months i have been eyeing the Canon S2-IS, but rats !, the cost hardly comes down. one popular camera that one ! The other day vivek mailed me all excited saying :

"Oi...check out this deal on laptops on this website"

Me : " Oh no man, i'll need to buy a camera, waiting for a deal"

Guess i pulled the wrong nerve this time around, and got a reply back saying :

"You'll keep waiting for a good deal, and sure enough if you ever buy a camera, pigs will fly"

hehehe, while my mind chose to spend its time imagining pigs flying, vivek was all fuming in the texas heat :D..

well i don't get this habit of mine of saving money for a camera, but then failing to use it to buy one. the inner loud voice saying in my mother-tongue : "dubba camera aadre ?" (what if the camera is a total dud ?) and another thought rising : "what if the prizes drop dead just after i buy the camera for a fortune ?"

it's always the case, and i end up buying stuff, the prizes of which would fall rock bottom 2 minutes later. It however did not stop me from pestering people into buying a camera though :).

That's history..now after reading about it and having used its predecessor, the S1-IS ( another friendly gesture from suneel who owns one :D ), i can hardly wait to get my hands on it.

Have been getting stories that we'd need to stand at 3:00 am in the night on thanksgiving day; that's how long the queue would get if we went in late. I just hope its an absurd lie ! cold as it gets, its not the best of time to say 'cheese'.

Keeping my fingers crossed, and hopefully i'll finally have a camera i can call my own !

Click.

Random Two

2005-11-08T08:04:00.000-08:00

Golden Mean

Random One

2005-11-08T08:01:00.000-08:00

Paddling duck

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

lake lustre

2005-11-08T07:52:00.000-08:00

2005-11-08T07:29:00.000-08:00

Bank of the river...hmm river or lake...

Green Touch

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

Lake side greenery- forgot the lake's name; minnesota apparently has 10000 lakes.

City City Bang Bang - One Dollar Dilemma

2005-11-03T06:50:00.000-08:00

After a great holiday in minneapolis with friends, the weekend before last, i had to catch a flight to NY early monday morning. The plane would land at JFK airport at 10:30am, and from there i had decided to take a subway to the bus stop, and eventually catch a bus to New Jersey to reach office directly by around 1pm.

well everything had to work with clock like precision for that, with my plan being :

10:30am land at JFK
10:40am catch air-train to subway.
10:50am buy tickets to subway.
11:00am catch a subway train to the bus depot.
11:45am reach Port Authority Bus Stop.
12:00 catch Bus to NJ and reach office by 1pm....

hmmm, sleek as my plan was, i could not miss the 12:00 bus to NJ at any cost, which kept me on tenterhooks throughout the journey. while i landed at JFK on time, it took longer to get down the plane, and subsequently my plan showed signs of falling apart. The subway kept me in good stead, but i ended up reaching 5 minutes late for the bus, which unluckily left on time for me to miss it just in time ! While i used to curse buses in bangalore for being late, i didn't realize that it had given me as much flexibility as it had for the BMTC bus driver :D

Realizing i had no choice but to wait for the next bus at 1:00pm, i decided to catch up on some food and lose myself in the make-shift mall nearby.

Port Authority is a huge place in NY city, and though it isn't very difficult to find directions to places there, some of the areas there isn't where one would like to find him/her self alone. Huge as it comes, some of its alleys are dingy and secluded.

I loitered around with my backpack, looking like a cave dweller lost in a city when a lady came in from behind me. She spoke good english, and was probably in her late 20s.

Lady : "Excuse me sir, you look like a good man to me"

pleasantly surprised, i knew she was speaking the truth :)

Lady : " I was here early in the morning, when i was robbed off my belongings, now i can't stay here alone !"

it looked like she was trying to drive my attention to her soggy eyes, while i was busy munching pretzels.

Me : "oh i am sorry... contact the police, they'll be able to help you" ...pretzels still stuffed in my mouth.

Lady : "i contacted them and they say it'll take 24 hours to catch the goons and i'll need to stay here till then..."

Me : "but..."

before i could complete, she thrusted upon me a sheet of crushed paper, with obscure markings that looked like some calculation...

Lady : "I have calculated how much i need to go back home, i need 67$, and i have collected 50$ already, can you help me ?"

The Pretzels seemed to have stuck in my throat, after the difference in amount dawned on me. I had a ticket to NJ, and 5 1$ notes, and a bug bear key chain i bought as a souvenir from minnesota and of course a sack full of clothes. I could part with the bug bear if she insisted, but then it was a wrong time to exchange souvenirs, i concluded.

Having never been in such a position before, i could not tell if she was trying to trick me or not, and 17$ is a lot of money if one is getting cheated. So i decided to play safe taking out the 1$ notes out of my pocket. I had to lie fast and soon. picking 2 notes, i said :

Me : "See i have 2$ with me, and i need 1$ to go back home, so i can spare you 1$"

Darn ! what was i thinking !...if she was a crook, she must have laughed her head out. Not only what i had just said, a stinking lie, it was so apparent that it almost looked illegal.

Lady : "I'll take that, and if you give me your address, i'll probably send you a cheque"

Hehehe, now she must be thinking she is talking to a postbox. i can't look so dumb, whichever angle !

after a pause, she started off again...this time trying to wipe off her non-existant tears...

Lady : "Do i look like i have cried a lot ? "... now almost smiling !

Lady, i am the one who's lost a dollar here, if anyone it's me who should be crying ! One more dollar loss for me and i might as well join you and go around telling people that i got robbed !

Me : "No, i don't think so"...i answered meekly, shaking my head like i was struck by a gong.

it was 12:45pm by then, and without looking back i hurried towards the bus stop again !

I will never know if she was lying or indeed needed the money...

....and so stays the one dollar dilemma !

City City Bang Bang - Weekend Pay Cut

2005-10-29T14:13:00.000-07:00

Triggered by the abnormally high rent i am currently paying here, i had gone into an auto-save mode, saving a penny where there wasn't any. While i had not drastically cut down on my food, my friends swore that they could count my 200+ bones without the help of an x-ray, when i last met them two weeks ago. While the taunting had not stopped there, it had successfully made its way to the long hair that i had fashioned.

Paying 15$ for a cut was something i'd do anything to postpone; and postpone i did, trying hard to make my long hair look like a fashion statement, except that it looked more like wild grass painted black.

After the disaster with the group photo last week, which i had enthusiastically shown it to many friends, and quite a few of them replying back asking me whether i was in the photo, i decided it was time for a haircut.

Walking down the road, 15$ clutched in my hands, i entered the saloon.

Barber : "Hello Sir, please have a seat"
hmmm...I surely will if you let me take it with me, for the money i am losing !

after a 5 minute wait, the barber was ready.

Barber : "Please sir....ready for you now" (directing me to the chair)

Gingerly i sat on the chair, calculating how much i'd end up losing, and hoping the stock exchange would sky rocket and the rupee would strengthen, so that i'd end up losing a bit lesser. After a mental calculation i arrived at 650 Rs. I guess that's the total amount i would have paid for a lifetime of haircut in India, and it didnt seem like this barber would be using golden scissors to cut nor like he would throw a buffet lunch after the haircut, in my honour.

Barber : "What would you like to have sir"

He sounded like those hotel waiters in bangalore who would usually come and ask
"Idli vade, dosey, uppit.... ivathina thinDgi ge....yen beku ?"

I thought it was an offer for beverage or snacks; brightening my eyes and planning to eat like a raven, i turned back to look at him...

Barber( a bit taken-aback) : "...what kind of haircut, sir ?"

Rats !!...i had no idea what kind of cuts they give here. since the time i started going alone to the barber's shop as a kid, i've been telling him the only word i knew in cutting "short". Before that my cousin who used to take me to the barber, used to mention "tennis ball cut" to the barber....well it didn't help my facial features but it sure made the barber's job easy.

Me : "Short" ..i answered abruptly, as though he would charge me for talking too.

Barber : "and then ?"

Me : "hmm...that'll all i know" ...thinking that the barber was tricking me into asking a hair-style that would make me shell out another 10$.

Barber : "Ok, short it is..."

meanwhile, i saw a few photos, hung on the wall, of models with different hairstyles. while i didn't want it to look like i asked for a specific cut, lest he bill me for that, i decided to take my chance

Me : "What are the choices that i have ?"... I love USA for that, there is a choice for anything under the sun.

Barber : "Well, there isn't any choice with your hair, Sir, it'll all stick up anyway, but i'll do my best"

oh yeah, threw it on my face didn't he !

After 15 minutes of torture, i was finally freed from his clutches, when i accidentally saw the rates for a haircut...the board said "12$".. much as i could not believe my eyes, i was happy to find that this barber wasn't that greedy after all.

Barber: "Your bill is 15$ sir"....and started typing it into the machine, when i interrupted him
Me : " Is it including the tip ?"
... i had heard that we need to tip people here in addition to the amount paid for the haircut, and 3$ for a tip was absurd...one greedy barber this one...

Barber: "It'll be 16$ then sir, thankyou"
Me: "!!!....hmmm...but the board says 12$ for a haircut !"

looking a bit amused, the barber turned to me and said :

"You have come in a bit too early for that discount sir, it's for senior citizens above 62 years of age"

Me : blushing...handing him the 16$...

I jetted out of the shop, promising myself to not make a moron out of myself the next time around.

Penny wise, Pound really foolish...

City City Bang Bang - Part 1

2005-10-07T06:05:00.000-07:00

City life brings with it a bag full of surprises that never seems to get empty. Having to live an almost independant life in this city was not something i had prepared for when i boarded the plane 2 months ago. The city is still a maze for me. Often on the wrong side of the road, literally (In India, it's right hand drive you see), it has been rather difficult to get the hang of the system here. Driving is one less thing i do not do here. Both an advantage and a disadvantage at times, it gives a lot more fodder to write though :)...

Being used to a city with a growing population, it took me some time to digest that my current city has a population of about 6000 ....hmmm, yeah, now 6001, a far cry from the 5+ million i used to deal with back in Bangalore. At first i thought this city was a small layout i was living in. In fact it is so small, i wont be surprised if some residents actually park their cars in the adjoining city, and have tea at home in our city. Take a reverse in your car and you are off city limits :D....the other day, while driving to office, we had to take a detour and unfortunatetly took two wrong turns and crossed two cities !

A small city, however, has its advantages, and that is you know everyone :D....almost every shopkeeper knows you, and every stranger is your friend. The lady at the burger shop nowadays does not even wait for my order, and shouts out an order at the sight of me, "One Veggie roll, Robert !".. :), or the doctor down the street who greets me with a 'Namae-stay !',who once rather excitedly told me that he worked for a year in Manipal Hospital, when i told him i was from Bangalore.

Local Newspapers are the funniest. Sunday headlines usually shout out loud, telling readers about a kitten called winky lost in the nearby wood, or how Daniel maintains his lawn by watering it every evening. Breaking news usually scale up to 'Mayor to pass city today, residents excited', and brings up some buzz to the sleepy city.

My accent has been a problem here ever since i landed. While i am pretty happy with my accent, it is rather difficult for many here to get it though. More often than not, i am usually seen repeating a sentence again and again for the person to understand. People find it especially difficult to get my name, and more so over the phone. Initially i tried to pronounce my name so that the person on the other side could get it.
Once i called a health insurance agent, and she asked
Lady: "your first name sir"
Me : "Jagadish"
Lady: " Sorry, can you spell it please ?"
Me: " j... a... g..a...d "
Lady: "sorry !"
Me: "Deeeeeeee!"
Lady:"ok"
I went again..thinking she lost track
ME:"J a G a D..i... s..... h."
Lady: " ok ...We are not able to find your record here sir"
Me: "can you please read out the name i gave you"
Lady: "it is Y..aye..g..a..B...i...ess..hetch.....yagabish !!"

Grrr....what rubbish !

Me: " no no, it is j a g a...d... i... s ....h.. j for john...aye...g.... a..... D for hmmm(trying to recollect some name here, and couldn't find one, so)...Dog... i.. s... h"

Lady: "sorry sir, i am not able to get it, here is my fax number, please send a fax with your name in it"

Me:"!!!...ok"

I have long given up pronouncing my name over the phone, so usually when people ask me my name over the phone i go straight like "J-for John, aye, Jee for god, aye, D for dog, i, ess, hetch".

Having to use all possible transportation, i often find myself asking people for directions. Some politely say 'Sorry, i do not know', and some even have walked me to the place in a few cases. On one instance i had to reach a place urgently, and had spent a good time circling around it and yet was unable to find the place. After looking to see if anyone was around to help me, i found an elderly man sitting on a wheel chair in the lobby of a building. Doubtful i went to him and asked him :

Me : "Excuse me, can you tell me where is Pocono road ?"
Man : "Sorry, i could not hear you"
raising my voice, i asked the same question
Me : " I need to go to Pocono road"
Man : " Sorry, i could not get you"

I thought the pronunciation problem had come back to bite me again.

Me: "I have to GO to PO CO NO road"....going slowly.... on my already late appointment.
Man: " Sorry, I still cannot hear you"

by now i was yelling the address out
Me : " POCONO !!, POCONO ROAD !"

The man calmly replied
"Sorry sir, i cannot hear you, I cannot hear anyone "

Me: stunned to silence

Man: " Do one thing, go to the first floor of this building and ask the lady there, she can hear"

looking up , i found to my horror the sentence "Center for speech and hearing" in small golden letters etched on the building. sigh !

Nodding is another problem, which i thought i didnt have until people started getting all the wrong signals. Well like many of my fellow indians, i too nod my head sidewards, as though the head was balancing on a pin. Drives people nuts like crazy here :D.

My first day at the client's office was very enlightining. after the meeting, i was speaking to one of my new teammates and discussing what work we'll be sharing,

teammate : "ok i'll take up this one, can you take this?"
I nodded, shaking my head sideways.
teammate, looking a bit startled, "Ok, i'll do that too, which will you do then ?"
me:"I'll do the one you told me to take up", i repeated.
teammate, looking even more startled, "are you sure ?"
the work didnt look like it would bite my neck off half way into it, so i gave a matter-of-fact look, and said "yes", and nodded sidewards again.

by now he was completely floored, lost for words, and finally blurted out "ok pal, you make up your mind soon i'll be back in a minute" :D

more of the city later..

By the way, this city rocks away, in every way :)

Drivers license

2005-09-26T23:21:00.000-07:00

"Don't smile Saar !.....oooooohhhkay!", prayed the computer operator for the 3rd time, at the Regional Transport Office, asking me to stay put and stone faced while he pointed the webcam at my face. Try Hard as i may, i could not supress the bubbling joy and the idea that i might finally get my driver's licence.

Getting a licence was my official entry into the motorists' world. As i realized later, my actual lessons began only after this.

Commuting problem in bangalore can be broadly classified into two : Roads and drivers. Often against each other, drivers try hard to run down other drivers and animals, while roads try to maul those who are left.

Driving in Bangalore is more or less a cake walk, except that the chances of falling face-first into the cake is really high in this case. Roads are generally designed keeping motorists' morbid designs in mind, including huge pot holes which cater to the bungee jumping fraternity who have lost interest in cliff side getaways. Road humps live up to their name most of the time, and look like magnified ramps which drivers can optionally use to do a wheelie when they are bored of running down pedestrians. Idealy, the concept of roads in Bangalore is "an area where a house or a tea shop should not be built by law", and instead is a public playground, and a resting place for cows and buffaloes after a mid-day meal. Here the road is a great leveller, from the president to the bamboo thief, there is no sparing when it comes to roads.

Signals and zebra crossings are usually used to add glamour to the otherwise bland road, and are strictly for ornamental purposes only. As a child i used to wonder as to why a zebra would be foolish enough to cross the road only at the given place. Most still believe the same when they are adults too and cross the road everywhere but at the zebra crossing. Its like that "womens only" seats in public buses, here it is "Zebras only"!. Signals add color to roads giving motorists cheap entertainment and momentary challenge, while they try to jet past the road before the orange turns red. Basically signals test the driver's patience to wait for the green signal, and are not necessarily bound by law to wait for it. Many believe red is lucky for them, and so choose to cross the road when its red instead.

Lanes only add confusion to the chaos. for all practical purposes, a lane can be defined as "that part of the road, which must be used only when the driver in front of you doesnt". Waiting for the crackpot driver in front would hurt one's ego, and is generally not accepted in the driving community. instead, a quick look behind and a swift turn keeps one in good stead. The white markings on the road provide for neck to neck racing, more than defining lanes. "Stop" signals are required to trick drivers into loosing the race, and the fool who stops at the sign is not only an airhead, but also an imbecile oaf or atleast that is what he gets shouted at by drivers behind him "Yaako @#%$#$% magne nilsiddu ?" ( why did you stop you &&@#$#@$# ?).

While the general understanding of a flyover is the same when it comes to the outside world, it takes a slightly different meaning when it comes to authorities in bangalore. They are usually keen on taking the literal meaning, and leave the flyover half built up to the ramp , so that motorists can actually FLY OVER after that point. Obviously, the government is keen on saving money, so they leave the public to run helter skelter when that occasional drunkard driver forgets to see the dingy board which says "Flyover Incomplete. Sorry for the delay", and drives over the flyover to complete the sentence for them ", but you'll still reach hell in time".

Interestingly, Roads are the only source of annual income to quite a few departments in the goverment. The Bangalore Mahanagara Palike(BMP) and the water supply board(BWSSB) are like enemies in bed, both fight the crap out of each other for funds, one to lay and repair roads, and the other to dig up roads and repair underlying water pipes ! That was until recently. Over the years they have learnt to work together, the BWSSB now allows the BMP to build roads or repair them during the first six months of the year while they burn the hookka at home, and in turn diligently dig up the same roads during the next half of the year looking for that evading broken pipe damaged while laying the roads ! Now both departments are happy, and since roads and water pipes are constantly repaired round the year, people at any point of time are either fishing for water, or are being fished out of flood water.

The only time roads look smooth and levelled is in the rainy season, when mud water covers up the pot holes, providing the motorists with a live minesweeper game(for those who have played it). Pot holes generally come in varying sizes, and while the authorities sleep on it for years, motorists lose their sleep while tripping into it. Known for getting crazy showers at odd times of the year, roads in bangalore look more like as though saddam had used it to test his armour piercing missiles. For the lucky few who stay in the route of VIP motorcade, roads are maintained and decorated like they are being given away in dowry for the visiting VIP.

Getting a driver's licence is as easy as walking down the street, but only if you go through a tout, who apart from having 'inside contacts', will optionally learn driving for you instead, if you are ready to pay the extra amount. The RTO is infested with crooks and rabid owls who turn their head 360 degrees at the sight of a Rupee. For those who'd rather take the legal way, they'll either end up driving a cycle all their life, or spend half their good age running from desk to desk.

As for drivers, Bangalore has more of Divers than drivers, since they dive to grab any free space available on the road which might take them an inch ahead. Drivers come in two types, the good ones and the bad ones. The bad ones drive on the road, and the good ones take the bus to commute.

Many have weird misconceptions/superstitions about driving on the road. My foray into driving also attracted a number of driving advisors. My cousin used to tell anyone who cared to listen, that a good driver is one who kick starts a bike and not let it switch off, even by mistake, until one reaches the destination. Wonder what he thought those reverse counting timers on signals (put up so that motorists could conserve fuel by switching off engines until the signal turned green) were for - to blast the signals ?. As browny points he used to add, "..and if one accomplishes the journey by driving only in the 3rd and 4th gear, then he/she is a driving genius", both of which my cousin had proudly accomplished. Conserving fuel was probably not his forte. On another instance, one of my tenants who had bought a brand new luna, used to pray loudly every morning poking incense sticks to the headlight and shouting out "Devre office ge hushaargi thalpisi bidappa !"( oh god take me to office safely"). The zig-zag way in which he used to drive his vehicle, god must have been praying back to him "oh boy ! please let others reach safely to office, then i'll think about you !".

If there is one area where women and men compete neck and neck almost beating each other in their own game, then driving in bangalore surely is one of them. Of course women would beg to differ, and so do men. while male drivers honk and zoom past when they see a female driver , female drivers give back in kind by overtaking their victims from all directions.

A significant number of people in India don't mind being late for an appointment/meeting, but when they are on the road they transform themselves into riding whizkids, that is they whizz past like kids. It is more like jumping into an arena, where everyone is expected to perform, so the motorist with his beastly bike revvs up his engine, almost shouting loud "haven't i paid for this road, give me way!". The problem is the mentality of a lot of drivers. I was driving to office one day, and had to stop to wait for a signal when a cockeyed fool on a 'pulsar' bike started honking asking to give him way. This fool who also happens to work in the same company as mine, was very cautious about following rules within the office, and guess what, he even gave me way while driving within the campus. Morons such as him are more worried about reaching office early, than actually working there.

The number of vehicles being added to bangalore each day, on last count, has probably beaten the birth rate of the city. A gross exaggeration agreed, but 900 additional cars per day is not a small count. Of course IT companies( CEOs actually ) in Bangalore pop their eyes out crying hoarse that the city is going to dogs, but hey they'll still have 10 cars each that they'll want to use on any given day. While they propose humungously foolish ideas to overcome the traffic situation, they try their best to flood the city with a 100 more people each day and use the choicest words from oxford dictionary to condemn whatever is left of the place. Kids can learn a lot about hypocrisy just by looking at the pictures of these CEOs.

While roads continue to be a bigger problem, we motorists add a lot more to it than we give ourselves credit for. Roads will still get better one day, but the Driver ? only time will tell...

Tip-toe Dracula

2005-09-16T11:36:00.000-07:00

Was going through some of Calvin and Hobbes cartoon strips. The author, Bill Waterson, is truly talented in recognizing stuff which kids do, and also their thinking. Many a times i see myself in Calvin, at least the initial years of my life. Looking back, being the youngest kid i guess i was a pest at home :D, and sure was a pain to many outside :D.

I was in 2nd standard when there was this offer to exchange 3 chocolate wrappers for a gift of our choice. I had painfully eaten up those dung smelling chocolates in my attempt to garner those wrappers, and ran to the shopkeeper to exchange it for my gift. There were a few choices: a pink doll, a box of those dirty chocolates again(without wrappers), and a set of dracula plastic teeths. Realizing i had no choice, i picked the set of Dracula teeths.

Determined to use it against my enemies, i planned for a deadly night attack on one thug who lived in the neighbourhood. After careful planning, i decided to drop the idea of a night attack, after i realized that i was as afraid of scaring him, as he was of being scared, given the deathly darkness at night. A torch could have done the trick i thought, but it would look very silly for a dracula to be running around with a torch, i concluded. Moreover, i was more afraid of running into a Dracula myself, given the pulp-fiction stories i was fed with as a child, by offshore aunties.

It was a saturday morning, a holiday, and I just tried it on to see if it fit properly, and it fit amazingly well, as though it was made for my teeths. Since it was white as a real tooth, it looked all the more believable. Thought of first scaring my mother who was cooking in the kitchen, then realized that it would be too risky at this age to run fast enough to escape just in case she took offense of my overgrown teeths. So i just dropped in to check if she was in a good mood to accept the scare i was about to give.

"maa...." ....and a goofy smile, uncharacteristic of a dracula.

"oh !...Juggi, Hogi 1 kg akki thagond baa..." ( Go to the shop, and get a kg of rice )....my mother ordered without an iota of surprise at my deathly looks. 2 foot draculas are hard to come by even in stale horror stories !

The smiling dracula obeyed with a big bow, and retreated gracefully with the 5 rupee note in hand. Hoping to scare someone else, i thought of removing the plastic tooth for now, and use it later. Unluckily for me, try hard as i may, the plastic tooth wouldn't come out, since i had pressed it too deep into my kiddish canines. Scared that i would be beaten to pulp if my mother became aware of the situation, i decided to go all the way to the rice trader praying nothing untoward would happen.

The 2 minute fame that i had hoped to gather by scaring someone had now turned around to bite me back where it hurt most. Thinking of the irony, i walked into the rice trader's shop.

The Rice Trader was a portly man, with a bald pate, who sat all his life on that seat which his son, the thug i spoke about earlier , was hoping to capture in future. The old man had amassed enough wealth by selling rice and stones together, and almost had his own set of weights for measurements, which far from being accurate looked more like hardened cow dungs.

"Yenri esht dina beku nimge saala vaapas maadodikke ?" (how many days to you need to return the money you borrowed?) ...bellowed the rice trader at a customer in front of me.

"Neev kodo kallu mannige, dudd badlu chaavti nall hoDibeku !"(for the stones and sand you give, we should give you a lash, instead of cash).... the round aunty bellowed right back, widening his cave like nose into an awkward circle.

Both went into a heated argument, and finally the rice trader shunted off the customer giving her the 2 kg of rice+stones. Of all the days, i had to choose this day to transform myself to a dracula.

"yen beko hudga ?" (what do you want, boy ?)

careful about not opening my mouth, i indicated to him with my eyes at the rice grain sack, with my index finger up, indicating 1 kg.

"Bai ilva ? yen beku helu !" (dont you speak, tell me what you want !!)

scared out of my boots, i tried to get out an unassuming smile. Try as i may, it was the hardest thing to do, trying to speak with a half closed mouth.

"ond kg akki bekaagithu" ( I need a kg of rice)... i blurted out, with a weak smile, when the canines decided to pop-out unceremoniously.

That streak of fear and shock on his face could have made even a stone to roll with laughter, but i stood holding my breath both because i could not stop laughing, and more importantly could not stop fearing.

Jumping out of his seat, the rice trader bellowed:

"Yeno !! nun hatra ne aata aadthiya, chotudda idiya !!" (you 2 foot kid, trying to play tricks with me?) ....eyes red with anger.

the two seconds of lead time i had to get what he was trying to tell, made me realize that he was not behind me the dracula, but was behind me like a dracula. Without thought nor logic, i bulleted back home looking back only after i was safe from his clutches, albeit without the rice grains.

For the effort i had put to escape from the JAWS of death, it was satisfying to see the rice trader's face of momentary fear, for a dracula in shorts was the least he had expected to see in his evil life as a trader :D.

Times of a Tabloid

2005-09-14T01:31:00.000-07:00

Ad-verse Condition
"Al-Qaida in Kanpur, selling Insurance !" screamed the thursday's Times of India edition like it had ants in its pants, a few months ago. Turns out to be just an advertizing gimmick by an insurance company in UP, which the Times reporter covered.
I can't believe the extent of stupidity this paper has managed to amass in recent years. From a once respected daily, it has now turned into a novice tabloid. Who else in their right mind can take this crap as "News" ! ... The paper obviously is trying very hard to please its readers, by talking their talk, but unfortunately for it, this simply isn't the right direction.

Megalomaniac
The paper tries so hard to please its readers that it's simply amazing the extent to which it goes to lick each one of it's readers boots. All the more evident in the way it gives cricket a prized place in its sports section. Agreed it has a popular following here, but who the hell wants to know which cricketer had what food for the day, when in wimbledon all hell was breaking loose. Just going through a few editions when chapell was named coach will give one a very good idea of what TOI is up to. "chapell did this", "chapell ate that", "chapell swam here" "chapell kicked there".... man !! who in their right mind would be interested in an old man's daily routine !

Critical Nonsense
The only thing TOI is good at is to sensationalize crappy news, make people believe that the news they get from TOI is indeed of critical importance to them, with most of the news sounding more like as though a convicted lunatic is walking around in the neighbourhood with missiles tied to his shorts ! Only after we have read the full dumb story that it becomes clear that it's actually a kid's who's been running around with two unusually long pencils in his pocket, and then followed by a long boring story about bringing up kids without the aid of pencils ! That's news !, courtesy: TOI.

Many a times , i feel, TOI is majorly responsible for all that euphoria it creates about players, movies, cricket or all those stuff which turn out to be a damp squib.

Whacky Whacks
The dumbness of the paper is only equalled by an even more pathetic way in which it tries to lure people by their so called 'whacky' one liners. For instance, their world news section is now named "The World at your Feet"....tell me, does this even remotely make sense ? Even a drunk hyena would agree that this is the act of a bafoon. Or the first page one liner printed above the name of the paper, which says "Zero Worries. Zero Duties. Celebrations Unlimited"....duh !. Even a baby that can't sit on its potty properly has a million worries, and these guys talk like they are publishing for readers on MARS to read it.

Poll position
Anyone familiar with the so called Poll section of the TOI will agree with me on the kind of questions that are put up for poll. I usually read that section of the paper when i feel this intense urge to barf; works for me. Many a times it makes me wonder if TOI employs people in its ruddy office to actually participate in those polls. Insane questions more like "Do you think Aishwarya should have slapped salman ?" or even worse "Is Bill Gates ready for Pearly Gates ?" keep readers guessing...astoundingly, many a times there is only a "Yes" and a "No" for the reader to choose from, when most of the time its "can't say" which is the answer ! how can a midget sitting in Domlur know why Aishwarya chose to do what she did !
Well any roadside hawker will tell you that this is a cheap gimmick to find out how many people read their paper along with increasing the sms traffic, and then finally publish one fine day that it's nearest rival "The Deccan Herald" had to eat it's shoes for trying to compete with it. Anyway, both these newspapers bring out ads against each other, which more or less looks like two hungry mongrels trying to bite into each other's tail.

Unnerving Dubya
Of Course the most celebrated crap about TOI are its reporters and it columnists. It's long time loyalist The-Pin-head-Poop-Brain Jug Suraiya should have actually starved of hunger like one of those somalia UNICEF baby ads, but for TOI. Who in the right mind would give him a job otherwise. His infamous Dubyaman cartoon strip was such a pain to read, it used to bring me back those childhood nightmares of "goggayya"(Devil with a banjo), which that long lost aunty used to tell me to put me to sleep. I still remember the curses readers used to send(which the TOI had the nerve to publish right below the cartoon) every damn day, and almost plead it to remove that cartoon strip. Half of pin-head's hairs must have fallen off because of those curses. One reader had almost threatened to create a rival comic strip in Deccan Herald, while another wrote "I like to read the curses people send, more than the cartoon itself, so please keep up the work" :D....As for me, i used to read that strip whenever i felt threatened that i was the last fool left on the face of the earth, and console myself that i was wrong.

Caste-ing a bait
A few months ago, an ad for their matrimonial edition, on the front page of the paper shouted "We openly discriminate among people. We support people who advertize in our matrimonial service with the words caste no bar in their ad, by providing a 10% discount"... i mean this is sordid stuff....Does the Times of India think it is some neo-secularist, out to rid the society of caste and prejudice ? i would laugh my head out if someone told me "yes"...It is just a pathetic way, chosen by the paper, to get popular following with it's pseudo-secular views. Agreed there are problems with systems in a society, but everything has a way to be dealt with. Times of India is no full of saints who have given up their happiness for the cause of people. It has always been a sack full of dirty vagabonds who eat into the society by exploiting its weakness.

Ad-vantage
Added to this, the paper is filled with ads, so much so that we have to virtually search for news. Look at the creativity of the advertizers, they publish their ads that look like news columns; only after we have read it completely we come to know that it is a solicitation by a plumbing company asking us to buy "Ashok pipes" !...Darn this paper ! one day they'll publish a small sheet of paper which will tell the pages and columns in which news can be found in their newspaper for that day !.

Sleezy Solace
What was once a Information supplement, the Bangalore Times has now turned into one that is a sleezy compliment. Well another paper "Asian Age" was born that way, but TOI didn't think twice before turning into one either. Starting from those putrid "15 questions to keep your wife happy", to "5 easy ways to separate from each other", TOI has printed a whole load of elephant dung in the past years. None make sense, especially those silly quizzes which evaluates nothing more than the amount of mental crap that readers have acquired over the years reading this damned news paper.

In its attempt to appeal to the younger generation, TOI goes one step ahead by buying itself a medallion of foolishness, apart from being an accomplished street fool. Many a times, the paper itself has no idea what its printing, and keeps publishing the same rabid stuff again and again in different pages, hoping people will not find out.

Of course the limited creativity that its crew possesses is hardly usable, so they print stuff that hardly leaves anything to the reader's creativity or imagination.

The Times did shine
Once a Bhel-puri guy was particularly happy about TOI, my rants notwithstanding, "Saar ee times auf india nouru super . ond rupai kotre, 1 kg paper kodthaare, ond dinakke asht saaku" (The Times of India guys are too good, for 1 rupee they give a kg of paper, enough for me to sell bhel-puri to customers for 1 full day)

Needless to say, i stopped respecting TOI a long time ago, but i do read it once in awhile to see if it has broken records in steeping even lower. Until now the TOI has not failed me in accomplishing that. Atleast they are good at that !

Waxy Sojourn

2005-09-06T14:06:00.000-07:00

"Smile Please !...",

.... i ordered for the nth time, asking my friend to stand closer to Beyonce and smile, instead of the 1 mile gap that he had created between them, while he tried hard to stay as cool and composed as a pillar. Meeting Beyonce made him look nervous, even though she was smiling and posing for several photo ops so I could get that perfect shot. A few crazy girls nearby were ogling at a famous base ball player whose name I cannot recollect.

"31$ is your bill, sir...and Welcome to Madame Tussauds, New York" beamed the lady at the counter, handing me the ticket, waking me up momentarily from my trance.

Madame Tussauds, a High point of my trip to New York, also made me look like a goofy by the time i was out, fooled at every step I took at the 4 floor museum.

With only a working knowledge of celebrities in the west, and a goofy group fooling around for company, it felt like an empty coconut shell had commissioned itself between my ears. for the next 30 minutes, we posed, without fear or rebuke from anyone, next to wax models of Elle McPherson, Shakira, Jennifer lopez, Salma Hayek and a few more, leaving the male wax models standing like flag posts without care or concern. Vivek almost tripped over himself in his attempt to pacify Madonna, who was rather grim and looked forsaken, while Suneel was having problems with his ponch, trying hard to look less than twice the size of Julia roberts.

By the time we were done with the first floor, we had practised enough killer moves and poses, and by now were suspended in air one feet above the ground.

A rather dingy board read "house of horror - photography not allowed". Pitch darkness, as we entered a narrow lane unaware of anything that was in store.

"....yeno isht kathlu illi !".... (why is it so dark in here !)

....and WHAM !!!...the door on our left closed and opened again, with a white faced ghost materlializing in front of the door. It was enough to get the daylights out of all of us, with me shivering peculiarly, trying to stand and run at the same time. The next thing we knew, we were all as white-faced as the door-side ghost.

Kiran being the bully, pushed suneel to the fore, while we followed him ponch first, and our hair all straightened up like a glorified cactus. It would have looked very funny for that ghost, but we were praying our heads out that the ghosts in the otherwise dark room would be happy with Suneel and leave us alone.

Kiran pacifying suneel, was more like "Suneel, this is the time when that fat in your ponch can be put to good use !".. Accustomed to being tormented by kiran, he didn't think the ghosts could do better. Good for us.

All our heavenly sojourn back in the celebrity room was washed away, and we were dying to get out of this shady room.

BOOM !!!! ....a huge sound from the floor and a gush of chill air swept across our feet, almost toppling us backwards...suneel recovered fast and started to speed ahead of us, while we still lingered around to see the fate of the goat that went ahead. A screeching voice, and a broom stick tap, and voila !, a ghost in a Black suit came thumping ahead to scare the slightly piqued Suneel.

Giving the ghost a look of "ok, am i to get afraid or were you born that way ?", Suneel shouted back "yaako Gubald !"....The American Ghost was taken aback and didnt know whether to take Suneel away with it for his offensive language, or just escape for good. It chose the latter. Our faces white with fear until now had now turned into a unplottable laugh, guffaw actually....patting him on his back, we ran towards the exit, shouting like hungry mongrels, while another ghost in the attic tried pathetically hard to chase us.

Leaving behind us the gory wax models, we were relieved to see the exit sign, and made towards the next exhibit hall. As we moved around, to cross another entrance, we saw a lady taking a photograph of a group of wax models which i thought was of a famous band group. The chinese lady was all focused and still, concentrating hard on the subjects she was about to capture. Being the gentlemen that we are, we thought not to disturb her and wait for her to finish, before we passed between them. While we focused hard on the wax models and appreciated them, we ignored the chinese lady completely.

1 minute up.....we were all still blinking at that group, waiting for the photograph session to finish...as though they would just move away after that !

2 minute up.....now we started getting doubts like "what is this lady doing, is she taking a photograph or has she turned into one of those dumb wax models!"....and turned around to see if she was done...and By Golly !! she was a wax model herself !!....madame tussaud made us wait like morons in between those wax models !...Grrrr...

After being fooled by many wax models that were strategically placed, to make us think that they were real people, our brains were working full throttle to overcome the visual situation. As we passed a few models, we came across "The Rock" Hero Johnson's wax model. vivek and kiran wanted a snap with him, while Suneel began clicking furiously. Meanwhile, i saw two wax models, a young lady looking down towards her camera and a man in a suit, both non-celebrities. The wax models were two feet apart, and so i shouted "Oi Vivek, get me a photo with these two wax models, i'll look like i am standing between two people i do not know, and i can fool everyone, heheheehe"...with that silly grin i went and stood right in between the two wax models. To my horror, both wax models turned towards me !!!...

...they were not wax models, but visitors like myself !....i had done enough damage that i could have actually given them a cellphone to call 911 !

After a quick run through of the other models on display(Jennifer Aniston was ravishing, and so was Princess Diana), we ran towards the exit, to finally be freed from the place. In the next one hour that we roamed New York, all of us were in a trance, feeling like there were wax models everywhere in city. Apparentely, this is the feeling that most of them usually experience after visiting Madame Tussauds, leaving people to move around in drunken stupor.

The whole event left me wondering about the amazing talent of the artists who were involved in the creation of these masterpieces, compared to the textboxes and buttons that i am usually seen moving around on my Web Application.

Frankly Speaking !

2005-08-26T22:57:00.000-07:00

Anonymity brings the best and the worst out of people. My fair share of anonymity gave me my days of happiness, but when the tables were turned i've had to run for the covers.

The first time i got a phone connection at home, when i was 8, i was amazed by its capability. Then again, that amazement was short lived, only to be taken over by my, shall i say, quest for pulling off pranks.

The Telephone, the modern day connector, in its various forms, has been a revelation and to many a tool to unleash their creativity.

While my initial foray to pranks on the telephone was a more sober one, with conversations usually like:
Me (ring up a friend's number, with a piece of cloth over the mouth piece): "Hellowwww !" Friend: "Hello, who is this ?"
Me: "Hello ! Hello ! "
My friend tapping the mouth piece, and shouting even louder
Friend:"HELLLOOO !"
pretending like i cant hear, i too shout back like i had my shorts on fire
Me:"HELLLOOO!!"
Friend:"HELLOOOOOO!!!"

after 2 minutes of shouting "HELLOO" and beating the crap out of each other's ears, my friend hangs up, with the word still ringing like a temple bell !

On one instance, i recorded my voice in a tape-recorder, which had me asking questions at regular intervals apart from recording a "hello". Armed with such a fantastic weapon, I called up my cousin, and switched on the tape.

The tape contained something like "Hello, how are you ?" ...a small pause, to give the caller a chance to answer.... "what did you do today?"....a long pause..."Are you going out anywhere today ?"....another pause..."you know what happened today ?..."...and my long boring story.....in the end "ok, got to go, bye"..

while my cousin sat at home, for 20 long minutes ruining his day, busy answering my questions, and listening to a boring story about how staff at zoos take care of ducks, i was happily playing football outdoor, and enjoying inside out :D.

Well, it was not all rosy and pink all the time, and the telephone has been a headache on a lot of occasions. The coming of a telephone to our house was one of celebration and happiness, more to our neighbours than to us. Being the only house in the street that had a telephone connection at that time, our house had turned into a makeshift telephone booth with neighbours dropping in to call either their "Anna" in kottayam, kerala or a "PaaTi" in dharampuri, TN.

Since the neighbourhood spoke like a hundred different languages, tamil, malayalam, telugu, and i spoke rookie kannada as my mother-tongue, my young impressionable mind was bombarded with all kinds of languages, making me almost forgot my own language !

One particular lady was the most irritating, one because she spoke in a language i never understood, and the other, and a far more dangerous one being, her screaming and shouting over the phone. She would come in almost every evening whenever her uncle would call up from kerala, asking for "Geeeedhha kupadriya ?" (i later found it was "Can you call Geetha ?") ....while given an opportunity i would just hang up, but under the watchful eye of my mother, i couldnt do that. while my sisters would go scurrying out of sight from my mother, just in case she asked them to call "Geeedha!", i would be left shivering holding the handset, with the voice ringing in my head "Geeedha kupadriya !", "Geedha Kupadriya ?", each time increasing in intensity. One glance at me, and i would know that i had no choice but to walk down a mile and call "geedha aundy"...day in and day out, aunty would go on and on, about how her small land in kerala was being manhandled by her uncle who grew pumpkins on them instead of aunty’s preferred coffee beans, pouring over the phone. My only source of entertainment at that time being the "chitrahaar", that aired hindi songs on TV, would get ample servings of malayalam sandwiched between the songs thanks to aunty. As if this was not enough, she would hang up the phone after a 1 hour marathon, and then sit down to tell the whole tale back again to my mother in broken Tamil. since my mother didn't follow malayalam, and the aunty didnt follow kannada, both had settled for tamil as a common language(which neither knew anyways), and i would be stuck in between them trying to decipher hindi songs on TV !, while the scars on my ankles itched on account being beaten to pulp for accidentally speaking in a language other than English, during school hours; Talk about linguistic confluence !

Being relatively new to the telephone, many of us had minimal or no knowldege of telephone etiquette, with "Hello" being the only common link, between any two caller, in most of the cases. Since "Hello" being a English word, it HAD to be indianized, and it gets real funny when you dont get what the other guy’s telling. In many cases, one cant get if it’s a “hello” or just a decorated yawn.

Some of the hello's include, reading phonetically,

"hey lo",
"Haaa low"
or a more romantic one would be "halove"
..some would sound like the person is threatening you with a greeting: "HALLOW"
a more portly man would sound like "HOLLOW" !
one gujarati aunty who would call us, used to sound like she was always in a hurry, with a fast "haLL oh!", stressing really hard on the "L"s..

Atleast better than a few who would call home and directly jump into the topic, without confirming who’s on the other side.
man:"Hello!"
me:"Hello!"
man:"saar, naale nun maglu madve, khanditha barbeku" (Sir, tommorow is my daughter's marriage, and you are cordially invited)

being the kiddo i was, i was pleasantly surprised by someone addressing me as "sir" and inviting me to a ceremony, but wanted to confirm if the invitation was really for me.

me:"uncle, naanu juggi, elli maduve?" ("uncle, its me juggi, where is the marriage ?")
man:"ayyo neenappa, appa ge kodu" ("oh oh ! is it you, give it to your father !")

RATS !!...i would get shunted out like a bug

some calls are bloody confusing, more like

lady:"Hello"
Me:"Hello, yaaru ?" ("hello, who is this?")
Lady:"naanu" ("it's me")
how the hell am i supposed to know, am i a voice/sound reader ?

once my sister had called up, and i did not get who it was because of the same reason i mentioned above, but i thought I’d rather lie than get caught, and used my usual greeting.

me:"oh aunty !..heli aunty !" ("oh aunty, yeah tell me")
Lady:"yee GOOBE, naano nim akka, mommy ge kodo" ("you owl, its me your sister, give it to mommy !")

JEES...that would now enter into the "book of weapons to torture me" which my sister would use when required.

And to this, the wrong numbers to add to the confusion. Our Home phone number unluckily differed only slightly from that of a nearby tile company, and people used to usually interchange the numbers, and we would land up getting a lot of calls asking for either "Glazy Tiles with pink stripes"...or "Sir, when can i come and pay the bills for the tiles ?"..or even worse, some used to shout "Saar, your tiles have still not yet arrived, why are you so lazy ??? !" ..i did not get how he came to know i was lazy, but he sure had dialed a wrong number !

Once a guy called me when I was in a particularly bad mood due to the "Geedha" effect.
Man: "Saar, venkateshwara elllidare ?"("where is venkateshwara?")
Me(yelling back`):"Tirupathi nall idare hogri next bus nalle, sigthaare"("he is in Tirupathi, catch the next bus immediately, you will meet him")

Even worse is when that long lost pre-school friend calls up, and pesters you to recognize him/her. In pre-school i hardly knew how to speak, how would i recognize a person voice who's grown into a beast ever since?

My Talent for not recognizing people’s voice over the phone only got worse with the wrong number stuff. A few years back, I had an offer from Oracle, but rejected it since I was not ready to travel to Hyderabad. However, my cousin got wind of this and thought he could play a prank on me. Calling me on my cell, masquerading as an Oracle HR, he started off:

Cousin: “Hello, can I speak to Mr. Jagadish”
Me: “Hello, yes speaking”
Cousin: “I am Satish from HR, Oracle. I would like to offer you 5 lakhs, instead of the 3.8 lakh we had initially offered, would you like to join us ?”

I couldn’t believe my ears’; anyone with ZERO IT experience would jump in for such an offer. I actually did a somersault and then went in for the dive.

Me: “Yeah, that is a good offer, I would consider it seriously”
Cousin: “Also, we have decided to pay your accommodation charges, car rental and also give you free travel tickets to bangalore”

By now I was doing a reverse bungee, and trying to walk on one hand. I could not believe they were offering all this.

Me: “Oh that’s a neat offer, I accept it”

A crack, a stifle, and a HUGGGGEEE ROAR….. my ear popped out of my head… my cousin was laughing and rolling, gasping for breath…..after 5 minutes of uncontrollable laugh, he finally told me “ naano, Shekar !” ("its me Shekar !")

I was so shocked by the sudden laughter, I could not register that it was my cousin, and was wondering why the HR guy was laughing so loudly. I had at that time thought that he was so happy I had accepted the offer, that he just could not control it over the phone.

Me: “Sorry I didn’t get why you were laughing ? and you said you were satish not shekar !”
Cousin(still gasping) : “ Lo juggie, naano shekar ! nin cousin ooo !!!” ( "I am your cousin, shekar !")

That sudden realization ….

..and then it was too late to reverse what had happened….

The Telephone has, until recently, more or less been a costly instrument to own. However, even costlier are the calls. Back then, it wasn’t very costly, about 1 rupee for 3 minute rounding. People however would go to great lengths to save that amount too. One aunty who would otherwise speak slow when she used to come home, often comfortably spoiling the evening for me, used to speak like a rattle snake running for life when it came to phone conversation.
Her calls used to be more like:

Aunty:”JustTellMommyThatWeWontBeGoingToTheTempleTodayAndI’llGetHalsandhiKaal SambarAndChutnyPowderTomorrow”… PHATAKKKK …..she would cut the phone; message delivered in less than 30 seconds….I would just tell my mother that a particular aunty had called and spoke in malayalam :D.

Talking about etiquette, the concept of a voice mail, has been a difficult one to swallow for many in India, including me, with many uncomfortable speaking to a machine. The first time I enabled my voice mail system was when I joined my company. I had put my name, a courteous message asking the caller to leave a message. After a few days I realized what a folly I had committed. Every day I would come in to check my voice mail to find messages like
“Hello ! Hello !... hello ? …..Tak Tak Tak…. Chey cut aagi hoithu !” (“It got cut!”)
“hello juggie, ivathu 9:30 ge silk board hatra bartiya ?…hello ! hello !!” ( “Can you come to Silk board at 9:30pm, hello ? hello ?”)
“hello….hello !..chey…phone ethkothane, yeno helthane, amele cut agoguthe” ( “He picks up the phone, says something and cuts the phone”)

My colleague at office was fed up of hearing garble messages on his voice mail, more often being “Hello…yaaro pesraango, yaaro pesrango maa” (“someone is talking, someone is talking mom!”)…apparently, my colleague had left a short message with just his name, which the caller mistook as someone speaking at the other end.

Telemarketing has been a more recent phenomenon in India, but it’s nonetheless frustrating and irritating. Add to this, mobile phones make it even worse. Once my friend, out of an elevator, red with anger “They don’t even leave the lift phones, these Citibank guys !”….and on another instance, a colleague of mine who was running to the restroom, ran back to pick up his phone ringing, only to find out that a lady was interested in knowing whether he wanted to buy kashmiri carpets for 20% discount.

I’ve been troubled many a numerous times. I used to drive to office on my bike, and hosur road is not a place to stop a bike even for 5 minutes. With my helmet on, and speeding into any nook and corner I can find, it is hard to reach office on time anyway, worrying when my PM would call up asking about my whereabouts. On my way to office, one day, my phone buzzed like a wild cat just out of water; slowing down completely, taking off my helmet, stopped at a place to pick up the phone, and I get a moronic voice “Idu Airtel inda nimage uchitha karey….this is a free call from airtel….these are the following crap of offers we have for you right now, to make your life miserable, please dial one for choice, or wait for caller assistance”. DRAT !

Once I decided to give these telemarketers back the taste of their own medicine.

A lady from standard chartered called up,
Lady:”Hello sir, I am calling from Stan chart, what is your name ?”
Me: “hi, my name is mallesha..”
Lady: “would you be interested in a credit card ?”
Me : “Yes certainly, how much credit can you give me?”
Lady(excited) : “Sir based on your salary we can give a credit of up 25K”
Me : “That’s cool, I would like a credit of 25K”
Lady : “What is your designation, sir ?”
Me : “I am currently working as trainee office boy”
Lady ( slightly apprehensive): “What is your salary, sir ?”
Me: “2000 rs per month, including perks”
Lady(voice suddenly changing into a harsh tone): “Oh !! we do not currently have any scheme for that income”
Me: “May-dum, please give me a credit card, please”

Lady(slightly irritated):”I’ll give you a call once I confirm with my manager”
Me:”May-Dum, please maydum, at least give me your phone number, so that I can call and find out once you have decided. Please write down my contact info : Mallesha, care of kalpesha,..blah blah ” ..PHUTAAK….the phone line got cut, and so were the numerous calls I used to get from standard chartered….i guess my number was blacklisted soon after this call :D :D…

The Telephone never fails to astonish me, nor does the numerous possibilities it possesses, to irritate and frustrate people included. However, like someone put it so well for Monsoon’s in India, it is but a “Necessary Evil”.

Right now my cell rests safely in my locker, and so are my morbid fears of someone making another prank call.

Rush Hour

2005-08-19T04:09:00.000-07:00

"No, No, No...there is no direct flight to Newark, bombay is flooded saar" moaned the travel desk lady thrusting on me an itinerary which had stops in almost every continent possible. For someone who has hardly been out of bangalore, i thought it was great idea to see four places in one day. My friend, who was to travel along, was insistent on getting a different itinerary which would bypass chicago for us. I was ok with going to chicago, since i had never been there before. Though i thought my friend was wrong to miss such an opportunity to see chicago, it was me who got laughed at more when i told my friends about the journey. Pradeep was kind enough to say "Sareeg Goobey kudsidaale travel navalu" (The travel lady has made a moron out of you).

After some frenzied packing the next day, the weighing machine read 18.5 kg, leading the shop keeper to comment "Saar neeevu kuthkondu hogbodu suitcase nalli, yaaru hidiyolla" (Guess you can sit in the suitcase and it still wont cross the max luggage limit). I thought "Smartie, hold your words, i am going to the YOU-YES-AYE" :D...

apart from the short tours i took to Mangalore and Bombay, leaving Bangalore was seldom in my list of to-do things.

After getting a whole lot of advice from people about New Jersey( in a few cases, some had not even been to US actually), and one big round of "ashirvaada" ceremony, our gang was off to the airport.

"Tidong ting.....Bangalore - Delhi flight is now Boarding" screamed the lady through the public address system, while i was still hysterically waving at anyone i could see through the glass. I got into the plane and sat down gingerly next to the window seat.... the pilot announced a series of stuff that i hardly understood. After taxiing down the runway, the plane turned around like a raging bull, the engine in full throttle the beast sped fast, and in a split second my stomach gave a huge groan and i knew i was in air.

"The plane would reach a maximum height of 33000 feet", the pilot announced. The farthest i had been suspended in air, before this flight, was probably 6 feet during a failed high jump attempt which saw me bang into the side pole, mid-air, on my school sports day.

Reaching Delhi airport was one thing, catching the next flight was another. As soon as we got down the plane, we were frisked into a Box-like Bus, and were dropped off near the entrance of what looked like a dilapidated horse stable. My friend travelling along signalled me to a place where the baggages happily stay put on the carousel. After eagerly waiting for about 5 minutes, i finally saw mine arrive. Not accustomed to pulling the luggage off the conveyor, i knocked down a lady, standing beside me, with my huge suitcase. Aunty went hurtling down, but not before she picked up hers too. She stood up in haste, not remembering whether it was me who knocked her off or she herself in her hurry to pick up her luggage. After apologising to her, and later howling in laughter, i finally hopped into a bus that would drive us to the international airport.

Delhi Airport is madness.

As we entered the airport complex, boards on the wall read "You can enter any gate and then check-in to the respective airlines". Meanwhile an elderly man came to me and asked in hindi "bhai saab, singapoor ko kaha se jana hai ?" (where should we enter to go to singapore ?)... Notorious for my "good" hindi speaking skills, i started stitching together each and every word to make sense of the sentence that it formed. I blurted out "appko kahi se bhi aayiye, aur undar aake search kijiye" ( It meant "Come from anywhere, but search inside"...trying to literally translate the sign on the wall). The old man was as blank as he was before asking me the question. I pointed towards the sign and moved on.

We had to board the alitalia flight, and made towards their counter to get the boarding pass...I was carrying a backpack and a small cabin baggage.

The airline lady, trying to act important, started asking questions
"Do you want to carry two baggages ?"
I said "yes, both put together weighs less than 6kgs, 2 less than acceptable weight"
Lady : "No, No, we cannot allow two baggages inside the plane"
Me: "??....but why ? it is not crossing the limit !"
Lady:"No not possible, airline rules !" (I knew she made this up, runtime)
Me:"Okay, if that is the case, i'll put this backpack inside my other cabin baggage" (and gave her a mocking laugh)
flustered, the lady shouted: "ok ok, you can take both !"
she didnt give up though, and continued.

Lady:"Why US ?"
Me:"to work!"
Lady: "Why are you travelling to the US with a H1-b ?"
Me: "?????...to work ?" i answered tentatively, thinking it was a trick question...
Lady:"Are you planning to come back ?"
no my company is deporting me, very meek chance of me coming back, actually!

Me:"yes in 2 months time"
Lady:"what are you going to do there?"
Me:"create a web-based application"
I thought this was my chance to give back in kind.
Lady:"!!....what work, i meant !"
Me:"!!....software ?"
Lady:"ok!"

After the harrassment, i moved fast, cleared the immigration faster, but not before a punjabi granny with her grandson came to me asking something in punjabi. I gave a blank look, and she thought i had not heard what she said, and shouted again in her ear-piercing voice. In broken hindi i blurted out "muje maaloom nahi hai". Praying "rabb mujhe ..." she went to an unsuspecting italian in the queue, and asked him the same question. The little hindi that italian must have learnt was by now washed down the drain, pink-faced he blurted "eenglish eenglish"....the lady continued chanting "rabb mujhe..." dragging her bellowing grandson and magically making it ahead of all of us, passing the immigration.

Boarding the plane a few minutes later, i sat down on my seat.

"Rabb mujhe....", the sound wafted in the plane....i turned around sharply, and there the elderly lady sat with her groaning grandson on her lap, right behind my seat ! For the rest of my flight, she wouldn't let me move my seat an inch towards her, since her grandson was on her lap !

The groaning grandson, i could partly make out, hated it going in the plane as much as he hated being with his granny, for he kept hooting and moaning like a wolf all through the journey. Added to this, one of the airline staff, a big hulk with a bald head, came in with a color pencil to pacify the boy. The kid freaked out on seeing him, and almost jumped out of the window. granny comforted "uncle hey beta uncle"(raakshas nahi).... and then started "Rabb mujhe......."....i had almost conditioned myself to hearing it... "All passengers can now.....Rabb Mujhe......remove their seat belts" announced the air-hostess, amidst her chanting....all through the journey "Rabb Mujhe...." had become my wake up call for lunch, dinner and breakfast.

10 hours into the flight, i woke up again to the chanting to land in 10 minutes. At the security check, people were moving out of the metal detector like zombies with their hand held high up and straight, while the security lady was shouting "Hands Up", "hands Up".....i had put in my luggage into the x-ray scanning machine, and walked through the metal detector. The machine gave a loud beep, and the lady barked "shoe REMOVE" in thick italian accent....i removed the shoes and entered again....it beeped again loud and clear..."belt REMOVE"...."watch REMOVE"....."glass REMOVE"...."REMOVE, REMOVE, REMOVE"...shouting hoarse like a roadside thief... every time i had to re-enter that damn entrance...each time removing something !...finally the detector let me through...having already wasted a lot of time, i decided to go to the restroom before boarding the plane to Chicago, but the only restroom in the whole airport had a long queue that would have put the kerosene queue in bommanahalli to shame.

"Here or in the plane, what difference !" i thought, settling down before boarding the plane in half an hour. "Rabb mujhe....." had taken another flight, so i breathed easy and slept well for another 10 hour flight to chicago. An otherwise uneventful flight this one, marred by a few ramblings by the guys in the front seat pestering the air hostess for vodka, or the red faced airline guy with a ponch coming in to serve irate passengers while shouting "giving giving, wait wait"... finally the plane landed in 10 hours at the Chicago International Airport.

Chicago airport is huge, and understandably well maintained. We had to pass through immigration, check-out our baggage, and check-in again in order to take a domestic flight to Newark. dragging the luggage, sapped out and tired, we lost ourselves again in the airport. I made a quick enquiry to a lady official standing nearby.
Me: "where do we go to take continental ?"
lady : "First floor, take a right, Train at terminal 2"

Stunned i re-checked my ticket to see if that travel lady back home had given us a train ticket to Newark instead of an air ticket ! luckily it said "air ticket", or alteast looked like one.

Me:" I need to take a flight from here, not the train !"

stiffling her laugh, she gained her composure back

Lady:" you'll need to take a train within the complex to reach the domestic airport, Sir."

The way she ran in the opposite direction, i could make out she was trying hard to control laughing on my face.

After some intense searching, we finally boarded the plane again, and after another 2 hours of travel the plane touched down at the Newark airport, ending my long journey of 4 flights, 3 check-ins, and almost 36 hours in travel time.

Wide roads, Big Cars, no noise....Welcome to the USA.

Shell Shocked

2005-07-16T11:21:00.000-07:00

A normal day, i thought, when i woke up this morning at 10; "4:30 am" ringing at the back of my mind. "Harry Potter and the half blood prince" would now be officially on sale, at all major bookstores. I wanted the UK edition badly, so had booked my copy at Indiatimes 2 weeks earlier, which they promised to deliver a day after the official release. "I can wait that long" i had thought then, and only yesterday i had been to work wearing a custom made Harry Potter t-shirt :D, the euphoria still alive and kicking.

Feeling rather lazy, i started browsing through the day's newspaper and as i read i found, not so surprizingly, the paper full of Harry Potter news. After having a go at the day's news, i was brimming with curiosity about what the book would be like this time around.

I am rather notorious at the office as well as among my friends, for being a bit of a , if i can say, staunch supporter of HP books.

After a few quick calls and chat with friends, most asking me whether i have already bought the book, and some suggesting me places where i could get it at a discounted rate, i got all the more edgy to get my hands on the book.

....the book would reach me a day late, and i will have to wait, i told myself, with a lone voice in my mind hoping i would get it this very day.

All was going fine, when i was informed that my book would arrive a week late owing to some transportation issues. The News on TV was full of the mad rush for the book, and my hopes started to wane. I would have none of it, a weeks wait would be suicidal; while everyone at the HP club at office would be discussing the story, i would have to just sit and try not to hear anything. I decided to scourge around the city for the book, but not before cancelling the damn booking at Indiatimes.

I had been idle the whole day, and now i was ready to leave for jayanagar, hoping a few books would be lurking around for me to latch on to. I got a call from ashwini, asking me if i had plans for the day. I had the only plan, and i told her the same, but she would have none of it, and told me that our group would meeting at crossword near Brigade road immediately. I would not need to cancel my plan of buying the book, since i could buy it near brigade road. After getting another call from ashwini about change of plans, and that the group had decided to meet at gangarams book store i couldn't have asked for more.

except rashmi and myself, none in my group are known fans of Harry Potter stories :D. I thought it was a lucky coincidence that they had chosen to meet at gangarams, and also left me wondering if ashwini had suddenly developed a taste for HP books :D.

After wading through some serious evening traffic i finally reached Gangarams, and there stood ashwini, karthik and pothnis enjoying bhel-puri and giggling ear-to-ear on seeing me. After parking my bike, i got ready to barge into gangarams-already overflowing with ad's on Harry Potter, but held back thinking that i should meet my friends before hopping in. After a brief exchange of pleasantries, and the still giggling ashwini, i jumped the gun and proclaimed that i had to urgently go to gangarams to get the book. still giggling, ashwini putforth a plastic bag handing it over to me. puzzled, i looked into it. There it lay, neatly placed, a book, the letters on which read "Harry Potter and the half blood prince" !.... the words "it's for you !!" took time to reach me, but it only aggravated the pleasant shock i got.

while my friends let me savour the moment, i stood there, like a kid who had had his wish fulfilled the minute he asked for it and shocked beyond belief !

I opened the book, after karthik guided me to the first page, when i had instinctively had moved to the last page, and there on the page were written the words:

To Jaggs,

Science is a Sham :-).

It is one thing to buy a Harry Potter book, but to be gifted one, it becomes priceless.

Thanks guys !

IT is not like that !

2005-07-14T13:17:00.000-07:00

"....yavaag foreign ge ?"

The familiar sentence is arguably one of the most frequently asked questions , losing only slightly to the even more grave one "...yavaag maduve ?", to someone who unluckily happens to be in the IT Industry and in Bangalore. There was never a better conversation topic for the older generation to suck every drop of blood the poor bloke manages to save despite working as a techie.

It's a wave that everyone wants to be part of, and everyone wants to show they know. The word computer is now a house-hold name. A good relief for many topic starved aunties and uncles, but our poor techie gets stuck like a nail that's half into the wood when it's head decides to painfully break lose.

The popular following that IT has gotten in recent years has been more due to the lucrative travel, than what the techie believes is due to his work. This time it is the uncles who have the upper hand in making a conversation, owing to some 'extra' knowledge, thanks to 'external' contacts. Aunties resign to just asking "...yenappa computer aa ?" ( literally means " are u a computer ?", but it is supposed to be "Are you working in the IT field ?". One must be ready to field a volley of smirks and barrage of questions, if the victim answers a "no", though it would be the right answer for such a question. For if you are not part of the bandwagon, then you'd rather term yourself a foolish old crackpot and be happy with that, than get a loathesome look from the omnipresent aunty.

IT has such a popular following here, most do not know what they are following, but just drift along to be 'seen'. Our aunty gets into her form, and asks our techie, "you computer, my son also computer" ...our techie, just out of a ctrl-alt-tab-enter, has no idea how to respond to this inhuman potrayal, by the aunty, of her son. He just smiles and says "wonderful aunty, which company ?" and is hardly interested in what he hears. The aunty carries on.. " nun maga sapoo"...the indianised MNC becomes "sapoo" from SAP, while our techie replies back, "i work for GE"..aunty is a bit concerned on hearing that, and blurts out "is it a good company ? didnt u get in infosys ?"...techie is at his wits end to explain; aunty is in no mood to understand. aunty's techie son is blushing ear to ear.

while the general social understanding of an IT company hovers between Infosys and Wipro, some good souls give respect to "Vorakal" too. So aunties are generally happy if one is from any of these companies. The other companies will only mean a detailed interrogation about the techie's academic credentials, past criminal record, if any, and a sure minus point as a prospective groom.

It is the conversation between aunties that is the most funny and amazingly astonishing. Recently one of my cousins went onsite, and i being the scape goat , who still 'had' to be in India, was the butt of all discussions.

aunty1 : " foreign ge yaavaga ivnu hogodu ?" (when is he going onsite ?)
aunty2 : "gothilla, innenu swalpa divsdalley hogthaaneno" (He might go in some days !)
aunty1 : "hmmm...they say only brilliants(sic) are sent onsite"
aunty2 : "that's true !"

I was being murdered inch by inch, neat and clean. My reputation in tatters.

This is even bearable, but get this, if a techie manages to stumble on an onsite travel but is cancelled on that last millisecond, then his future is doomed, for aunties will have a field day disecting him and nailing him for not working well at the office. I have been most unfortunate in this case, so much so that if i had got a call to abort the travel 2 seconds later than what i got, i might have had to jump off the plane mid-air.

aunties started flowing in from early evening that day, some trying to stay oblivious of the situation, some trying hard to keep a straight face, and a few more giving their own versions of my story, which by the way i never told anyone !...well one aunty even had the nerve to ask me "did you have a fight with your manager ?"..well i was kind enough to say "no aunty, project got scrapped ", only to realize that the aunty had no idea what a project meant, and instead pressed me to agree that i had indeed done some mistake...finally she let me go when i blurted out "my manager had a fight with the airlines"....well that was enough for me to roll over on the floor and laugh at her, despite the 'humiliation' of not going onsite.

uncles are not far off, and are ever more eager to learn 'computers'. One uncle was particularly curious to know as to why we guys were paid for playing computer games !...apparantely he was of this view after he had seen his 9 year old son only playing games on his newly bought comp. I knew better than to explain, so i told him that it was because if we won, the company would get money. uncle's spirits rose, and in all probability he would have gone home and pestered his innoncent 9 year old son to teach him to play games in the hopes of joining a IT company in future !

uncles are a little more "knowledgeable" though. One uncle came to me one day, when i made the suicidal mistake of attending a social gathering full of aunties and uncles, and asked me as to which company i worked for, and i answered him hoping he would stop there. however , uncle had no such intention and carried on " yaav language ?"...though stunned, i replied back "c sharp uncle" ...uncle's face glowed and then he said " nun maga Java , c# bidhoithanthey!" (My son works on JAVA, C sharp has long fallen from grace) ..In most uncles view, languages are like company shares, the value of which keeps fluctuating on an hourly basis.

Though salary is something of a sensitive issue, uncles don't give didly-squat about that and continue questioning the techie on the same. I was ripped apart when i told one uncle that my gross was 25k, to which, in suspended euphoria, he exclaimed that his son earned 2.5 lakh per month at onsite. Having no room to argue, i kept mum, when uncle went off again "why dont u ask your manager for a raise".... I told him i would consider his advise and ask, though my manager was bit of a dragon, unlike my uncle's son's manger, who was a saint just short of a halo!

Even more weird is the funny way in which people take those mails managers send to techies and their team, as to the good work being done. one of my cousins who recently joined my company got such a mail from his manager, and he thought it was a good idea to take a print out and show it to his father, a folly he still regrets to this day. My uncle not only read the copy, but made a hundred photocopies and distributed it as pamphlets to his near and dear ones. My dad got one too, and i had to field some intense questioning at home, since i had not managed to get one such letter even once ! i had even gone to the extent of thinking about printing one on my own just to escape the 'humiliation'.

while it's often funny to listen to the weird misconceptions people have about IT, it gets irritating if it goes too far. It would be a boring place without the aunties and the uncles, but it would be a wonderful place, if they knew better than to draw conclusions about one's work, of which they know so less about !

Harry Potter Mania ?

2005-07-01T07:13:00.000-07:00

With the Harry Potter - 6 due to release this month, the atmosphere is all about expectation and enthusiasm. The wait has been really long, but all i hope is that it's well worth the wait. I will be getting a Harry Potter T-shirt in a few days time, specially made to order, so i can't wait to get my hands on that one too.

Though many dismiss it as childish, which it definitely is not, not many understand that it is an amazingly creative work of literature. Imagining a parallel world, co-existing with our own, though is baffling, it is something we really can't completely brush aside as stupid.

People talk great lengths about science and technology, scientific bent of mind and blah blah blah, and carried away by it in thinking that science is all encompassing. For instance they talk about how gravity affects our life, but they forget as to why gravity is present in the first place. As in what is density, why should earth attract us, how did earth come to be in the first place ?

Man only tries to understand what he can comprehend, in effect he needs proof based on his traditional set of beliefs. There is no room for things that the human mind cannot 'understand'. We stuff ourselves into believing that we are scientifically advanced, that we have a scientific bent of mind, but we hopelessly fall short of realizing that by limiting ourselves to what we see, we do not get the big picture.

Many who dismiss Harry Potter stories are in fact victims of the same notion mentioned above. They are hard-pressed to believe that something that science cannot explain is not real or is a figment of one's imagination. It is, however, necessary to understand that science does not explain everything, and hence denying a creative writing by branding it as rat-piss is not only foolish, but is outright barbaric.

I enjoy reading Harry Potter books, and appreciate the author's creativity. I cannot entangle myself into the scientific realm. I do not go by scientific reasoning.

Science is a Sham !

Road Ro(a)meo

2005-06-27T09:18:00.000-07:00

Taking Stock of the situation.

Had to attend a friend's wedding last Monday some 18 kms from my place. Right from the day when my friend first told me about the hall she had booked for her wedding ceremony, i had this sinking feeling that i would have a tough time reaching the place.

for the record, i got a map of Bangalore city as my birthday gift this year, for being one of the most ignorant banglorean. for the trouble i put my friends into, by frequently losing my way in bangalore, i think they were waiting for such a chance to give back in kind. One particularly clever friend of mine even suggested an evil idea of buying me a ticket to a bus ride given to tourists and first timers to the city.

Bangalore city is a maze for first timers and me. I have always gotten away with it though.

Roads in bangalore are highly confusing, and add to that the overnight conversion of roads to one-ways, makes life for people such as me all the more difficult. The almost similar names of places is a nightmare too.

Like they say, ignorance comes out only when we open our mouth, in my case, it's when i start my bike.

Anyway, this, my friends came to know only recently.

i had deviced a convenient idea of mapping every place , with my house as the point of origin. Life became a lot simpler, though i did try hard to come up with decent reasons for my friends, who would frequently ask me as to why i had to go back home every time they asked me to come to brigade road. I would come up with weird excuses like "i need to fill my bike's petrol tank", or would simply tell them that i needed a nap.

I used to escape.

It's always been a big journey for me whenever i travel to places in bangalore. The thumb rule that i usually apply when i get lost is to follow the herd, that is i move in the direction in which most of the traffic flows, added to it a little local knowledge usually keeps me in good stead, and i know it when i lose my way. Once i went hopelessly wrong and reached Bangalore Cantonment, the first time i had ever been to that place. Initially tried calling up someone, trying to use one of my lives, but decided against it after thinking about the consequences of letting someone find out about my screwup. luckily for me, i saw a car which had a registration number which told me that it was registered from the Regional Transport office located near my house. I couldn't thank my stars, and followed the car hoping that the fool in the car might probably be heading to the same place i had to go to.

Apart from a few tense moments, including one in which that idiot in the car stopped by to buy vegetables making me wait for him at a distance, all went fine, and luckily i was able to reach a place from where i knew my way. two bats eyes to that stupid oaf for making me wait at that vegetable shop.

Things sometime get out of hand real bad, and luck seems to have favoured me big time in such situations.

It was this movie that we were going to watch in a theatre i had never heard of, near brigade road. First i made the fatal assumption that the theatre was probably a nick name for the one near my house.as luck had it, i reached the movie hall and called up my friends chiding them for being late, only to find out that i had been to the wrong place, but disguised it by telling that i was actually on my way and was only joking. First of all i had no idea where the theatre was, and i could not ask my friends either, with just 10 minutes for the movie to start. I tried a few of my old tricks like asking questions such as "Look i know the longer route, which is the shortest route i should take to reach the hall"....pat would the reply with the details of the route :D. Not that it made my situation any better that day, since some crack old fool was supposed to arrive that day to bangalore and hence the traffic police had converted a few roads into one-ways. In all this melee, one of my friends got wind of my ignorance, and started howling like a mad cat every 10 minutes asking me as to where i was :D... I would simply tell him that i was stuck in a traffic signal, while i was busy circling roads trying to find my way out :D.

At last i came to a place i had the least idea about, and was contemplating going back in the route i had come in before completely losing my way. Luckily for me, i met a friend from office at the traffic signal. Much as my excitement, i stiffled it and asked in a slightly high pitched tone "this one way rule they have imposed today is real silly, can you tell me the shortest route to reach Rex Theatre"...she didn't get an inkling that i was lost, and gladly guided me to a place from where i could easily reach the theatre. of course i got kicks from my friend who was waiting for me with only the guard keeping him company, while the rest of my friends were laughing their head out watching the movie :D.

Sometimes , i have put myself in the most peculiar of situations when people have asked me for directions and i had to resort to unheard of means to escape the humiliation of not knowing a particular place.

Once i had been to a place called chickpet in bangalore with my uncle. I was waiting alone outside the shop while my uncle was purchasing something. A boy came to me and asked me in kannada "Saar gundappa rasthe ell barathey ?" ("where is gundappa street ?")...I had no idea !. That boy looked like a 6 year old midget, and i didn't want him to know that the odds of me ever being able to tell where "gundappa street" was as much as sonia gandhi winning wimbledon. Instead i tried to pull off the "do not know language trick"...and shouted "eh?"...to which the kid improvised and asked "where is gundappa ?"...i had to control my laughter, but just was biding time to see if he would let me loose and give up on me. after a confused stare, he murmurmed "kivda" ("deaf guy !") and left :D

On another occasion one of my lead at office who was new to bangalore and new to my antics called me up one day asking me the route to Lalbagh from MG road. That was as complex as it could get. Though i knew both the places well, it was only from my place that i knew the route to reach these places, not directly. Instead of telling him so, i tried to tell him the route which would take him near to my place and then further from there to Lalbagh. Well he got to know that it was not the best way after all, and luckily i had a staff nearby at office who offered to help me out of the sticky situation.

An innocent friend of mine from office asked me if i could guide him to a place i had heard for the first time, and i managed to tell him enough to make him completely drop the idea of going to that place altogether :D

I will not bring in here, the incident when i was in bombay for the first time, and got down near Dadar station, thinking it was Borivali; i asked one passerby as to which train to take to go to Dadar station, to which the guy gave me a weird look and said "Turn right and walk 5 steps, and don't look back" in hindi :D :D...

I have more or less improved in my sense of places in bangalore now, except for a few hiccups sometimes, which surely is not in my best interests worth mentioning ;D.

and yeah, you are right ,i lost my way while coming back from my friend's wedding last monday. Then again, it's been two weeks since then, and haven't lost my way yet :).

Bollywood Trash

2005-06-15T07:10:00.000-07:00

Had been to the movie "Bunty aur Bubly" three weeks ago. For the effort i put in to reach the theatre which screened the movie, the least i could expect was to at least stay awake during the movie.

These days frustration seems to be on sale, and i bought it. Much as i loathe the ever so decreasing standard of hindi cinema, i was childish enough to beleive that things would have changed for good during the past two years. clearly, i was wrong.

so much so that, if i termed the movie as Extremely Mediocre, i would actually be praising it. Its one of those rare movies which crosses the line of stupidity by rubbing the line completely; in other words it can't get worse.

The movie starts off with a scene wherein the protagonists(two in this case) are seen jumping around either moronically on top of a train, or just being plain moronic and lip syncing to the horrible song playing in the background. The song did end, albeit abruptly.

Well the story remotely resembles that of "Catch me if you Can", but has been modified so horribly that the silly old bollywood trash in it becomes quite apparent. The movie did end, but not before belting out around eight ear-piercing songs, and trumpeting the disgusting acting by the cast.

One can't help but recognize the seemingly low standards of bollywood movies, and more so the way in which such trash gets popular following thus egging psychedelic directors to make many more. "Swades", another classic example of a foolish way to gain patriotic sympathy, was filled with a crappy script matched only by the bad acting skills of the cast, not to mention grave and obvious mistakes in direction. "Black", another of those movies which ran full house everywhere and had the house full in tears is another glaring example ! well i got that it's based on a real life story, but look at the way it has been potrayed -making one feel that a blind and deaf human should necessarily be insidious, dumb and not be able to walk properly- that's atrocious ! I can't believe people bought such stuff.

check out this:

It beats me as to how the seemingly stinky "Mein Hoon Na" was a superhit ! That movie looked like it was made when the director couldn't think of anything useful while answering nature's call. I'd rather watch a Pig wagging it's tail for 2.5 hours than watch this load of owl's droppings.
If one thought that that was the heights, well that's not it, the actors were awarded at IIFA for this !

Funny as it might sound, some genuine and sincere efforts by a few, usually gets the brickbats. The movie "Dil Chahta hai" being one of those. One of the better movies made in this decade, It was a moderate hit. However, starting from the cast and the acting skills they displayed, the simple but neat direction to the practical content of the story, made this a movie that stood out. "Jhankar Beats", "Hera Pheri" and "Hungama" were some of the other good movies which tried to experiment creatively, rather than follow dumb old standards.

It does not come as a surprise to me that out of the 800 odd movies dished out by bollywood in a year, hardly 2-3 movies are worth watching.

For now it is a BIG NO NO as far as bollywood movies are concerned, unless the human race starts walking on its hands. I just hope wisdom will finally see the light of the day in the minds of these movie-makers and we get to watch some quality stuff.

Hail the mass, and go eat grass.

Cockeyed hypochondriac

2005-05-21T00:19:00.000-07:00

Ignorance is a gift not many understand how to use. for me, it's been detrimental. The mild hypochondriac in me raises it's head whenever ignorance starts belting it's stuff out of me.

continuing my bad run from where i had left, into May, things seemed a never ending tale of fear psychosis, whispering at the back of my mind : "What's next ?". In the first week of May i saw myself working for a new project, which i am happy to announce, i am enjoying. That's the good part.

I had been to my family doctor earlier in the month, slightly concerned about my headache. she gave me some crap which didn't seem to work, and advised me to consult a dentist. The densist, who i then had suspected to be a quack going by her attire, advised me to check out an ENT specialist as she suspected a mild throat infection. My drama did'nt end there, neither did my headache. The ENT guy looked a bit bemused, ordered a ear test for me and fished me out of the hospital with a bag full of medicines in my hand.

things started looking a bit fishy, and my mind got busy with its own 'analysis' of my condition.

even after 3 days of taking the medicines didnt show up any signs of improvement, i thought it was time to see my good old doctor again. amidst my plight, there'd been a meningitis scare going around in the newspapers, though no cases had been reported in the state as yet. The "Times of India" which gets a bit corny on such issues went overboard with headlines like "Symptoms to look out for", "ways to avoid", and the usual euphoria bullshit. Not that it's a credible newspaper to believe every word it prints, it's a little more than a tabloid though, but it sure gave me the heebie-jeebies.

The newspaper read "symptoms : mild headache, fever, rashes, pain in the eye, loss of memory". I seemed to have satisfied the first condition very well, and it seemed like my eyes were paining too, and i had forgotten since when, so i had satisfied the "loss of memory" condition too. I seemed to have even forgotten the names of some famous actresses :D, which was weird. that was enough to psyche me out and minutes later i was checking out the net frantically looking for some kind of information which would tell me "Hey dumbo, get your stinky head and dunk it in water, you seem to be dehydrated of logic"

The next day i found myself visiting the doctor for a second opinion :). after exchanging few words, the doc decided to put me on a course of antibiotics which would cure my throat infection. Still apprehensive, i decided to check out the details of the medicine. My doc has this dirty habit of not telling me what was wrong, thus allowing my mind to further its morbid designs on me. another two days passed, and now i started getting edgy, more so after reading that the medicine would cause mild breathing issues, which was enough for me to concoct one up in the next two days..back to square one i thought, and ran to the doctor, this time very sure that someone out there had very bad designs for me.

I had seen the doctor 3 times in 7 days, and she was tired of collecting her fees from me, and i was pleasantly surprised when she didnt accept her fee. Conscience got the better of her, apparently :). for some who already didnt know that i was visitng a doctor, i could have easily passed off as my doctor's personal stalker. In all this flurry of activities, i forgot completely, to notice that my headache was actually decreasing.

Even After meeting the doctor for the nth time, and her insistence that the medicine was doing it's job, i could still not resist myself from putting forth my opinion... i slowly sat upright and in a slight murmer told her "u know there is this scare about meningitis going around"....by the look on the doc's face, i knew i had over stepped the limits by a yard this time, and made a hasty exit amidst my doc's ranting "If anything, I would know it better than you" !!!......and asked me to not even think about changing the medication she had prescribed for me !. Absurd as it may sound, She was growing increasingly worried that i might actually take my own medication :D :D.

A week later i must say i had troubled her enough without reason :). My throat is slightly sour, and my headache's gone, but most of all, my mind is free :D. That much for my ignorance.

Half-knowledge is something most of us can live without :D, my doc couldnt agree more with me , ha ha.

Warning : April !!

2005-04-25T12:39:00.000-07:00

life's becoming one big hell this april...possibly the april 1st warning should have tipped me off, but it ticked me off instead. I had a harrowing time last week at office, and was hoping it would just end there; i'd been testing a silly web application for the past 10 days, and at that time seemed like i'll need to do that for another month, which effectively meant i'd have to look for another job. Added to that i have a dumb butt-head for a PM, who's pea-brain is as small as it can get. The moron's logic is disturbingly amazing.

The silly wisdom tooth, for all its name, is the dumbest oxymoron one can come across. it always seems to give the dentist money for no value. mine's no different, so i thought i'll get the damn tooth removed over the weekend and take rest on monday.

Being the oaf that he is, he jumped up to the idea wildly and started shaking his round head like a mad cow. It would have seemed very funny, had i not been in pain owing to my tooth. i did not get my holiday but instead got a whole lot of ideas from my "doctor" PM himself !...

some of his outrageous thoughts :

"The doctor is an idiot. he'll give you one pain killer tablet, but you should take two" ( that will kill the pain and me too )
"business and client is important, so you should have planned it earlier" ( aha, now that's why we call it the wisdumb tooth, it does not know about business and clients and when to cause us pain ) .
"you cant take holidays left and right" ( hellloww !! someone needs to explain to me, the jist of what this lunatic wants to say )
"it'll swell a lot, and so do have lots of food before going for the surgery, since you cant have food for the next 3 days and you'll become quite weak" ( bloody slavedriver accepts that i can't possbily make it on monday, but wants me to come )
"inform me 1 month in advance, before taking holidays left and right" ( this guy has a left and right syndrome, his left brain has nothing right in it, and his right brain has nothing left in it, as the saying for fools goes )

finally, as it goes, i had to come on monday writhing in pain no less....but for no use, since the dumb PM released me from the project owing to the clients request to downsize the team !..

my PM had the nerve to ask me "Hello hero, how is your tooth now ?". i had to control my anger but was tempted to give him a blow on his face, and ask him back the same question..

All in all april has been one hell of a month for me...nothing went right, and nothing was left !

I am glad i am out of it, and hopefully something good might just happen in May..... May be ;)...

My Melee ?

2005-04-12T01:30:00.000-07:00

owing to lots of queries as to what my blog name "My Melee" means, i guess i should write a bit more on it ( actually there was just one query, but being hte enthu guy, i'll explain it without much fight :D).

Melee, or noisy riotous fight, is to depict the endless fight or battle that rages in our mind, and hence My Melee is to denote the same that is happening in mine.

However, that is the explanation for those who do not know the kannada language, and for those who do, "My Melee" would be "mie melay" or "nun melay", meaning "About myself" :D....well it almost means that, for those kannada pundits who would like to disagree with me.

Hopefully that puts to rest all confusion, present or future.

April fools !

2005-04-10T22:31:00.000-07:00

as usual i forgot to update my blog...well that means, i have lots to say :). of particular interest is the April 1st fiasco, which will probably feature in the top 5 unluckiest days i have had till date. well true to what ashwini proclaimed in her blog, i was supposed to leave for Atlanta on April 2nd. I have been leaving for onsite since september, that is for those who know me :D. For many, they are not even sure where exactly i am, since i chat 24 hours round the clock :D. Well my manager asked me to pack my bags on march 31st to mark the beginning of an ordeal i'd rather forget. i had to shop for virtually everything, and had to do it in about 4 hours time!. I was ready for the April 1st gruelling day, when we'd have to go through a hundred official processes before embarking on our journey. i Had to confirm my tickets before 9:30am to actually be able to take the flight next day, and we were having second thoughts of whether the project would be scrapped in the last minute, owing to the numerous indications coming in from various quarters. much as i liked to stop myself from thinking that such a thing might possibly happen, i was praying that it wouldn't come true when i am half way through my journey( which my colleague promptly pointed out had happened earlier ) .
10:30 am : all procedures for travel were in full swing.
11:15 am : i entered the foreign travel briefing session, nailing my eyes on to the screen the instructor was displaying with utmost laziness :D
11:30 am : my colleague who was in the session with me gets a call, and he picks it up, amidst my muttering to him that it was not very professional of him to do the same. continuing in the same tone, giving no heed to my protests, he murmured into my ears 2 minutes later : "Get up, the trip is cancelled !"
11:33 am : we were out of the travel session briefing midway, and clueless and blank :(.

We cancelled our tickets by calling the travel desk, just hours after we had confirmed our travel. we had to fight with the travel desk, since the lady would not be convinced that we were not fooling her and that it was indeed a genuine case of pure misfortune. she would have none of it anyway, and asked us for a written communication !, courtesy April fools day. she wanted an email confirmation, for which i would need to login to my domain account.

I came back to my seat only to find that i had completely forgotten the password to my login account which i had changed only the previous day. The system would just not accept the damn password. After 3 tries, it locked my account :(....well on a rather normal day, it would have been easy to actually unlock my password, but not today !; for one i had forgotten my password, which meant that i would have to personally appear in front of the admin and prove my credentials to actually change it, and the damn place was accessible only to birds !...well i had to climb the damn stairs to reach the place, and started looking for the admin area. buildings in our office consists of a lobby sandwiched in between two huge workeareas, and there is this damn confusion of which is the left building and which is the right one. The admin had mentioned right, and god knows who's right or whose right ! i took the best right that was possible, and i was squarely wrong. waited for 20 minutes in the wrong building. Adding to the confusion, some members in the area insisted that a dingy looking room being the admin room; innocent morons !

frustrated i left that building to reach my place and called the person again only to find out that i had been to the wrong side of the building :(....ran to the bulding again and this time surely enough i found a person in the "admin area" and owing to him forgetting his glasses that day, he put to test my id and my face to a series of matching tests with close circuit cameras, and finally cleared me and my id as being authentic !..i changed my password and ran back to my seat, which was a mile away.

I was able to login, and no sooner did i login to my account than my phone rang. The lady at the other end introduced herself as swetha menon from the accounts department, and wanted me to meet her for some queries and stuff. well i thought one more to add to the day's ordeal, and told her that i would come to her office immediately, which by the way was a good 500 mts away from my seat. cursing myself i started towards bulding 3 from building 41. I had reached half my journey when i got a call from my other colleague in office bursting out laughing loudly and shouting "april fool".. Grrr.....

April 1st had never been so bad :(....but life goes on...

Progress on my promised book

2005-02-26T20:55:00.000-08:00

progress right now is that i bought a bundle of white sheets, 120 rs......hahaha :D

....but yeah, i have realized that not everything i think can go into the print. May be i need someone who can pen my thoughts, i seem to be doing it rather awkwardly. tried writing the other day, and by the time i had finished writing around 100 words, i realized it looked more like a groan rather than something serious :(....

Anyway, i'll stick to my thoughts for some more time, until i get hold of a writer :D.....

2005-02-26T10:18:00.000-08:00

flower or leaf ?

2005-02-26T10:15:00.000-08:00

cloudy "rays"

2005-02-26T10:13:00.000-08:00

Harmony

2005-02-26T10:10:00.000-08:00

the white triangle

NET access or NETT access ?? :?}

2005-01-22T01:02:00.000-08:00

oh boy...i guess i have learnt my lesson well...that is never to sign up for an internet connection that is based on a specific download limit. I think i am losing money in the hundreds...my 2.4 GB download limit per year, for 3K is peanuts, considering that i get less than 200 mb per month...less that 8mb per day :(...one connection to yahoo, and the limit's reached with the blink of an eye....i think the 8pm-8am package is a decent bet...since that's when i use it usually...lesson number one learnt successfully.

Daylight robbery with my signature on it, ridiculous :.....

Thinking of buying a bicycle....

2005-01-21T23:44:00.000-08:00

I am being increasingly drawn towards the idea of cycling to office, with hosur road giving me ample reasons to do so. I was thinking about a battery powered bicycle, which would be easy to ride, as well as allow me to nudge through the battery of vehicles on the road. I remember seeing such bicycles on discovery channel, and is famous in the US, it is said. 13 kms to my office is not very far, considering that i will no longer have to get frustrated due to traffic. Of course, i'll be doing my bit to the environment and my pocket too..

....badly searching for a company that can get me such a bicycle :)....

of course, that would mean i won't be able to give any lifts to any one in future...which is bad news :(...

Book ???????

2005-01-19T01:20:00.000-08:00

i have been thinking about writing a book for quite sometime now, about the indian political system and the patehtic Hypocrisy with which it is administered to its citizens....Its hard to explain the rage i feel when i see the path our country has taken under successive governments....There is no sense of direction, nor a collective feel. It looks like one big cauldron of tarantulas, waiting to harp on any given opportunity, drubbing anyone coming in the way.

Isn't it time we thought about the necessity of such a democracy, which is crazy ?? isn't there a clause in democracy which states that democracy works only in an educated, civilised and rich country ? well if there isn't, then it better be included. Democracy simply fails in a big country with such a huge population....

get all your answers in my forthcoming book :D

Its realll boring today

2005-01-18T21:51:00.000-08:00

Yuck Yuck.....i've been on bench for 3 weeks now. It’s getting really boring, sitting in front of my monitor, reading some crap about how to give access to the database using impersonation and windows irritation. why are these systems so complex ? Why is it that only things that are complex are preferred more?

What was it like living 2000 years ago ? Were people worried about impersonation even then? i am sure they didn't have a login id and password !...

oh hell, these damn logins and passwords !!...i tried to create an account by name "jagadish", and the system says it's already taken, and suggests me to use jagadish_pea_brain...and i run into a flurry of ideas to give a decent account name(none gets accepted) and voila i end up with Jagadish_pea_brain !!...

Arrggghhh...yesterday i got a call now from my colleague....he wanted me to check if more than 15 users could login into ACCESS database and bloody damn access the DAMN data !!...he'll be thoroughly pleased to know that 15 users can access it....as for me, having no clue on how to go about the problem, i just went to the website of google and typed "Can more than 15 users connect to Access at a time ?" and i got a popup Ad which said "Broadband connection, very cheap"....i searched for about 15 minutes using permutation and combination, and when i couldn't get anything regarding that, i just called up my colleague and told him that it was possible to connect 15 users to Access database at a time. Why should i worry about 15 users connecting to a system, its microsoft's problem....!..if 15 users can't connect then it's a bug, otherwise i am right :).

The old days were good, just rocks and stones, with people wondering whether the earth was flat or round. About the only issue that gave them nightmares was that they wouldn't roll over in their sleep and fall off the edge of the earth !! today, we go to the cliff and fall, and call it bungee jumping...well the one who invented it was real desperate to make money somehow !...I think i'd rather worry about falling off the edge than think about some lunatic virus creeping into my system and shouting out "I love you !!, please wait till i screw your system", and then pops a message saying "your system needs to be restarted for the changes to take effect"....like i was very interested, duh!...damn these viruses !...

okay okay....its time to go home....these guys are coming down to unchain me from my cabin, at last i am free for another 15 hours...to come back to the same ordeal the next day !...

My Second "first" Blog

2005-01-18T21:47:00.000-08:00

yeah....i have lost count of the number of blog accounts i have created but failed to remember, to actually return back and add posts. anyway, i intend to continue with this blog for good...hmmm...yeah that's about it, nothing much to say..what if i forget this blog too, and then i'll have to type the whole thing again in my new blog....:D