The Misfit's Monologues

Hell

2010-04-21T10:17:00.000+05:30

Naseeruddin Shah interview on MTV Iggy

2009-12-06T20:42:00.001+05:30

Face-off with a deadly predator

2009-12-05T12:43:00.002+05:30

Renown National Geographic Photographer Paul Nicklen takes us on a voyage with him. We get to see first hand and up close how the filming of a deadly predator turned into the filming of a friend. Watch as a Leopard Seal in Antarctica shows his true color.

Honda ASIMO conducts the Detroit Symphony Orchestra

2009-10-30T20:19:00.000+05:30

Forrest Gump in One minute, in One Take

2009-10-30T19:22:00.001+05:30

Pulp Fiction Audio Mix!

2009-10-30T19:15:00.000+05:30

Cinema, Aspirinas e Urubus (2005)

2009-10-09T00:23:00.006+05:30

Cinema, Aspirinas e Urubus (Movies, Aspirin & Vultures)
Directed by Marcelo Gomes

IMDB Synopsis:
In 1942, the lonely German Johann travels through the arid roads in the country of the Northeast of Brazil in his truck selling aspirins in small villages, using advertisement movies to promote the medicine. He meets the drifter Ranulpho, who intends to go to Rio de Janeiro seeking a better life, and gives a ride to the man. While traveling together, they develop a close friendship, but on 31 August 1942, Brazil declares war to Germany and Johann has to decide if he should return to his home country and fight in the war, or stay in Brazil in a concentration camp; but the option of moving to Amazonas with the migrants of the drought seems to be feasible.

Language:
German/Portuguese

My opinion:
A tad too slow and monotonous at times, but nice.

Gegen die Wand (2005)

2009-10-09T00:13:00.008+05:30

Gegen die Wand (Head On)
Directed by Fatih Akin

IMDB Synopsis:
Cahit is a German Turk in his 40's. He has given up with his life after his beloved wife's death, and he's living a miserable life right in the core of cocaine and excessive drinking. One night, he semi-intentionally crashes into a wall, and barely survives. At the hospital he's taken to, he meets a girl, Sibel, another German Turk who's tried to commit suicide. She's sick and tired of her family's ultra-traditional issues, and asks Cahit to carry out a white marriage with her out of the blue, so that she can become a married woman and get rid of her family's revolting pressure. Cahit is turned off by the idea at first, but then he agrees to take part in this plan. As Sibel tells him straightaway that she's interested in absolute freedom involving other men and he agrees, they live as roommates with separate private lives for a while. Then things take a different turn, and they're no longer two indifferent roommates. But their love story won't be anywhere as simple as any other...

Language:
German/Turkish/English

My opinion:
Kick-ass! Brilliant! Or, in Chennai-speak, Terror!

Schwarzfahrer

2009-10-08T09:47:00.001+05:30

Oscar-winning short. Inspired a similar scene in Dev D.

Road. Movie - Can't wait!

2009-09-19T13:37:00.002+05:30

Hitler finds out no camera in iPod Touch

2009-09-16T08:28:00.000+05:30

Signs

2009-07-24T14:32:00.002+05:30

Signs, a short film by Patrick Hughes:

The Olympus PEN Story

2009-07-12T14:45:00.000+05:30

Living with First Person Shooter Disease

2009-07-08T16:40:00.001+05:30

Robogeisha!

2009-07-08T16:39:00.001+05:30

Something different for a change!

2009-07-07T17:52:00.003+05:30

Rili cool music video!

2009-07-07T17:48:00.002+05:30

Axe Deo

2009-05-03T09:46:00.002+05:30

I used Axe deo for the first time, and unlike in the ad, the only things that seem to be attracted are fuckin' mosquitoes.

Pidipompi Calling Cards

2009-04-22T22:32:00.002+05:30

Thanks a million for this, Suyog!

Microsoft's Songsmith Commercial

2009-01-30T02:17:00.004+05:30

LMFAO!

How to make Chicken Masala

2008-11-13T21:14:00.001+05:30

Checking your belongings

2008-11-02T16:29:00.005+05:30

Something I found in a loo in Bangkok...

Bangkok Wall Art

2008-08-28T23:25:00.003+05:30

A Very Strange Love Story

2008-05-30T01:57:00.009+05:30

The following are a series of (love?) letters that were sent to a friend of mine [henceforth referred to as Jane] by her colleague [henceforth referred to as Tarzan Apeman (Tarzan = First Name, Apeman = Last Name)], who, in order to maintain anonymity, sent her these emails from an email account created especially for this purpose. The ID that was created was a concoction of their first names [tarzan_jane@xxxxx.xxx].

I swear that every single thing written in those letters is true to the best of my knowledge and has not been tampered with in any way, except for the names, which have been changed to maintain anonymity.

Though I’d love nothing more in the world than to comment on every single line he has written to her, I’d rather not add anything in the middle and spoil the experience [and the flow] for you. However, whichever parts I would like to stress have been marked in bold. And if I couldn’t resist the temptation to say something, they are within brackets, in italics.

Well, hope you enjoy these as much as I did. Here they are:

~~~

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: "Tarzan Apeman"
To: "Jane"
Date: Mon, 31 Jul 2006 15:01:34 +0530
Subject: hi

Hi J[being a short version of Jane],

The day on which you are not there in the office is something very painful.

I always expect you to be moving arround here in this floor. Today there is something missing and I am looking at your seat always,
but you are never there in it, some people are noticing me looking at it. After looking at it I am noticing that you are abcent.

The most beautiful things that i had seen in my life is your eyes Jane , can never forget them.

I started seeing you from one year Jane. When I first saw you I thought that you are a HR executive.

Now its time to initiate the things if you are comfitable, or else I am afraid that my life will start off like an autograph movie.

I always feel like joining you while going home, but unfortunately there is always a big gang of your friends along with you. who stares at me when i look at you.
But they are necessary for you to help you go home in the night time.

Dont know whether mailing a female like this is right or wrong . one thing I know is that, asking a persons openion with out knowing what I am is definately wrong .

Never talked or interacted much with females. thought of mailing you from few months,finally did it. One day, i peeped into your book, you draw pictures very beautifully like a kid.

This mail is too confidential Jane.... if this is disclosed, i can never lifet my head in this company.

take care..

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
http://mail.yahoo.com

~~~

My friend completely ignored this email. [Luckily (for us), she didn’t delete it].

A few weeks later, she receives this email, where he calls her a lion, of all things in the world.

~~~

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: "Tarzan Apeman" <Tarzan_Jane@xxxxx.xxx>
To: "Jane" jane@xxxxx.xxx
Date: Thu, 17 Aug 2006 11:35:21 +0530
Subject: hi

hi lion,

How to start talking with u.

How low will we go? Check out Yahoo! Messenger’s low PC-to-Phone call rates.

(Hahahahaa)

~~~

Four days after the above-mentioned email, he sent these two short emails out of the blue, six minutes apart from each other.

~~~

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: "Tarzan Apeman" <Tarzan_Jane@xxxxx.xxx>
To: "Jane" <jane@xxxxx.xxx>
Date: Mon, 21 Aug 2006 14:33:08 +0530
Subject: hi

Hey...

U are sitting like a kid on the steps.

Do you Yahoo!?
Get on board. You're invited to try the new Yahoo! Mail Beta.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: "Tarzan Apeman" <Tarzan_Jane@xxxxx.xxx>
To: "Jane" <jane@xxxxx.xxx>
Date: Mon, 21 Aug 2006 14:27:08 +0530
Subject: hi

Hey....

you are sitting like a small kid on the steps.

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
http://mail.yahoo.com

~~~

She apparently seemed to have got very offended for being compared to a small kid, for she replied immediately with a short, curt email, asking him not to bother her.

~~~

"Jane" <jane@xxxxx.xxx>wrote:

I dont know who you are .But if you dont stop mailin me I'll have to report this to a higher authority .

So I suggest you do.

~~~

He replied to this email that same evening:

~~~

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: "Tarzan Apeman" <Tarzan_Jane@xxxxx.xxx>
To: "Jane" <jane@xxxxx.xxx>
Date: Mon, 21 Aug 2006 17:09:53 +0530
Subject: RE: hi

Hi,

Apology, Don’t know that I am doing mistake, came to know after seeing your response. It was never done to harm you. Its not easy to mail also. Took six months to take this decision. Your response is proper.

Please forgive me.

Regards…
Tarz..

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
http://mail.yahoo.com

~~~

Then, a few days later came this long email…

~~~

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: "Tarzan Apeman" <Tarzan_Jane@xxxxx.xxx>
To: "Jane" <jane@xxxxx.xxx>
Date: Thu, 2 Nov 2006 21:13:00 +0530
Subject: RE: hi

hi Jane,

Please dont get angry Jane, and please dont give warning to me after reading this. Its my mistake only to tell you that your eyes look good and all in the emails, I tried to be close to you in a funny way, but that became a major flop. Now i understood that you dont like me, God promise [how long has it been since we heard something like ‘God Promise’ being used?] that no third person in our office knows that I email you or i see you. Even i mis understood you because you are looking at me. what ever, i have sent you wishes for two festivals from my official id, I did not get response, means , u dont like me. I respect your response and make it confim that I failed in love with you. But Jane, I enjoyed a lot when u are looking at me. those days were my best days when we were looking at each other. I thought that I will never fall in love with any one. what ever, I am very happy that you scolded me in mail, you are the first girl to scold me [I’m surprised], few girls in our office emailed me and one proposed me [I wonder what kind of a person she must be]. You are better you gave me warning , but i got scared of saying no. to them.. [huh???]

From past few days I was spending sleepless nights Jane. Its was one of my ambitions to become an enterprenuer, I am not getting any opportunity. I am not at all satisfied and i will never be with my software job. I dont want my software job to be my primary dependancy. job should be only for the security.. but a man should be physically strong and should earn in a challenging way in buisiness and put his family up. There will be defiantely one good way, I am trying to find it still.. I was passed out in 2000 [not only does he keep track of how many girls have scolded him till date, but he apparently also maintains the details of when he has fainted] from a very repurted institution in andhra. I am BE . Electronics [Now you know what inspired the movie to be titled “I am Legend”]. With one wrond step I had ruined my career... I was a merit student earlier, now i dont believe in hardwork... All my classmates are in USA doing great. few already started their own consultancies and bussinesses.

Please dont think that I am money minded, every month I give arround 20% of my income to a charity called parikrama which gives education for the slum kids. I will strictly follow this what ever i earn 20% should go . Jane, i give even though i dont have any property at my back [how about in the front?]. If I am not doing this, I dont feel like I am a man. I was working hard to convince others also to donate da [notice the change of tone]. but no one listens to me Jane. These software engineers never listens to any one. they only tell but they wont listen to others. along with this they are very practical always using the words like so what and then what... I always wont understand how to convince these innocent people...If they talk loudly they feel that they are very confident and bold, actaully what is the use of confidence Jane if our hands cant help the hungry people. Every week end i will teach in an institute called SRM radiant for free of cost. I will teach testing realtime i will help them to get jobs. Till now i helped arround 100 people to get jobs. you know one day one girl came in an auto and i was sitting in the reception. I had forwarded her resume to our company. she is from kerala, her husband left her, she came to bangalore with a kid. Our TL s got scared to select her as she is fake. but most of the testers in our compny are not genune. Though i gave indirect clue about her situation, they told me that they dont want to take risk.... like this so many painful stories da.... Most of them are from kerala.... but they will bless me and go .... you know There is a girl called ____________, she is the girl who gave me this idea of emailing to you. earlier she was with call center and now she is in ____.. she always asks about you. she also looks very very fair like tomato like you [first, a lion, and now, a tomato... read on to see what he calls her next].

I belong to a caste called Kshatriya from andhra. We are actually called surya vamsha rajas. This Id is my names prefix which is not there in record.

Jane, Since i was thrown ina hostel when i was kid itself I got used to lonely life . I got so many friends in between, but one day they will take my contacts [I didn’t know contact lenses were introduced in India way back then] and go away nd slowly I loose in touch with them. Actually its very painful to loose them.. Now when ever i talk to any one i will automatically feel that he will also leave me one day and hence i will not get energy to get close .... But i have few close frends, some are in india and some are abroad.

Jane, Actually i thought of leaving this company after completion of sixmonths itself, but i stayed back with a ray of hope that it will go well between us [she doesn’t even know who the guy is]. It is painful for me to leave you, but I even want you to settle with the person with all the qualities that you want [that was mighty considerate of him]. I might had proposed you, As i am not financially strong, I did not get energy to come and propose you. I did not have any strong point to garantee a better life to you. facial features might not be not be that good but apart from that I look better and stronger than any software engineer in bangalore.

Jane, as i said that i want to start my business apart from my job, I can,t achieve this if i stay back here in ___ [the company where they worked] and even i have to get married by maximum in an year . Now i am padding up my five years of gap and trying for job. I already got through... I did my best to impress you Jane, I left all my ego before you and emailed you even though though you did not respond to me. now its time to leave you...[why does he sound like he's dumping her?] I got through in ____ [another company] with 5+ years of experience waiting for the offer letter and might be in next two months I might leave ____..[the company where they worked] But miss u alot...

Except in emails i felt lot of respect from your side Jane. I am very very happy for that. Actually its not very easy to find a girl like you. Actually my aim was not to marry an engineer, but after seeing you, i was flat....god promose da.. you are very good and a bit innocent too..

Please dont warn me Jane, bless me before i leave you.....I respect you a lot da, because of that only when ever you are close to me, my mouth will be shut. even i never expected that the story will end like this. hope that u understand my situation.

I will never bother you with my emails.

God Bless You Jane.

Cheap Talk? Check out Yahoo! Messenger's low PC-to-Phone call rates.

Get your email and see which of your friends are online - Right on the new Yahoo.com

~~~

… and three months later, a longer email…

~~~

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: "Tarzan Apeman" <Tarzan_Jane@xxxxx.xxx>
To: "Jane" <jane@xxxxx.xxx>
Date: Fri, 24 Nov 2006 18:35:14 +0530
Subject: RE: hi

hi,

From past few days, I am seeing you being very dull which you were not earlier, you used to be very active and lively. Now I am seeing you walking very dull. This should not happen, I know that this is happening only after my email. I am making you uncomfortable. When I came here you are very nice and active, very energetically moving around talking happily with every one. Now I am feeling that I am the person who has spoiled your happiness.. I will feel more than you if you are like this.

When the kids are not eating the food or when they are crying, we will tell them raj kumari stories and make them comfitable [ROFL!!]. As u are wise I shall tell you real stories . One is a small story and the other one is a painful family life story of myne. I am not luckey to talk to u daily like your friends, at most I can write a long mail. That too with lot of fear that you might get bust on me with anger. It took few days for me to write this, this is the only way to talk to you. When ever I feel like talking to you, I will open this document and continue to write. I know that you don’t like me emailing you, but for a person like me, this is the only way.

Listen da… Imagine that a good friend of yours is telling you. This small story is from mahabharata.

One fine day, lord Krishna and arjuna will be walking [note the future tense] on the sea shore, beside the shore there will be one village, a group of people will be gathering around the dead body before a small house, they will be weeping and crying like hell. Then lord Krishna will tell arjuna. See arjuna, how those poor and innocent people are crying with lot of pain………….. These people are crying thinking as if they are going to live forever. After few years we all will not be there on this earth, we will go to heaven, In heaven i dont need to get feared to talk to you. These are all the games played by gods. Gods come in different ways , with one hand they give and with another they will take away. Few months back I am in day dreams thinking that you will be my life partner and for all my next janmas, at that time I was scared to leave you for a month also, I was scared that company will ask me to go onsite [the first time I read this, I thought Lord Krishna was talking about an onsite trip to Arjuna, and wondered why he told Arjuna “I don’t need to get feared to talk to you” and "I am in day dreams thinking that you will be my life partner"], if they had offered also i might had said no. Now, I am facing the most painful situation of my life about which I cant express to any one that I am leaving you forever, except god I think no one can understand this pain. We are just normal humans who are part of his ball game. What ever decisions we take are not taken by us, they are taken by us according to gods wish. So we should’n t repent for some decisions and their painful consequences. What I am saying is, what ever decision is taken by you is very much correct. Because you are a good person and you never did any harm to any one.

My story…................................. Takes time to read. .read it for time pass when you are free [that’s what we’re doing].

If any one asks you what your family background is you might tell them that your grand father is a big officer or your uncle is a big renowned person. But I am a person who came from a very much rural and less civilized family. It’s a very very painful experience which no other families should ever encounter in their lifes.. Some people around our villages tell great about us and few tell that our families are very bad and cruel.

My grand father _____ [name of grandfather] is our village president, Our village is in coastal Andhra, It’s a very good village where every one is very good, people from other villages wait for the curd and milk of our village, we never used to mix water in it. Like that only most of the people are. People are very innocent, if you joke, they will keep remembering it through out the day and keep on laughing.

One day one quarrel happened because of females. I shouldn’t tell you, it’s a very bad reason. So the village got separated in to two. Its not exactly two, but one party is only our family and another party consists of many other village members. Our families are very big there are 150 males in our four big families with the same initial with which I am called here.. At a time they used to attack each other in the night times when the opportunity come. My grandfather has six brothers , My father is the elder son. I am the only son to my father. And he is very very strong person, he weighed 120 kgs I heard. He was the only educated person in our villages. He married my mother who is very poor. They were in love with each other, and got married. . heard that she and her sister are the most beautiful girls in our village [he hasn’t seen her???]. He usd to come to town and study.

In the clashes a group of 200 to 300 people used to attack eachother in the night times. If they report to police, they used to come to the village and eat well including money from both the sides and go away. Few people used to get killed on both the sides..

One day, the other party members removed my three grand fathers brothers heads in the middle of the village.In the day time,, Their names are ___, ___ and ___. When they are trying to kill one the other two went and they were also killed. At this time our families got wild up, the other party people got scared and they ran away to the forest and other places of the district. In this situation, not knowing what to do, my father taking his all relatives and brothers almost made the village in to graveyard they killed so many people, at this time they killed so many good people also. At this time 150 reserved police came to our village and they were there for few days. After few days the was a situation where no one knows what happens. Two parties are growing more powerful. No one knows what happens. Every one from both sides used to get scared. All our females in our families used to hug the small kids and they used to cry like anything. If a male goes out no one knows whether he will come back or not. That’s why they used to go in groups. Though the men are fighting, our females are the most daring people. They faced the most problems than any other females. Our family males are very very arrogant, they never used to care any one. The only thing they know is killing. There were police cases on many people from both sides.. Our family people needs to sell of our agricultural lands to fight for the cases. Our families used to earn from one side and from one side it used to get melted to bribe the police and lawyers. Here the people who actually killed our grand fathers fled to the city and they were later caught by the police and they got life sentence.

At this situation my father told his father that he don’t want to stay there and he along with most of my family members came to a small village close to town, there those village people didn’t allow us to enter in to the villages, those village people told that if we enter we will convert those villages also like graveyards. In that situation we all of our group of our families constructed small small mud houses in an open space between two villages . Here one village is of yaadavas and another is of our caste Kahatriyas, and stayed. Here agrahaara is close to us where only bramhin pandits stays, they are the people who helped us a lot during that bad situation, that’s why till now we will protect and respect then, we will not let a feather falling on them under any circumstances. When most of our family members came here, our other relatives became very weak there, so the other party people used to attack them and our family members used to run away and come to our houses to this village, stay here for few days and when the situation goes well they used to return back to my old village.

Here these village people around us used to show lot of partiality with us, they always used to try to quarrel with us.They used to always consider us as uncivilized as most of the people in this village are connected to the town near by. Actually they know that we are very strong, but they are very large in number, they don’t want us to raise again. But my family members are very much ferocious they never get scared of any thing. They are like lions like you. A cold war used to go [where?]. They never allowed us to construct the houses in their villages but we used to go inside for other activities. The male people in our families used to get worried because the area in which we have constructed the houses was not having power facility. We used to lit lamps in the night times. At the same time the females kids were growing in our families. So, they tried to discuss with them the situation and enter, but it became futile.

One night time at around 8 o clock, me, my father and my sisters and mother we were having dinner, out side the neighbour village people were beating one person because of some reason. When they ere trying to kill him, my father went to stop. That’s it, there were around 500 people, who bet my father, we thought that it will be very difficult for him to survive and get up from the bed. His two ribs were broken. He picked up a little and they gave him very strong food which made him again pick up. After becoming fit when he was about to go out side for the first time, my mother begged him not to go out, she had fallen on his legs also, he told that no one will do any thing as they already bet him. He went out and we got a call saying that he is in a dying situiation. They again bet him.

Can u imagine the situation. We were all crying, I was too young at that time, this is a 25 year old back story,, from one side our old village, from one side these fellows. That was the situation still now I remember my family members crying. Dieing is better than living like that. Our people used to get scared to go out, full of enemies around. No one goes out with out a weapon. And a stick, here every one learns stick and sphere, I also learned for four years continuesly [huh???]. My mother only forced my father to teach the art to me. When these kind of things are growing more. One day our family members attacked our neighbouring village and entered in to it, my father tried to chop off this new village presidents head, at that time the new village people only scolded their own president because of his cunning nature.. This is the village in which my family is in now at present. I was thrown in to a hostel in the town it was a missionary school.. my father want me to become an officer.. but my family member want me to become an inspector. Some used to ask me to become a lawyer to fight for their cases.

After few years, my old village people killed my fathers elder brother ___. And in our old village my grand father expired, his death was safe. After an year all my family members went to my old village to put salt in my grand fathers grave. I did not go. At that time they stabbed my fathers fourth brother ___. They stabbed him 17 times. But he survived. Now he is the richest man in our families. But over all our families killed more people than we lost. I cant tell that my families are always right, but they did not kill any one just like that or for the sake of name. The only thing is that they are very very ferocious. The quarrels ended and these people started businesses, some are successful and many failed. Now soo many differences among our families itself. If we go to town people will get feared of my families, political people like MLA s and MP s s will come and meet all our relatives. They will use us like anything…. You might be thinking that the ministers are good people who want to serve the country, please don’t innocently believe them, during elections they will get bombs and put them in our houses. Its true da. God promise believe me. That’s the reason why I will not vote. My families will not care them also. They are very arrogant. Politicians will come to us because our families are powerful and can fight. There will be so many things going on between them. … Now every one tell that we are the people who killed, no one knows our pain, how many females lost lost their husbands, no one think all these, every one points us, they tell that we are not humans,. Very pain ful it will be. But my father is having very good name as a good person, he helped many people with money and land. Now he is not having anything to give to his own son, I don’t want anything, he made me an engineer, I am greatful to him, if I can help few people in need and later if I can make my kids useful to others , I shall be happy..

Coming to my mother, she is very good and innocent, she calls every one with the names Amma and ayya. Amma means mother and ayya means father. She never call any one with names. including kids, She is very shy person, she is old, a bit blind, she cant recognise me, she dont know how i look now. If you come to my home, every one will go behind the doors and they will be peeping at you. If you go out also so many of my men will accompany you fopr your security, they are very strong to protect you.

Any way, after few years I got in to 11 th class and joined in a residential college in the town, I got in to engineering. After that my US visa got denied for my MS, I got admissions in five universities in US and the next year the software came down, at that time I worked with an R& D Firm on some GNOME tool.. as developer . that is some proprietary language. I worked there for few months only because the work will be like 18 to 20 hours per day. Any ways under bad circumstances I was in depression before joining this company at that time I became very thin.

I joined here and I saw you. Finish, there was lot of life and energy in your face and you are just moving around and talking and laughing with every one. Some thing like you wre very happy all the time, lot of people used to come and talk to you. You are like james bond. When I saw u I thought that you are some HR executive and slowly I found that you are a developer and in a better position than me. That is also ok, I used to prey to god that you should n’t be rich so that I can easily convince you for marriage, unfortunately I saw you one day driving car. I lost hope completely that you will like me, but I tried still. Some times I used to think that trying to propose you is a mistake as you are well deserved person than me, but I finally became selfish and possessive with respect to you.

After that I think you know every thing, Daily getting up in the morning at 8:00 , coming to office and taking your darshan, joining you for break fast , tea, lunch, and while going out home also. I did it with out your notice, later you came to know that I am following you. After that 8:30 to 10:00 gymming and having dinner and sleeping at 12 o clock. I forgot, in between few warnings from you through emails. That day I cried in the bathroom. On the week ends I will go to the charity parikrama to meet my dearest darlings, my slum kids. I sleep for two days on the bed on week ends lazily, and I never go out into the city. I don’t know anything in bangalore except my room, office and majestic. I like to go to late night movies with families. I am very very soft person, I don’t remember when I got angry in my life. My life has become a compromised and full of sorries, if any one gets angry on me I will just tell sorry and come out of the ring. I am from village, but the city environment is a bit practical, which will hurt me some times. I am very sentimental. for joke purpose also, I never hurt any person. Actually you never allowed me to come and talk to you , under and circumstances if you give me your hand to hold, that’s it you are out I will never leave it through out my life. You will come to know how Sentimental I am.

Dai, I got fed up with this lonely life from the child hood, if I have friends also they are leaving in between, now I am looking to marry an innocent girl like you and stay with her family because my parents are not ready to move out from our village. If I can get a girl like you, I shall stay with her family and I will treat her parents like my parents. I want to live with family da. I am alone, now you are also leaving me, I don’t have any one. I am alone. I will be 29 years old on the coming December __^th , I hardly have one year to get married, If I am not getting married for one year[!], I will get out dated [!!] and no one will marry me da. Now no love, I loved you and I will protect these good and very precious mements. I cant love anyone apart from you. I don’t want to also. I don’t my love to become impure, If any girl other than you is seeing me I am not feeling comfortable, I want only you to see me. I love only my tomato lion. I renamed you are tomato lion, which means a lion who looks as fair as a tomato.

I want to live the life like you, having so many good people around, living happy life, every one respects you,. Can I tell u what is ther in my heart, A person who is very clever, serious, earning more money, having ego, who always wants center of attraction among every one, who talks more, who always points others to prove his greatness, and especially who will get a bloated belly after 30 years and impatient Now days guys will wear an allen solly shirt if we remove it they look like a cycle tube filled with air. These are not the right match for a kind of person like you da.

You are a person living a very good life, you are respectable and innocent. Its really true, I am noticing it every day. I notice every step that you take. You are talented and you work like a bull in the office, you will never try to change the companies for money, you work more than a man. You talk with every one nicely irrespective of whether he is good, bad, or what ever he is [ugly???]. I always notice you cheering up with every one. You have soo many ghuts [huh???] also.. A good person like you need a person who knows what you are in your life da, who can see your 26 years of long struggle for your career and goal, who will understand your want and what you feel by looking into your eyes itself, who is very much balanced in mind even during his worst situations, who stands like a strong man beside you like a commando and who can stay fit and strong till his 50 years of age, who knows the value and gives respect for good of others also.. Who after marrying you will treat your parents as his parents and who will not live for his selfishness and who also helps your family relatives who are in need and he who gets more respect for you in the family and who even know the taste and pain of hunger. Even he should have the goal in his life to come up. …

Coming to my situation, I am getting scared to talk to you, actually I will never get scared of any one, its happening with only with you. If you come close to me my heart beat starts fast, That day in the lift after lunch during the afternoon time, ohh god, very much tensed, I think your friend enjoyed both of us. None of our collegues were able to help me also in this regard. One of your best friend is there who comes with you for the walk after lunch, some times I will be thinking why at least she was not able help me out. She is a nice person. People from kerala are very soft and good. Thinking that you might get bad name, I did not disclose your name to any of my best friends also. I just told that you are from kerala.

Any time in the future gimme one message, I will leave every thing and come for you and take you away. And I shall live according to what you wish. Nothing can be better than having a wise person like you as wife.

Now you will be very much angry with me for writing this mail, I know it very well, you will be waiting for me with sword on Monday, that’s why I will not come on monday. Don’t know when you will come to me and bust off. Getting scared, but don’t want to loose you, I always think about you from the morning till night. But no one helps me. Many times tears come out of my eyes.

The people who are successful in love are the luckiest people.

Everyone is raving about the all-new Yahoo! Mail beta.

Cheap Talk? Check out Yahoo! Messenger's low PC-to-Phone call rates.

~~~

Sadly [for me], he never wrote to her after that. I guess some love stories unfortunately end as abruptly as they start…

My Mumbai/Goa Holiday - Part IV

2008-05-27T12:34:00.007+05:30

---
This is Part IV. Part I, II & III can be read here:
http://shthappens.blogspot.com/2007/12/my-mumbaigoa-holiday-part-i.html
http://shthappens.blogspot.com/2008/01/my-mumbaigoa-holiday-part-ii.html
http://shthappens.blogspot.com/2008/03/my-mumbaigoa-holiday-part-iii.html
---

Day 05: 12th December
==================

Though I had slept for a good 8 hours, I woke up feeling like I had slept only 10 minutes back, probably because I didn’t wake up on my own, but by the ruckus that these young half-wits were still making. It was just like last night, except that no one hollered at them anymore. I got down from my berth and glanced towards some of those who had screamed at these people last night. They looked as exhausted as I felt: their shoulders sagged, their lips pursed, and their eyes droopy, with bags under them. The Gujaratis and their NRI friends, on the other hand, looked fresh as daisies, and were still at it with renewed gusto.

I looked at the time. The train would reach Thivim at 12 Noon, and it was only 9:30 AM. With nothing else to do, I continued reading H2G2, but after a while, I got restless. I tried forcing myself to concentrate on the words, but gave up after 2 minutes.

I went out of the compartment and stood by its open door for a while, gazing out at nothing in particular, my thoughts a blank, feeling only the wind on my face. Shortly, one of the Gujarati guys and one of the NRI girls came outside to have a smoke. Since the other door on this side of the compartment was blocked by one of those big white bundles of something [if you’ve travelled in a train in India before, I’m sure you’ve seen atleast one of those big white bundles of something which are always found placed against compartment doors in the morning], they huddled around my door and started with their chattering. I went back inside, and went over to the other end of the compartment, but the two compartment doors on the other side were being hung around in by firangs. I went back to my berth, and, sighing as I sat down, hoped the train would reach Thivim on time. I didn’t have any patience left to deal with any more of this.

As if the sardonic train had heard my thoughts, it stopped at this obscure station and refused to move ass for a whole hour. When it finally did, it did so with a small jerk, which I’m pretty convinced was a train’s equivalent of the movement your body makes when you chuckle.

The train eventually reached Thivim at 1 PM.

[Getting off the train at Thivim felt so liberating that I’m tempted to employ sentences as done-to-death as “As I got down the train, I felt the sun shining down on me, bathing me in it’s warmth, and washing off any traces of fatigue and sleeplessness I may have previously had”, but I must restrain myself from being dramatic].

I disembarked at Thivim, leaving behind knee-shattering firangs, pea-brained Gujaratis, Karan-Johar-addicted, fake-accented NRIs, and a train with a cruel sense of humour [This, I realise, is no less dramatic, but... oh well...]. I felt strangely light, and a feeling of relief came over me as I walked out the station [Here again, I was on the verge of turning around, squinting at the leaving train like Clint Eastwood and muttering “So long, suckers!”, but good sense prevailed].

The scene outside the Thivim Railway Station was chaotic. A whole bunch of passengers had got down at Thivim, and as we went out, we were engulfed by a whole bunch of auto-rickshaw drivers, taxi drivers, and motorbike pilots [who drop you from one place to another on their bikes]. Two other guys I had met in the train were staying close to where I was going to [Arpora], so we decided to share an auto-rickshaw. However, by the time we decided this, all the auto-rickshaws had already left with passengers, save one, whose driver James bore a strong and eerie resemblance to Keshtu Mukherjee. As we commenced our rickety ride to Arpora on James’ dilapidated auto [the first thing that came to mind when I looked at the auto was the quote from Hemingway’s The Old Man & the Sea about being “destroyed, but not defeated”], we noticed that his behaviour and mannerisms too bizarrely imitated Keshtu Mukherjee.

En route, when we were climbing a slightly inclined road, he suddenly stopped the auto-rickshaw, changed the gear to first, took out an empty water bottle from below his seat, and, saying that he needed to pick up petrol from his place, left us.

Here was an auto-rickshaw on the brink of collapse, bearing the weight of three adults and their heavy luggage, standing motionless [and only on the strength of its first gear] in the middle of a steep stretch of road, with its driver nowhere in sight. We wanted to lessen the burden on the auto-rickshaw by getting out, but both sides of the auto-rickshaw had windowed doors, and to open them, you had to use a lot of force [When we had tried unsuccessfully to close the door when boarding the auto-rickshaw, James had got down, and smiling at us condescendingly, had shaken his head and said “No sir, no sir, not like this”, and banged the door hard with what I’m sure was a proud and content look on his face]. We were afraid to even breathe, leave alone using force to open the doors. One of the guys tried opening the door near him very slowly, but since it didn’t seem to work, applied a little pressure, causing the auto to shake a little. At this precise moment, James returned, and seeing what the guy was doing, told him “What sir… you must be more careful. The brakes don’t work well. What if you shook too much and auto starts going down the road? Correct time, I came. Otherwise…”

Shortly, I got dropped at Mella Rosa[where I was staying] in one piece. Beer, ayurvedic massage and shower later, I was ready for action. But since it was only 4 PM, I decided to cool my heels by watching TV for a while. I browsed channels for a while, before sticking to this Hindi candyfloss college romance called Ishq Vishq [you can imagine how bad the other channels must’ve been].

An hour later, I stepped out my room, ready, and looking for rental bikes. There was a small shack right in front of Mella Rosa which had taxis and rental bikes, but they told me that since I didn’t have a driving license, they would be charging me a hundred bucks more than the normal rate. I figured this wasn’t worth it, since I would not only have to shell out more money for the bike, but if the cops caught me without a license, I would probably have to shell out more money to pay them. And the last thing I needed now was another dampener like a brush with the law.

So telling them I wasn’t interested, I got a pilot to drop me near Calangute Beach. I went to the Blue Bay restaurant, where I was waited on by a guy called Peter, a guy in his 40’s with salt-and-pepper hair and a very young face [which looked even younger whenever he broke into a grin]. He remembered me from my last trip to Goa, which was in Dec 2006, and accurately told me that I had come with three other guys, two girls and a kid. He had apparently waited on us the last time too.

Peter turned out to be an extremely good waiter, getting me my order real quick and popping up at the right time to check if I wanted more beer or something else to eat, while I read Haruki Murakami’s Blind Willow Sleeping Woman, a collection of his short stories. A couple of beers and short stories later, I left.

I spent some time looking at t-shirts and buying a few of them. I wanted a Che Guevara t-shirt, but all the good ones were small, and the only ones in my size were lame: some of them with bad printing, some with lousy fonts, a few with spelling mistakes, some others in loud, garish colour, a few others with a deformed Che Guevara, and the rest with a combination of a few of or all of these disfigurements. Finding none decent enough, I slowly began my walk towards Baga Beach.

To get from Calangute to Baga, you walk down one lengthy stretch of road, with a deviation to the left towards the end. The distance is somewhere between 3.5 and 4 kms [according to a motorbike pilot], and the entire path is filled with pubs/restaurants both posh and inexpensive, shops and boarding houses. Since this was the first time I was walking the stretch, I concentrated more upon the road than the sights surrounding me.

About 45 minutes later, I reached Baga beach. I promptly went to Silver Sands [the restaurant I frequented during my last two trips], where I immediately asked them to put up my table very close to the shore. The tide always rose after 8:30 or 9 PM, and I wanted to feel the waves lapping at my feet while I drank. I’m not sure if you’ve tried this, but it’s a very nice feeling.

Roy, my waiter, this guy with a shaved head covered with a cap, tried making conversation about where I was from, what I did, etc.. I told him I was from Bangalore, and on an impulse, told him I was a writer [I completely relate to Holden Caulfield from The Catcher in the Rye when he says, “I'm the most terrific liar you ever saw in your life. It's awful. If I'm on my way to the store to buy a magazine, even, and somebody asks me where I'm going, I'm liable to say I'm going to the opera”]. He got most interested when I told him this, and he proceeded to ask me more questions, like what I wrote on, etc., and so I built lie upon lie on the spot, telling him I was a short-story writer who writes humour, and that I came to Goa twice a year to get away from the monotony of daily life [I’m not sure if you’ve tried lying on impulse, but it’s great fun. Though this may seem easy to do, you actually need to do a lot of quick thinking.

When you start off doing this, you may take a few extra seconds to respond with each lie, and since you’d be pressurising yourself real hard to come up with a lie real fast, your lies probably would end up not being very consistent and may not sound natural and unforced. As you gain experience, however, you tend to start off by telling someone the first thing that comes to mind, and by the time the other person responds to what you’ve just said, your mind comes up with a list of questions that the other person might ask, and almost immediately, it also comes up with answers to these anticipated questions automatically.

You may wonder what one could possibly gain by lying impulsively, but believe me, its great exercise for your mind. Like I said, you need presence of mind, and as you go on doing this, your reaction time reduces, and you thinking speeds up. It is also challenging, for you’re always trying to get better at this, your only competition being yourself. In addition, the satisfaction you get when your lies go down well with someone, when you manipulate someone into believing you’re something you’re not, is immense. Moreover, since it’s only harmless fun, why not?]. Me being a writer no doubt impressed Roy, for he showered me with first-class treatment: coming every 10 minutes to see if I had finished my drink, asking me if I wanted to repeat my drink even when there was about 30% left in my glass, recommending snacks without my asking, and generally hovering around and shooting the bull after serving me.

During one of those times when he was tending to other customers, two stray dogs loafing around apparently sniffed the Squid Masala on my table, for they slowly approached me, sat down in front of the table quietly like well-mannered dogs and glanced alternately at me and my plate, never once coming close to the table to smell the food.

Having no company, and impressed with the level of restraint shown by these two dogs, I decided to give them some of the Squid Masala they seemed to be longing for. I gave them a piece each, holding out each piece on a piece of tissue, and the dogs devoured their respective pieces [they didn’t even fight amongst themselves for each other’s piece] and looked at me again, tails wagging. I gave them another piece each, after which they looked at me again. I tried ignoring them, but couldn’t for long [I guess ignoring a hungry dog when it’s looking into your eyes can be difficult, even heart-breaking to a certain extent]. There were three pieces left. I ate one, and gave the other two to the dogs. They looked at me again, but I didn’t have anything left, so I said “That’s all, folks!”, showing them the empty plate. They looked at me for a while, before lying down on the sand beside my feet, heaving a content sigh, waiting for me to order something else.

The scene was near-perfect. I was sitting a couple of feet away from the waves, drinking. Ahead of me was complete darkness, save for the phosphorescence of the waves. The waves kept lunging ahead, trying to reach me but missed. Not for long though. They would soon lap at my feet. There was noise behind me: noise of people talking, orders being shouted, and faint music. I soon tuned out the noise, and all I could hear now was the crashing sound of the waves, the deep, content breathing of the dogs and the music playing in my head.

It was one of those rare moments when you’re content with life, one of those moments when you’re at peace with yourself and want the moment to stretch forever. It was one of those picture-perfect moments which you make a mental note to add as a scene in your movie when you [if you ever] become a filmmaker.

All of a sudden, the loud blare of a guitar riff pierced the air, shattering the moment. I slowly turned around, pissed beyond words. It turned out to be a live band playing Pink Floyd’s Another Brick in the Wall in the adjoining restaurant. To rub salt into my wounds, the lead singer had got the lyrics all wrong, and was singing “We don’t need your education” instead of “We don’t need no education”.

I had a closer look at the band when going to the loo. The singer was holding the mike with both hands and leaning onto it [a cheap impression of Jim Morrison], mouthing the words out of the corner of his mouth [like Sylvester Stallone] and occasionally turning his head to give his drummer knowing grins: a cocksure singer who not only botched the lyrics and didn’t realise it even though it stuck out like a sore thumb, but also thought he was the king of cool.

I couldn't let him get away with it. He had, after all, ruined my moment. Through one of the waiters from the adjoining restaurant, I wrote and sent him a small, intense, anonymous stinker of a note on tissue paper [something on the lines of what I think Hannibal Lecter might have whispered to Multiple Miggs in the next cell], which resulted in the rest of their songs being a little subdued and sober in tone.

The dogs had gone somewhere in my absence and eventually returned when they saw I was back. I settled back into my chair, feeling the waves which had now risen and were splashing at my feet, looking at the great black nothingness before me, thinking random thoughts till the restaurant closed.

I took a taxi to my room at around 1 AM. I browsed channels for a while, but finding only junk, turned it off and switched off the lights. I had had quite a lot to drink, but was strangely not feeling sleepy at all. My last thought that night was about how I wished I had my Economics text book from school, which had always had a very tranquillising effect on me...

(to be continued...)

Blast From The Past

2008-05-12T02:27:00.008+05:30

Gold Spot Ads

Parle-G Dadaji Ad

Cadbury's Dairy Milk - Cricket

Cadbury's Dairy Milk - Mehndi

Cadbury's Dairy Milk - Bull (copied from Butch Cassidy & The Sundance Kid)

Cadbury's Dairy Milk - Football

Cadbury's Dairy Milk

Doodh

Natraj Pencils

Leo Coffee (music by Rahman)

Lijjat Papad

Vicks ki Goli

Hamara Bajaj - I

Hamara Bajaj - II

Cinthol - Vinod Khanna

Vimal

Purab se surya uga

Natraj Pencils

Archies Cards - Anniversary

Mile Sur Mera Tumhara

Baje Sargam

My Mumbai/Goa Holiday - Part III

2008-03-11T15:45:00.023+05:30

---
This is Part III. Part I & II can be read here:
http://shthappens.blogspot.com/2007/12/my-mumbaigoa-holiday-part-i.html
http://shthappens.blogspot.com/2008/01/my-mumbaigoa-holiday-part-ii.html
---

Day 03: 10th December
==================

I woke up at around 9, feeling as heavy as I felt when I slept the previous night. Our original plan for the day was to go watch Khoya Khoya Chand at Eros Theatre [Sis had proposed Eros Theatre, saying that it would be good if we watched the movie, which was about the film industry of the 50’s, at an old movie theatre which retained the atmosphere of that era, rather than at a swank multiplex with ultra-modern interiors (“the interiors are so tastefully done, no? The décor sooooooo moulds with the rest of the… ”, we were sure to hear the yuppie crowd say), and me, being a sucker for all things ambience, was pretty gung-ho about watching the movie at Eros.] However, thanks to yesterday’s happenings, the movie plan was now out of the question.

Over coffee, sis and I discussed the revised plan for the day. The first part of the day would be dedicated to getting my holiday back to near-normal state [money, phone and SIM card], after which we were to meet my BIL for lunch at Café Britannia, a Parsi restaurant near his office [the Dhansaks there, declared sis, were out of the world and not to be missed at any cost]. After lunch, we were to go to Colaba Causeway to do minor shopping and print posters from hi-res images downloaded off the net [which would later be framed and eventually join the few other ready-to-hang framed posters in Chennai], after which we were to head back home.

I got down to downloading some of these hi-res images, and checked my mail in between. A few friends had replied to my previous day’s email. Some even replied in real sombre tones, almost sounding like newsreaders quoting Head-of-States responding to some calamity in some other country… “President ___ has expressed his shock and deepest sympathy…” [I use the words almost sounded because none of them offered financial aid (haha)]. One of them sounded pretty normal, and concluded by saying “Enjoy the trip... losing your phone has its up-side. You'll know in a couple of days!” Though this was exactly how I would feel a few days later, I remember muttering a sarcastic “Yeah right” at the time.

An hour later, we were off, heading first to a mobile phone showroom nearby.

[But first, a tiny digression on my phone plans. For a few weeks now, I had wanted to buy, apart from a new phone, an 80GB iPod. After reaching Mumbai, my sister had convinced me to get myself a digital camera (“You get fairly decent ones for only 7000 bucks these days”). So my options were to either buy a cheap phone, an iPod and a digicam, or to buy a phone that would somehow try replacing the iPod and digicam to a reasonable extent.]

The showroom did not have too many phones, but it was there that I first laid my eyes on a Nokia N73 Music Edition, a fairly-decent-looking phone with a 3.1 Mega Pixel camera, a 2 GB memory card and great sound quality, which cost only 15000 bucks. We decided to get back after withdrawing money from the bank.

At the bank, I was redirected to this guy called Imran. I told him what had happened, that I had no ID proof, debit card or cheque book, and that I needed to withdraw some money for my holiday. He told me that I could write myself a loose cheque [basically a self cheque written on a cheque leaf borrowed from the bank] for 5000 bucks. I told him that 5000 bucks wouldn’t be enough since I would be in Goa for the next few days. I also told him I needed to pick up a mobile phone pronto, weaving a story about how, apart from being expected to be part of daily conference calls between office and clients in the US, I was also expected to be available on call 24/7 in case of emergency. He asked me how much money I needed, and I blurted out "20000 bucks".

He told me that he would speak to the guys in the main branch, and asked me, in the meanwhile, to fill out the application for a new debit card. When I went back to him after finishing this, he told me that I could withdraw the money, adding that he was taking a big risk by doing this. Ten minutes later, we were out of the bank with the money, impressed with their efficiency, speed and helpfulness.

En route to the Airtel Customer Care Centre, while mentally calculated my expenses for the trip, I realised that 12000 would more or less be enough. I also wondered what to do about the new phone, since 8000 would not be enough for the Nokia N73 ME. Quite frankly, I wasn’t too keen on buying a phone in Bombay. Mind-block apart, my self-confidence too was at an all-time low, what with images of myself getting ripped off again in Goa flashing in my mind. We reached Airtel, these thoughts still running in my head.

Summing up what happened at Airtel, I was told that, being an Airtel Bangalore customer, I would be able to get a duplicate SIM card only at Bangalore. They suggested that I alternately try getting myself an Airtel Pre-paid card for the time being, but I told them I didn’t have any ID proof, since everything was pinched [I know I could have asked my sister to get me a temporary number using her ID, but I didn’t want to go through the headache of informing everyone about my temporary number and facing those annoying, inevitable situations: “Your number is constantly switched off. What do you mean which number? The one you sent me from Bombay. Oh… you got your old number back? You should have told me. What’s your old number again? I deleted it”; multiply this conversation with the number of people you’ve given the new number to, and you get the idea. The world’s full of people who are just waiting for an excuse to delete your phone number]. Also, since I would be going to Goa the next night, I would be charged roaming charges for all the calls I make and the ones I pick up, even the wrong numbers [Only when you are on roaming will you get a million wrong numbers], not a single one of which would not be reimbursed by the office, even if they were official calls.

No, there was no way I was going to get myself a temporary number or a phone. I was here on holiday, not on official work, and reasoned that I should be in touch with the office when I felt like, not vice versa. Moreover, the whole point of a holiday would be lost if I were to be disturbed frequently by folks at office. At the same time, since I couldn’t be completely out of touch, I made a mental note to call office everyday to check if all was well, and to resolve problems, if any had cropped up.

Having made my decision, I told my sister I didn’t want to buy the phone, telling her I would pick one up after reaching Bangalore.

We then went to Ballard Estate for lunch, to Café Britannia, a very old Parsi restaurant [more than a hundred years old, a video review told me], stepping inside which was like going back time। I was busy checking out the place, drinking in the details when it’s tall, frail, octogenarian owner, Mr. Kohinoor, came over to take our orders. Lunch eventually arrived and we then proceeded to devour the Dhansaks, which, indeed, were out of the world, and not to be missed. Make sure you visit the place when in Mumbai.

Video Review of Café Britannia here [the video incidentally happens to be hosted by Prem, a friend I met through a writing website a few years back].

After lunch, we went to look at our BIL’s new office, and after looking around for a while, we went to Colaba Causeway in search of movie posters. We got down at Café Mondegar and did a bit of window-shopping. I picked up for myself a new wallet [ :-| ] and a copy of Shantharam, and for friends, a couple of T-shirts [one of Jim Morrison, and another of Jimi Hendrix]. We asked around for movie posters, but were told they weren’t available anywhere at Colaba Causeway.

We then went to this street near Flora Fountain, where we generally window-shopped, looking at phones, digital cameras, iPods, and the other things you suddenly get interested in and impulsively make a mental note to buy in the future. We didn’t find any movie poster shops though.

We eventually found a tiny printer’s shop, where the guy agreed to print out all the 5 hi-res images on very good greeting card paper for a total of 350 bucks. The prints came out really well, especially the Van Gogh paintings, the colors and detail of which were as good as an original.

The images I got printed:

Starry Night by Van Gogh

Starry Night Over the Rhone by Van Gogh

Café Terrace At Night by Van Gogh

Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope

Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai
(my sis took one look at it and remarked that the poster, rather than being framed and hung on a wall, would suit my cousin’s loo door better)

Satisfied with ourselves, we went back to BIL’s office to pick him up, and then went home, where, after dinner, we watched the DVD of the TV series 24. It was an 8 DVD pack, each DVD containing 3 of the 24 hours the title is named after.

I soon got engrossed and ended up watching 24 late into the night, hours after sis and BIL had retired, and went to bed after having watched about 4 or 5 episodes. I found P G Wodehouse’s Meet Mr. Mulliner in the hall, which I read for an hour or so before falling asleep.

Day 04: 11th December
==================

Having no agenda for the day, I woke up late. So far, the rough plan was to hang out at home, lunch with my cousin and leave for Goa that night.

I felt a little light-hearted. Last night, I finally figured there was no way I was going to get back my things, so by feeling miserable, I was just wasting my time and ruining my holiday. So, drinking coffee, I tried looking at the plus points [a near-impossible thing for a pessimist like me to do]:

- Without the mobile phone, I wouldn’t be disturbed by office. If I needed to call anyone, I would, from a phone booth. Moreover, this holiday was about spending time all alone by myself. So I guess it was good in a way, since people could not get in touch with me unless I wanted to get in touch with them.

- The debit card wasn’t a great loss. All I would have to do is make do without a card for another week. The cash I had withdrawn would take care of this problem.

- I’ve always been horrified looking at my own PAN card thanks to the horrendous photo adorning it, in which I resemble one of those obnoxious-faced mangoes in the old Mango Mood ad [the one that used to come way back when I was a kid]. Getting a new PAN card would mean putting a new photo in it. Though I knew the new photo would look bad as well [I’m one of those guys who, as a rule, ends up looking bad in ALL photos], it wouldn’t couldn’t be as morose as the photo in my old PAN card [if you thought I looked hideous in person, wait till you see my PAN card photo].

- Driving license… I had, for a while, wanted to go for car driving classes and upgrade my license from two-wheeler to four-wheeler. Maybe having lost my license, I would finally haul ass and go for those driving classes.

Thinking these thoughts, I started reading the Wodehouse book, which I intended to finish before leaving to Goa that evening [I always have to finish a book I’ve started, however heavy or boring, even if it meant taking a break by reading another book and then later returning to this one. Of course, there have been exceptions: Ernest Hemingway’s Death in the Afternoon, which I gave up after 7 pages, and Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged, where I skipped about 30 pages of the painfully long and boring speech [the one that you begin to read most enthusiastically, but after a few pages, starts to gnaw softly on your brain, and which, in the end, gets blewhhheweeeugghhhh (the inexpressible feeling one gets when one imagines one's ears being meticulously chewed by an old man without his dentures) that Hank Rearden gives towards the end of the book (no one I know has ever read the speech in it’s entirety. The first thing I ask everyone, even the ones who swear by Ayn Rand endlessly, when they talk about the book is, “Did you read that big speech in the end?”, and the answer’s always a sheepish “No”)].

My cousin came home, and over lunch, she began to tell us about her new part-time tour operator business [she organizes tours to Raigad and other historical destinations in Maharashtra], showing us brochures and giving us historical trivia about these places. After a while, she and my sister got completely engrossed discussing this and other things in general, and I eventually tuned out and went back to read.

My cousin left a few hours later, and a couple of hours after that, I finally finished the Wodehouse book. It was around 6 PM. I checked my email, packed my things and called up railway reservation to check the status of my ticket, which had been in the waiting list during booking. No luck.

BIL and sis took me out to Spaghetti Kitchen, this Italian restaurant at Phoenix Mills for dinner. We had mushroom soup, which was delicious, and this low-fat pizza, which had a base so thin and crisp it crumbled in your mouth. It was more or less like the masala papad you get in all these restaurants, the only differences being that this was much bigger, and had those typical Continental food toppings in place of the usual tomatoes and chillies that adorn its Indian equivalent. It was a little bland but nevertheless good.

After dinner, they dropped me at the VT Railway Station half an hour before departure, which was convenient with me [One of the things I like to do is observe people rushing past me at railway stations: their expressions, peculiarities in their mannerisms, etc. At the risk of sounding like one of those weirdos hanging about in underground subways, let me tell you, it’s good fun. The number of people in railway stations is huge, so the potential entertainment value is exponential.

At the same time, let me clarify that I don’t go early to railway stations with the intent of observing people or anything. It just happens that I leave to the railway station intending to reach 15 minutes before departure, but I always end up reaching the station half an hour in advance. It happens like clockwork. I once left home to the railway station very late, with only 20 minutes to spare, and when I reached 20 minutes later, sure that I had missed it, I found the train had been delayed by half an hour]. I walked to the train platform, holding onto wallet dearly. After settling down in my seat, I sought out the TT and told him the usual lie I reserve for such occasions: that I had just undergone a spinal surgery and that I could not sit down in one place for more than half an hour, let alone the whole of the journey, and that I needed a confirmed berth. The TT promised to help.

A few minutes after this, a truckload (and I’m not exaggerating here) of firangs boarded our compartment and took a full hour to settle down and get themselves organized, during which they made life miserable for everyone: being loud, going to and forth the entire compartment with luggage, banging their luggage on everyone’s knees, etc; and somewhere in the middle of all this, I was requested to move and eventually sent to a berth at the end of the compartment, which was occupied by a young Gujarati couple and three friends [a guy and two girls (who had just returned from abroad, judging by their phony accents and constant train-compartment-hygiene woes)], who were engaged in shallow, brainless conversation. These five were expecting another friend to join them at another station, and in the meanwhile, the wife was telling the others, occasionally interrupted by blushes, her whole goddam life story: how she met the guy, how they got married, how he secretly met her before they married, etc. I’m sure that these anecdotes must have been pretty routine and boring in real, but then I guess everyone exaggerate events from the past with the subconscious intent to conceal the monotony of their life from others. These incidents, however, were magnified to colossal lengths, and ended up sounding like scenes from Karan Johar movies. The other two girls lapped it all up eagerly [I don’t have to tell you about the NRI fixation for KJ’s movies] and made frequent digs at the couple. I, on the other hand, was trying my best not to puke my guts out.

Their friend did not turn up, and so I got their friend’s berth, thanks to the TT. A while later, as they brought out the food and booze and proceeded to consume them, I settled down with Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy I had brought with me for the trip. The two foreign-return girls tried very hard but seemingly casually to look at what book I was reading, but were having a tough time, since they could only see the back cover of the book from where they were seated. I decided to kill time by making it hard for them to guess which book I was reading. Every time I kept the book down, I made sure the front cover was down and the spine was facing me. Every time their interest seemed to waver and they were about to give up, I would give them a quick glimpse of the front cover, but it always was a very quick glimpse, quicker than it took for them to notice the letters on the front cover. That the book was a cheap paperback edition with bad printing did not help their cause. A few minutes later, I got bored, shut the book [the back cover facing up, spine facing me] and tried to sleep.

It was pretty late, and most people in the compartment had slept [even the firangs] except for this group, which was making quite a bit of noise. Other passengers would request them to keep quiet, which they would do for a while by whispering quietly and all [which didn’t really help, since whispers can be loud in a quiet annoying rat-gnawing way too, like, for example, the squeak of an airport trolley wheel], till one of them would say something funny, which would induce a high-pitched squeal of laughter from one of the foreign-return girls, which, in turn, would induce another passenger to come scream at them.

My attempts to sleep were thwarted successfully by the girl’s pig-squeal and the eventual screaming the other passengers directed at this group. I agree, I could have asked them to keep quiet, but then, I couldn’t. I have to give menacing looks at people before I vent out steam [It’s sort of become a habit. Anyone pisses me off, and I give them a glare that usually makes them recoil in fright. It works to my advantage that I’m not good-looking. If you’re decent-looking and you glare at someone, the other person thinks of it only as a glare. But take a frightful-looking guy, and his glare carries a glint of menace in them, and the person the glare is directed at immediately thinks of something dangerous (“He plans to bury me alive!”, “I’m sure he’s gonna castrate me” or “A guy with a look like that, I bet, carries a mean-looking blood-dripping butcher knife on his person").

Also, glowering at someone is like laying a solid base. Seeing the other person cower gives you a little more confidence and a little more time to form your sentences before you unleash your wrath, and while the other person is thinking of the threat your words seem to be laced with, s/he doesn’t notice any minor mistakes that you may make (like malformed sentences, grammatical mistakes, pauses in the middle, sentences that don’t pack a punch, etc. that are typical of any rant. I guess this happens because your mind doesn’t get enough time to mentally form your sentences). In short, glaring at someone before you scream at them is something like the foundation that women wear before putting on all that make-up. It conceals the chinks in your armour.], but I couldn’t glare at anyone because the lights were out. So making a mental note to give them the dirtiest of looks in the morning, I tried to sleep. For a while, I thought dramatic thoughts by looking at the time and then thinking “1 AM. Another eleven hours to go. Eleven more hours of firangs. No no no... ~~Andy Dufresne~~ Guru crawled through eleven hours of imbecilic banter, intense whisperings, knee-breaking firangs and general nonsense and came out clean on the other side”, but gave up after a while. I even went to the extent of counting sheep, but after counting two of them, I realised what I was doing and stopped. I finally drifted asleep, still trying to think of things to think about.

(Continued...)

My Mumbai/Goa Holiday - Part II

2008-01-19T15:50:00.003+05:30

---
This is Part II. Part I can be read here:
http://shthappens.blogspot.com/2007/12/my-mumbaigoa-holiday-part-i.html
---

We were picked up at the station by my uncle. We walked to his place, which was 5 minutes away, and found that only one of 3 cousins, the middle one, was at home, and was getting ready to go to work. The eldest one was away working and would be home only later that evening, by which time we would have left. The youngest, the brother, who studies in college, had gone for some special classes and was expected at 3:30-ish that afternoon.

We had quite a lot of catching-up to do with my aunt, and so we did just that. My uncle, in the meanwhile, was adding last-minute touches to the food in the kitchen, occasionally poking his head outside the kitchen to wisecrack.

Summing it up, we had a lovely time, talking flashbacks and all. We were treated like royalty, stuffed with exquisite food and were subject to my uncle’s fine wit, and before we knew it, it was 3:30 PM.

My cousin brother, who I haven’t seen in about 10 odd years, walked in. The last time I saw him, he was this lean, lanky kid with a ready smile on his face and a crazy sense of humour (found in abundance among all the cousins in the family). He was still lean and lanky and still had that same grin across his face, but was strangely very quiet and pre-occupied with something in his mind, which led me to wonder if studies and other responsibilities had got to him and gradually dissolved that crazy streak in him.

I was proven wrong when I went to the loo. Inside, on the door, were stuck many pictures: a sportsman, a guerrilla soldier, an army guy, etc.; and all of them were yelling their guts out with a lot of emotion. The photos were strategically stuck (at eye-level when squatting), and there was no way you could avoid seeing these photos when you were inside.
Displayed below are a few random photos I found on the web, thanks to Google Images, which try their best to convey the same emotions as those loo-door people, but these, I must add, are not half as hilarious:

My sister left alone at 5 PM. I had to meet a college friend at 6 PM in Mulund (a place close to Dombivli), at this place called “Deepak Bar” which was supposedly right opposite the station. I boarded the train at around 5:30 PM. By the time the train reached the station before Mulund, the compartment was crowded like hell. No joking. It was oozing with people, like in one of those concentration-camp-bound trains that the Nazis used to stuff with Jews. And I was right in the middle. We were reaching Mulund in a few minutes, and I had to get to the exit pronto, so I started pushing my way across to the door. When Mulund came, people poured out of the compartment like pus out of a just-squeezed boil, and I managed to get out too.

Satisfied that I had come out in one piece and at the right time, I patted my own back and shook my own hands (by clasping right hand in left and shaking them vigorously). I reached for my phone to call up my friend to ask him “What was the name of that bar again?”, only to realise my phone was missing. Hand instinctively went to my other pocket to check for wallet, and I realised my wallet was gone too.

My wallet was stolen, and so was my phone. After the initial confusion and a few minutes of the customary looking-all-around-helplessly bit, I decided to go to the police station to lodge a complaint, but decided to meet my friend first and ask him to come along with me. He would probably know some cop since he lived there. Only, I had forgotten where I was to meet him. He had mentioned that the bar was bang opposite the station, so I went out of the station and looked around to see if there were any bars nearby. I vaguely remembered the name and knew that I would be able to recognise the bar if I saw the board somewhere, but none seemed familiar.

I went over to a fruit vendor who was screaming out his wares and asked him for the names of the bars nearby. He stopped, glared at me for a second, and resumed his shouting (I don’t really blame him. If I was a fruit vendor, I’d probably react the same way if some guy walked up to me and, out of the blue, randomly asked me the names of the bars nearby). I turned to go but stopped when he stopped suddenly. A few seconds later, he resumed, and I walked away, pissed that the reason he paused was not to help me out but to give temporary rest to his vocal cords which were hoarse from all that yelling.

I found another fruit vendor who gladly rattled off the names of the bars, none of which was the one I was looking for. I randomly asked him if there was a “Deepak Bar” somewhere, and he replied “Yes, yes. 50 meters down this way, on the right.”

It’s amazing, the kind of distances the mind can travel, from one random thought to another linked together by the vaguest foreign keys… oops… connections, while your feet are treading the comparatively miniscule distance of 50 meters. Walking towards Deepak Bar, my mind drifted to thoughts of how this incident was going to impact my holiday. I had lost my debit card, PAN card, Driving License, my mobile phone and about 800 bucks.

I realised with dread that I would have to use only cash wherever I went (and I get uneasy and paranoid carrying a lot of cash). Moreover, carrying cash would mean that I could not have too much of it, and therefore would not be able to splurge money as and when I wanted. I would also not be able to withdraw money that easily. I would probably have to go to a bank which, I was willing to bet, was going to be located someplace really far away from where I was staying. Going there would, no doubt, be an emotionally-draining, pain-in-the-ass journey, and to top it all, I would probably have to tell my story to some bank employee, who, after hearing me out fully, would then ask me to go meet some other person, to whom I would have to repeat my story all over again. Going to the bank, I really didn’t mind much, but repeating my story to people, especially strangers, can be depressing. Especially if you’re on holiday. I wondered if I should type and print out a word document and show it to each bank employee I was going to be redirected to. This would probably save me time and energy, and I atleast wouldn’t have to worry about my tone when talking to those bank people. I eventually ditched the idea though. I pictured myself doing this and realised I would look like one of those deaf-and-dumb kids who always ring the bell when you’re sleeping on a Sunday afternoon, show you some paper about their deaf-and-dumb school and ask you, through sign language, to donate some money.

Another unsettling thought was that money (or the lack of it) would be in the back of my mind all the time. This depressed me no end. It would, for sure, influence my thoughts, the way I look at things, and it wouldn’t, for sure, leave me alone. It would definitely crop up every time I decided to buy something, and I would end up doing a mental calculation of how much money I had left. The last thing I wanted to think during a holiday about was something as spirit-dampening as how much money I was spending and how much I had left. I mean, I was here on a holiday, not on some attempt to make ends meet or anything.

Also, losing my Driving License screwed up my plans of renting out a two-wheeler in Goa. I would either have to walk or take a taxi wherever I had to go, which meant that I would either end up spending a lot of time, or spending a lot of money.

Time and money: the two unequal pans in the faulty balance scale of life. Everything, in the end, was a trade-off between time and money. You can choose to have an abundance of either one or the other, but not an equal mix of both. Take my example. In the past, I sometimes (most of the time) worked weekends and holidays, accumulating leave with the hope that I would either be able to en-cash the leave or someday be able to take a long holiday when I needed one. But when the time seemed ripe for a holiday, new work would crop up, new work which couldn’t be delayed, new work that always required “immediate attention”. So I ended up working when I needed a holiday, and eventually started working weekends and holidays again, because I figured if I wasn’t doing anything on those days except rant about the unfairness of it all, I might as well try finishing work earlier and go on a holiday much sooner. This, as you might’ve guessed, didn’t work. When I finished this, more new work which required “immediate attention” came up. I know this sounds like something right out of Catch-22, but this is how things always turn out in the end. With me, atleast.

I found my friend drinking with two of his friends in Deepak Bar. After the initial ‘hey-how-are-ya’ and associated back-pats, I told him what happened and asked him to accompany me to the police station. I was visibly jumpy, and he told me to calm down first. I borrowed his phone and made a few calls [to block my debit card and inform sis. Getting through to my sis turned out to be this huge affair because I didn’t remember her number: I first had to call up mom in Chennai, get my sis’s mobile number and call her (she didn’t pick up the phone), call up mom again and get my sis’s home number, call up to be told by sis’s MIL that sis and BIL had gone out somewhere, then get BIL’s mobile number and finally speak to him. Yeah, yeah, I know I should have got all 3 numbers from mom, but then I wasn’t expecting my sister not to answer her phone. Moreover, I guess your thoughts get all tangled up during such situations].

After the calls, I asked my friend if we could go to the cops. He told me to chill and sit down, and told me there was no way I was going to get back my wallet or phone, and so there really wasn’t any point going to the cops. His friends agreed with him, and while I was mulling over this, one of his friends shook my hand and said “Welcome to Mumbai”.

While leaving Deepak Bar, I decided to travel back by train, since I was in no particular position of being robbed again (everything that could be stolen already was), but my friend wouldn’t hear of it and insisted on dropping me back at my sister’s place, which was quite far away.

My friend ended up driving even more rashly than my sister’s driver, and while I was grabbing dashboard, his friends at the back were joking and doing imitations of Rajesh Khanna and Ashok Kumar. Maybe it was a Mumbai thing, driving rashly and swerving between lanes and cars, like in Need for Speed or one of those old arcade car race games that we grew up playing.

I hadn’t been able to get through to Airtel to block my SIM Card, so I tried calling them again from the car. I called up Airtel Mumbai, and was put on hold for about 5 minutes, and when I finally got through to a representative, he told me that I would have to call up Airtel Bangalore, and gave me the number. I called up the number, and was put on hold for another 10 minutes, and when I finally spoke to the guy there, he told me “Sir, you have called Airtel Pre-paid. You would have to call up Airtel Post-paid”, and gave me another number. I called this number and was again put on hold for 5 minutes, before being transferred to this jackass who kept repeating “You have to come to the Customer Care Centre tomorrow morning” for everything, even when I got tired of hearing this and asked to speak to his boss. I eventually banged the phone down… or tried to, rather (how on earth do you bang down a mobile phone?), and called up Airtel Bangalore Pre-Paid again. They gave me a different number. This turned out to be Airtel Bangalore Post-Paid all right, and after proving my identity answering those verification questions, I finally got my SIM card blocked.

They finally dropped me on the main road near my sister’s lane, and told me not to let this affect me, and to enjoy my holiday.

As I walked back home, weaving my way through pedestrians and potholes, it suddenly sank in that I no longer had a mobile phone. Though I would consider this a blessing in the days to come, I was pretty upset at the time, groaning inwardly at the thought of having to re-build my contact list, a Herculean task without doubt. I also realised that I would have to narrate the story to whoever called me on my new phone.

As soon as I got home, my BIL fixed me a much-needed and much-comforting drink of Dewar’s. Drinking this, I sent an email to colleagues at work, telling them I would not be reachable on phone, etc., and also emailed a few of my friends, informing them about what happened and asking for their phone numbers.

I made plans with my sister for tomorrow: withdrawing money from the bank, getting myself a new phone and a duplicate SIM card, among other things.

I went to bed and tried reading a while, but couldn’t concentrate. I closed my book and thought about what had happened. I felt like a jackass, like a victim of a giant cosmic joke. I tossed and turned and eventually fell asleep, convinced that something out there was out to fuck me…

(Continued...)

My Mumbai/Goa Holiday - Part I

2007-12-26T14:59:00.001+05:30

Day 01: 8th December
==================

My holiday started today. Had an early morning, 11:40 AM flight to catch to Mumbai.

As luck would have it:

- I woke up only at 9:50 AM (couldn't, for some weird reason, sleep the previous night), and by the time I hauled ass out of apartment, it was 10:10 AM.
- I didn't get an auto for 15 minutes.
- No taxis in sight either.

I finally boarded a Volvo coming my way, stopping it by waving frantically and nearly blocking the road.

By the time I reached the airport, it was 10:45 AM, and by the time the huge queue at the entrance, where you put in your check-in baggage through the X-ray machine, cleared, it was 10:55 AM. 45 minutes to departure. I went to the baggage check-in counter, where, when I very optimistically asked them, with big smile on my face, to check-in my bag, they politely (with bigger smiles than mine) and very indirectly asked me to fuck off, telling me that I was very late and had to lug my huge bag for the duration of the flight as cabin baggage. I finally had to subject them through 5 minutes of irresistible charm and wit before they checked-in my bag.

After checking-in bag, found time at the airport to pick up Jed Rubenfield’s The Interpretation of Murder, a murder mystery featuring Sigmund Freud as protagonist. Had heard good things about the book, so thought I'd gift it to my sister.

The flight took off on time, and reached Mumbai 15 minutes before schedule.

Sis was at airport to receive me. The journey home in her car lasted 45 minutes, and for the entire journey, I was holding onto front seat for dear life while her driver kept shifting lanes at high speeds continuously and taking fast turns. My sister, who I thought was generally more jumpy than I was before she came to Mumbai, did not bat an eyelid (except when she had to blink, of course), and kept talking, unfazed. I gave her the book, telling her that someone had recommended the book as a good read, and that she should check it out. She took one look at it and told me that she had already read the book, and it was she who had recommended it to me in the first place. :|

After lunch at home, sis and I headed out to Jahangir Art Gallery, where, according to a colleague, you get posters of old classic movies in the pavement shops. We got down near Jahangir, and went to this bookstore called Magna. Like it happens to me in other bookstores, I just had to pick up something... anything. I ended up picked up Haruki Murakami’s Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman. Urge satisfied, we went to Jahangir, where we found not a single movie poster, either on display or on sale anywhere in the vicinity. Gee, thanks a ton, Vivek. :|

Went back home, sacked out for a while, before I headed to Hard Rock Cafe to meet a friend. Sis and B-I-L told me it would take me 15-20 minutes by walk, so decided to walk it. We were to meet at 7:30 PM, and so I left home at around 7:10 PM. On the way, called my friend, telling her I might be 5-10 minutes late, and asked her to go ahead and get a table, but she asked me to go ahead of her and to give her a call 5 minutes before I reach, and when I asked her why, she gave me some logic about it not looking nice if a girl goes early and has to wait for a guy. Girls, I tell you... :|

Reached HRC at around 7:50 PM. They had some benefit concert, so the entrance passes were 500 bucks a head, out of which 300 went to charity. Friend came, and we went in.

This was the first time I was going to any HRC, and I loved the place. The place was high-roofed and spacious. Rock memorabilia everywhere. The music wafted all over the place like mist, flowing smoothly down the wall onto the floor and slowly but gradually enveloping everything. Them playing Pink Floyd's Shine on You Crazy Diamond I-V only heightened the effect.

Most HRC employees had on these black uniforms, and had fixed artificial white wings on their backs. Hanging around the waiters and the DJ was this one annoying girl, dressed in white, who also had wings attached, and who had just about as much make-up as a goddam geisha. She was wearing this tiny skirt which showed a lot of leg, and for some strange reason, raised her left leg bent at the knee, and rubbed it against her right leg forward and backward, like a dog which has oscillating 'yes/no' thoughts about peeing someplace because it doesn't resemble a lamp-post or car tyre.

We were trying to get a table, but because of the concert, most of the tables were booked in advance. Firangs occupied most of the other tables. After a while of waiting, we decided to go someplace for dinner, and left.

We went to Phoenix Mills, a mall near my sis's place, where we had dinner at this nice and quiet joint called Noodle Bar, where my friend gifted me these books: one of the Calvin & Hobbes comic books and Haruki Murakami's Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman (yeah, the same book I bought a few hours back...). I had got her John Kennedy Toole's A Confederacy of Dunces, Last Chance to See by Douglas Adams/Mark Carwardine and a few Mani Ratnam movies.

Then came the tough "Writing stuff on a book" part. If there's anything I absolutely suck at, it's gotta be writing stuff on a book I'm about to gift someone. I always think of writing something witty, but whenever I take pen in hand, my mind's a complete blank (like a blackboard just cleanly rubbed, without the slightest trace of chalk, by some over-zealous class first-ranker who comes half an hour early to school especially for this purpose) and finally end up scribbling something dumb, something achievable only by someone as dumb as Big Moose or Moe, the class bully in Calvin & Hobbes. I took a good 10 minutes to think about something to write, and eventually wrote "Happy Reading", and "Hope you enjoy the book" or some crap on those lines. :|

We later went to the Worli Seaface. After a while, she left, since she had to go to Pune early the next day.

It was only 11:15 PM, and since I didn't have to go to Pune the next day, I finally went back to Phoenix Mills, to this place called Brew Bar. The place was more or less empty (only one other table apart from mine was occupied). After I had settled in and was drinking beer and reading the Calvin & Hobbes I'd just got as a gift, the waiter, a tall reed-thin guy, walked over to me, looked at me for a few seconds and then, tilting his head to one side and pointing a finger at me as if he was trying to correctly guess something, asked me,”Sir, you're from the South, aren't you?"

I said "Yeah... u guessed from the moustache?"

He said, grinning widely, "Yes, sir. Where in the South are you from?"

"Kerala", I lied.

He then went on to tell me that he had worked with a lot of South Indians and had liked them, and that they were hard workers, smart and good at heart. After a minute or two of this and related topics about moustaches, etc., the conversation fizzed out and he went back to what he was doing, and I went back to reading Calvin & Hobbes.

When I got the bill, I noticed that it was much lesser than the amount I had mentally calculated after looking at the menu. I looked at the waiter, and he grinned at me. The guy had just given me a 30% discount on the bill, only because I was a South Indian!

I walked home, read awhile and slept.

Day 02: 9th December
==================

I was woken up really early, at 8:30 AM, by sis, with whom I was to go to Dombivli to visit my uncle, aunt and cousins (2 sisters and a brother) I haven't seen in ages. Sis asked me to take a book along, just in case I got bored on the train, so I took Koji Suzuki’s The Ring (yeah, the one that got made into a movie).

We took a taxi to Byculla Station, and after figuring out which platform to go to, we boarded a semi-fast train to Dombivli. We luckily got seats (my sister got the window :-( ). My sister started reading a book she had got, while I generally looked all around me.

The train was getting crowded, and on the far side of the same row, near the window on the opposite side, sat a Muslim family: an old guy wearing a prayer cap, and 3 old women in burkhas with veils lifted.

Ahead of me, by the entrance to the compartment stood 3 college kids who were joking around and laughing, and whenever the train started from a station, they found some girl standing on the platform and loudly shouted out: "I Love You"; one hand holding the railing, the other stretched out towards the girl, their faces full of fake pain and longing. They obviously got some kick out of this, for they did this at every station the train stopped at and started from, and afterwards, would laugh, not lecherously but good-naturedly, for a whole minute or two.

A Hindu couple with two sweet-looking kids got on board a station and stood on our side. The husband, a little plump, wearing a teeka, looked like a slightly heavier version of Govinda. He had a very nice, honest smile. The wife, apart from the trademark Hindu bindi on her forehead, had a very neat assortment of teekas (very unlike the completely random teeka-like things movie heroines have on their forehead after a rape scene), and in her hand, held a basket of flowers/coconuts. The kids, being kids, were restless after a minute or two, and squirmed in their parents' laps. One kid said something to the father, pointing to the window where the Muslim family was sitting. The father then requested the Muslim gentleman to let his kids stand near the window. The Muslim gentlemen and the women nodded in total agreement, as if saying "Of course, if they're kids, they have to stand by the window", and took the kids by hand, patted their heads, pulled their cheeks, kissed them and let them stand by the window. One of the two women by the window had made one kid sit on her lap, and the other woman was pointing somewhere outside and telling the kid something. The parents, in the meanwhile, took no notice of the kids, and were talking to each other and joking/laughing.

My heart warmed at these sights. In a sudden rush of emotion, I sent my friend an SMS, saying "I'm on the Mumbai local train. I've brought a book to read, but I find myself looking at the people around me, who seem very nice, and have such honest smiles :-)".

Only later that evening was I to realise I had spoken too soon…

(Continued...)

Cookies, by Douglas Adams

2007-12-17T18:29:00.000+05:30

This actually did happen to a real person, and the real person is me. I had gone to catch a train. This was April 1976, in Cambridge, UK. I was a bit early for the train. I'd gotten the time of the train wrong. I went to get myself a newspaper to do the crossword, and a cup of coffee and a packets of cookies. I went and sat at a table, newspaper, coffee cup, packets of cookies. There's a guy sitting opposite me, perfectly ordinary-looking guy wearing a business suit, carrying a briefcase. It didn't look like he would do anything weird. What he did was this: he suddenly leaned across, picked up the packet of cookies, tore it open, took one out, and ate it.

Now this, I have to say, is the sort of thing the British are very bad at dealing with. There's nothing in our background, upbringing, or education that teaches you how to deal with someone who in broad daylight has just stolen your cookies. You know what would happen if this had been South Central Los Angeles. There would have very quickly been gunfire, helicopters coming in, CNN, you know. But in the end, I did what any red-blooded Englishman would do: I ignored it. And I stared at the newspaper, took a sip of coffee, tried to do a clue in the newspaper, couldn't do anything, and thought, What am I going to do?

In the end I thought, Nothing for it, I'll just have to go for it, and I tried very hard not to notice the fact that the packet was already mysteriously opened. I took out a cookie for myself. I thought, that settled him. But it hadn't because a moment or two later he did it again. He took another cookie. Having not mentioned it the first time, it was somehow even harder to raise the subject the second time around. "Excuse me, I couldnt help but notice..." I mean, it doesnt really work.

We went through the whole packet like this. When I say the whole packet, I mean there were only about eight cookies, but it felt like a lifetime. He took one, I took one, he took one, I took one. Finally, when we got to the end, he stood up and walked away, and I breathed a sigh of relief and sat back.

A moment or two later the train was coming in, so I tossed back the rest of my coffee, stood up, picked up the newspaper, and underneath the newspaper were my cookies. The thing I particularly like about this story is the sensation that somewhere in England there has been wandering around for the last quarter-century a perfectly ordinary guy who's had the same exact story, only he doesn't have the punch line.

Music Band Wallpaper Site

2007-12-16T21:17:00.000+05:30

Just found this good music band wallpaper site. Do give it a dekko:

http://www.bandswallpapers.com

Caterer woes

2007-10-16T13:34:00.000+05:30

We have this new caterer at our office cafetaria. I write about this caterer, not because the food's good or anything (it, in fact, is no better than the usual crap dished out by the others), but because of this 'feedback' guy they've posted near the cafetaria door, whose job it is to ask everyone if they're okay with the food.

This guy's presence, though annoying, is helpful in a way because these days, I'm in no mood to go through that trial-and-error thing we usually have to do with cafetaria food (taking a bit of whatever looks eatable, hoping that something would turn out to be good), and if this guy's around, I know for a fact that the food will be shitty, except probably for the rice and curd (which no one can possibly screw up, even me), and so I restrict my lunch to just these.

I usually avoid talking to the guy, not because I might end up being rude to him, but because I might feel bad about it later (I too am, after all, a nice guy... ha ha) and the last thing I need, looking at the current state of things, is this feeling (I even put up with my friends these days... ask them and they'll tell you how unusually tolerant and quiet I've become of late).

Anyway, this guy has this particular way of doing this feedback thing. He stands at his 'post' like a bouncer in a discotheque, hands folded, scanning the expressions of people coming out, and anyone with an expression betraying even the tiniest sign of displeasure, he closes in on them and asks them for their feedback. All this, with an extremely humble look on his face.

Last week was no different. He was standing there as usual, doing his routine, when I came out after lunch with my trademark blank expression, and he must have sensed something unusual about this, for he stopped and asked me, with an honest, innocent tone (like the one employed by Kindergarten kids while acting in one of those Annual Day things, where everyone plays a goddam vegetable or animal and steps forward to talk two lines or something in an honest-as-hell tone) and this real earnest look on his face (his last name's probably Hemingway or something... ha ha):

Him: Sir, was the food good? Did you like it?

Me: It was pretty bad.

The sly bastard then changed his expression from 'extremely humble' to 'extremely surprised', as if he was representing the best catering service in the whole goddam world, where they employed world-class, highly-paid food tasters or something, and were always used to setting a benchmark of excellence for their other competitors, and the goddam chefs had this healthy competition amongst themselves and strove to surpass each other everyday, thus improving the quality of food and therefore delighting the customer all the time.

Him (with same expression, but shaking his head slightly, probably from disbelief): What was wrong, sir? We would like to improve.

Me: The rice was not cooked fully, the curd was ok (you probably bought it from somewhere outside), and there was more garam masala than yam in the yam thing.

Him: Oh. What about the others?

Me: I didn't eat anything else, but judging by the expression on other peoples' faces, I'm pretty sure they were bad too.

To his face already displaying surprise, he then proceeded to add on expressions of injured pride, regret, resignation, anger (on being let down by his world-class chefs and food-tasters... he was probably gonna sack the entire bunch of bastards that very evening, judging by all the contortions he made with his face), and determination.

Him: Tomorrow, you see, sir. You will definitely like the food.

Me (dropping the red coin into the feedback box): Yeah let's see.

Needless to say, the food sucked the next day too...

Zuiikin' English

2007-10-12T22:14:00.000+05:30

Learn English and Aerobics at the same time through....

Zuiikin' English!!!!!!!!!

Things to look out for:

1. The background music in general, especially between sentences.
2. The way the camera focuses on the girls' legs between sentences, and the way they stand on the tip of their toes in perfect timing to the background music.
3. "Let me off at the nekust corner."
4. Their happy faces when saying "Spare me my life!" and "I was robbed by two men".
5. The exercise for "Let's go dutch!"

HOW TO STAND UP FOR YOURSELF IN A RELATIONSHIP

And if you thought these were funny, check this out:

If you have, just like me, become a big fan of Zuiikin' English by now, here are a few useful links:

The official homepage of the Zuiikin' English programme on Fuji TV:
http://www.fujitv.co.jp/cs/program/7395_014.html

Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zuiikin'_English

A few more episodes of Zuiikin' English:
http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=609ADC6845FE7163

Parodies of the Zuiikin' English programme:
http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=52EFD0E93902F5D4

--
Gu-roo Smaaa-run Gu-roo Smaaa-run
Gu-roo Smaaa-run Gu-roo Smaaa-run
*dinchik dinchik dinchik dinchik dinchik dinchik dinchik dinchik*
Gu-roo Smaaa-run Gu-roo Smaaa-run....

Photos of Butch & Charlie

2007-09-29T23:56:00.000+05:30

Stress-Balls

2007-09-13T23:05:00.001+05:30

We have a group of people at office who organize all these 'feel good' activities so that the average employee thinks our office is a great place to work in. Recently, we got an email which mentioned that this team would be giving away a surprise gift to all employees. Later that afternoon, these people came around, giving away yellow smiley-faced stress balls to everyone with a noble smile on their face and all, as if they were feeding a thousand kids at some goddam orphanage.

All this was pretty much okay, and I was feeling pretty neutral about this whole business, when I realised they were cross-checking from a list whether a particular employee had already received a stress ball or not. I mean, here they were, 'donating' stress balls to everyone, smiling widely and all, as if they found no better joy in life than giving away stress balls to everyone, only to turn around, stone-faced (add a few more of those 'cold, steely' things that Roger Waters keeps talking about in his songs), to tick against someone's name in a goddam list.

The goddam icing on the cake was when these guys took photos of employees when they were accepting these stress balls, and when I say that, I mean these guys took photos of employees exactly when they were accepting these stress balls, you know, both of them in contact with the stress ball in the photo. And going by the preciseness of the moment at which the photo was taken and considering the fact that there was no motion blur in any of the photos, it only means that they actually posed for this.

Posing for photos. That's gotta be the phoniest thing you can ever do. You may argue that photos are good if, twenty years later, you wish to look at them and see how happy you were and 're-live those happy moments' or some other happy-shit reason, but then, from a logical standpoint, I think it's pretty pointless. You may become happy after you've transported yourself to the past, but when you transport yourself back to the present, you're left feeling more melancholic than before.

Anyway, coming back, I had no clue that photos were taken until we got an email the next day with a link to the photos. People smilingly giving away smiley-faced stress balls, and people smilingly accepting them. I had to go out for a short stroll to kind of get back to normal after seeing them photos. I was secretly happy they didn't ask me to pose for a photo or something. I might have had this grim expression of impending doom, or might have 'accidentally' shown a finger or something.

People, I tell you. They're always making a big deal out of things like stress-balls. Try telling them this, and they'll give you some lame, shot-to-shit crap about little things like this making life interesting or making a difference or something.

PS: Couldn't resist posting this photo of an over-stressed colleague's stress-ball.

Random Question: What do stress-balls do when they are over-stressed?

The poet in me awakens...

2007-09-13T23:02:00.000+05:30

You are two parts hydrogen,
And one part oxygen.
Pray tell me, o mighty rain,
If you had a headache, would you take a Novalgin?

--Guru "Wordsworth" Smaran

Uncle & Aunty

2007-09-03T11:52:00.000+05:30

The first words I heard last morning were "Hello uncle, is aunty around?"

Some middle-aged woman had not only dialled the wrong number, waking me up at a godforsaken hour (8-something AM on a Sunday morning), an hour when the whole goddam world sleeps, but also thought I sounded old enough to be her goddam uncle.

Uncle, influenced by sleep and the previous day's alcohol, the effects of which hadn't yet worn off, replied, "If uncle had aunty, why would he be like this? Uncle still searching for aunty. Lemme know if you find her", hung up and went back to sleep.

Reader's Digest and the 3 Mystery Gifts

2007-08-20T08:43:00.000+05:30

Recently subscribed to Reader's Digest. This is what was written in the Registration page when I subscribed:

To enjoy the Reader's Digest throughout the year or to Gift a Friend the experience, just fill in the form and we will get back to you right away. Remember, 3 Free Mystery Gifts are waiting to be picked up! You can opt to pay through Credit Card or VPP.

The 3 Free Mystery Gifts was something I was really looking forward to. Images of beautiful RD hardbound books flickered in my head, those RD hardbounds found in much abundance in all the second-hand bookshops, and I grinned inwardly, for books, especially hardbounds, excite me like nothing else. There's something about those hardbounds that make them irresistable. Is it because they are beautifully bound and a pleasure to look at, or because they feel lovely when the tips of your fingers come in contact with them, or because they smell so nice? Or is it because all these things come together to become this beautiful experience of sight, smell and touch?

Anyway, a couple of weeks later, I got my first RD copy. There was however no sign of the 3 Mystery Gifts. I waited a while longer, mentally composing an email to send to the folks at RD meanwhile, thinking about all the wise-ass* things I would say, like, for example: "The 3 Mystery Gifts still remain a mystery", or using "The Mystery of the 3 Mystery Gifts" as the mail subject.

While pondering thus, I completely forgot about the letter box in my office, and when I checked today, I found the 3 Mystery Gifts. However, they did not turn out to be the lovely hardbounds I had dreamt of, but three small booklets printed on cheap paper. :-(

They were these three tiny booklets that were put together in a transparent plastic covering and thoughtfully tied together with cheap, coarse string to hold them together, lest they fall out and I get deprived of my 3 Goddam Mystery Gifts. Reader's "Customer Satisfaction" Digest. I now feel I'd have been happier if they had fallen out, but then, if that would have happened, I would've continued thinking that they were gonna send me lovely hardbounds, and I'd have probably emailed them a stinker or something and wait even longer, only to get these 3 Corny Mystery Gifts in the end. The feeling of writing a stinker, the very thought of investing time and effort and even attempting to infuse word-play, all for 3 goddam booklets would have depressed me no end. Hell, it might have even driven me to suicide.

Anyway, these are the 3 Mystery Gifts, and I can't do anything about it. More depressing than the booklets were their topics:

1. How to Lose Weight and Keep Fit:
Printed on cheap paper, this book has a lot of diagrams of this black-bikini clad girl doing these exercises, and the paper is so bad that you can see the black bikini from the previous page(previous exercise) kinda merge and become a part of the bikini-clad woman in the current page. I dunno why, but bad paper and their effects on diagrams always have a very disturbing effect on me.

2. Time Management: Make Every Second Count:
Yeah, you're right. It does have the dial of a clock on the cover. Apart from the clock, it does have four pictures, three of which are of people wearing official attire and staring at laptops, etc., while the fourth picture is of this guy sitting with his son on the banks of a goddam river, you know, just to show that there is life outside office, and that this book will teach you how to plan your time so that you can sit on a goddam river bank with your goddam son, thus, achieving in the end, a proper work-life balance. Work-life balance. That has gotta be the corniest word I've heard in a very long time.

3. The Assertive You:
The cover of this goddam booklet displays the two hands of this guy. One hand, the left one, is open, the palms facing upwards, while the right hand is formed into a fist, and is held above the left hand. Like the fist is gonna come down on the open-palmed hand. You get the picture? An assertive symbol and all. Know who were the authors? Stanley "Body" Phelps and Nancy "Language" Austin.

Anyway, the more I look at these books, the more they depress me, because I always think about how I expected hardbounds and how RD fucked me in the end. I therefore intend to dispose off these books to members in my team who're either overweight, non-assertive or don't give a shit about time. Have already found a taker for the "How to Lose Weight and Keep Fit" book (the taker was this girl who didn't need to lose weight at all. Girls, I tell you. Even if they're thin as a goddam pencil, they still think they're overweight and would want to lose more weight), but not for the other books.

Therefore, people reading this, if you have read and enjoyed this blog immensely, please leave your name and postal address to win 2 Mystery Gifts.

* - At that time, I thought they were clever statements to make, but I now realise that they are like those corny attempts at wordplay that all those retired "Letters to the Editor" type of old people try in order to show off their superior command of the English language.

PS: Doesn't the title sound a little too Harry Potter-ish?

Loo Behaviour

2007-08-06T20:36:00.000+05:30

If there's one sect of people I hate, it's gotta be those who, when peeing in the loo, spit in the urinal.

Urinal. That's gotta be one of the most disgusting words in English. Think about it, and you'll know what I mean. Life is unfair, probably thought the guy who came up with the word, and therefore coined the word "urinal" after much deliberation, deciding that this was probably the best revenge that a guy who was not at peace with the world could take.

Not to be left behind is the word 'urine' and related words used in conjunction with 'urine'. Like how some people say 'pass urine' instead of using the word 'pee'. "Please pass urine into this small container so that we can do the tests". "Excuse me.. I need to pass urine." Yeah? Don't pass it onto me.

It especially sounds very crude when someone's talking tamil and say stuff like "oru nimisham sir... urine poyittu varen", which, when literally translated, means "one minute sir.. i'll go for urine and come". Go for urine. It's extremely disgusting when people use words like 'urine' in a sentence and end up making a grammatical mistake.

One word I've given a lot of thought to was 'Urine Culture', a word commonly used in laboratories. I've always wondered what the hell 'urine culture' meant. Was is something like folk culture? Did pee samples in labs get together and do something? Or did those lab guys really dig those samples so much?

Anyway, like I said, I hate people who spit into the er... umm... bowl when peeing. I also hate the thick 'thhpt' sound they make when they spit and the 'splat' with which it lands. Whenever I hear these sounds, I instinctively get this strong urge to push them forward towards the bowl, but since we are an evolved species, I find other ways to take revenge.

So if you're reading this and realise that I have, in the past, busted your balls for no good reason, you now know why. Muahahahahahaha!

PS: Girls, steer clear from guys who do this. They're usually assholes. Make sure 'He shouldn't spit while peeing' is one of the important points in your 'My Kinda Guy' list. And in case you were wondering, no, I obviously don't do this. :-)

Parking

2007-08-06T11:14:00.000+05:30

In case you're planning a change of profession, and have finally zeroed in on becoming a parking attender or a security guard who's in charge of a parking lot, here's the one and only thing that they teach you during training, the only rule you will have to follow to the point of obsession if you plan to stay in the race and/or garner respect from your future peers despite being new in the profession:

When people have found parking space after hunting for nearly an hour, and have parked their bikes/cars and are about to go about their business, finally getting a chance to forget about parking-related woes, tell them that they shouldn't be parking there, and asked them to park elsewhere. Most importantly, before you tell them this, make sure that they have taken the trouble of side-locking bike, and if it's a car, ensure they have locked it, and the entire family has gotten out and has walked about 3-4 steps away from car.

Wanted: Karate Students

2007-07-29T13:15:00.000+05:30

Saw "The Karate Kid" on Sony PIX a week or two back. If, by now, you still haven't yet figured out or seen the movie, it's about this bullied kid, Daniel, who learns Karate from his japanese neighbour Miyagi, and, in the end, kicks the bullies' asses. In the process, he also gets a girl, Ali [a very gorgeous Elisabeth Shue], who also happens to be the head baddie's ex-girlfriend [I wonder why all these bad guys in movies always have to lose their girls to the heroes... poor bastards]. Throw in a couple of 'bonding' scenes of Miyagi and Daniel, a 'date' scene or two with Ali, a feud with a karate school where the baddies learn karate, a Karate Championship ending (I'm sure you know who wins the tournament), and you have the movie.

One constantly gnawing thing about the movie... I wouldn't say irritating, but it was this constantly 'gnawing' thing, if you get what I mean... it's like you don't mind it, but it sticks out like a sore thumb, making you notice it everytime... was Miyagi's accent. I mean, any Japanese guy who's been in the US for a while kinda gets to speak normal english, you know, proper sentence structure and all. But Miyagi, despite living in the US for years, speaks the same goddam Japanese-English spoken by every goddam Japanese character in all of goddam movie history, doing stuff like referring to himself in the third person, and saying stuff like "Walk on road, hm? Walk left side, safe. Walk right side, safe. Walk middle, sooner or later *squish sound* get squish just like grape. Here, karate, same thing. Either you karate do "yes" or karate do "no." You karate do "guess so", *same squish sound* just like grape. Understand?" Also, in a scene, it's Daniel's birthday, and Miyagi sings "Happy Baaarrrrrsssssday to you". Baaarrrrrsssssday!! What the hell is a 'Baaarrrrrsssssday'??!!

One really bad thing about the movie was that since Miyagi has his origins in the East, the frickin' script-writer decided to throw in all this eastern philosophy shit at every goddamn opportunity. And when I say every goddam opportunity, I mean EVERY GODDAM OPPORTUNITY. I had to feel sorry for this Daniel character, who, apart from us, got a lion's share of Miyagi's strange-utterings-in-the-guise-of-philosophy. For example, there's this scene where the poor bastard, when taking something out of his wallet, drops, by mistake, a polaroid photo of him and his girl. Miyagi, who pounces upon every goddam opportunity to sound wise, likewise pounces upon the photo and says "Miyagi no know you have sweetheart. You both different. Different but same." Different but same. I admit that wasn't anything philosophical, but it sounded philosophical, if you know what I mean. Different but same. That killed me.

Another major letdown was that in one scene, Miyagi is trying to catch a fly with his chopsticks [Guru say Karate/Kung-Fu movie incomplete if guy no catch fly with chopsticks] and when Daniel asks him what he was doing, he says the following Confucious-like saying:"Man who catch fly with chopstick accomplish anything". Till then, I was drooping in my chair like that sunflower in ET, and when Miyagi said this Confucious-like saying, it was like ET touching sunflower and bringing it back to life. I sat up, excited and expecting more quotes like that, perhaps stuff like "Cow with no legs, ground beef" or "Man who drop watch in toilet have shitty time", but in the end, I had to make-do with that one Confucious saying, which wasn't even funny in the first place.

But all was not bad, for we learnt much while watching the training sequences. After Daniel nags Miyagi for a while, asking him to take him as a disciple, Miyagi extracts a promise from Daniel ["We make sacred pact. I promise teach karate to you, you promise learn. I say, you do, no questions."]. Poor unsuspecting Daniel agrees, and Miyagi, cruel bastard that he is, then proceeds to make Daniel wash and wax his car ["Wax on, right hand. Wax off, left hand. Wax on, wax off. Breathe in through nose, out the mouth. Wax on, wax off. Don't forget to breathe, very important."], sand his decks, paint his fence, and finally paint his house, all in the guise of teaching him karate.

When I said we learnt much, it was because after watching the movie, we decided that, considering the kind of money we have to shell out for a domestic help these days, this was the best and most cost-effective way to get someone to sweep and mop the floors of our apartment, wash the bike, do the dishes, wash the loos, cook food, get alcohol from shop, etc. Of course, we have to teach him karate one day or the other, but I'm sure that the three of us room-mates can come up with some karate based on what we've seen in other movies. In the worst case, I'm sure my '36 Chambers of Shaolin' DVD would help to a great extent.

After this, the only thing left would be to enroll this guy in some tournament and make him win it. This too, I think, could be arranged. Let me now go try convincing room-mate to act as opponent and get ass kicked. I think a bottle or two of beer should do the trick...

Today's Cafetaria Menu

2007-07-23T20:35:00.000+05:30

After supplying plain boiled rice with sambar and rasam for the last goddam 200 years, the caterers in our cafetaria decided to add more variety to their offerings and came up with the following:

Ghee Rice: A disgusting thing, in which rice is mixed with ghee [something I have a life-long hatred for] and garnished with all those tiny things you garnish stuff with. Truly pukeworthy.

Bisibela Bath: Sambar Rice, with a lot of special effects [carrots, boondi(one of those things that can't be translated), and peanuts]. Supposedly solid food but ends up being of a pasty consistency. When swallowed, it flows down your throat like radioactive ooze, like thick slime down a drainage pipe.

Lemon Rice: Bright yellow in color, missing the main ingredient: lemon.

Tomato Rice: Rice mixed with Tomato gravy within which lurk several million annoying long rolled-up spiky pieces of tomato skin which invariably get stuck between your teeth, or, if swallowed, miraculously survive the acids of your stomach, only to, like Andy Dufresne in Shawshank Redemption, "come out clean on the other side".

Vangi Bath: Brinjal Rice. Tastes as disgusting as it sounds. Brinjals mixed with some weird powder and rice. Need I say more?

There are more, but none come to mind.

Anyway, today, those guys finally ran out of things to mix with the rice, and in the end, you won't believe what they came up with. Take a wild guess. Not in your wildest dreams would you imagine them to come up with...

Milk Rice Bath!

Rice mixed with goddam milk!!

And before you ask, no: I obviously did not try it. But I did ask a few colleagues who did not see the menu and ate it unknowingly. I was like "Hey... how's the milk rice?", and one of them turned red in the face. I asked another, who I did not lunch with, and judging by her about-to-puke expression, I didn't have to wait for her answer to figure out that she had eaten it. A while after she came to know, she told me she was feeling low [strongly suspected as a side-effect]. I suggested a cup of coffee to cheer her up, and gave her the idea to have black coffee, and when she asked me why, I told her that the black coffee would mix with the milk rice in her stomach to become coffee rice, and that this was something the cafetaria guys hadn't thought of [atleast not yet]. Needless to say, she did not find this idea very appealing.

Anyway, I know you guys won't believe me that there indeed exists something called 'Milk Rice Bath'. So at the risk of being labelled insane by all and sundry, I took a photo of the goddam cafetaria menu when everyone was around. Here it is:

Captioned T-shirts

2007-07-12T22:21:00.000+05:30

I have something against people who wear T-shirts with supposedly wise-ass captions. They'd have probably gone shopping, seen the T-shirt which has some lame, done-to-death quote like "The best way to avoid a hangover is to stay drunk" or "I went all the way to America, and all I got was this lousy T-shirt", thought it really funny and original, also thinking that they were probably the only people in the world wearing a T-shirt with that caption, and would have then bargained like hell for it and would've finally bought it, satisfied look on their face and all. And while buying the T-shirt, they'd also have thought about how everyone would look at it the next day and how people would think how funny the caption is and how cool s/he is and all.

The next day, just before wearing the T-shirt, they'd think about all that attitude they're gonna exude that day, and they'd wear it with a smug smile and all. And finally, when they come to office, they'd have this fake swagger of hips but very matter-of-fact and normal expression on their face, as if the T-shirt was some 20 years old, lying in some corner of the house somewhere, and they wore it because there was no other T-shirt available, and that they never really gave the caption much thought. But one look at them, and you know they're faking it, because the 'normal' expression is a different kind of normal, and you can instantly see through it because of this subtle-yet-obvious smirk plastered all over their face, and also because they act consciously normal, if you know what I mean... doing stuff like looking elsewhere whenever people look at the caption or talking a little more animatedly so that people notice them and eventually their T-shirt. And if someone actually goes upto them and says something like "Hey... nice T-shirt", they'd give this surprisingly amused look, as if they never expected someone to come upto them and compliment them on a goddam 20-year-old T-shirt, and they'd then say thanks and change the goddam topic immediately, as if talking about the T-shirt was trivial and that there were more important things to talk about.

People wearing captioned T-shirts, I tell you. They have to be the phoniest bastards on earth...

Joe Pesci in My Cousin Vinny

2007-07-12T13:48:00.000+05:30

I've got so much work these days, I feel like Joe Pesci in this clip...

Strange occurence at office

2007-07-11T23:26:00.000+05:30

Weird shit just happened at office! I was working on some database-related work when suddenly a bloody bat (not the one used in frickin' cricket, but one of them Count Dracula ones) materialized out of nowhere and started flying all over the floor, coming damn close to me thrice or frice (frice, froce or whatever you call it when something happens four times). For a moment, I stood there shell-shocked. I mean, the last thing you expect when working on stored procedures at 11:45 in the night is a frickin' bat flying around you!!

A few seconds later, I called up reception, told them about the bat while ducking whenever it flew past me, and then ran like hell to the exit door, closed it behind me and watched through the small glass part of the door as it continued it's flight across our floor, hitting parts of the cieling once in a while. The reception guys came armed with a stick and they opened another exit door, but it didn't figure out that it could get out. One guy then swung at it a few times with the stick but missed. The other guy tried throwing a goddam floor mat on it, and after a few tries, hit it, and it fell down. They then surrounded the poor thing and hit it till it died.

I was depressed after they killed the bat. I wish they had been a little more patient with it by waiting to let it fly outside. It eventually would have. Killing it might not have meant anything to them, but I guess it would have made a world of difference to the bat. Hell... it probably had kids or something, which, thanks to the reception guys, would now be orphaned, and would be deprived of a proper upbringing. You know, after seeing all this, I don't really blame bats for biting humans and stuff. If I were a bat and they killed one of mine, I'd do more than just biting people on their necks. I'd have probably gone on a 'roaring rampage of revenge' like Beatrix Kiddo (Uma Thurman) did in Kill Bill.

Anyway, I'm still a little edgy and jumpy after this whole ordeal. Bats flying around your seat at 11:45 PM isn't exactly your average everyday happening at office. What I need the most now is some alcohol to steady my nerves. But It's 12:30 AM now, and all the bloody shops are closed. It's an unfair fuckin' world!

How are ya?

2007-07-03T16:50:00.000+05:30

Of late, I've noticed that people, when asking you how you are or how work/life is, don't really listen to what you say. Questions like these more or less are like time-fillers, the conversational equivalent of something like a newspaper in an office lobby, or 'uncomfortable silence'-busters, because people just have to say something, even if it's crap, when they're in the same room as someone they know.

I've often been in situations like these, especially at office, while waiting for lifts or when bumping into colleagues in a corridor or the cafetaria. They generally ask me how I am, and don't really listen when I reply. This always pisses me off, probably because I not only listen to what people say, but also impart pearls of wisdom while talking to them.

After consciously observing this for a while, I wanted to try and see how it would be, doing the same thing to others. One day, a golden opportunity presented itself in the form of a colleague who happened to be in the office lift with me. When the lift doors opened to my floor, I got out and asked him "Hey... how's work man?" and turned immediately to go, and the poor guy opened his mouth to reply but didn't have an opportunity to answer me, since the lift doors closed. I felt really bad. The colleague in the lift was a nice guy.

Realizing that I couldn't do this to people without feeling bad, I've instead started mumbling nonsense whenever someone asks me how I was or how life/work was... random stuff like "President", "Leipzeig", "Fisichella", "Steinbeck", "Foo Manchu", "Forty Nine", "Dr. Seuss", "Roald Dahl", "Imbruglia", "Guten Tag", "Portico", "Alsace", "Kipling", "Civil War", or whatever crops up in my head at the moment, and out of a thousand times, only probably once or twice did people stop to ask me what I said.

People, I tell you. The phony bastards don't really give a damn how you are.

Paper Plates

2007-06-25T14:14:00.000+05:30

Since time long forgotten, the staple snacks for an attendee in any Indian party/gathering is a Samosa, a small piece of cake with part of a yellow flower or half a pink alphabet, some mixture, potato chips heaped over all this, and a plastic glass (the kind that rickshaw-pullers drink out of in wine shops) with half-cold and stale Pepsi/Coke, Fanta/Mirinda or Sprite/7up. All this, obviously with the exception of the plastic glass, they stuff onto a really flimsy-looking paper plate which is on the brink of collapse under strain.

This easily has to be the most disgusting food-assortment you can possibly put together on a plate. The samosa, standing high like a mountain, drips oil, the cake, deciding to be the Leaning Tower of Pisa, leans at an angle of 5.5 degrees, while a few of it's fragments are smeared all over the plate, and the mixture runs freely when the plate is held in hand, a few of them sticking onto the cake as and when detained during it's expeditions. But the worst thing about this assortment has to be the chips, which, when heaped all over the plate, get stuck to and pierce through the cake, and you have to pick them out of the cake in order to eat them. Eating chips covered with a bit of cake can be one of the most depressing things you can do to yourself.

But more depressing it is for the paper plate, which, even before the party, probably nurtures an inferiority complex because of the cheap paper it is made of and the kind of wussy floral patterns it has on it. The poor thing not only has to deal with it's inner demons and a shattered self-respect, but also with an oil-dripping samosa, a cake which smears parts of itself all over the place, mixture running helter-skelter like mad children, and chips which jump onto all the other three like soldiers storming a hideout of unsuspecting terrorists, or like one of those annoying school classmates who still surprise you, 20 years after school, with a 'Boo!'

It is therefore no wonder that the paper plate is always nerve-wrecked, on the verge of a breakdown, and when it's resistance finally breaks, it dies a gory death, destroying not only itself but also it's tormentors.

I probably sound crazy when I say this, but paper plates remind me of the students, the 'misfits', who, unable to take it anymore, take a gun to school, massacre everyone before turning the gun upon themselves.

Ugly Jeans

2007-06-21T14:17:00.000+05:30

Today, a guy in our office wore the ugliest pair of jeans there ever was. Till I set my eyes on this pair, first prize was for the one worn by a plumber in our building. The plumber's jeans were dull blue in color, caked with dirt and grease, were artificially faded (the fading done in the jeans factory, where the back and front of your thighs are bleached white to give it a faded look, while the rest is blue in color), and it had a lot of ball-point-pen graffiti written all over, even on the back of his thigh and on his butt pockets. You name it, and that guy had written it on his jeans... "I Love ____"s, a million heart shapes, someone's name and mobile number, etc.. Hell, he even had scribbled down measurements. I strongly suspect he's the guy who scribbles "I Love You Pooja" all over the walls of our apartment lift.

Anyway, like I said, this guy in our office today elevated ugliness to an art form. His pair of jeans was...

Lemme stroll towards him, shoot the crap with him for a minute and soak in the details...

Back...

His jeans are also blue in color, an ugly blue, and had tiny irregular patterns all over like TV-white-noise, and had this unreal whitish-yellow (pus-colored) artificial fading.

It was a close call deciding the winner, because, even though they were more or less equally matched and the plumber had a slight advantage because of the graffiti, the colleague won because his ticket and butt pockets were made of rexine, resembling cheap leather, and were light-brown in color!!!

You just have to see these pair of jeans to believe what I'm saying! Rexine pockets stitched over a pair of jeans, and artificial fading the color of pus... how can he NOT win??

Anyway, I can almost imagine some designer spending time on designing this goddam thing, and showing it to the jeans factory boss. The boss would've been thrilled with it and would've approved it, and then they'd have manufactured these jeans by getting rexine from somewhere. And when they distributed these jeans to the shops, the shop keeper must have been blind enough to accept this monstrosity. And then comes along my colleague to the shop, looking to buy a pair of jeans, looking at different ones before choosing this, of all things. He must have looked at it, tried it on, even worried a little about whether it fit him well or not, then deciding that it fit him just fine, would have bargained for this. Bargaining for the ugliest pair of jeans in the world has gotta be the most depressing thing in the world. Anyway, I wonder if the shopkeeper had secretly smirked at him when packing it, glad that one more of these ugly jeans were gone.

And what would've happened when he went home to show it to his wife or kids, i.e., if he was married or something? Would the wife and kids disown him because of this? Or whenever they go out, would they kind of shy away, embarassed, whenever someone they knew approached them? Or was it the wife or kids who had actually suggested this pair of jeans out of revenge for something he had done, like not buying the kids chocolate or something?

Anyway, I'd probably go on and on about this, so I'll stop.

If any of you have seen an uglier pair of jeans and want to prove me wrong, please leave a comment.

Anyway, I'll try taking a photo of his jeans secretly, so that I can put it up here.

Music-Band Movies, or Why do fat guys always have to be drummer?

2007-06-19T14:31:00.000+05:30

I've seen a million movies about music bands, and it's always the same story. The band members start off in their garage, being a pain in the ass to their parents and neighbors. They then show us how they compose their first song (which usually ends up being their biggest hit), which is usually like this: they're all feeling pretty low because they aren't able to compose shit, and then the guitarist 'accidentally' plays a riff while practising, and the songwriter 'accidentally' notices the riff, gets all excited about it, and then proceeds to add lyrics, and so on. This is probably one of the most depressing parts of the movie, because the song they've just composed usually sucks, and it's always depressing seeing people improvise on a song that already sounds awful. It's like putting in a lot of effort for something while going in the wrong direction.

Anyway, while at the pinnacle of their cacophony, their future manager 'accidentally stumbles' upon them, and, very impressed with their music, arranges for them to play a gig in some cheap club. They end up playing like shit, thanks to their nervousness and all, and they're booed like hell by the crowd. The manager, worried, calls them backstage, and gives them an inspiring speech full of assorted crap. So they let go, inspired, and give it their all, playing with all their heart and all, and lo! they're an instant hit!!

We then get to see how their song made it to #1 in the local radio, how they go to a recording studio and record their first album, which again goes on to climb all the charts, and we see rotating newspapers with blow-ups of the bands, more gigs, and so on. They also show some happy cigar-smoking record label boss patting the band members with cigar in hand, big grin and all, obviously impressed with their talent and the sales of these albums. If there's one thing I hate the most in the world, it's cigar-smoking record label bosses. They never fail to piss me off.

Anyway, after a few years of all this popularity, these guys are big shots, and act like pricey bastards. Then comes this big ego fight resulting in the band splitting. The fans are distraught. They send like 20 million letters urging the band to get together, but since the band members are egoistic bastards, they don't.

Many years later, they happen to meet in a gathering (probably the band manager's death), and they kinda make up with each other. And then they decide to play together once again, "for -band-manager-" or 'because -band-manager- had always wanted this". Someone always has to die for these fuckers to come together again. That's why the movies have characters like band managers. Normally, they're about as useful as a fork is when drinking soup, and their only purpose is to die and get the band members together again.

Anyway, these guys decide to play together ,and as you've guessed by now, the gig is sold out. The movie ends when the band, after singing a few of their numbers, decide to sing their first hit, the crap song. They exchange glances, grin at each other (which is shown in close-up), and then break into song, and when the crowd hears that familiar riff, they go mad.

What I hate the most in such movies, apart from the music, is that if there's a drummer in the band, it always has to be a fat guy, who almost always is nothing more than a part of the background. He doesn't even get to put on any starry airs, even during the scenes of the band splitting. Hell... the poor bastard doesn't even get a chick!

I do agree that the drums are important in a band and all, but then, you don't need great skills in order to play drums in a movie. The only proper skill you need for playing a drummer in a movie is your goddam stomach. And the bigger it is, the better your drumming is supposed to be. I can almost imagine the director, when casting, thinking "Ok... now the drummer. What we need is a fat guy with a lot of hair, who'll gel with the background. No... not this guy. We need a real mean drummer, and this guy isn't heavy enough to look like a good drummer." That always depresses me.

If I ever made a movie on a music band, I'll make sure the fat guy either sings or plays the guitar or does both, apart from getting all the chicks he wants. Those poor bastards deserve a break, you know.

Eye check-up

2007-06-18T11:00:00.000+05:30

There's something seriously wrong with my eyes. I've been cutting onions quite frequently in the past one week, and I realised that of late, my eyes have not been watering while cutting them. I realized only yesterday, when I cut 5 giant onions and my eyes didn't even drip a drop.

Gotta go get them checked at a doctor's one of these days...

Jhoom Barabar Jhoom Barabar Jhoom Barabar....

2007-06-14T19:43:00.000+05:30

Jhoom Barabar Jhoom has gotta be the most aired trailer in TV history or something. It's probably come 30 million times on TV already, and god knows how long it'll keep coming (I hope the movie dies a quick death). All the 30 million times, it's the same goddam thing. You see a weird Amitabh Bachchan trying to look like Jack Sparrow, Medusa-haired Bobby Deol, Lara Dutta looking like a Pekingese (don't know why, but I always associate her with the dog... probably because the way 'pekingese' sounds when pronounced is funny in the same way as how she looks), Abhishek Bachchan with that Neanderthal Man stubble that he has been maintaining since the Jurassic Era, and Preity Zinta, another funny-looking thing with dimples. While our eyes get assaulted at the sight of these people, there's this irritating theme song that keeps going on and on and on...

That song has gotta be the most annoying thing in the trailer. The lyrics, a stroke of genius and original thought by the lyricist, contain only two words: Jhoom and Barabar; and they keep repeating these words again and again. The song kinda mindfucks you when you try singing it, because when you say the last Jhoom in the phrase "Jhoom Barabar Jhoom", you don't actually end the first phrase, but in fact, you're actually beginning the next "Jhoom Barabar Jhoom". It's like this endless, vicious cycle, which, if represented in Set Theory (yeah.. the stuff we studied way back in school), would probably consists of like a million sets of something, each having the value "Jhoom Barabar Jhoom". When you do a union of the first two sets A & B, it becomes "Jhoom Barabar Jhoom Barabar Jhoom", and when you do a A union B union C, it becomes "Jhoom Barabar Jhoom Barabar Jhoom Barabar Jhoom", and so on. Imagine doing this a hundred million times, and you'll see what this song can do to your sanity.

Anyway, I'm pretty tired and pissed-off with anything even remotely related to Jhoom Barabar Jhoom. I hear that bloody infinite-loop song another time and my internal organs will probably go into convulsions and I'll probably end up with multiple haemorrhages or something.

PS: I know the Set Theory explanation above is full of crap. Mathematically-correct morons need not point it out.

Birthday

2007-06-13T16:15:00.000+05:30

Bunked office on my birthday as planned. Had slept at around 3 the previous night, thanks to the cake that my room-mates surprised me with, and phone calls from friends, romans, and countrymen. Woke up all groggy at 8 AM, thanks to relatives, and vegetated at home till around 11, watching TV.

Had planned to go to Brigade Road, and so I went there. The day was hot as hell, and I sought shelter from the intense heat at Peco's, where I quenched thirst with beer while listening to Led Zeppelin. I was probably the only guy in the pub, and I shot the crap for a while with Nagesh, the bartender. I was getting a little bored, and so I called a few colleagues and incurred their wrath by asking them what they were doing in office, telling them with a devilish laugh where I was, what I was doing, and asking them to continue rotting at office.

A couple of hours and beers later, it was 1:30, and I went out, only to find that the sun hadn't relented, and was doing it's job with the same enthusiasm as a software engineer who has just got a 50% pay hike. I then went to a few second-hand bookshops and hung out there will about 4, getting, apart from a very bad sinus headache, the following books:

Something Happened – Joseph Heller
Picture This – Joseph Heller
The Hobbit - J R R Tolkein
Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring - J R R Tolkein
Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers - J R R Tolkein
Lord of the Rings: Return of the King - J R R Tolkein
To Have and Have Not – Ernest Hemingway
The Short Reign of Pippin IV – John Steinbeck
Return of the Native – Thomas Hardy
The Call of the Wild / White Fang - Jack London
Nine Stories - J D Salinger
Captain Courageous – Rudyard Kipling

Was totally zonked out and very hungry by the time I came out, and so I went to Pizza Corner and had one of them Sandwizzas or whatever you call them. The damn thing was hard as hell, and so you had to chew it a million times before you swallowed, and because I had the kind of headache that you can feel throbbing between your jaw and forehead when you chew, I was pretty much gone when I finally came out of Pizza Corner. Those guys can really kill you if they want to.

All I wanted to do was go home and crash, but then, I first wanted to pick up a few DVDs, and so I went to this DVD shop, and bought the following movies:

Volver (Spanish, directed by Pedro Almodovar)
Flags of our Fathers (English, directed by Clint Eastwood)
Letters from Iwo Jima (English/Japanese, directed by Clint Eastwood)
An Inconvenient Truth (the Global Warming documentary)
Pan's Labyrinth (Spanish, directed by Guillermo del Toro)
A Scene at the Sea (Japanese, directed by Takeshi Kitano)

Anyway, while I was picking up these movies, some dumb moron in the shop decided that the only way to find out if the music DVD he was buying worked properly was to play the damn thing really loudly while people like me were sitting right next to the speaker, looking at the DVDs. I almost killed the guy because my headache went up a notch higher after all that noise.

I finally came out with DVDs and a more intense headache, and finally decided I had had enough and took an auto to go home and crash. Spoke to my sis-in-law, and told her I probably wouldn't be visiting them (brother, her and their dogs) that evening because of my headache. I went home and had hardly laid down when my brother called up and told me that he'd pick me up in an hour, and so I got up, went to a barber's near my place and got myself a good head-massage which kinda knocked out (literally) most of my headache. I got back home, got ready, got picked up, and went to my brother's place, where I spent the next few hours drinking, watching some cheap tamil movie on TV while commenting on it non-stop (a pastime I have developed an affinity to, of late), having dinner, and playing with his dogs Charlie and Butch (probably the best part of the day). Whoever the quote was attributed to was right when s/he said "There is no psychiatrist in the world like a puppy licking your face". By the time I left, I felt much better, the headache now completely gone.

I went home, slept, woke up at 8 the next morning, and went back to office. :-(

Random Post #2

2007-06-08T21:01:00.000+05:30

Girls who've done eyebrow jobs by thinning them and all seem like they're very inquisitive, very suspicious, and don't believe a word of what you're saying. Probably because their eyebrows are always raised.

Random Post #1

2007-06-08T18:32:00.000+05:30

The shape of the 'head' hole of a V-necked T-shirt, the one where you put your head in, reminds me of the logo on Superman's chest.

Weddings & Invitations

2007-06-07T12:06:00.000+05:30

2007 seems to be not only the Year of the Boar, but also the Year of Marriages. Four of my friends tied the noose... oops... knot in February alone, all these weddings happening in a span of 10 days, and I've been getting atleast 5 or 6 wedding invitations a month from people I either know or work with. I don't attend most of these weddings. Attending weddings can be one of the most depressing things you can do to yourself. All these people come there, reeking perfume, dressed up with lots of jewellery, resembling intricately-designed victorian chandeliers, their jewels reflecting light so that you have to squint while looking at them, all the time acting humble and all, being very friendly with people they don't give a shit about, and doing a million other phony things. The worst thing is that you know they dressed up specifically for the wedding and all, wearing clothes that they have reserved only for special occasions, and that when they go back, they'll have to remove all that crap and get back to their shitty existence, and their clothes go back to the closet, rotting there till the next special occasion comes by. Thinking of all that stuff depresses me.

However, one good thing about weddings are the invitations. I always love reading the crap they write in the cards, with clichéd words like 'gracious presence', 'blesssings', etc. This girl I work with gave me an invitation to her wedding yesterday, and the card read:

===

A moment of joy needs someone

with where you can Share & Feel

Glorious would be those moments when

you make your presence on

the occasion of my marriage with

-Bridegroom's name-

-wedding date & time-

===

The poor girl probably had to go around the whole office, giving out this invitation card, oblivious of the grammatical mistake, worrying about whether she had missed out anyone while people were reading the invitation card in front of her, noticing the mistake and suppressing a smirk. One more thing she must have gone through was to answer all these questions that these people ask. I don't know if you've noticed, but all these people ask the same goddam banal questions, and you often end up having to answer the same question more than 50 or 100 times or something, while being patient as hell and smiling all the time. You had to feel sad for the girl.

Birthday Plans

2007-06-01T13:03:00.000+05:30

If there's one thing I've grown to hate in the world, it's going to office on my birthday. A million people, half of whom you don't even like, come and wish you for your birthday, and you'll have to put up a big fake smile and say thanks. The next thing they'll ask is "So Guru, today evening... Bageecha(the haunt of the office booze-hounds), eh?" . while laughing as if they're saying something really funny.

The reason I'm worrying about all this is because my birthday's just around the corner, and I plan to take leave on the day. One good thing about my workplace is that they give you leave on your birthday and wedding anniversary. Anyway, like I said, I plan to bunk office, wake up late, go to Brigade Road sometime in the afternoon, loiter around for a while, go to Blossom's (the second-hand bookstore), buy tonnes of books, walk to Peco's, tired n all, and then drink beer and come back to life while listening to great music. Sounds like a good plan, except that I'm 99% sure it won't happen, thanks to project pressure. Your project needs you only when you decide to take leave or have a nice time.

Food

2007-05-28T21:17:00.000+05:30

Rice, sambar, curd. Rice, sambar, curd. Rice, sambar, curd, rotis, weird gravy. Rice, sambar, curd. Rice, sambar, curd. Rice, rasam, curd, rotis, some other weird-tasting crap. This is how repetitive the lunch menu has become at the cafetaria. And as you've guessed by now, I've got rice, sambar and curd coming out of my ears.

A lot of people I've complained to keep asking me, "Then why don't you go out for lunch everyday?" Like I never thought of it. I would, but then, there are a lot of things that eventually dissuade me from going out for lunch, some of them being:

1. It's hot as hell outside during lunchtime.
2. There's a physical effort involved.
3. All the good restaurants are not within walkable distance.
4. Because of (3), I have to go on bike, which again involves physical effort. I have to kick the bastard for like a million years before it starts.
5. The only people I get for company want to eat at this Malayali joint. I already have Malayali food for dinner, because there's only Bullet Rice (the mallu rice) at home, and the last thing I want to have is Bullet rice in the afternoon. It kinda gets to you after a while. The Bullet rice, I mean.

Worse than the Bullet rice is the coconut-flavored food you get at all these Malayali joints, which the other guys seem to dig a lot. I dunno, but the smell of coconut oil in food kinda reminds me of these nerds, the front-benchers in college who put bucketloads of coconut oil on their hair, the kind who become the honest "Letters to the Editor"type when they grow old. I know I'm crazy, but whenever I taste coconut-flavored food, I always think that they kinda took all these nerds into the restaurant kitchen and kinda wrung their hair dry in the goddam vessel and cooked the food in the oil wrung from their hair. The food's got a weird taste. I'll probably find lice in the food one of these days. Some guys found a cockroach in the food... the guy who had his hair wrung that day must've been one helluva huge giant nerd or something to have cockroaches instead of lice in his hair.

Anyway, I've just about had enough rice-sambar-curd in life. I'll probably get a haemorrhage or something if I have rice-sambar-curd again. These cafetaria guys can really drive you to death when they want to.

Priarie Oyster - Hangover Cure

2007-05-26T14:39:00.000+05:30

Read this somewhere. Sounds like the hangover cure that Jeeves concocts for Wooster on the first day of his employment. Haven't tried it, but plan to do so soon.

Ingredients
1 Egg Yolk
1 oz. of Vinegar or Worcestershire Sauce
1 tsp of Tabasco Sauce
A dash of Black pepper and/or Salt

Instructions
Don’t break the yolk. Shoot it down in one gulp.

Addendum: If all else fails, go to Gent's Hair Saloon (yeah, that's the name of the place) at Kundalahalli Gate, Bangalore, and get yourself a head massage.

Coffee Mugs

2007-05-23T16:19:00.000+05:30

I don't believe it! Someone actually stole my coffee mug! And before you ask... no, it isn't of any sentimental value. It's one of those 'company' coffee mugs they give you if you work for one. This one is white in color, has our company's logo on one side, and a cartoon character with a stupid expression on the other side. They actually went around 6 floors, distributing these stupid-looking cups to everyone. Hell, they even asked you to sign on a sheet of paper after you received yours. All rationed and everything. I can imagine the folks who did this spending considerable amount of time designing this thing, planning the number of cups they'll make and all. And when they decide on, say 500, and just when they're about to order the mugs, someone'll say in the last minute, all earnest, concerned, and in a honest tone and all, "Shouldn't we order 100 more? I know we need only 500 now, but just in case, you know." And the others would think about it, and one of them would say "You know.... he's got a point. Let's go with 600!!". I hate it when people get all honest, caring and earnest about things like coffee mugs.

Anyway, I'm glad they didn't ask us to stand in a queue or something to collect our coffee mugs, like those Nazis did when distributing clothes and blankets when Jews arrived in their concentration camps. Of course, I wouldn't have gone to collect my allotted coffee mug, but then, people all around me would've gone, come back with their mugs with a smug, content expression, and would've asked you "Hey... didn't you get yours???" That would've depressed me.

Coming back to the point, someone actually stooped to the level of stealing this coffee mug, of all coffee mugs in the world. I wonder if they took it out of need, very well knowing what an ugly-looking mug it was, or if they took it, thinking it was beautiful and all. Whatever the reason, stealing a goddam ugly-looking coffee mug really is the pits. I wouldn't do it even if someone offered me a million bucks to do it. Even if the coffee mug was good-looking as hell.

The Unknown Regulars

2007-05-22T22:51:00.000+05:30

There are a lot of these people I keep bumping into at family weddings (the very very few that I attend). I don't know who these people are, I don't know if they are relatives, but they land up at every wedding in the family, and they seem to know me by name and all. I recognize them only because I've seen them in the last family wedding that I attended. Everytime I meet these unknown regulars, the following conversation takes place:

S/he (smiling widely): Hi Guru!!! How are you??
Me: I'm fine. How are you?
S/he: I'm fine. How are mom and dad?
Me: They're fine...

I don't ask them if their parents are fine, because they're quite old and all, and I guess their parents must be dead, and the last thing I want is a foot-in-mouth situation. So we gape at each other, smiling dumbly at each other, an uncomfortable silence hanging thick in the air.

Then finally:

Me: OK.. I gotta go. Got some work to do.
S/he: Sure. Pass on my regards to your parents.
Me: Sure...

Everytime I go to a family wedding, they're there, and we always have the same conversation. Either that, or this:

S/he (pulling my cheeks): Guru! Is this really you? I don't believe this!!! The last time I saw you, you were three years old, in your chaddis, and were peeing on and on.
Me (trying my best to hide my embarassment from the girls who promptly materialize out of nowhere during moments like this): Err... umm...
S/he: Do you remember who I am???
Me: No.. the last time I saw you, I was only three years old, remember??

And then that person would proceed to explain who they are.

I have tried asking my mom about the identity of these people, and she has tried explaining how we are related, but it's usually a very lengthy one (Eg; father's brother's sister-in-law's nephew's cousin's father's brother's daughter), and I lose track after "father's brother's sister-in-law's". Moreover, the last thing I want is to stack up useless information about people who don't matter in my filled-to-the-brim-with-unwanted-crap head of mine.

I've always gotten away when dealing with these unknown regulars, but my sister was less lucky.

It was during her own wedding reception. She was having this really tough time because she had to keep smiling at everyone who attended the reception without even knowing who they are (and knowing my sister, it's impossible for her to do phony things like this). Most of these people seemed to remember my sister a lot, and kept saying the same ol' things like "I can't believe it. The last time I saw you, you were this small. Do you remember who I am?" My sister got this "Do you remember who I am?" question many times, and initially, she said no, and everyone explained. But then, she looked at the queue of people waiting to meet her, and then, she started saying "Of course I remember... how are you?", etc.etc. This went on smoothly, until this old lady came to my sister, gave her the gift she had brought and after the initial pleasantries, asked her the usual "Do you remember who I am?" question. My sister gave her the usual reply and looked away for an instant, when the lady asked, grinning, "Really? Who am i?"

Good News!

2007-05-16T14:07:00.000+05:30

I’m happy to report that the anonymous guy in our apartment, the guy who loves Pooja and professes his love on the walls of our lift, actually has a vocabulary of more than 3 words (discounting Pooja, which isn’t an English word). Apart from the four “Pooja I Love You” scribblings on our walls, he has now scribbled, apart from another “Pooja I Love You”, a “PILY” (the abbreviation of Pooja I Love You) and “I’m Yours Pooja”. Also, it looks like our guy here is getting a little desperate. There's also a "Pooja I Love You Please".

I am planning to add a “too” between the “I” and “Love” in one of the “Pooja I Love You” messages, or add one of my roommates' name and mobile number below the messages. Let’s see what a bit of competition does to the anonymous lift-scribbler.

Wall scribbling

2007-05-10T13:36:00.000+05:30

Holden Caulfield was right when he said "If you had a million years to do it in, you couldn't rub out even half the "Fuck you" signs in the world." While people across the world are busy writing their "Fuck you" signs, Indians instead scribble "I Love You" signs all over, be it a historical monument, a harmless tree-trunk in a park, or any other clean surface with a minimum size of 5 inches x2 inches.

Holden Caulfield was right when he said "If you had a million years to do it in, you couldn't rub out even half the "Fuck you" signs in the world." While people across the world are busy writing their "Fuck you" signs, Indians instead scribble "I Love You" signs all over, be it a historical monument, a harmless tree-trunk in a park, or any other clean surface with a minimum size of 5 inches x 2 inches.

Hell, even the walls of our apartment lift haven't been spared, and they now boast of some guy's profession of his deepest feelings for Pooja, apart from the name and contact number for Jigar Name Boards Brass, which, I'm sure, was written by the owner of Jigar Brass Name Boards, a poor guy earning his living who resorted to this out of desperation after seeing the poor response after knocking on all the doors of our apartment complex. He must have returned home, his clothes sticky with sweat, his shoulders drooping, the brows on his face hanging over his eyes like dark clouds, and his wife must've asked him how business was, and soft-spoken that he is, he must've shaken his head slowly while sighing and looking down, and his wife must've comforted him saying that things will be better tomorrow. The wife, going to the kitchen, must've opened a small Pan Parag tin where she stores probably the last of the family's savings, and asked one of her two kids to go to the market and get rice or something. The kid, obedient, kind and unspoilt, unlike the rich kids of today, must've gone to the market, and the shop keeper must've passed insulting remarks in front of other customers about the credit that the father already owes him. The kid, though his eyes were blazing and his teeth were clenched, must have pleaded with the shop keeper to give him rice one last time, for during the conflict between the stomach and the heart, the stomach always wins. The kid, crying silently out of shame, scarred for life thanks to this incident, would have returned home, wiping his eyes outside the door with a corner of his slightly-torn shirt, and the mother would have cooked dinner, and noticing that there wasn't enough rice for everyone, would've given away half her share to the husband and the kids, since the husband's gotta go tomorrow looking for people interested in name boards, and the kids have to grow up. Thus, eating very little and drinking water out of a earthen pot, she must've slept, her stomach rumbling late at night. Her husband, not able to sleep at night, must've said 'Don't lose hope. Hope is all we have. Tomorrow's a new day with new possibilities.' Thus, comforted by her husband's word, the wife must've slept, dreaming of a better future, while the husband must've stayed awake, thinking of survival in the long, vulture-laden road to prosperity.

The son, however, would need any reassurement from anyone about his future. It was all chalked out for him now, thanks to Amitabh Bachchan (henceforth called AB, thanks to lazy fingers), whom he idolised, mainly because AB had a childhood and family situation much akin to the boy's in most of his 70's movies, getting insulted by shopkeepers and all, and when he grew up, he was rich, powerful, and whipped everyone's sorry ass. The boy imagined how he'd grow up to be like AB and how he would take revenge on the shopkeeper. But there was a problem though. In all these AB movies, the mother always died, and he did not want his mother to die. His eyes became watery as he imagined a scene from the future of his life, where his mom was ill, in bed, wanting medicine to survive, and he would save up all his money shining shoes to accumulate the money, and then he'd go to some pharmacy, hand over all the money in change, get the medicine and run home, only to bang into some car (thanks to negligent driving) and splatter the medicine all over the road. He would then plead the car owner for money for the medicine, but the car owner would ask him to fuck off, and so he'd run home, only to find his mother dead. He realised that this was a situation he did not want. So he got up, the tears now flowing freely, prayed to God, asking to grow rich and powerful like AB but without his mother dying, laid down again and slept. He did not dream any dreams that night.

Photos taken during my Feb 2007 Holiday

2007-02-21T10:23:00.000+05:30

My Holiday in Feb

"Mission" movies

2005-09-14T00:29:00.000+05:30

What does it take to make a "mission" movie? A "mission" movie, for people who don't know what a "mission" movie is, is a movie where people are put together on a mission... a mission like combating terrorists or blasting-to-smithereens a meteor that's coming Earth's way. I'm sure a lot of you would have watched atleast one such movie.

I just saw one. Stealth. This one was no different from all the other mission movies i've seen. The only difference was the mission. The mission obviously had to be different, otherwise no one would watch it.

While watching Stealth, I started thinking about all the pre-requisite stuff that goes into making a mission movie. Here are some I thought of:

1. The team that's gonna do the mission usually comprises of people who are very different from each other. Some of them even have fights within themselves because of their differences. And most of the time, each one specialises in a particular skill which the others don't possess. However, there's always one guy who doesn't seem to have a role in the team. More about him in point 3.

2. You can't understand half of the dialogues in this movie, because it's technical jargon. I'm talking about stuff like:

"Captain, your mission objective was to destroy the designated targets."
"Roger."
"Captain, do you read me?"
"Negative."
"Captain, give me your position."
"Delta 4, 360. Co-ordinates 49, 536.54. Alpha 4252."
"OK Captain. Lock target."

And at this point, if the guy at the control center tells the pilot to do something that the pilot doesn't like, you see frustration on the pilot's face.

"Negative, Sir. I'm the commanding officer on this mission. Team, abort mission. Do you hear me? Abort mission. Terminate mission."
"Captain, are you disobeying my orders?"
"Mayday"
"Roger"

etc.,etc.

During the interval, me and a friend started talking the way they do.

"Officer Rizwan, do you want some pepsi?"
"Huh?"
"Officer Rizwan, do you read me?"
"Positive, Officer Guru."
"Do you want some pepsi, Officer? I repeat. Do you want some pepsi?"
"Negative, Officer. I would, however, like some popcorn."
"Are you sure, Officer?"
"Affirmative."

3. Someone in the team dies while in the mission. Usually, it's a guy everyone thinks is an asshole... someone who doesn't seem to have any purpose. I think the guys who select the team, while selecting the team, go through their profiles and say "This one's of no use. We could use him as the guy who dies if something fucks up."

4. The guys who die have wives, and before they die, they say stuff like "Tell Mary I love her." or "Mary, I love you."

5. The team, before going on the mission, walks confidently towards the camera in slow-motion, and in complete mission attire, like body suits, helmets, etc.. They sometimes walk this way after the mission is over, but not always, because they're all hurt n stuff, and they limp.

6. After the guy in the team dies, there's this renewed zeal in the entire team, thanks to one of them saying stuff like "Do it. Let's do it for Johnny". And people get this angry, determined look, and they complete the mission with a lot of feeling towards the dead guy.

7. The team always has conflicts with the guy in the control center, who's their boss. They disobey orders, etc.

8. There's a ceremony at the end of the movie, with people standing in line and in navy/army uniforms. There's a dais, with big photos of the dead guy/s, and all the dead guys smile real sweetly into the camera. The ceremony has a couple of people talking, and they say stuff like "Johnny was a brave guy. He had balls. He was this. He was that. He was a hero. The whole country's proud of him." etc. At this time, the team members are silently shedding tears, or if they're the manly types, they don't cry, but their eyes well up with tears.

9. The movie ends on a light note, with a joke, to show us that life goes on normally even after all this shit is over.

There are a lot more, but none comes to mind now. Leave a comment if you know more.

Rain

2005-08-05T01:12:00.000+05:30

Almost went out for dinner. Looked like it was gonna rain like a madman. I stayed back. So it didn't rain.

Results of the "What Classic Movie Are You?" test

2005-07-17T15:10:00.000+05:30

Check out the website

Results of the "What Famous Leader Are You?" test

2005-07-17T15:02:00.000+05:30

Check out the website