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3 idiots, has caught the fancy of the nation like no other recent film has. Having read Five point someone, the book on which I thought the story was supposedly based before Vidhu Vinod Chopra shut us all up, I wasn't really excited about the movie release and gave it a skip the first weekend, while it kept on garnering excellent reviews from all quarters.

So on New Years Day, I queued up half an hour to book a show for the movie. Queuing for movie tickets brought back fond memories of my hometown where buying tickets was always a more fulfilling experience than the movie itself. At times, we were so thrilled at the mere fact that we had managed to get a ticket, we just went back home. Oh, I so miss those awesome cat-fighting and swearing between ladies trying to sell tickets in black. Those were the days when cinema meant wholesome entertainment, much of which came free of cost.

Two third-row tickets for the 9 pm show cost me Rs.500. I cursed the multiplexes yet again.

I will not review the movie here. I thought it was an alright film that just got mighty mighty lucky.
Instead, I'll share a few memories of those early days of engineering and pass on a few advices of my own on what not to do in engineering and topping that list is Never Ever try to electrocute a senior, particularly when he is peeing.

A couple of days after the Millennium New Year, the first semesters started. Throughout my school life, I never needed any forged Daddy-signatures in my report cards. In fact they were the source of those small joys that parents willingly accept as reward for all their sacrifices. Soon after the first semester results, I realised that this source of their joy had dried up for ever. I did try quite hard though in the beginning to continue with the good run, but peer pressure got the better of me...the peer pressure to live up to the high standards set by friends from a state called Uttar Pradesh. And no those standards had nothing to do with engineering but yes a lot to do with being an engineer.

Uttar Pradesh is a state where a child usually starts cackling right from inside his mother's womb, lest he not be given enough time to complete all that he has to say during the lifetime outside. By the time he reaches engineering, he has already spoken the volume which a non-UPite would probably take four or five lifetimes to reach and fate placed me bang in the middle of some of the greatest proponents that our college was to ever produce in this Art of Talking. They honoured me by converting my humble room (which by the way already had three other occupants) into their august Parliament where they assembled every evening to discuss on the graver aspects of life.
The uninitiated, that I was, I made meek attempts to shift the venue of these daily gatherings by scribbling quotations such as :

'If you have an hour to spare, don't spend it with someone who hasn't '.
Someone expounded on this thought and beneath it wrote in bold:
'INSTEAD SPEND IT WITH ME'

I was defeated and I entered the Great Grand world of Bakar.

Our discussions initially were concentrated on mostly identifying and allocating the seniors to their correct incestuous relationship categories, depending on their attitude with us during the ragging sessions. Gradually, as we realised that Gujarat was a dry state only till we reached Shankarbhai's egg stall, the discussions grew much in content and animation.

From what I hear, ragging has more or less been completely eradicated from our college these days, which is kind of sad. When I say this, I obviously do not refer to anything of the nature in which iron rods are shovelled up narrow human orifices, but of the kind we endured, which was certainly irritating as not many of us liked to get a girl's signature on the inked impression of our posteriors, nor were many eager to graph their erection-time curve on the back of condom packets and carry them as identity cards, but majorly they were exercises of ego massaging which if not taken to heart, were really quite harmless. The embarrassment of running in a crowded train shouting "Bhago Bhago train me aag laga gaya" or being made to sit in the
corner of the room with a bucket on your head to hide your 'shameless' face as reprehension for a bad joke or a wrongly credited fart or the great 90 degree pranaam are some instances that you can recollect and have a hearty laugh even years later.
Not to mention the joy one gets on kicking the arse of those same seniors once the ragging period gets over. It is so out of the world ! Not so much though, when in the subsequent years you are at the receiving end.

But God forbid if you were to fall prey to the 'Intellectuals', or the group that majorly comprised of people who had read or heard of Catcher in the Rye, Fountainhead or Catch 22. They would never have any straight questions for you and naturally there were no straight answers either. It was only through trial and error that one learnt to handle these individuals. On the stairs of a busy shopping complex, I once bumped upon one of these specimens who after the usual boring game of Guess-my-state-in-three-questions-or-you-are-fu**ed, came up with a weird and audacious demand.

"Allright fuc**r, come here and touch my balls", he said.
Caught a little by surprise, I wondered whether the guy was making a pass at me but if so why would he do so in such an inappropriate place and manner. I always thought that homosexuals were a little more discrete with their advances.

So I enquired " Sir, do you really wish that I should place my hands on your testicles?"

"How dare you question back your seniors, C'mon touch my balls" he repeated with morevehemence in his voice this time.

I thought for a moment and said what the heck. Arguing would only land me in trouble. Moreover, I have many a time retrieved cricket balls from shit holes before. These were at least was a couple of inches away from one.
So I slowly nudged my hand forward to have my first homosexual experience. What followed momentarily changed the equation of the ragger and the ragged

"What the f*** , What the f***, What the f*** !!!!" he shrieked as he recoiled a good five metres in a single leap at my advance.

"I meant the eyeballs, you pervert, the eyeballs" , I could hear him shouting as he ran miles away from me.

Batao, How was I supposed to know that ?????

These are of course the goody goody accounts and at times things were not so pleasant, but surely everyone would accept the fact that things were never so bad so as to contemplate running back home.

Re-categorising the seniors in newer and more complicated incestuous relationships usually took care of the frustrations. And if the situation ever seemed to be getting out of hand, one could always fall back upon his 'knowledge' of palmistry. Bloody worked every time !!!

In that great Parliament of ours, we once had a heated debate on this topic of ragging and most of us firmly pledged that we would all refrain from this ridiculous show of ego.
Thankfully the pledges were not on stamp paper.

Learning to curb the ego is not a bad lesson for a man to learn so early in life. Prepares him well for marriage.

Jawani ki woh raat

Realising that just three more days remain to the New year has suddenly put me in retrospective mood. That a whole decade has passed by in this millennium is reason enough to halt for a moment and take cognizance of where one stands in life and what the road ahead looks like. Blame, such thoughts on lack of beer on an extended weekend, you may, but the fact remains that this last decade has been and will remain one of the most defining periods of my life and I quite vividly remember it beginning .

First semester exams were precariously close and with ragging period still on, we had restraining orders on our enthusiasm. The walls of the college gate that acted as the melting pot of all our engineering emotions acted as the party venue.
Now, in all the Hollywood movies where Americans save the world from destruction, there will surely be a scene depicting absolute chaos where thousands of people are shown running helter-skelter away from the impending disaster. In reality, all these scenes are actually canned free of cost in cities of Gujarat where occasions like Sunday evenings, stock market gains, American visa approval of a fellow Gujarati etc are celebrated with such fervour and abandon that one often mistakes the scene as one before the end of the world.
So you can well imagine the scene of a millennium heralding New Year eve.
Roads were absolutely choc-a-bloc with traffic moving in all directions. Well, as long as the roads led to some eatery joint or at least some open space where the bedsheet could be spread for the entire femly to sit and eat khaman dhokla.
Another hot-spot was also a sea beach on the city outskirts. Unknowingly named after the great French novelist Alexander Dumas, the Dumas beach was hospitable to only a particular section of the public who needed some extra privacy while eating. (Lets keep it to khaman dhokla to maintain the UA certificate of this blog)
So we being a vehicle-less, girlfriend-devoid, cash-strapped group of ragged-first-year hostelites joined the party from our college gates equipped with resources such as whistling and hooting abilities and a running tap of creative and predominantly harmless expletives. We cheered on the party revellers till we got bored of watching the never-ending exhibition of two-wheelers with their shockingly dressed owners. That each of these specimens had body-hugging females as pillion riders was not very comforting either. Some fresh expressions took birth for the engineering posterity to cherish as we headed back straight to our rooms......well almost straight.
The detour towards the girls hostel was incidental and futile. There were to be a lot more non-incidental such detours over the years but the futility was to remain constant. In most government engineering colleges, surveys on the sex ratio of the college get results such as Not Applicable, You Heartless Bastards, Teri M* ki and so on and so forth. I prefer to maintain a dignified silence when asked of opinion on such matters.
Anyway coming back to that millennium dawning night, there was no booze either as Gujarat was to remain a dry state for us for some more time to come.
Thus started this decade, dry and not-so-high, only to chapter its antithesis in the years to follow.
Watch this space for more.

Excerpts from next episode :
"Not many of us liked to get a girl's signature on the inked impression of our posteriors, nor were many eager to graph their erection-time curve on the back of condom packets and carry them as identity cards."
"C'mon touch my balls" he repeated with more aggression in his voice this time...

Wishing all of you a very Happy New Year. Have fun and stay safe my friends.
One of my resolutions this new year would be to change the status of this blog from a quarterly periodical which it has unintentionally become, to something that can be frequented more often.

Pavillion lautkar...

There are many joys of coming back to India. Working till 10 at night everyday is not one of them. If you reach home at a time when the first batch of drunkards are just making their way out of bars and you are too tired to join the second, then something is definitely not right here. For six long years I was blessed to have a client based in UK, a country where business transacts at a time when most of India is awake unlike US whose work timings match that of our jackals and owls. All good things cum to an end and so has my honeymooning with decent client work timings. But this is recession period and complaining can just make your manager sentimental while he informs you of how much you will be missed in the organisation.

Even without the changed work schedule, life takes a volte face every time I come back to Mumbai. While in England, if I were to wake up and jump out of my thid floor balcony (and were I to remain alive), I could have taken a couple of more steps and pronto I would be at my office desk ! No Ma, I did not fill in as the evening security.Here it takes me an hour to reach office by bus and by Mumbai standards that is ridiculously early.One might argue that the solution lies in taking a house near to my offfice which brings me to another interesting bit of information.Search for a house in Mumbai is another fascinating experience if you are a bachelor. 95 out of 100 building societies would outrightly reject you and you need not even be named Imraan Hashmi for that. Even if one is named Rama Krishna Gopalacharya (which I am not by the way) you would not be allowed to a take a house for rent and your only fault is your marital status. That’s it. No arguments. This search for a house almost made me call up home and ask Ma to start her long and eagerly awaited search for my bride but thankfully I saw a place which sold beer. I mean what do these bachelors do that they are so shunned by the society. Okay, they do a lot of things for which they should be shunned by if not ejected from civilised society but my point is why do it in a manner which makes life difficult for fellow bachelors. So my hunt continues.

Other than the above mentioned pangs, I am enjoying every remaining bit of being back. I love the FM radio which Dhan Te Tans your mornings like nothing other. Easy access to Vada Paos and Bhel Puris and Paani pooris only cements my faith in the Almighty. Its good to be back for there is no other country in the world where people leave early from work to see a high tide from a bridge.

I wish all of you a very Happy Independence Day and I hope we achieve freedom from the horrible menace of swine flu sometime soon. Till then wear masks. Its pretty cool infact. Gives you a menacing look.

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen

Apologies for the long absence from the blogging scene. There has been a lot happening on the non blogging aspects of life. For one, I should soon be heading back home. No, I have not been laid off as yet but my company seems to have a charming policy for me. It allows me to spend the sweltering summers in India and the freezing winters in UK. My company is renowned for such employee friendly policies.

As I write this post, The T20 World Cup is in the semi-final stage and India, as described in most of the popular media has made an unceremonious exit from the tournament, a train of thought, I firmly disagree with. In my opinion, the Indian team played impeccably well and I will attempt a short review of some of the classiest performers in the team to prove my point.

By the way, if anyone ever comes across a sentence which uses the phrase 'ceremonious exit', then please let me know.

Suresh Raina - I think he performed marvelously and we should not be misled by statistics. He is a performer par excellence and for him the World Cup was a stage, a grand stage to showcase his art. The only issue was that someone should have informed this great artist that this was not the World Cup for Belle dancing, which, had it been, he would have won hands down considering the awe-inspiring dance steps that he regaled the audience with while facing bouncers from the West Indian and English fast bowlers. No prizes on guessing on who would be winning the next Nach Baliye contest. As he gyrated all around the wicket, I think I faintly heard Dhoni shouting from the stands,

"Raina....in kutton ke saamne mat naach"...but it was a tad too late, Basanti..er..Raina had already begun his performance...

Ravindra Jadeja - This guy is a true hero. No longer would terminally ill patients need to petition the government to grant them the right to euthanasia, nor people contemplating suicide take to drastic measures to end their lives. All their misery and suffering can be alleviated by simply watching this master play an innings of cricket. He guarantees you a peaceful death out of sheer boredom. If only the poor chap could have held his wicket for some more time in the match against England, we were assured of a victory as the English players were sure to concede defeat to escape from the grotesque torture that Jadeja was imparting upon one and all in the name of batting. The below is what one of my dear friends Nilabza, had to say about him:
"He should be fed to pigs. Country seller, Olokhi pecha ekta, Dekteo shala ta shutki bepari laage , Gu khawrar dol" (Jinxed Owl that he is, looks like a vendor selling smelly dried fish , Pack of shit eaters)

I leave it to your imagination to visualise this.

Yuvraj Singh - His attitude and facial expressions makes you feel guilty of the fact that you are not paying him special taxes for the huge favour he seems to be doing to mankind by playing cricket. If arrogance and conceit were to ever procreate, my assumptions are that their offspring would have shocking similarity with Yuvraj. Yuvraj was once considered one of the best fielders in world cricket. Even today his fielding is a captain's delight. So what if the captain is now from the opposition teams. The manner in which he let go the ball off the last delivery of Harbhajan's over should be a lesson for any kid but one should remember that there is no easy path to such success. Such finesse can only come from a correct mixture of nonchalance, callousness, irresponsibility and more importantly the ability to withstand pressure of trivial issues such as the fact that you are representing your country. It comes after a lot of practice and IPL matches.

Ishant Sharma - He was once a bowler who bowled with fierce pace and aggression and scared the wits out of classy players like Ricky Pointing. That was becoming too passe and predictable I guess. So the Indian think tank had a new role for him in this tournament. They said, "Ishant tu Zombie banega" and boy did he play his role to perfection !! Of course his stint with the Kolkata Knight Riders team just before the world cup helped a great deal in his preparations.By the time he came into the tournament, he had well perfected the art of bowling like a top notch imbecile and seamlessly slipped into the role expected of him by the team management. BCCI must be complimented for creating this well-oiled machinery that churns out players with such unique repertoire of skills.

Mahendra Singh Dhoni - Last but certainly not the least of the awesome performers was our great Kapitan Kool. But the temperature of his coolness has steadily been decreasing over the past couple of months to have now reached a sub zero level.

Initially I thought that he was suffering from some bowel clearance problems which can understandably make any person irritable, but the lowly mortal that I am, I had got it completely wrong. Under the sheet of ice with which he came up to address press conferences, was a great thinker and strategist at work.

His decision to make practice sessions optional before both the crucial Super 8 matches speaks volumes of his wisdom and far sightedness. Could we have seen the grand Raina-Gambhir Hopping show otherwise ? Continuing with Zombie Sharma in spite of RP having figures of 1/13 of 3 overs and his extraordinary decision to send in Jadeja ahead of Yuvraj and Pathan are what legends are written of. The media is calling him rude but then they fail to see his benign nature which was in full display while he batted. He did everything possible to do away with the tag of being an aggressive batsman which the media again had foolishly added to his reputation over the years. He hit just four boundaries and a single six in the entire tournament which goes miles to show his kind nature and concern for the opposition. After all winning is not everything; there is something known as humanity too which is so much more important than a mere game of cricket.

In light of the above, I think we should stop being unnecessarily emotional about this whole issue and learn to see beyond the obvious. There is inherent greatness in the Indian cricket team way beyond the comprehension of ordinary cricket fans such as me and you. We would never stop watching India play, no matter what we think of their performance. So lets get on with it. There is a series to lose in West Indies. Cheers !!

(Thanks a lot to Anjali for kicking me out of my laziness,,,,....)

Dot Kaun ?

A writer's block is more painful than normal constipation. While there are many churans and molasses to loosen the blockage in the gastro-intestinal tract, a thought blockage has very few laxatives. One of the toughest jobs, I find, is to come back and complete an unfinished blog entry.Many of my blog entries thus have to undergo abortion owing to the callousness of this mental obstinacy.The idea of this post was to pen some quick reviews of the websites of the leading regional parties and never has the word quick been so humiliated. But as they say, better late than never, so here it is...........


Samajwadi Party (http://www.samajwadipartyindia.com) : Its the great visionary party which has correctly identified English as the root cause of underdevelopment in India and has promised us that they will do all in their power to root out this evil.
And Computers ....oh my God....that wretched thing which is gobbling up all Indian jobs......Probably the Indian IT industry generating 60 billion USD is actually a major ISI ploy to destabilise our economy. Thank God for Mulayamji else we were all headed for certain doom. The brilliant manifesto also highlights the plight of bullocks and cows who have lost their ploughing jobs to the mean tractors and are thus ending up in the slaughter house. Now this is what we call tackling the recession by the horns. Meanwhile the General Secretary of the party Mr.Sanjay Dutt has been warned by a District Magistrate for making amorous advances towards the Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh. Mrs.Dutt, his staunchest supporter meanwhile not surprisingly is busy buying clothes in London.
The homepage of their website correctly shows the socialists of today showing the right way to the socialists of yesteryears:

Nothing of much interest within the website unless Jaya Bachchan's phone number interests you. The photo gallery has some nice quips though. For e.g one photograph shows Mr.Yadav flanked by two armed commandoes and has the heading "Words of Wisdom" with the caption "Samajawadi Party will never concile with any other party".
It does not matter that there is no word such as concile in English. He is against the whole language anyway.


Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (http://dmk.in/) - With a sincere urge to know the reason why Mr.Karunanidhi always wears dark glasses, I googled for it. The probabilities expressed ranged from a permanently rotating eye ball to a venereal disease because of which he cannot face the world eye to eye. Utter nonsense, my point is, why would a politician need a venereal disease to not be able to face the world ?
Anyway the homepage of their website seemed pretty boring and unsophisticated till something caught my attention. In much the same way that the Ramsay Brothers would have calligraphed their latest flick 'Chudail ki Dysentry', the wise designers of the DMK website too have added a similar link that reads 'Midnight Arrest' in a font seemingly dripping with blood. But the fun is when you click the link. I would not spoil your fun by describing it in words. Have a GO yourself and experience the maturity of the world's largest democracy and yes do try clicking the Skip option in the page.
The remaining sections within the website were completely outdated or irrelevant with the election manifesto of 2004 being the latest link in the chronological links.
As regards their policies, well that is not important as long as the Sri Lankan government is fighting the LTTE.


Bahujan Samaj Party (http://bspindia.org): This was the first image that greeted me on their website

Can you blame the chap Afzal Guru now ?

I was initially impressed by the honesty displayed by the party in the website when I saw downward arrows against the Leadership and Achievement links. But I soon realised that the arrows only meant the presence of more links rather than being indicative of their performance in those areas.
The party highlights a very important demographic fact below:

As you can see, according to BSP, there are billions of Untouchable poor people in the country. Now since the Iron Lady is not to be questioned unless one wants to be turned to Rust,I did some elementary mathematics. Considering that the entire population of India is around 1.2 billion, it would mean that all of us Indians would need to be Untouchables to fulfil this observation. In a sense that is quite a progressive thought which would lead to huge savings in the defense expenditure of the country because of the simple reason that No One can Touch Us now.
The website per-se is quite okay. There is all the information you want as long as the information concerns Mayawati. Rest are all 'Comming Soon'.


Biju Janata Dal - No websites. After they cunningly dumped the BJP, they are now extremely wary of any web-designers.


All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (http://www.aiadmkallindia.org) - I wonder why a regional party, with a presence in only one out of 28 states, needs to have the 'All India' tag in its name !!But then I guess the party cadres have always been motivated by bigger sized entities.

Another boring and very poorly designed website. There was such a lack of material in the site that I actually opened their manifesto and would you believe what I found in it :

Jaya Ho...Jaya Ho...!!!!


Shiv Sena (http://www.shivsena.org) Bala Saheb needs a nail-cutter immediately. The sharp finger jab at you from the homepage is not very welcoming to say the least but then what place does decorum have in Shiv Sena anyway. Again a very rudimentary website in terms of content with the picture of two Thackerays taking nearly the entire page. Four of the five links do not work and the only so called material in the site is in the form of embedded You Tube videos. What is more surprising is that the website is not in Marathi !! Some MNS workers came to know of this and damaged a few cyber cafes in protest.


Janata Dal(Secular) (http://www.janatadalsecular.org.in)
Led by a man who has the unique capability of falling asleep even in his sleep, this party is really fighting for survival in this election.

A pretty professional website though you may initially confuse it for that of a restaurant but then on second thoughts, I think, all politicians have a great talent for cooking; the common ingredient in whatever they dish out is shamelessness of course.

A visit to the Join JD(S) section would clearly eliminate you and a large chunk of population from their membership because each such aspirant must be a 'habitual wearer of hand-spun and handwoven khadi'. Now that is what we call wearing patriotism on your sleeve.The entire website has a distinct and all pervading green and a little analysis has confirmed that the colour actually started transforming to its present tinge soon after the BJP government came into power in Karnataka.

Thats it guys. Let the dance of democracy continue. I hear that Rakhi Sawant wants to judge the show and marry whoever wins it.