Coffee House

Tol Mol ke Bol

2012-01-16T16:10:00.012Z

For the last couple of days, I have been going through my Marketing books. I have been checking out the chapters on how to price a product and ruing at my gross inattentiveness during the classes in which these theories were taught. This sudden interest in this topic owes to this very interesting newspiece where a Chennai couple have sought out a sperm donor from an IIT. The news immediately sparked some dormant entrepreneurial instincts in me. If an IITian can command a sum of twenty thousand rupees for his sperms, how much should the same product be priced for a person with an REC+IIM background ?

So I opened Kotler, the Bible of Marketing to go through the basics again. With a production rate of 1000 per second (Source : The endocrinologist sister) at almost zero input cost, this is a product that challenges the very foundations of all pricing principles. We cannot follow any of the cost-oriented pricing strategies and thus concepts like break-even analysis, markup pricing etc are of little help to me.

However like every other product, it must be priced and priced rationally for it to succeed in the market. I analyse a few theoretical concepts to throw some light on this subject.

Value-Based or Cost-based pricing - This is the first choice that a seller has to make and the choice is fairly obvious given the nature of the product. With insignificant costs of production, the pricing strategy needs to be Value-based. But therein lies the catch. Value-based pricing method needs the seller to set a target price that would match the customer's perceived value of the product which becomes a tricky proposition. A good idea would be to follow a value-added pricing plan. Thus instead of a price war with competitors, one should attach value-added features and services to differentiate the offers. Maybe something like a contribution from a batchmate can go a long way in establishing market credentials of the product. I am currently in touch with a few who are interested to contribute.

Pricing as per Market : To understand this we take a little help from the concepts of economics. Now there are primarily four types of markets.

a) Pure competition - Many buyers and sellers trading in a uniform commodity and individual sellers cannot cause changes to market price.

b) Monopolistic competition - Many buyers and sellers trading over a range of prices owing to differentiated offers for different customer segments.

c) Oligopolistic competition -Few sellers who are highly sensitive to each other's pricing. Entry barriers exist for new sellers.

d) Pure monopoly - Single seller.

Of the above, though we may fantasize of an Ideal world where a pure monopoly exists with us being the single provider, in reality I think the market for our product would fall in between monopolistic and oligopolistic competition leaning slightly towards oligopolistic at this stage but with the government opening up a plethora of IITs and IIMs , the market is expected to move more towards monopolistic competition and thus as sellers, we must quickly start devising plans to differentiate our offerings.

The Price-Demand relationship - An increase in price is usually followed with a decrease in demand but to what extent is the question. That must be analysed with proper market research data and I suggest opening up a Facebook community for say IIM Sperm donors to keep record of sales. Also every donor should immediately update his Twitter account on a successful transaction to maintain a real time check on market prices. However such updates should strictly happen only when the transaction has had some commercial value attached to it.

New Product Pricing Strategy :

Kotler says that pricing strategies should change as the product passes through its life cycle. Now the life cycle of a sperm while inside the production warehouse is hardly of any interest to anybody and thus we will directly jump to the stage when he has successfully managed to come out to see the world outside the factory gates. The stimulus to see the outside world may vary greatly depending on the mood and circumstances of the factory owner. The life cycle of this product depends largely on that. If the gates were opened under the pressure of some adult content related stimuli or some fanciful thoughts interspersed by special appearances of beautiful unobtainable women, then the product is doomed from the very beginning. Inhospitable external environment, most often tissue papers, lead to immediate destruction of any commercial value of the product.

If however, the exit circumstances are enabled by the physical presence of another person of the opposite gender, then it may have a completely different cycle to follow, which this time would invariably depend on the mood of this other person. Most often than not disaster would strike again in the form of a thin plastic sheath that prevents any further transportation of the product. The product gets an unceremonious fruit-flavoured farewell.

(Note : If the product finds itself getting a vigorous rinse and then looking down a basin hole, then the circumstance leading to its predicament regretfully cannot be covered in this blog owing to its 12A rating)

Coming to the case, when the product manages to transfer itself successfully to a hospitable foreign destination. The word hospitable here is only used relatively as the acidic recipient environment allows the survival of only a couple of hundred of sperm from an enormous pool of about 300-500 million that arrive with each incoming batch. These few hundred who survive are left to shoulder the responsibility of the product. Depending on ten thousand other factors, details of which are beyond the realms of our understanding, one robust swimmer, out of those many millions that started the journey with him, may successfully swim across the complex matrix from the vagina to the cervix to the uterus and reach at the gates of the fallopian tubes where it would do what it does best. Wait ! The wait may or may nor bear fruit and the life cycle of the product again becomes dependent on factors beyond its control. The heroic journey may be cut short simply because of the timing of his visit. The sign on the gates 'No Ovulation - Come back later' brings his world crashing down and he too dies a tragic and unsung death like so many of his compatriots. The task would be left for another brave soldier from another batch who, after braving all these above mentioned obstacles, may finally meet a coy little egg at the gates and complete its Karmic cycle by fertilising it !!!

Urination on a strip thereafter may lead to congratulatory messages being exchanged or a broken nose for the factory owner. Thus discretion is supremely advised in any transaction related to the product.

Apologies for digressing from the primary intention of this blog but the above information was necessary to understand whether the price of the product should vary as per its life cycle. As per my conclusions, the pricing should remain constant due to the complex nature of the product's life cycle.

Some other very pertinent points which I think are worth considering when setting the price of the product:

Market-skimming pricing - where we charge a high price initially should be justified here as the competitive advantage is soon to be affected with the arrival of new competitors. Though some of the earlier batches who passed out in the 60's and 70's may not be much of a competition now but they cannot be completely discounted either. Also I am pretty sure that very soon, fake products would flood the market that would bring deflationary impacts on my product price.

Time pricing -where a firm may vary its price by the season, the month , the day or even the hour also is relevant here. Research shows that the demand for the product fluctuates largely based on the global economic climate. Recessionary trends that may lead to lesser than expected salaries during the placement season significantly brings down the perceived value of the product. Thus the pricing too should be need to be adjusted accordingly.

Competitor's Strategies and Prices - Kotler says , "Consumers will base their judgement's of a products value on the prices that the competitors charge for similar products ". Thus I guess an all IIT-IIM meet should be organised where the directors of all these institutes should agree upon some basic principles of pricing that would be applicable to all alumni and current students. This would ensure a level playing field for all. The products should be graded as soon as the placement season is over. The following table can be used as a guiding principle :

Recruiting Company	Product Grade
I-Banks, Management Consulting firms	AAA
PE firms	AA
FMCG firms	BB
Indian IT firms	Suspicious Quality of product

I am a little groggy after all this study. No one single theory seems to be giving me a definitive direction to my pricing strategy. Thus after considering all relevant and irrelevant literature , I have come to the conclusion that Psychological Pricing which prices a product based more on the psychology of the consumers rather than economy would be the most ideal way of pricing this product. A higher priced product comes with the natural perception of having a higher quality. So in order to shine out in the competition pool, I have decided to put up my product for auction.

The shortlisted sites are Khuljasimsim.com Bazee.com, Nilaami.in, Mastibids.com .

So all couples who are looking out for this great product, please don't miss this opportunity to buy this guaranteed product. Register yourself today and start bidding. Let you, my dear consumers, decide what the price of my product should be ! Looking forward to doing great business with you all.

Jai Hind !

Happy Birthday Bloggie !!

2012-01-12T15:20:00.003Z

My blog is six years old today. Named after the iconic Coffee House at College Street in Calcutta, I guess laziness was something that came in its DNA. Yet, 55 posts that averages to 9 posts a year is not that bad, considering that the author was recently diagnosed with chronic PAS or Posterior Adhesion Syndrome, a rare disorder that immobilizes all locomotory and sensory activities for considerable periods of time as soon as the posterior gets a resting place. Often this is diagnosed incorrectly as being a Bengali. (The symptoms may be similar but this disorder is far more severe.)

On this joyous occasion, I must also observe a minute's silence for those many thoughts that did crackle out of the brain with the enthusiasm of a Oliver Ridley hatchling, only to take the expression of a severely PMS affected woman and fizz out with a whimper without ever seeing the light of the blog. And there were very many of them. Let those fertile aborted thoughts rest in peace. Amen !

Meanwhile a quick month long trip to Scotland happened between the last post and this. The trip wasn't meant to be this quick but one can never truly qualify as being from the IT industry if he hasn't been part of a project that was scrapped when in full steam. So now here I am beaming with pride at the completeness of my mandatory IT credentials, as one fine Monday morning soon after completing a status call , we were all invited for a meeting that announced the immediate closure of the project. Just like that ! Not much work is done in the Western world when the birthday of Jesus is around the corner and when you have developments such as these, the people affected are left as directionless as a cow in a busy Indian thoroughfare. You can chew cud, you can stand in the middle of the road amidst honking cars wondering about how the universe was created or you can just smack the dog nearby with your tail for all anyone cares ! Such was my case too as no one had an idea of what to do with me. So I loitered around for some time before the think tanks realised that the financial impact of my liability was not helping the recessionary economy at all and decided to send me back. But not before I celebrated the 25th Dec birthday. And boy is the birthday celebrated with pomp and show !! Not a single shop was open, not a single house had any fancy lights hanging outside, not a single public transport vehicle on the streets !! Much similar to a curfew after a riot in our country ! Its a private celebration they say.. Wierd , we say considering this is the only thing close to a festival that these guys have !

Anyway a friend from yonder years had come over to share our mutual melancholy and with two more of her friends , we embarked on a climb up Arthur's Seat, a 825 feet hill in Edinburgh that provides some exotic views of the beautiful city. But planning and execution are two wicked step sisters who rarely see eye to eye. Nature that day was in the mood to play frisbee and typical to her playful nature, chose us humans as flying disks. So strong were the winds that it was next to impossible to stand aground and if you belong to the gender with not very heavy hanging organs then God save you on such days.

But we did manage to scale almost to the top where we met a not-very-cloth-friendly Canadian girl. In other circumstances, I may well have spent a moment admiring her visible contours but in those extreme chilly and windy conditions, where my features were slowly but surely turning Mongoloid as the photo to the left confirms, I just left the thought float away with the wind. Some people just don't like wearing clothes and that's that. We were led in this campaign by a very spunky lady of our group, who braving these extreme conditions was more than willing to lead us to the top. It seemed King Arthur's spirit had possessed this otherwise sweet lady and boy was she determined to go and check out the seat !! Her tresses, which kept swinging around like a lost compass needle in frantic search of the north, complimented her possessed state and dare we not have followed her ! Nature however intervened our glorious march and just a little distance from the summit, we decided that birthdays were better celebrated where Gods were not taking their Fluid Mechanics practical exams

The following day was Boxing day, a day traditionally meant to torture the male species. Comes camouflaged as Sales in Fashion stores ! With the friend from yonder years also in a mood to celebrate her womanhood, I had to tag along of course. Thankfully other than the one occasion when she managed to get lost in the crowd with the cellphone obviously left at home and her having no clue where that home was, it was not that torturous a day out. What I couldn't help noticing was an Indian gentlemen who cut a very sorry figure of himself in his desperate attempts to keep track of that wandering kid, the other one pooping in the trolley, those thirteen packets overflowing with female and kid clothing and the red water bottle. As consolation for all his effort , his wife had bought him a bright yellow T-Shirt that said "My wife cutest !" As the happy family made their way back home, with the wife cheerfully chattering away on the phone informing her mother in Ernakulum of the day's steals, the gentleman walked with an expression of having lost a lot more than a mere few hundred pounds on that cold Monday afternoon . "Honey I love you na", she said. He smiled. On his cell phone he opened the Facebook page of his only remaining bachelor friend who had just uploaded pictures of a Christmas in Goa with a few scantily clad Ukrainian ladies. He clicked the Like option and sighed.

I flew back to India in another couple of days and finally saw the T3 terminal which sure is a treat to watch. An Indian origin smart looking female bearing no signs of being married and carrying an American passport lamented about the fact that I being an Indian too had to queue in the common line for immigration clearance. When good looking females pass an opinion , I always agree and this one had an American passport !! Are you kidding me ...I nearly fell on my trolley trying to convey how much I agreed with her. Our paths were destined to diverge in a couple of minutes but her sad expectant eyes did convey to me how lonely she was ! Alas I had a connecting flight and she a kid !

A fortnight later, I am still put in India while my current bosses continue to figure out something that my previous ones have burnt much oil thinking over, but to not much avail ! How can they make any use of me ! Let them take their own sweet time. Its 2012. The world is coming to an end anyway so why bother much !

I had started this blog inspired by mydayzwithmyself, a blog maintained by a fellow IIMCian, which he in those days updated regularly with large doses of his typical humour. As I see his blog too hasn't seen much activity of late. Blame it all, we may on Blackberrys and Androids but then I'm sure every blogger wants to continue writing.

So here is raising a toast on my blog's sixth birthday.

I want to write more. I hope to write more. Maybe I will write more.

Cheers !

Photo Credit : The spunky lady - Divya Iyer

Sazaa-e-Namak Paani

2011-11-04T11:08:00.005Z

This time the reason for my break from blogging is quite serious. With a heavy heart I must announce here that I have just been released from prison. This piece of news must come as quite a shock to many of you but it unfortunately is true. To arrest your alarm, I owe all of you an explanation here to explain my current circumstances.

I was jailed on the 18th of August soon after I came back from a quick visit to home on the Independence day long weekend. Little was I to know how my own independence was to be brutally cut short soon after. The rude jolt came in the form of a shrill phone call on a cozy afternoon when completely unawares of my impending fate, I was busy sharpening my skills in online archery. (Angry Birds was blocked in my office and no matter how angry we were at this, the policies remained unchanged and thus the game beyond our reach ). To come back to the point, the call was from my manager who wanted to see me. Now this itself was a disturbing little thing which sowed the seeds of doubt in my mind. Over the past three odd months, we had developed a very beautiful relationship - one in which we saw as less of each other as possible. In times when the resource utilization was best left undiscussed, it was a mutually agreeable unsaid arrangement.
As I made my way to his desk in the 8th floor, I kept wondering what the reason could be behind the unexpected invitation.
Could it be what I was thinking ? But how could it be so ? It was unimaginable that it would catch up with me so soon . Not after all the effort that I had put in the last year and a half in the desperate hope to never ever tread those God forbidden paths again. But the shadows of the past are lengthier than we think my friends. It was time to face the truth.
"We have identified a project for you. "

Seven harmless little words which came together like a slap in the face. I was just getting so comfortable in the post MBA do-nothing phase but someone just got jealous I guess !
To add salt to injury, I was informed that the project was housed in an ODC. To those unfamiliar with this obnoxious little term, ODC stands for Offshore Development Centre which is an area in an IT office that is earmarked exclusively for any particular client. The client has a free hand to impose any restriction within the confines of this area in the name of security policies. Thus if they were to ask to us to present ourselves in yellow pants and red shirts with blue shoes, we being the typical accommodating Indian service providers would go a step further and add a cowboy cap and maybe orange feathery mufflers to go along with it. Well this particular client was not so much bothered with our attire as it was paranoid with our cell phones and Internet activity. To enter the premises of one's own bloody office, any cell phone that had a camera was required to be deposited to the security chaps who manned the doors 24/7. You would go crazy answering to the daily question " Sir phone aache ? " but the buggers wont relent.

Thus started the jail term. Internet services were completely blocked. Can you even imagine a life without Google but one such existed within the confines of those walls. My brand new Blackberry had to be forsaken for a camera less and a lot many things less Nokia 1800 which however introduced me to a world which I had thought was long lost- The world of the great Kumar Sanu. With FM being the only means of relaxing in an otherwise claustrophobic environment, I was amazed to see (hear) that Kumar Sanu numbers were not only alive but thriving in Kolkata FM channels. It was impossible to surf through all the FM channels at any point in time and not find at least two that were playing old nasal Sanu hits. Bengal does not forget its heroes..So true!!
The authorities were so stringent with data regulations that they thought it wise to not even install Microsoft Office in our PCs. All Excel based flash games faded into oblivion and with it my hopes of being a great Online Archer.( Ricochet Kills Version 2.0 - Just FYI for those interested) So the only thing that the PC hosted was a link to a remote machine that resided in a foreign country and no prizes for guessing which one. So technically I was actually working in US. Aur lagao H1 par restrictions...Aur karo L1 reject.... But Hum desi log tumhare wohan kaam kar ke rahenge !! Karlo jo karna hai.

The prison term soon started to take its toll on me. With no Internet connectivity and continuous barrage of Bengali radio advertisements that were hell bent on making me buy just about everything from umbrellas to advice on sexual issues, I started showing signs of depression. I would go back home and watch Rakhi Sawant's talk show on TV. Yes my condition was that serious and it was then that I decided to do something about it.

I write this blog to say that I did. A few changes in life have followed. I have escaped from prison (read : changed my job). I have landed in Mumbai once again and today morning did something that I always dreaded. Travelled to office in a local train during peak office hours !!! The fact that I am writing this post shows that I survived. In fact it wasn't bad at all. This city makes you a survivor.

A new chapter has thus begun this week. Will keep you posted as the story unfolds.
Till then have fun !!!
I will miss the city of Calcutta nonetheless. Hope to write about that sometime.

Kya hua......Tera vaada

2011-07-18T15:02:00.004Z

Two months have passed since I rejoined back corporate life following my MBA and boy have I taken the world by storm !! Cutting edge strategy work, shadowing the executive board and winning a couple of top notch deals....All in this short span of time !!!!

Yeah and I also am Brad Pitt .....Read on.

It all started with an induction week in Pune as a part of a batch of MBA graduates, the average age of which was greatly distorted by me being in it. Apart from those excruciatingly boring speeches about company capabilities by equally bored gentlemen , some very interesting activities formed a part of the program. As a part of team building exercises, was one where we were supposed to lie flat on the floor with eyes closed and make weird noises that were to depict different kinds of laughter. As the room steadily started resembling the venue of the annual World Hyena Conference, I wondered whether all those foul sounding noises was actually aimed at me. A person with 7 years of IT experience , frustrated with his job turns to an MBA from the best in the country to get out of the mess and after spending close to 2 million rupees and a very fertile year of his life, comes back to join the same rut !!! Bravo... Bravo I heard and then the howls grew louder and more sarcastic.

And then I had a second thought, that maybe it isn't directed at me alone ...Here was a batch of 30 odd MBA grads from prestigious colleges hired by an organisation that for certainly had the word Business Consulting in its name but no matter how hard the business owners tried to convince us (or probably themselves) about the consulting aspects of the business, there really was none . This was more a case of selling TT balls in a Rasogolla tin with the label - Made in an Indian Institute of Management !!!

The howls of laughter suddenly sounded like chants of Ulloo Banaya !! Ulloo Banaya !! and those expectations of doing cutting edge management consulting work died at a very premature age. The face of that HR who had recruited me suddenly floated by. He had a sly smile !!

A morning of Salsa camp with an instructor in very tight fitting clothes and a God gifted figure helped relieve the uneasiness a bit but it only confirmed the fact that my dancing abilities are best and probably only appreciated by equally drunk gentlemen. It was sheer decency on the part of my dancing partner that saved me from being physically assaulted by her for repeatedly stomping her feet.

Coming to accommodation, sharing rooms is something I don't mind at all, provided the physiology of the roommate allows for the appreciation of an extra orifice. But my organisation was not very keen on my interests as I found myself holed up with another chap in a very smallish room. So we turned to that one thing that offers solution to so many bachelor problems. Yes, Beer. And the one week of induction passed off peacefully thereafter.

Next destination and place of posting was the City of Joy. I have always wondered which this city alone got this name when Kingfishers Strong is available in every city of this country.

For those under the illusion that Gujarat and Mizoram are dry states, a visit to the nearby asylum for a quick checkup and maybe a week long stay is highly recommended. By the way, if you do manage the visit, then probably you could do me a favour and ask the HR junta (who surely must be permanent residents there) as regards what was the sense in having an induction planned at a location, 1841 kilometers away from the posting location !!!

However, this did give me an opportunity to touch base with some long lost faces from the engineering era, which only cemented the fact that the disorders that those 4 years introduce into your system are unfortunately and fortunately, permanent.

Now if the room in the guest house in Pune was small , the one we got in Calcutta was probably meant to house prisoners for the night who have escaped jail and were being transported to a higher security facility the very next morning. We were also welcomed by a rodent of a size that for a moment made me mistake him for a fellow new joinee. The housekeeper negated that. In this moment of disbelief, one of my colleagues thought it prudent to mention that some of hisbatch mates recruited by one of the two cola giant were received at the airport in a stretch limousine. The irony just seeped in further.

Office started a day later. The person I was asked to report to curiously had to leave for US that very day and to think of it I had barely spoken to him for five minutes over phone ! Its amazing what measures people have to take to avoid my company ! Nonetheless someone else filled in to show me around and introduced me with fellow team members. Of course there was no seat allocated to me but there was promise of one in a couple of days.

The start surely was encouraging !!!!

To be continued ....................

Nearly an article..but

2011-05-16T01:44:00.003Z

Just over a month since that eventful day when India lifted the Cup and I lifted my degree at my convocation. It has been an arduous five weeks of complete joblessness since then. With a joining date ensuring that everyone in the batch sees a credit of their first post-MBA salary before I even start my first day back in Corporate life, I have given laziness a whole new meaning in these days. Laziness and me have always been very good buddies. We understand each other very well and communicate at the right wavelength and this post, which I started writing when Osama still had twenty days to live stands testimony to this fact.

Okay what can a person in my situation do to make himself useful at home, a place which runs just perfectly fine in my absence ? Fans have been cleaned, a leaking stove repaired, windows sparkled and attempted to learn driving for exactly 2 hours. Now there is this thing about driving cars that I have come to accept. It is just not my cup of tea. Three Mirrors- 2 eyes, Three foot pedals - 2 feet, a machine certainly not as per God's design, crazy fellow drivers breathing down your neck, scratching your bottom and honking incessantly as if he is in a hurry to go and scratch the bottom of another as soon as you make way for him. Its complete chaos and I in all my wisdom have decided to not add to it.

Now a week remains for me to start work and here I stand with a degree from one of the most reputed business schools of India. So what difference has this degree brought in me as a professional?

*******************************************************************************

This is as much as I could write in a month and a half. So instead of sacrificing this unsaid thought and as a tribute to my laziness, I will post this in my blog. Office starts in an hour. A new journey towards possibly newer destinations. Will have to wait and see.

Convocation or WC Finals ?

2011-04-02T06:11:00.001Z

For all those nights spent solving quant problems to clear CAT, for those train journeys at 4 in the morning to Baroda to take SIM CATs, for all those days spent in frustration at not getting/converting calls, for the effort it took to renew interest in MBA while working late nights in office, for that 3 week back pain that helped me take GMAT, for those hours and hours spent in writing and then rewriting application essays, for the tryst with failures again and then rising up for one last time, for the 10k flight to Delhi to attend interviews, for that one email from IIM Cal that changed my life, for the last one year that has given me the pains of being a student again and all the fun and frolick and nightouts and exams...yes for all of these, I choose my MBA Convocation today over World Cup Finals. May the best team win !! Cheers !

The ship turning in.....

2010-11-13T06:01:00.014Z

A week into our internships and I have a deep urge to pour out my state of mind. But before that, what this internship is all about, needs to be told.

Like most things in IIM Calcutta, this concept of having a one month internship as a component of this 1 year Tandoor Grill Course, too was driven by a Bheezeeon (some outside Calcutta spell it incorrectly as Vision). The Bheezeeon was to make five international friends. Yes Five. Not One, Not Six but Five. So in order to implement this PentaFriend plan, a study tour was organised collaborating with international management schools whose name if searched in Google usually come in the second or third pages of the search results. Three years down the line, not many friends were made so this idea was discarded with our batch and the Bheezeeon got confined to getting an internship done from just about anywhere. Gorakhpur Brick Factory would do just as fine as Bain . That we are accepted in neither is another story all together.

So there we were , a bunch of 44 scrambling to get internship offers from whosoever had a space to offer in their office premises for a month. Hurt at the unceremonious manner in which we shelved the PentaFriend proposal the college offered no support at all in this process of securing our internships. Just FYI, an all-AC 85 room temporary structure was erected over two months to cater to the summer internship process for the PGP folks. But of course the comparison does not hold. We are PGPEX you remember, guys with an average work experience of 9+ years, people who know the nuances of the industry, appreciate the courses so much better and of course pay shit loads of money for the course. We do not need these facilities nor the support of the institutes, do we ? We are way above all these trivial things as meagre summer internship offers from UBS, Merryl Lynch, JP Morgan, Credit Suisse, McKinsey, A T Kearney and the lot.

Anyway so here we are, a week into our internships, splintered across the country, working primarily on projects that require intensive researching, data analysis, corporate strategy formations, market entry decisions, new business proposals etc.
He he he ....Yeah sure !!

Four of us are in one of the top Indian IT firms within the Process Excellence division of their BPM department. Okay no giggles allowed here. Blogspot is naturally turning the word Process Excellence into bold each time I type it.)

Our office which also houses the corporate office is situated in an aptly named place called Sarjapur (HeadGoPur). We all know how Indian IT firms work best when employees keep their heads and brains back home.
Now there are certain things that you would never want to see in your life again. People swiping their ID cards while entering the office in the morning is one of them. The moment I saw droves of people queuing up to mark their attendance in the swiping machine, some very painful memories flooded me. Eight months it was since I had last seen something as painful as this. And it does not stop there. Our one-month-employer, I guess must be CMM Level 5 in Swipe Usage .
So once an employee has marked his attendance, that goes into the record books as his/her time of entering office. The next swipe which would happen when he enters his wing would also be recorded marking the time of entering his actual work place. The difference in the two swipes would thus determine the time one has spent devouring Dosas and Idlys and gossipping in the office cafeteria- an important matrix for the project manager indeed. In addition every swipe out from the wing, other than the last swipe out of the day, must be paired with a swipe in. This would check tailgating and more importantly determine the time spent outside doing non-billable activities. Another important KPI for the manager.
Thank God that we are yet to be given our cards which however comes with its own set of inconveniences. With both the washroom and the coffee vending machine being outside the wing, some natural biological requirements are held in check till someone kindly opens the door for us.

Now as regards our project , well, lets say we have had a very fruitful week and there are two people whom I would like to sincerely thank for this , Sergey M. Brin and Lawrence E. Page. These two individuals to whom the Indian IT industry owes a major share of their profits have blessed us too with their guidance. Lets avoid the details of the project, as discussing them might be in violation of my Intellectual Property Rights.

Another aspect of this one week which deserves mentions is the awesome food that we have been having. One experience surpassing the other. Basically the Bangalore cuisine is pretty simple. A red coloured paste which is of course Andhra style forms the base. Now you may involve animal pieces or poor vegetables in it and you got yourself a dish. What happens to your Gastro intestinal tract following this consumption is also best left unsaid and unheard. Lets just say that the Tissue paper industry has been doing good business in part of the country.

Such has been the week of our temporary re-entry into corporate life, a life which however much we wish to avoid awaits us in some months and to say the least , the dress rehearsal has begun on an interesting note.
Joy Baba GoogleNath !!

Atithi Devo Bhava

2010-08-13T13:24:00.037Z

A much talked about event in management school circles is the IIMC-XLRI sports meet. Now I know why. Undergrad education in an REC has its advantages. Along with the degree, one comes out of the gates with a lexicon - a compilation of the learning of many generations of bright and wise minds. And deep learnings they are, about humans and their profound relationships. The uninitiated call them expletives.
But if all these days, I was carrying a dictionary, the sports meet gifted me an encyclopedia. Here is what happened.

Lets start from the beginning.
Friday 31st of July, 2010: The campus was abuzz with enthusiasm. Banners of the genre shown below and the shrill of Vuvuzellas shattered the tranquility, creating a feverish pitch around the campus.
(Ahem- that 34-5 you see is a mere statistic showing the distribution of overall tournament wins between the two institutes over the years. Who is 34 is just anybody's guess)
After some prolonged but necessary check of credentials at the gate, by around 10 pm, the guests started entering the campus. The banner read :

Our campus is a beautiful one and we take pride in showing it to outsiders. The route to the registration desk thus ended up being slightly longer. The guests had got their drums and drummers in an attempt to create their own din. Pity, there was no event for these skilled chaps. They would surely earn fortunes playing in marriage parties. We do give credit where it is due.

A Howrah bridge divides our campus into two halves, one half housing the PGP folks and the other us, along with the faculty. As our dear Colonel has aptly put it , it was the commonality of the spirit of the two halves that was in full display when receiving the guests.
We prepared Mashaals and got fireworks as our bit of the contribution from PGPEX. Later we added a few impromptu welcome sonnets of own to add on to the huge list already in existence. As you would understand, none of those sonnets could pass the eligibility criteria to be printed here.The aptly named hostel, Annexe was the chosen spot for the registrations.
The stage was set and so were we .

The actual reception ceremony soon began as the XL junta started streaming in, and chaos and mayhem procreated in gay abandon. Imagine a 1500 crowd screaming at the top of its voice. Add the influence of alcohol and you got yourself a party. A big party with firecrackers bursting where they ought not to, human relations being bartered thick and fast and the mere mirth of being a student. A human chain on either side of the exit corridor ensured that each and everyone of the guests got individual attention as they moved out. It was fun.

The first event was supposed to start at 2 am in the morning with Softball and Tennis. Just to ensure that the guests could make use of the morning freshness after their surely tiring journey from Jamshedpur. Such cordiality is also extended when IIMC visits the XL campus and it is this bonhomie that makes the event such a super success. The Rain God was in a bad mood and heaven relieved itself of many a cat and dog. All events were cancelled for the night.

We reached back to our hostels and realised that some of the XL junta had been housed there. One of them came searching for water in my room. Some of his other friends also were thirsty.
15 bottles of beer at 4 am in morning to quench their thirst and ours.
I went missing after some time and a search party checked ditches and drains but failed to find me. I was later found sleeping in one of the rooms, sharing the bed with a person of gender not to be associated with my sexual orientation.

Obviously Saturday started late but we missed nothing as the overnight downpour had messed up most of the schedule.
Tennis is one of the prestigious events and we had added interest in it as we had our very own representation from PGPEX there. That she is a former national level player helped. In short, the female on the other side of the net was butchered. Sledging from the opposition camp was hard and intense but there was little they could do to stop the bleeding. In the parallel basketball court, our men's team stream rolled theirs and before the guests could lick their wounds, our women's team smashed their counterparts too. The football team returned from their match. 4-0 in our favour !!
The unique feature of any game was the interruptions that happened after every fifth minute. The friction of sporting rivalry often reached tipping point and all it resulted in was two groups of men rushing at each other's throats baying for the other's blood. Only to disperse in a couple of minutes whereafter the games resumed and the cycle followed. Encyclopedia got new chapters at each such creative intervals.

A few of us who did not have their marketing project presentations that afternoon filled the gallery and soaked in the atmosphere. We had our own small contributions to make to the happenings as well, you see. And we certainly did not disappoint. Knowledge grows only when shared. The women's basketball team from XL may have lost the match but they gained so much more from our sideline discussions (primarily one-sided) with them.
Men's tennis was probably only of the two events, (the other being badminton) when the guests tried to prove the below point wrong .
Injury to our chap and lashing rains overnight led to a hung result. To be fair, the XL chaps showed a lot of gumption. In the background, chants and poems eulogizing relations among family members were bartered at will, defying the basic laws of supply and demand. Supply obviously far exceeding demand.

We had to present our project on selling TV over mobile phones the following day and so we took a break while an alternate team who had missed the day's proceedings filled in for us. The girls softball which we missed was equally Fab(ia), I hear.

Dinner, Beer break, Excessive rains.

2 am - Women's Badminton. The atmosphere was curiously polite with measured sledging. We lost, despite the heroics of one of our multi-talented player pursuing her Fellowship here and needless to say, her Fellowship of admirers saw a quantum boost during the games. She surely was one of the players of the tournament for us.

3 am- Mens Singles badminton. Superb start by both players. Excitement builds. Rain drips from the roof onto the court. Dampener. Relationships exchanged with more intensity. Bonhomie over smoke, the regular and incensed. Rains continue unabated.
We call it a day. The matches happen later in the night and XL save some face by winning them.

Rains played spoilsport with most of the remaining events including the much awaited cricket but all in all it was a grand experience to be a part of. Exhilarating and wholesome entertainment. Hats off to the organising committee who managed to stage a wonderful event in the face of an inclement weather. The spirit surely rose above the elements.
"Atithi Devo Bhava" - Guest is God, is a concept integral to our Indian culture and ethos. And I'm sure each and every one of the 250 odd XLRites who visited the campus during the 2 day event would have no reason to feel that they were treated any lesser. We made every attempt to live true to our traditions in letter, spirit and vocabulary. The final scoreline of events that read 13-3 in favour of IIMC stands testimony to the fact. I mean even God would not have expected them to win 3 events !!

The night after, was the celebration party. I have spoken enough. Let pictures do the talking.

Cheerio !!

Photographs Courtesy : Sameer Karkhanis, Utkalika Badu, Hriddhi

Dancing to the tunes of management

2010-06-14T17:59:00.020Z

Education, said somebody, is the progressive discovery of one’s ignorance. In the last couple of months, the pace of this discovery has been so scorching that often the poor ego was left severely bruised and hurt. But then I discovered something important, the joy of collective pain. The sinking feeling after each academic disaster is often assuaged when you see the majority of your fellow mates sinking along with you. Management , what I understand after the completion of first term is all about having as many people as possible with you when sinking. From this definition, I have not done too bad.
Another learning of prime importance is that when you know no shit about something, you might as well change the definitions as I have just done above. In the corporate world, there is a term for it -Thought Leadership.

As the term progressed, the class too evolved greatly in character as individuals and groups started blooming with their own unique traits. While some sought (seek) the answers of life in class, some were (are) more interested in answering them. Common ground often is never reached nor sought. That too has a terminology - Rich diversity of batch. A subset of this diverse batch is the following :

The Band of Brothers (with No Sisters) - A conglomerate of individuals held together strongly by the bonds of grapes and barley who believe that the greatest discovery of mankind is the discovery of the process of fermentation. They invariably represent the second category mentioned above and some even claim to receive their answers directly from the Buddha. (Attempts at group discussion for academic purposes within this group have proven to be hopelessly futile for obvious reasons.)

There have of course been quite a few deep learnings and important events since the last post, some of which are described below :

Jargonology - The reason management education is so costly is because it is here that you are introduced to terms and definitions which twist and turn the muscles of the brain so bad, that when appropriately used, an antagonistic audience would be compelled to cede ground. If they are still not convinced then you are equipped here with a rich repetoire of world famous theories to further substantiate your views. The term Bullshit is believed to have originated from such rich discussions. But one should be careful in its usage as the higher one goes up the corporate ladder, the more is the chance of interacting with people talking in this same bovine language.
So next time , if you hear a person use terms such as Cognitive Evaluation Theory, Fiedler's Model of Leadership, Economies of Scale, Multi Divisional Organisational Structure etc etc, have pity on him. He must be repaying a hefty bank loan.

Theory of the Raised Hand - This is a unique theory that claims to solve any management problem. No matter what the complexity of the issue, you just have to ask people to raise their hands and depending on which direction the majority of hands are pointing, the decision can be taken. The basic logic behind this is that, some would invariably faint from the combined stink of the armpits. Works very well in boardrooms I hear. Has been helpful in our class as well to sort out contentious issues.

I was not born theory : This feeling hit all of us after the Financial Reporting and Analysis (FRA) examination where we were asked to balance some cash flow statements. Never has the word balance seemed more alien than on that day. This subject that had tormented us throughout the term simply deep FRAied us in the exam. A scalded behind is all that I could bring home from that course.
Some who had their birthdays during the term had it comparitively easier as they had already been subjected to such feelings before through vicious attacks of cake smacking on their faces. Owing to this increasingly violent trend, many have decided to postpone their birthdays till the next year.

Are you understanding ? : Often you would not, but the key is to pretend that you do and 'meaningfully' participate in the class. Unfortunately, dozing off is not counted as a participative process which gives people like us a serious disadvantage. Other than that, just opening your mouth (yawning excluded), tearing apart a classmate's argument or his shirt or his dignity all seem to be contributing towards meaningful class participation. Its a big bad world outside and this is where we sharpen our skills of survival, provided of course that we are not mauled here itself.

Some other titbits :

One of my greatest achievements (read joke) of life - An A+ in Probability (The environmental factors played a part of course). For the remaning subjects , its the familiar story of Kabhi to Nazar milao, Kabhi to kareeb aao with A grades.

After three failed attempts to enter Tantra , the happening disc in town, due to gender related issues, a few of us finally managed entry owing to the benevolence of a couple of female classmates and the perseverance and belief of one gentleman from the Band of Brothers mentioned above. Some night to remember that was, whatever portion I remember of it, that is. Include a trip on an open tempo through the midst of the city and it was a memorable weekend for the student in each one of us.

The excel sheet with the bills that followed was equally forgettable !!

There is a certain Pyarelal who does the washing and ironing of clothes and every cloth that he takes for washing comes back with a permanent mark of D12, my cell..er room number. Imprisonment is here to stay.

The two PGP batches are now in full strength in campus making for healthy peeks at civilisation. Those like me whose marital status still reads Free have our tasks cut out if we are to make any use at all of this status.

As I write this piece, the second term has started in full steam. In the very first week, a barrage of case studies greeted us with all ferocity leaving most of us quite shaken. While the characters in the cases fish in Montana, we have been left to fish in unchartered waters. Time alone would tell where the sail next takes us.

Entrapped

2010-05-02T07:53:00.008Z

So the ice broke and also a music system remote. RIP my friend; at least you had a quick death.

Years ago on a visit to a zoo, a memory was permanently sketched in my mind- the sight of a chicken in a sleeping python’s cage. That same chicken has been visiting me frequently in my dreams over the past one week and a sense of brotherhood seems to be developing between the two of us. Another fellow mate, 'Bijoy' has identified our situation with that of flies that get attracted to the shine of these insect electrocuting machines.

Very Profound indeed.

The classes have started encroaching to timings when a person looks much better with a pint of beer in hand. But no, you have instead to understand whether a damned construction supervisor’s wages should be accounted for, while calculating the fixed asset value as per some god forsaken Accounting Standard. Some numerically challenged person like me named Millie had botched up her balance sheet big time but there was no reason that I should get the same for rectification. My feeble attempts to reach at the correct figures and its atrocious degree of variation from what was the actual solution was not very boosting for the morale. The one skill that engineering had taught me well was the ability to copy-paste and that skill alone had helped me maintain a continued salary inflow over the last seven years in IT. I sincerely hope that I get to use this universally usable skill to tide over this attempt at management education. After all reinventing the wheel serves no purpose to the society, does it?

We also went through our first surprise quiz on Microeconomics. More surprising than the quiz was someone asking for an extra sheet when all I had filled in were my name and roll number! In fact those were the only two items for which I had genuine answers but thanks to some wise decision on my part as regards the seating arrangement that day, I was inspired in a few answers to the problems. The seating arrangement awaits evaluation once the answers come in.

The PGPEX Chairman addressed the class for the first time and it was heartening to finally see a head that oscillated along the Y-axis to our suggestions instead of the by the now familiar No-No-No-No-No that we got as an answer to any request directed to his next door office. Applying the two negatives theory might just work there. For example :

Us - “Sir, we absolutely do not want any printers in the hostels”
Reply : “No-No-No-No-No”

Us - “Sir, we have pledged not to bring vehicles to the campus"
Reply: “No-No-No-No-No”

Us - “Sir, we will positively not use a classroom on weekends for consulting club meetings”
Reply: “No-No-No-No-No”

Communication training continues. But they do not teach theories such as the Some-Alcohol-No-Spouse theory which has a profound influence on communication abilities. Leave a man with some beer and assure him that his wife would not be in the vicinity and check out the amazing communication channels that then open up. The party last week stood testimony to this remarkable piece of study.

Two new faculty faces entered the classroom. The very interesting Prof for Stats could well have an alternate profession as a marriage counsellor considering his unique ability to evaluate any aspect of life through the prism of marriage. As regards bachelors, someone opined that its our wives-to-be that are controlling our actions. Not something that will go down well with Ma.
The other class on learning Advanced Excel is an experience in discontinuos education. What needs to be taught seems to arrive in small packets of data after long intervals and the class goes into a state of slowmotion every now and then. People are utilising this time of packet drops for sanity checks (read, Gtalk and Facebook)

The weekend arrived and with it came the month end but not the SMS from the bank which confirmed credit of the dear friend, Salary. I am so missing you, my friend. I know I had been harsh upon you and time and again criticised you for your abysmal growth rate but now that you are no longer here, I feel your absence very strongly. May we unite soon and have a stronger bond in future.

Baa Baa Black sheep

2010-04-24T09:10:00.004Z

The alarm went off at 7 in the morning. The early morning brain convinced me that the alarm was playing up and I kept snoozing it for a good half an hour more before the reason for this unkind deviation of routine dawned upon me with a sudden ferocity. Classes were to start in less than an hour !!!

This was it then, the culmination of all those hours and hours spent correcting sentences and solving mango-apple problems for GMAT, those endless sessions of writing essays and then rewriting them all over again, the butterfly picnic in the stomach before the admission interviews, the agony of the name not featuring in the first list and then finally the thrill of that one email from the PGPEX office that left me unemployed and poorer by 1.4 million rupees!!
The alarm had not malfunctioned. It was just time.

The orientation session the day before was fairly insipid with run of the mill speeches by the who's who of the faculty and administration. The only speech that evinced some interest was not surprisingly that of the Placement Coordinator. His tone however went unnaturally down when reading the placement stats for the batch that just passed out. Like everything else, lets blame it on the Americans not paying money for homes they bought.

Meanwhile we were all getting used to the life at IIM Calcutta. Hectic activity could be seen in the Cooperative Store managed by Gopida. From cycles to hangars to bedsheets to buckets, he sold everything and at brisk pace. I also squeezed in a request for my internship at his store just in case !
Nothing however matched the twists and turns that came with the Airtel phone connectivity. Guided by the most experienced shoulder in our batch who managed to get the Airtel chap in campus on a sweltering Calcutta Sunday afternoon (!!!), we played hard and counter negotiated almost every offer that the guy had to make. He came back on Monday with some new ammunition to fight in the form of compulsory ECS. Gopida rushed in on his bike and gave everybody a hassle-free prepaid connection which got activated immediately !
His fan club added some new members.

The grind began with a class on Financial Reporting and Analysis and the enthusiasm and excitement of getting back to the classroom after all these years of educational celibacy was all too evident. The scheduled one-and-a-half hour lecture stretched well beyond. The enthusiasm was thankfully checked by a sumptous lunch from Bapida's super efficient mess, the Kolkata heat and a subject called Microeconomics where most of us reacquainted with an old friend - The classroom sleep.
The lecture that followed was on IT and most of us were on familiar domain or so we thought. IT jargons flew thick and fast but mostly it was a good exercise for the brain to come out of the Nomenclature Disorder as the entire class reintroduced themselves and we got another chance to link faces with names.

Day II brought some interesting subjects and professors along with. There was some serious digging on concepts of mathematics, a subject which has chosen to block me from its friend's list for quite some time now and the few more lectures that has followed has confirmed that I am still not in its good books. From the safe looking set theory, the class has moved on to dangerous domains of permutation-combination and calculus. I could hear thick mention of that Probability word, an area where my probability of getting problems correct has always had a limit at zero.

Two courses on behavioural sciences. If the feeling of being a student had not sunk in as yet, the professor for Organisational Behaviour clarified all such doubts with strict instructions of being barred from attending classes if even a minute, were we to be late. The result is that the class is at full strength five minutes before the scheduled start and of course there are no restrictions on when she can start or end the classes. So now if this class has been standardised to a duration of one hour forty minutes, I understand that its all a matter of 'Perception'.
The class on Managerial communication (Oral) has proved to be quite interesting too as one would expect. The disadvantages of having a name with the first English alphabet came visiting earlier than expected and by the end of the week, I was done with my first 25 mark business presentation. So i have completed 0.375 credits !! Neat.

The ice breaking party is scheduled for today evening. Not that ice has not been broken already. But its always advisable to break more ice as the heat builds up around you.
So Cheers to the first week and the days to come !!
Bring them on, I say !!

The new journey...

2010-04-16T17:04:00.005Z

IIMC Day 1 -- Nursing a bruised shoulder after carrying the Term 1 books from the Admission office to Hostel room. The room is air-conditioned and the air conditioner works !!!! A magnanimous 5 day break in the next one year !!! Classes start from Tuesday after an orientation on Monday. Orientation much required.

Ominous ......very Ominous....Keeping the faith
More later.....

The Metamorphosis of the guy with the computer but no brains to run it

2010-02-11T16:21:00.017Z

Why do we store experience Under our Belts ?
Of course I understand that experience in that portion of one's anatomy would be something to boast about, but to store every other experience there can be quite risky. For e.g. 'He has proven experience of sharpening blades under his belt' ..........Not a comfortable thought at all.
Wiktionary gives us the following example of its usage.
"He got off to a shaky start, but with a few months of experience under his belt, he kept up handily with the veteran employee."
If you interpret this sentence any differently from what I did, then I assume that you are reading this blog from some monastery or convent or may be this blog was opened using google.cn
The reason why I at all got bothered with this phrase is that I wanted to start this post saying that I would soon have seven years of IT experience under my belt and the thought just kept deviating from there. Apologies.

Seven years is a generation in the IT industry and considering the fact that I have remained glued to one single company throughout this duration does not speak highly of my employability. In my defence, I blame it completely on my Bengali laziness and my inability to generate any interest at all in what I am paid for.
Time and again on weekends, when there is absolutely nothing to do or watch, I have often wondered about where is it that I belong ? This thought invariably lulls me to sleep and soon it is Monday again and for the next five days, there is no space for such silly questions.
More complicated questions keep me busy and almost all translate to "What the fuck went wrong? By when will it be fixed ?"
IT is very interesting in this sense. There is always fire in your pants with little or no water to douse it. Petrol…yes and provided in ample measures by anyone senior to you.
No matter what CMM level your organisation claims to be or what the excellence of the operations you may have in your processes, something or the other will invariably fail after the delivery. That is the golden rule of all IT deliveries.
In IT contracts of bygone days, there used to be a Service Level Agreement of FTR (First Time Right) delivery. The very mention of the term brings out wild guffawing and hysterical laughter in IT circles. Speaking of Capability Maturity Model Levels, these certifications for a company are often misunderstood as indicative of its quality standards. The truth cannot be farther from it. The various processes within, were created by visionary people with the sole intention of generating work where none is required. It gives the management something to keep themselves busy with or seemingly at least. So the whole bunch of people who actually bring in no revenue to the organisation spend their entire days creating documents and generating reports of different shapes, sizes and textures.
So if you have been asked to document something seemingly very useless, then do not fret my friend. Your manager sees management potential in you.

A software professional moves through different roles/phases as he progresses in his career. Attempting brief description of the few that I been through/seen from close quarters.

The Fresher- Fresh out of college, it is this group of individuals whom you need to contact if you want to access Gmail, bharatmatrimony, Youtube or any other such useful site that may have been restricted by your mean and selfish network administrator. The excitement of a first job and their desire to impress makes these freshers the most sought after resources in a project. These are the people who will document all your sins and go and play Antakshari in the canteen to vent their frustration. They also are a rich source of those forward emails that keep you informed of stuff like benefits of coconut, Miss Infosys/Wipro/Cognizant/... each featuring photographs of the same group of ladies, emails about how the movie Avataar has been ripped off from our very own Rajesh Khanna starrer Avtaar (the similarities are shocking !!) and many more of such information that bring a smile to your face when nothing else seems to be going right. This bunch of people are thus the easiest to work with, as long as they come without any romantic liaisons. The ones entangled in matters of the heart remain perennially busy over phone.

The Module/Group Lead - People with 2-3 years of experience in IT, irrespective of what they actually do in their jobs will invariably be a module lead in their resume. This is actually a ghost role created to placate hurt egos at not being sent onsite. With the lead word attached in his signature, he gets a feeling of authority which is very important to us Indians.
I often wonder, why is there this immense fascination among us Indians to be leaders. Everyone wants to lead something or the other. When I was of this module lead age, I was bypassed even for the Fire Warden role of my floor. So much for my leadership skills !!
You can identify this set of people very easily . It is that guy who whispers ‘Just give me a minute’ every time he receives a call on his mobile and walks out. Hunting for an alternate job is his life’s sole intention. Most succeed in their hunts and move on. Those who don’t, write blogs later in life.

The Float/ Bench warmers : The people who are paid to do absolutely nothing and often referred to as the Bench strength of an IT organization. Not officially allocated to any project or account, their only job is to come and swipe their cards and record their In-Out times. If, in between these times, he has made a visit to the nearby mall and caught the matinee show, shopped brinjals for his wife, or played non-stop Solitaire or Minesweeper, no one gives a horse’s ass. This phase in a software professional’s life is when he recharges his batteries and regains his belief in God, by which I do not mean Google. These float areas are the breeding grounds of attrition in an organization and often the management does not seem to mind it.

The Team Lead /Project Leader – This is the role offered to guys who have aged in IT and are no longer fit to deliver anything of any worth. Having thus fulfilled the primary and probably the sole criteria required for management roles, he is given the responsibility of managing a team of developers and yes the module leads too. He basically has the job of the Project Manager’s parrot and keeps himself busy by organizing useless meetings and sending out hordes of seemingly important mails.When he needs to show off something concrete, he would conduct something fuzzy like a functional training session or explain quality processes for the kids in his project knowing very well that no one would be listening anyway and even if they did, wouldn’t be in a position to call his bluffs. Undeniably though he handles a bulk of the day–to-day project management stuff and manipulates figures so that the project health sheet shows up just as expected --cute and non-alarming.

The Onsite Coordinator: Onsite usually refers to a temporary stint at a high paying client location based on foreign shores when you start planning for your two bedroom flat. Wives prefer such assignments even more for the fact that their mothers-in-law can only rant over the webcam. As an onsite coordinator, your ass is first in the line of fire. So your primary job is to sweet talk with the client and come up with innovative excuses whenever the guys at offshore screw up the system and the possibilities of a man delivering a baby are more than that of the offshore team delivering the product on time. Fire in the server room, developer attacked by Hindu fundamentalists, "Its working fine at their end" etc are some of the successful ones that I employed to buy time. You just need to sound convincing and speak fast. On the other hand , while interacting with the offshore developers, you start politely and end up beating the pulp out of them by the time the call ends.
However, onsite coordinators should never forget to bring expensive chocolates for the team when returning. It is after all a temporary stint and the wife should be periodically reminded of that too.

The Project Manager : Well, what more can I add that has already not been said and written about this group. Project managers in IT are no different from managers in any other industry. They seem busy, smile when asked difficult questions and will always curtail your leave plans. As regards what they actually do to earn their salaries, its anybody's guess.

As the Peter Principle correctly says , "In a Hierarchy Every Employee Tends to Rise to His Level of Incompetence."

Chal 90 maar

2010-01-05T15:28:00.017Z

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

2009-12-29T15:47:00.002Z

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...

2009-08-14T15:35:00.002Z

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

2009-06-16T22:46:00.016Z

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 ?

2009-04-25T13:03:00.006Z

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.

So who takes the credit ?

2009-04-09T22:13:00.004Z

For months now, I have been hearing of the Economic Depression and Credit Crunch. As financial crunch and me go back many moons, I never paid much attention to it until I heard politicians committing billions of dollars to help resolve the crisis. I wondered whether I could be a beneficiary too if I presented my case well enough and thus I started reading ........

The following is a short summary of a few terms which can help laymen like me understand what the hoopla is all about :

Sub-prime crisis: This is the mother of all reasons. People bought new homes with borrowed money, like most do. Then they did not like repaying like most don't. Banks wrapped up these loans in nice packages and resold them other banks and financial institutions. This concept of packaging actually originated in India as shown here and was silently plagiarized by the Americans.
What goes up must come down.
Yes brothers, this sad truth applies to economy as well.
So the prices of houses which had sky-rocketed fell big time and soon the whole world realised that the United States of America had sold shit to them.......once again.
One of the first to be crumble was the British bank, Northern Rock. Couldn't have chosen a more inappropriate name I say.

Fannie May and Freddie Mac - No, they are not McDonald Burgers. Actually two naughty banks who gave money to anyone and everyone who wanted to own a home. Yes even Barbie doll houses were financed. After all America is known to help build homes worldwide. Take architectural marvels of Iraq such as this for example.

Lehman Brother's Diwalia Bumper : It took 159 years for the collapse of this giant financial institution as they filed for bankruptcy in October 2008. In India, anything started jointly by brothers usually lasts till the brothers get married and thus such situations never arise.
On the day, Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy, the worth of its shares had dropped 90% from its previous day close. Just ten more percent and I could have bought the company myself. Now before you start heaping praises at me for my business acumen, I must humbly say that I actually spent four of my formative years (read Engineering) in the state of Gujarat and we all know that when a Gujarati says he is going to the market to buy rice and oil, he actually means commodity trading in the stock market.
Okay now you can heap the praises.

Merrily Lynched : Within a day, Merril Lynch, another financial bigwig, was taken over by the Bank of America in what Wikipedia describes as 'distressing circumstances'. Just for your trivia, Merryl Lynch was ranked #1 by Forbes for 'stock picking and estimate accuracy' in 2008 and #3 by the Wall Street Journal in a similar category. It also won the Best Research House of the Year Award. How profound!
If only the Lehman guys had spent some time researching a good buyer for themselves. They finally landed with a company called Nomura which means No-Head in quite a few Indian languages.

Tata Bye Bye AIG - American Insurance Group. Wow ! Thats the only expression I have for this magnificently employee friendly company. Imagine this. You belong to the worst performing department of your company and your misadventures have caused colossal losses to the company to the extent that 80% of the company stake had to be sold to the Government for the company to remain solvent. In any other company, you would have been fired with Oxy-Acetylene up your soft posterior orifice.
But not in AIG. This marvelous company, which got Rs 8500 crore from the government to settle its bad debts actually paid the employees responsible for this downfall a very small sum of Rs 825 crore as bonus !! Now that is what I call a Dream Company.

Millions of people worldwide have been left unemployed as a cascading effect of the gross incompetencies of these so called Financial Gurus. Whole countries such as Iceland, Latvia and Bulgaria are going down under the impact of this crisis which is the worst since the Great Depression of the 30's. The figures in the stimulus packages cause temporomandibular joint dislocations (My sister is a doctor you see!).

But this is one laughter where there is no joke.

Happy Easters to all of you. The Lord would do well to resurrect one more time.

Delhi 6 - A case of twisted ankle at the touch line

2009-02-22T17:13:00.009Z

Guys, this is my first attempt at movie reviews. Actually had written this for passionforcinema.com. Thus you may find an uncharacteristic civility in the tone. But as the PFC guys did not print it, you all are to become my victims.

Imagine having a whale of a time with your family in a one of those fascinating fairs with lots of rides, bhel puris and 'Maut ka Kuwa'-motorcycle shows.
You are up on the merry-go-round and just as it is about to make that jaw shattering drop, the machine stops. Everything comes to a standstill and Arundhati Roy climbs all the way up a ladder to where you are sitting and gives you a tight slap. Before you comprehend whats happening, she slaps you again and starts an half an hour monologue on the problems faced by farmers due to the Narmada Dam and berates you for your audacity to have fun when people out there are suffering. Well thats pretty much how I felt while watching Delhi 6, so ridiculous was the sudden and completely unnecessary smattering of morality upon the poor unsuspecting viewers who were all having a gala time.

The story had begun awesomely well. The earnestness of the camera while shooting the lanes of Chandi Chowk along with all her nuances gives you a genuine feeling of warmth and belongingness. The characters are full of life and truth and the ensemble cast deliver crackling performances. Rishi Kapoor in yet another superbly measured performance as an old friend of Roshan's father, Deepak Dobriyal as the lovable Jalebi-wala Mamdu, Pavan Malhotra and Om Puri as two warring brothers and the exceedingly beautiful Bua, Aditi Rao Hyadri all turn in superlative performances to significantly raise the bar of the movie. I thought the pick of the wonderful cast was Vijay Raaz as the despicable local policeman who made me cringe with the profanity he brought into his character.

Sonam Kapoor has such a vivacious and infectious smile that you would just wonder at what the devil had possesed Sanjay Leela Bhansali to cast her in a movie as Sawariya. But of course this was probably one of his lesser offences compared to the grave cinematic injuries that the movie had inflicted upon us in the name of entertainment. Rarely had any 'entertainment' before Sawariya left the audience beaten so Black and Blue.
However in Delhi 6 Sonam just yaps and yaps her way into your hearts and surely we want to see more of this Jhakkas girl.
Abhishek Bachchan is certainly not one of my favourite actors but he too turns in quite a pleasant performance. The American accent was quite ridiculous but was compensated for with some genuinely authentic expressions through his journey of self realisation in the midst the bustle of Old Delhi.

The love story is beautifully underplayed and most of the scenes are quite clever. The lovely picturisation of the 'Dil Gira Daftaan' song where Abhishek amalgamates his Indianness with his western upbringing is truly a viewer's delight. Special mention of the remote control scene which was soaked with original humor.

So what in the story doesn't work ?
First and foremost, the repeated usage of the 'Kala Bandar' concept which I think the director used to metaphorise the black devil residing within each of us.I believe an art of filmmaking is to convey the meaning through subtleties. However if the director assumes you to be an idiot and gives individual attention to opening up your skull and hammerring in his ideas, the comprehension is often spoilt with the brazenness of the narration.

What was working in Delhi 6's favour was actually the seeming lack of direction in its story. The moment the makers of the film thought of giving it a direction, and much worse a commercially motivated direction, the whole foundation of the movie came crashing down. The idea was to pass a message somehow to the audience but it seems no one had a clue what that message should be and by the time the movie reached its grotesque climax, it was just plain desperation in display. Someone needed to tell Rakesh Omprakash Mehra that Basanti was just not the Rang required here.
Already enough has been said and written about the climax, so I will avoid going into the details but if an award is ever announced to honour scenes which butchered a complete movie, the heaven sequence will have few competitors.I guess the Jalebi in that scene too was a metaphor signifying our knotted brains being chewed by Abhishek and his Dad.

Indian audience is open to intelligent cinema now. The success of directors such as Vishal Bharadwaj, Rajat Kapoor and Anurag Kashyap is testimony to the fact that the audience is maturing.
Delhi 6, while promising much, ends up disappointing the audience and what is really sad is that only if the director had not had the preaching attack, this one would have been quite enjoyable.

Hum honge Kaam-iyaab ek din

2009-02-20T17:16:00.015Z

One more Valentine's Day came and went by and my status in all social networking sites still remains unchanged. Not that I am in any hurry to change it either but when you hear of awe-inspiring achievements of 13 year old whizkids such as this, one does tend to get a little retrospective.

While this chocolate-faced kid was excelling in his Fornication practicals, I probably at his age had not even realised the complete responsibilities of the male hand.
In those days, the Hindi film industry contributed no less to this lack of knowledge with their rampant misrepresentation of basic facts making us young minds think that if a man gets too near a woman, both would turn into head banging yellow Dahlias ! Whatever was the intelligent metaphor in this representation of sexual activity, I fail to understand even today.
However the movies have become more informative over the years and if there was an Oscar for best dialogue in a motion picture, this one which I randomly came across would have won hands down (not literally of course). It went like this:

"Jaise ek Ration ka dukan har hafte ek din band rehta hai, Ek aurat ka Pyar ka Dukaan bhi mahine me chaar din band rehta hai"

Whoa !! Now, 'Consortium of Loose Women', Please don't send me Pink Chaddis . I had nothing to do with this. Sparkling Red would more suit my personality.

(A tin of Ferrero Rocher to anyone who names the movie.....Hint: Antonym of a hit Bipasha Basu movie)

Often we hear of debates on whether sex education should be a made a part of the school curriculum but every time such a debate rages, I wonder how these guys actually plan to impart this 'education'? I mean imagine this....

Curious Kid: "Ma'am, where do babies come from"
Teacher(caught unawares) : "Ah babies...yeah right babies...where do they come from now..alright.. You know the storks......
Curious Kid : Oh cmon teacher, don't give me the stork story. My aunt had a baby yesterday and when I asked her this same question she said something about horny evenings in a car backseat with no protection"
Teacher ( oh damn this slut of an aunt). Well well..Thats not exactly how it works...A baby develops inside a female body after the successful fusion of the male sperm with the female egg "
Curious Kid : I see.
Teacher: So you understand right.
Curious Kid : Yes but what is a sperm ? What is fusion and can you females all lay eggs then ?
Teacher: Oh no no no...slow down ...Well sperms are like those tadpoles we saw the other day....only much smaller....
Curious Kid : Ah so now we have frogs too...Quite a zoo we had inside my aunt's stomach! No wonder it got so big ..So how did this sperm thinghy get inside my aunt?
Teacher: Well..right ..yes your uncle put it in there
Curious Kid : Really ? But why would he want to put the tadpoles in my aunt's stomach when they have that big aquarium in their house. He could have put it in there...isn't it.
Teacher: Tch..Tch.. No he had to put it inside your aunt for the baby to grow you see.
Curious Kid : Right. So did aunt have to eat this tadpole ?
Teacher: Oh no No .You don't eat these tadpoles ...Well ..Er..
Curious Kid : No ?? So how did it go in ?
Teacher: What ...what went in ??
Curious Kid : The tadpole ..what else ?
Teacher: Ah the tadpole ..yes .. Are you sure that you didn't see any storks near the hospital?

Or ones like this

Curious Kid : "Dad whats a condom?"
Dad : "Something which could have saved me from answering this question,son"

And we haven't even reached at the more complex questions.
But while it may be a tough task to satisfy the curiosity of the kids of this generation it is quite unacceptable to read of such news which shakes the very foundations of morality.
Ha Ha Ha Ha ....whom am I kidding...!!! Wait ...can I even use the word kidding anymore ???

Kala Ghoda Festival -55 Word Stories

2009-02-05T20:52:00.014Z

The theme for this year was Cheating.
These entries were an attempt to be unnecessarily intellectual. No wonder the judges kicked me out.
The winning entries can be found here

Below were my entries:

********************************(I)************************************************

He promised her for the umpteenth time that he would catch the earliest possible flight tomorrow. The sudden realization that Ayala was already five brought a smile to Abraham’s face as he collected his coat and wished the gentlemen a pleasant evening. There was some commotion at the reception.

The autopsy would reveal five bullets.

*********************************(II)***********************************************

I promise to bring electricity and drinking water to your village.
I promise to root out corruption.
I promise to generate more means of employment.
I promise to be secular and not fan regionalism.
I promise to provide you education.
I promise to uphold the principles of democracy.
I promise you Justice, Equality and Liberty.

*******************************(III)*************************************************

Her luscious lips chained his wayward thoughts as their bodies dissolved in the frenzied heat. The mad rhythm of his hardened flesh rattling the softness of her womanhood and their wild cries of passion conjoined to create pulsating sonata of raw energy. Heavy breathing interludes.

“And……… Cut.” “Nice expressions Christina. Let’s all break for lunch.”

********************************(IV)************************************************

Sanjay was always a big hit with his nephews. He was more of one among them and his annual visits to India invariably translated to unlimited frolic and tonight was the big movie night. Yippee!
Steamed spicy sweetcorn, Samosas, tons of popcorn, gallons of Pepsi and the opening credits…………

RamGopal Varma presents ‘RGV Ki Aag’

********************************(V)************************************************

The weed fogged the path of sanity. Trees had radiant blue fishes hung by their tails while headless demons danced around the pyre of his emotions. “Bitch”. The Priest was Breaking the Law. Snakes bit hard and ladders led to infinity. He gulped thirty white moons.

Consciousness gifted him a revengeful headache. Damn fake medicines!

********************************************************************************
More information on the contest can be found here.

2009 starts with three Bangs !!!

2009-01-02T13:59:00.006Z

Yippeee !!! The new year has arrived and I spent a very interesting hour on the very first day trying to contact my parents and sister after the new year celebratory fireworks in my city of Guwahati left a measly number of five people dead and around 50 odd injured. ..Tch..Tchh..Blasts not even worth mentioning actually !!

So heres wishing you all a very Happy Year ahead and alongwith it wishing you all loads of luck.
For it is luck alone that is proving to be the biggest Saviour of common men who are stupid enough to go and buy vegetables in crowded markets, who are crazy to go and have a drink at their favourite hangouts and for still catching the local train to work.... There is no one but us to blame now. We cannot say that we were not forewarned.

So Lord, forget about wealth, health and prosperity. Just give us a larger share of luck . We may just manage to get back home in one piece each day of the year.

Jingle all the way.....

2008-12-21T01:21:00.007Z

Four days from today is Christmas, a day when we celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ. As with all festivals, we celebrate the occasion with a lot of fervour, enthusiasm and alcohol in India.The colourful lights, music of the soothing Christmas carols adding on to the mirth and festivity of this joyous occasion.

Rewinding the tape of life by three years, I'd like to share with all of you my experiences of the first Christmas that I spent in England. It goes somewhat like this:

Christmas Eve: The office ended and the bars opened half a day earlier than usual. With office anyway functioning at quarter strength, only some people who had bid items on ebay could get some useful work done during the morning hours. The bars witnessed animated discussions as it was full of married men, most of whom had curiously forgotten to inform their wives that it was a half day at office. By 6 pm it was time for them to head back home but not before they came up with a good reason that could be attributable for their drunken shapes. As uniformity in the version of stories is supremely important in such matters of connivance, most agreed that they would say that it was the birthday party of a dear friend and inspite of their unwillingness to go were dragged into the same and made to drink.If we left the unwillingness bit, this story was completely true if they actually added one small insignificant detail that this dear friend of theirs was actually born around two thousand and five years back.

At the Stroke of Christmas: Four of us bachelors, two of whom unfortunately no longer share the same marital status, decided to bring in the Christmas in style and thought of hitting the discotheque at the stroke of midnight where surely blondes would get drunk and behave as drunk blondes are expected to.

Two such heavily built mean looking creatures guarded the entrance of the disco, that we were almost discouraged in our plans but we took the chance anyway. These descendants of Goliath are very aptly called Bouncers for if you were to ever fall in their bad books, they could, easily making pulp of all your bones, turn you into a rubbery substance which when kicked once, would continue bouncing till eternity.

Usually free on other nights, there was a cover charge of £10 in the disco that night which we willingly paid. More than the enthusiasm to enjoy the disco, the fear of being beaten up by the two men contributing to our quick parting with the money.

As we climbed the stairs, we were all spiked with the anticipation of the thrill awaiting us as the vision of drunk blondes started floating once again and we winked at each other. This is going to be a night to remember.

We rushed and pushed open the gates and sounds of some heavy music greeted us as we entered the huge disco. Bring it on England we cheered !!!

The music stopped and expressions altered.

We looked around ourselves and realised that apart from three middle-aged male bar-tenders , we were the only ones inside the discotheque !!! Our first reaction was that this was the way they greeted all new entrants and then the whole crowd would now descend upon us from all directions pushing and shoving us into the grind of the dance floor where we would then dance our hearts out.

Such hopes were to remain confined to our imaginations, for even half and hour later, there were just two new joinees and both belonging to a gender that did not interest us. The invisible DJ played out some unbearably loud and crass music and the dance floor remained virgin on that night. At the stroke of midnight, we wished Jesus a very happy birthday and left the disco with heavy hearts and lighter wallets. A night to remember it indeed was.

An old Hindi saying which comes as a four letter acronym starting with 'K' that describes the treachery to an upright object would have aptly described the situation here.

OK, so it did not turn out the way we wanted it to. So what? It was Christmas the next day. Hurrah. We would have a blast and compensate for all that we missed at the discotheque. With such optimism in mind and beer in stomach, we slept off.

Christmas : Woke up early the next day for I was really enthusiastic to see how a Christmas day would be like in this country. Strangely I had not seen any of those colourful paper stars hanging outside the houses here and wondered if that was something typical to our Indian way of celebrating Christmas I ventured into the streets and my first reaction left me speechless.

Ah no it was not the scale of the festivity which induced this reaction. It was the fact that I was the ONLY LIVING SOUL standing there with no sign of any other life in my vicinity. For a brief moment I felt like Tom Cruise in the War of the Worlds. But soon I saw myself on a shop window and the moment vanished. Damn the law of reflection.

Questions were whizzing around in my mind. Had the aliens finally struck and annihilated all life ? Was I the only man alive and if yes then had they spared Heidi Klum too , or Jessica Alba, okay Scarllet Johannson then? I saw my reflection again, bringing sanity back to such chain of thoughts.

But truly I was at my wits end (which is fairly easy to reach anyway) trying to find an explanation to this extreme oddity of complete lifelessness on Christmas day. Priyanka Chopra maybe ?

The shops were all closed which was kind of okay as people would want to take a break for the occasion.

But the fact that there was absolutely no vehicular traffic at all was what contributed to the eerie chillness in the whole environment. I roamed around the town centre in search of some semblance of humanity but there was none to be found. Completely baffled I made my way back to the house half hoping actually half wishing to find my roommates sucked away by some alien spaceship. But that joy, I was to be deprived of.

I came to know that all public transportation remains closed on Christmas day and being a day of family get-togethers most preferred to stay indoors which explained the lack of cars in the roads.

But this was crazy !! It was Christmas day and in the absence of a car, here we were stuck inside the house with no laptops, no stock of beer, one DVD of Gadar and a DVD player with a lost remote which meant that one could only watch Disc 1 where the focus defaulted when you turned it on. Awesome !!

And if you are wondering why didn't we try out TV then you should actually watch the programmes dished out on the 4 free to view channels. Butchering you with boredom is an art they pride themselves with.

Thus I spent my first Christmas in the UK.

Boxing Day : I am kind of quite hungry now so will quickly wrap this up. It snowed on Boxing Day and we clicked pictures like madmen. Tried to make snowmen but the snow wasn't that thick and mostly we ended up with distorted snowfrogs. Tomatoes and carrots which we had brought out to make the eyes and noses of snowmen with, went back into the refrigerator.

Trains were back on so we thought of making the shopping trip to Blue Waters which we had heard was the largest shopping mall of UK and Boxing Day was supposed to the day of heavy discounts much like Thanksgiving in the US. This surely could not go wrong. Took us four trains and two hours to reach. Our combined shopping at the end of the day was a 30ml bottle of perfume as nothing else was affordable.

Nearly froze to death on our way back as the snow started melting sucking away all the heat from the atmosphere. Cursed the country for no fault of hers.

Four trains later we were back home, with each of us swearing upon each other that this would be the last Christmas that we would be spending in this country.

Next week, it would incidentally be my fourth consecutive Christmas in this country.

But thankfully the first year had taught me my lessons well and I have stayed better prepared for the holidays since.

Wishing all of you a very Merry Christmas and a very Happy New Year ahead.

C'mon 2009 lets see what you got in store !!

Of Marriages, Bengalies and Rosogollas

2008-12-14T21:52:00.008Z

The annual hunting season is coming to its climax in India.

And like every year there is much jubilation in the camps which have come home with their prized hunts, some captured after a lot of perseverance and months of dedicated stalking.

Yes it is the marriage season in India when many a worthy warrior of the bachelor camp, having fought off captivity valiantly over the years will finally succumb to the emotional blackmails of concerned mothers, to the shrewd manipulation of match making aunts, to the appearance of a bi-coloured band in the girlfriend's pregnancy test strip or sometimes to some whimsical thought of doing something different in life, often such ideas emerging under the influence of alcohol or some other intoxicating substance.

While people here in the west tone down the affairs to a certain degree in respect of the distraught sensibilities of the soon-to-be-caged, marriages in India compete to give the word ostentation a whole new meaning.

This being the tenth year that I am out of home for padhai and rozi roti, I have been attending most marriages belated through photographs now and it I must tell you that missing marriages is really a huge huge loss.

While its stomach-breaking to hear of the menu over phone while you are chewing 'not-at-all-ready-to-eats' thawed in a microwave, it breaks a lot of other things when you see the photographs of all those dazzling femme-fatales giggling away in borrowed sarees.

Describing a typical middle class Bengali marriage and the various rites and rituals that accompany it would probably require Wikipedia to buy a few new servers to host all the information.

In this post I merely attempt to give short descriptions of the various entities that give a Bengali marriage its typical flavour.

The Kaku-Jethu-Mesho huddle- Usually men in their late fifties and sixties talking about their common gastrointestinal problems and the latest ayurvedic herb which eases the motions. This discussion is followed by what their kids are doing now, which nobody gets a chance to complete anyway as someone would surely jump in mid way to share what their own kids have been doing. With an underlying intent to prove that their offsprings are doing better than the rest, this leads to animated discussions interrupted by wives bringing in digestive tonics, blood pressure medicines, waist belts etc.

This group would suddenly thin out, giving the impression that they have retired for the night.

Then the orders for fried fish would start and sounds of laughter would ring out well into the night. The marriage continues somewhere in the background.

The Kakima-Jethima-Mashima Sammelan - This group of ladies form the most active party in the whole wedding with everyone seeming to be running around with the most urgent task at hand and if you happen to fall in their path then either you would be admonished for your carelessness or be immediately packed away on an errand to get that something without which it would seem that the rituals of the marriage just wont proceed.

Damn the clan of Pundits and their continuous chattering with God !

Anyway these women have another very important task in the marriage. That of spotting newbakras for their next match making opportunity and suddenly mothers with kids in marriageable age are thronged with attention. Sentences such as ' When is Joy next coming home ?' or 'Your daughter has completed her post graduation isn't it. That's wonderful' usually have an ulterior motive not visible to unsuspecting eyes. Seeds of many a future marriage are sown here while bachelors unaware of the predicament being arranged would be blissfully spending time guzzling beer and playing PS3 in some corner of the world. Idiots!!

The Char-annas (kids) - This genre run amok in all directions unaware of what they should be breaking or where they should be peeing . Some gentler ones would be sticking close to their mothers while the notorious brigade would be thinking of plans of burning some firecrackers up the grooms dhoti-covered-ass. As if the poor soul is not already destined for graver injuries in life.

The Bhai-Bons -The lot sharing the common ancestry with the groom probably enjoy the most in the marriage. With no work or responsibility other than looking good themselves, they spend most of the time hunting out potential flirtable entities in the bride's camp and having found one would be seen constantly hanging around these entities, well unconcerned of that brother of theirs who sitting in front of the fire had made this all possible and who an hour back had wished to know the score of the Liverpool-Chelsea match. Sacrificial animals need to be left alone in their last hours, so they believe.

In sharp contrast, the bride's party would traditionally be at their best behaviours camouflaging the glee of finally being able to get rid of the sister behind a facade of solemnity portraying the 'sorrow' of having to give her away. Sniff.

The Bandhobis - The female friends decked up in resplendent sarees and jewellery. Add to the glamour quotient of the marriage and usually keep the bride updated with all the gossip of whats happening in the marriage elsewhere. The unmarried ones pass fleeting glances at the handsome specimens of the group described below while the married ones rue a day very similar to this one which had snatched away their freedom to do so.

The Bondhugon - Mostly unmarried friends in suits representing the grooms friend brigade. Keep a watchful eye on the above group, interpreting smiles as invitation for dates and spend most of the time eating and doing nothing useful. They arrange on-the-stop rosogolla-eating-contests leading to an invariable shortage of the same and while nowhere to be seen when the need to drop an old relative back home arises, would suddenly emerge in full force as soon as they realise that the old relative is the father of the most dazzling lady from the above mentioned group.

All in all, I would say that a marriage is a lot of fun, but just as long as you yourself are not the one getting married.

My folks complete 33 years of marriage today while my cousin sister completes her first. Wishing them many many more years of a happily married life.

P.S. If this post reeks of a chauvinistic approach trying to highlight the plight of the groom while completely disregarding the feelings of the lady involved then I sincerely apologise to my female readers. Like all men I have very little idea of the female psychology and thus did not wish to tread on an unfamiliar terrain.

Leo Tolstoy was brave when he said :

"When I have one foot in the grave, I will tell the whole truth about women. I shall tell it, jump into my coffin, pull the lid over me and say, 'Do what you like now'."

A Tail of Three Patils

2008-11-29T18:57:00.007Z

While the National Security Guards, the Armymen, Home Guards, Navy and Mumbai police were all fighting tooth and nail with the terrorists in Mumbai, Mrs. Pratibha Patil , our President and the Supreme Commander of our Armed Forces sent her moist condolences from her holiday trip in Hanoi. It would have got over at some point or the other of course so why bother to be back and be with the countrymen in moments of such crisis.

Mr. Shivraj Patil, perhaps the greatest Union Home Minister, the country has ever seen was utterly frustrated that the terrorists had left without even saying goodbye to him. He could have taught them a lesson or two in probably changing nappies, a job he is doing so well for this country.

Mr. R.R. Patil, the Deputy Chief Minister of the state of Maharashtra is ecstatic that only 200 people managed to die at the hands of the terrorists when they had actually come to take down 5000. Wow...And in true Bollywood style he summed up the whole episode saying 'Bade Bade desho me aise chote chote batein hoti rehte hain'....

If humanity was up for sale somewhere, I would give up all my savings to buy these people some of it.

Can I borrow a spine for my country ?

2008-11-27T21:37:00.006Z

As I sit and watch the horror being enacted in Mumbai, I just cringe at the fact that our lives have become a matter of chance now and we might as well add death due to terrorism as a natural cause of death in India.
People have died with no reason to die and predictably all my Prime Minister says is that he strongly condemns the attacks. There is again no conviction in his voice, there is no sense of direction or semblance of leadership in such an hour of crisis when people are frantically searching for some ray of hope.

The visuals seem to have been lifted from some commando video game but the only difference is that the blood is real.

Will we ever strike back or should we follow Gandhian principles of holding up the other cheek to be slapped ?
Unfortunately, there remain no cheeks even to be slapped, we have been slapped again and again and again and we have condemned again and again and again.
The impotence and spinelessness of our reactions makes me boil with rage, but hey we should act with restraint and maintain calm for we are Indians and are renowned for our level of tolerance.

Is this the same country where people shook off the clutches of a 200 year old foreign rule? I just sit back and wonder what has happened to that grit and resolve of this country where people are being butchered at will and random and we just resume our lives the next day with a hackneyed reference to the 'undying spirit' !!

When do we think it would be enough ? How many more need to die for us to realise that we have reached the dead end of tolerance? These attacks are not just taking innocent lives, they are sucking away the self respect of a nation and I as a citizen of this once great nation hope that the powers-that-be for once take some steps which would instill a fear among such perpetrators, a fear so strong that should chill the marrow of these inhumans at the very thought of raising a finger against the nation.

I hope and just hope .....
I pray for the families of all those killed in this gruesome act of terror and salute those brave individuals who are risking and many losing their lives in their continuing efforts to cleanse the scum which has maligned our self esteem like never before.

The Elusive Degree

2008-11-23T20:45:00.016Z

Engineering introduces a grave many bugs in one's system and I had no vaccinations that would have saved me from my share. While some of these are of the type which sit on your head for a short time, fiddle around with your un-shampooed matted hair, realize the hopelessness of what lies underneath and then move on for more fertile pastures, some on the other hand, merrily outlive their stay and keep gnawing away till they hit the soft spot.

One of the most potent and destructive of all bugs and one which has often found mention in this under-nourished blog is the viral thought of pursuing a post graduate degree in business management. With a heavy heart today, I confess that I am suffering from the dreaded disease of MAIDS or "MBA Aspiration Immuno Deficiency Syndrome".

(Please note that sympathies would only be accepted in cash or online transfers)

I had the first attack around the final year of engineering, a time which is normal for this virus to strike engineering colleges and thus I did not take it seriously enough. Little did I know that this virus was as destructive as diabetes and you need to continuously monitor your pee.

This reminds me of one very stinky anecdote from my childhood. Excuse me for this slight digress but I have to share this. When I was a kid of around 6 or 7, there were some very bright young individuals in my neighborhood who had brilliant ideas about everything in life and regularly used to catch up on their intellectual discourses over borrowed cigarettes and udhar-ka-chai. Somehow most of these discussions were related to 'female upliftment'. Such visionary people they were and they were never reluctant to share and spread their knowledge. I came to know from them that a person suffering from diabetes pees multicoloured. Red, Green, Blue, Violet...you name it and a diabetic can pee that colour for you. This was fascinating information for me. To my luck there was a cranky old fella living just next door to us who had diabetes and for quite some time thereafter, as soon as I would hear his bathroom door opening, I would rush to the nearby open drain to catch the colour of this leak. I would sometimes shout "Gimme Red" or "Gimme Magenta" under his bathroom window and man did the Oldy go bonkers hearing it!! Heee hee hee ...still makes me howl with laughter.
Its a pathetic and an utterly gross story isn't it ? I know..I know....

Anyway coming back to my own illness, I wished to share with you all that I got a severe bout of the attack around June this year and under the severe influence of the virus, I took the GMAT examination.

One would have thought that the worse was over.
Lessons in underestimation were given a new chapter following the ordeal that I went through in the months to follow.
Slowly and steadily, the will of the virus began to take a firm grip on my intellect as I saw myself helplessly applying for the one year MBA courses at IIM Calcutta, IIM Ahmedabad and ISB Hyderabad.

The application process is a devil in disguise and while you write the essays and keep iterating them, you can feel the devil making inroads through your brain as answers to questions like "Why do you want to do an MBA from this college?" which a healthy person would have easily answered "Obviously for the hot moolah your passouts rake in" are now answered as...."I am looking forward to this course to get an overall picture of the various aspects involved in senior management levels and the course structure of the executive degree in your college has just the right diversity that could impart me knowledge on the crucial aspects of business management. This I believe would equip me with the expertise and edge required to succeed in my chosen career." ..Blah ..blah ...and then some more blah......Can you beat this ?

But I did not have the bodily strength to fight back as I patiently sat and wrote all the essays. ISB had one particularly interesting essay which needed me to write an election speech for the post of the president of their student body. While I was actually thinking of proposing Free Beer and Lowering the number of required credits to pass the year,I ended up writing about the need of social entrepreneurship.

IIM Ahmedabad was the most benevolent of the trio as it let me off without even bothering to shortlist me for the interviews and thus saving me from wasting a lot of productive man-hours. Not so in the case of IIM Calcutta and ISB who even after reading my essays did not get a clear picture of the immense pain that I was going through and shortlisted me for their interview process.

The suffering was soon to scale new heights. But I will not make you dear readers go through the Ram Kahani. To cut a long story short, I have been rejected by both the institutions.

This last prolonged attack has left me exhausted but I am sure that the bug will not lie down for long enough. It will soon strike back with renewed enthusiasm and this time it will go global for the Round II applications for National University of Singapore and Nanyang Technological University are still open and I am yet to find an antidote for this yearning to be a manager.

Failures are the stepping stones to success...so they say. I have a strong suspicion that the engineer who is designing my steps had spent a considerable time studying when in college.
The resuls are for all to see.....

A piece of advice to him....."Mate, Please unlearn fast and get your act right"......

Till then Cheersa !!

Stale news for a lease of life

2008-08-27T11:38:00.005Z

I was woken by a call at around 3 am yesterday... The caller did not identify herself. All she said was "Either we read a new entry in your blog tomorrow or we attend your funeral.In case you foresee circumstances leading to the latter, please choose from one of the following options....Beep...Press 1 for Rampuri Jhatka...press 2 for Painless Pillow ..press 3 for Tied Tickling (Authentic Mongolian Feathers used. Not China made)...press 4 for Skin Peeling...Press 5 for......"
I think I got the hint and cancelled the call...

So with no subject matter in mind, I will give you a quick update on our current affairs.
This is just to save my life and I promise to get back to regular writing very soon.. Mystery Caller please take note.... I am not even married for mercy's sake but wait ...is that the reason I am still alive..hehee? (This evil grin should please be forgiven by married men and forward thinking women )

To get to work...The Maharashtra Chief Minister recently announced a reward of Rs.1000 for every pothole that is brought to the notice of the Municipal corporation. I gleefully calculated that I could easily retire as a multi millionaire if I actually reported even a quarter of the potholes that I see on my way to office.
But no, as always someone had to play the spoilsport to progressive ideas and this time it was the municipal corporation. Their argument was that the number of potholes were actually increasing after the chief ministers statement as people all over were found digging up roads to create new potholes where there were none.
Absolutely distressing to see such entrepreneurship tendencies of the common man being strangulated.

The imbroglio over the Tata's small car plant in Shingur continues. Mamata Banerjee, the teddy bear sized progressive leader of the state is of the opinion that the factory should be destroyed immediately and the land returned to the farmers as the factory murders the poor farmer's aspirations to continue living a life of povery and deprivation. Can there be any substitute to the charm of continuing to repay generation old debts...debts which have been consecrated by the deaths of starved ancestors...huh? No No Na No....Na No No No...shout her supporters in unison.

Chiranjeevi the pot bellied super star of Telegu movies has launched his own political party and named it Praja Rajyam. One person gave up his life and 13 others fractured their ribs and limbs as token of respect for their leader who entertained them with dance shows.

The Amarnath issue continues to boil.Hundreds are dead.The protesters have proposed changing the name of our northernmost state from "Jammu and Kashmir" to "Jammu or Kashmir" but our shy and soft spoken Prime Minister does not want to intervene in silly matters of English Grammar as he has a DPhil in Economics you see and that too from the University of Oxford.
Oye paape ...And aur Aur me ki fadak penda ??? Bolo Singh is King....Singh is King ..Singh is King ....Balle Balle Democracy.

If you remember, we also have a president in this country Mrs.Pratibha Patil...no no she is not Shivraj Patil's wife. Anyway we were reminded of this fact when we finally got to see her in the news again posing for pictures with the Olympic winners. When asked of her reactions to these achievements..she said with tearful eyes that she was ever so thankful to Sonia Gandhi and that she hopes that Rahul Gandhi becomes the prime minister soon....Mrs Patil...control ur Yomotions

Ram Gopal Verma had announced a prize of Rs 5 lakh to anyone who could watch his latest movie Phoonk alone. No one won it....They belived in his abilities to scare the shit out of people..To this day they thank their lucky stars that they were able to come out alive of halls screening RGV ki Aag. Rarely since the holocaust have such gruesome and scary torture chambers been created.
But guys please go and watch Mumbai Meri Jaan. It is an awesome movie with terrific performances.

This sums it up for the day....will be back soon...honestly ...no life threatening calls please....
P.S...If any of you know the Mystery Caller...please please ...tell her that the task is now done.

The Not-so-Stupid Box

2008-04-15T13:57:00.005Z

Sometimes a post, by dint of its length can give the world new creative expletives,or cause temporary posterior paralysis. This is one of those.

Some many moons back, Mrs.Indira Gandhi, the then soft spoken Prime Minister of India, was convicted for election fraud by a court in Allahabad which while annulling her MP status also banned her from contesting any elections till the time I was to be a cute one year old.

In reaction to this,I have read that the lady calmly declared a State of Emergency in the country that imposed some very serious restrictions on civil liberties and constitutional freedoms. For e.g.

You were expected to reach office on time.
You were expected to restrain the external manifestation of certain hormonal outbursts to two head counts only and then run and register yourself for a not-very-male-friendly surgery.
You were fined if you were caught peeing in public !!
Political opposition was most welcome but only inside jails.

However the point that I wish to touch upon today in this post is the censorship on media that the Emergency had brought about.
The government had complete control on what was being printed or aired over radio and this kind of censorship was considered by all to be a complete murder of democracy.

As television was an alien concept for most Indians those days (only some seven unlucky cities had access to Doordarshan), there wasn't much need for gagging this media I guess and the effect of this leniency during the formative years of Doordarshan is for all to see.
Mothers now warn truant kids with consequences like 'Beta padhai karlo nahi to Doordarshan laga dungi'

People tend to be at their miserly best when on an onsite deputation, behaving more like Walking Currency Calculators than software professionals and when in UK, multiplying everything by 80 before taking any decision.

Under these circumstances when I learnt that to own a television there meant spending some 1200 rupees as license fee every month to watch 4 stunningly boring BBC channels, I chose not to bow down before the demands of the stupid box and devoted my entire life to the noble cause of surfing the internet, typing rediff.com and orkut.com and re-doing the same exercise again and again till I fell asleep.

Then one day a friend of mine sent me the link of CNN-IBN which had live streaming enabled in its website. And since that day onwards, I devoted my entire life to the noble cause of theinternet typing rediff.com , orkut.com and ibnlive.com, redoing the same exercise again and again till I fell asleep.

CNN-IBN proved to be a true stress reliever for us there and soon got us hooked to such a degree that we were thrilled to watch the same piece of news in the mornings when we left for work, in the afternoons when we came home for lunch, in the evenings when we returned from work, during dinners and finally concluded the day by seeing the day's headlines and what was surprising in this entire exercise was our interest level that just would not subside. At times we even replayed the videos of the same news the following day.

Staying away from home for long periods numbs one's senses, so I have heard.

Having come back home, where the cable bill still stands at Rs 300 per month for 150 odd channels I realised that the medium of television was notthaaaaat stupid after all.
I just cannot put in words the joy that I experience every time I press the button of remote and a new channel comes up!
Cmon what is this...Magic ??

Now television media has been in a boom mode for quite sometime now in India.
Anybody who owns a Sony Handycam got by his uncle from Singapore considers himself a struggling director and with new channels coming up every other fortnight, the need for these artistic individuals has risen all the more.

A particular community in this country has drawn up a dictum that unless you prove some mettle in some arena of the creative world(sometimes interpreted as communism) during your lifetime, neither heaven nor hell would give you a berth.

A small futuristic interview :
Gatekeeper at Hell - So dude what creativity have you shown in this horrible life of yours ??
Me- --Well ahem ..I wrote a blog and attempted some humour in it.
Gatekeeper at Hell -- Damn another of these bloggers !! Why aren't you guys allowed in Heaven damn it.... Anyway.. so humour me ..make me laugh and you will gain an entry.
Me -- The ant raping a tigress joke..
Gatekeeper at Hell ---Hideous joke...Not good enough ...try again
Me -- The tiger taking revenge and raping the ant back joke..
Gatekeeper at Hell ---Pathetic...one last try else you are dead !!
Me -- I spent a lot of effort coding and following quality processes in a reputed software company !
Gatekeeper at Hell -- Ha ha ha ha ..(demonic Guffaws)...Come in..Come on in.... hurry up...you rock big time ..ha ha ha ...This was just too good ..ha ha ha (uncontrollable demonic guffaws) ..
Me -- #%#%#$^!!!

For information's sake, I was once given a camcorder to record a birthday event. I ended up making a short documentary on the autobiography of my shoe and that of all other shoes in the vicinity.
Well they need to be heard too and no one told me that a camcorder needed to held up too and just why can't Japanese people make smart devices which require less of human interaction !!!

Now with the tough competition in the television media arena, the quality of programmes too is bound to have an upward graph.

Below mentioned are a few of the ground breaking channels that are doing stellar work in the field on TV journalism. This list is in no way comprehensive and only represents a few of my favourites.

India TV -- A few years back,I was glued to this channel for a whole day when a sting operation found Shakti Kapoor in a slightly embarrassing situation. He he .. It must have stung him real bad !! A channel with social responsibility, it has only grown in stature over the years.
With a prime time slot dedicated to Rakhi Sawant and her family, the channel sends a strong message on the rise of the downtrodden.
Recently a whole day was dedicated to the divinity of an American person who could fly making us aware of what we can achieve only if we make an effort.

Rajya Sabha- This channel ,I have come to understand, teaches philosophy. A display of 12-13 coloured vertical lines and a soothing shrill siren kind of music in the background for a continuos 24 hours of the day must surely have a metaphysical interpretation of entertainment conveying some deeper meaning of life.

India News - This is one of the newer channels I guess, which specialises in showing programs of the kind where a few Adivasis hunt down a deer with an arrow and how the animal writhes in pain. The writhing is shown in graphic details and repeated till the point the viewer vomits at least once. Such amazing concern for animal protection !
There was another programme where a 'witch' in Bihar was tied to a pole and kicked and slapped repeatedly till she fell unconscious. The slaps came with special effects of course and surely Rowling must have been very happy with the highlights on the plights of wizards and witches so responsibly being taken up by the Indian media.

I have also come to realise that the concept of 'BREAKING NEWS' is something quite different from what I had imagined. A news can only qualify to be one of this category if it successfully manages to actually break something when screened....Patience, forehead, intelligence barriers, right ventricular blood flow, humanity constraints ...anything will do.

And with extremely relevant issues like kids falling inside ditches being given a live telecast, we are constantly kept aware of the pitfalls afflicting the society today.
Such a vibrant and awake media is so very necessary in India's progress towards a better tomorrow.

Miracle Net - This channel is a show stopper. You have to watch it to believe it where the true meaning of Faith is exemplified through various first hand experiences and discourses. A particular person narrated his experience as follows :

"I had a son who did not work."
(Audience ...oooh...aaah ...sharing the pain, I believe)

"I had a son who did not work."
(Audience ...More ooohs...aaahs ...the pain intensifying)

"I had a son who did not work."
(Audience ...A few start crying and clapping..Some have their eyes closed with tears rolling )

"Then I woke up one day and prayed to God."
(Audience - Yes Yes Yes...some are visibly choked with a welling up emotion ..Some are lying on the floor trying perhaps to wriggle out the pain)

"God please send my son to work"
(Audience - Yes Yes Yes...some have fallen into a trance while others are swaying to some tune with kids on their shoulders.The ipod wire hangs loosely behind)

"That very day my son went to work and has not returned since !!!"
(Audience --Absolute pandemonium breaks loose...Some jumping to the stage to kiss the man, some fainting in their seats, some just crying and laughing)

The man crumbles down and falls unconscious and so did I and as I was falling, I could hear a thought banging inside my head........Keep the faith my friends...keep the faith ...

Long live democracy and the freedom of the press. Just at times, I wished Mrs.Gandhi was still alive.

(P.S.-Today's fortune in Orkut: You have an unusual equipment for success, use it properly.)
Unusual ....eh ???

To See or Not to See

2008-03-24T15:31:00.007Z

My dear faithful readers,

I understand that your faithfulness to this blog has been put under severe pressure over the last three months in the absence of anything to keep your faith upon.

While expressing my genuine apologies for not being able to keep up with the intensely demanding nature of a blog, for this sorry state of affairs however,
I put the blame squarely ,rectangularly and rhombusly on the complete dictatorship that has been initiated by the admin department of my company in the same of secure web policies.

The "Access to the Requested page is Denied" message has been coming up with such a frequency that would put the population clock of China to shame.

While there were always some restrictions (albeit unnecessary) before I left for UK, it was never as worse. For e.g based on some weird logic they would not allow us to view pictures of female bodies without clothes on, or the one in which they would not allow the use of external mail sites for sending out our resumes to other companies.(You could use the internal server of course).

But along with our many other sacrifices that we made, we took these too in our stride.

Now great many changes have happened in India in the last couple of years while I was away.
Locally speaking, the traffic jam has shifted a quarter of a mile away from where it reigned earlier;

The local Bar has had a Merger and Acquisition and the prices of drinks have trebled;

Flats which were considered to be located on the outskirts are very much within city limits now and areas which were dwelled by hyenas and panthers are now hot spots for developing new properties.
They advertise..."Come live in paradise in the midst of nature" ( and be eaten alive by leopards and crocodiles is understood I guess )

The office timing has been increased by an hour owing to rupee appreciation against the dollar and rarely has ever any 'appreciation' been looked down upon with more distaste.

However, all of these fade in comparison to the the changes initiated by our admin team to block websites that supposedly do not tally with the company policies.

Some topics topping in this taboo list are as follows:

A) Cricket

Some innocent google searches comes up with the following results.

1.Mysore Sandal Soap - Access Denied. - Dhoni did a commercial for this brand and it melts too early anyway, Try searching Hamam instead.

2.Hamam- Access denied - He he ...Caught you, you were searching for Mysore Sandal Soap isn't it ?

3.ICL - Access Strongly Denied . Not recognised by the BCCI or the ICC. The matches look more like uncles playing beneficiary matches for their old age pensions, What do you want to know about them anyway huh ?

4.IPL - Access Denied - 19 days still to go ! Have patience mate !

5.Ganguly's One day records - Access denied. Data permanently deleted from public memory.

6.Shoaib Akhtar banned for 3 years - Access denied. Moron its 5 years not 3 !
and so on and so forth.

B) ****

I understand that Blog too is a four letter word but to not allow us even read-only access on them is nothing short of criminal for a person who has just returned back to India after spending 2 and a half years at onsite billed solely for reading and writing blogs in office.
Respect the employee's skill-set for revenue's sake.

C) Miss-ellaneous

Technical Discussion Forums (How is a person supposed to develop his code for chrissake?!! and then they complain of not delivering on time ...How just How !!!),

MagicBricks.com and all other real estate website.How is a person supposed to do his research before buying a house?
Well not that many in my company can afford to in Mumbai anyway..so i guess this one is ok.

NGOs in Mumbai !! (Justifiably blocked as the company may get in serious trouble with the Human Rights organisations if the figures of our salaries are somehow leaked)

Money Control Justified for the same reason mentioned above. "Jab Money hi nahi hain to Control kya karoge ..he he ..Signed Admin."

Thus in a nutshell , life has suddenly turned very boring in office with the only site that regularly opens coming up with reminders for your unfilled time sheet entries and unsanctioned leaves and pending trainings :-((((.
No fire or wall can block this damned site !!!!!

I am handicapped my friends in the absence of access to blogspot.com from office to write more often.

But there is so much more to being back home. So much more to write, so much more of Mumbai..so much more of life......so will be back very soon ...

Yours
Apologetic Access denied Blogger.

Yappy New Year

2007-12-30T13:25:00.000Z

My dear blog readers,

The blogger is currently busy winding up his two and a quarter year stay in the Queens Kingdom to return to Apna Vatan on New Years Day.
So the next posts will have the distinctive smell of desh ki mitti. (Wonder when will Google come up with odour-enabled blogsites ??).

Till then Wishing all of you a Very Very Happy New Year.

And as they say it here
Cheerio!!!!

Onsite Binsight

2007-12-18T13:45:00.001Z

Some Project Managers have an amazing ability to sense out potential resignations in a project.Probably its taught as a part of the syllabus of PMP (Project Management Programme).

Typical examples are as follows:
PM Vijay- I can sense it...Yes Yes its such a strong one........40 degree 30'N and 94 degree 24'E..Its from the second last cubicle..Ah its Ramesh..I should have known. Damn I should not have given him a poor rating this year!
PM Vijay to Ramesh ---So whats up Ramesh?
Ramesh - (quickly closing the Orkut,naukri.com,blogger,Messenger windows)-Hi Vijay...nothing much,usual work , you know .
PM Vijay (yeah you moron..I know)--Yes its a busy time of the year isn't it ?
Ramesh (As if you care)-- Yes indeed.
PM Vijay- So what are your future plans Ramesh,
Ramesh -(Visibly disturbed..Does this bugger know ?)-- Ahem well, ..ahem...aheeem..
PM Vijay - You wouldn't be interested in an onsite opportunity for 6 months,would you?
Ramesh - Whoa !! What?? Are you serious ? I mean really ...actually ..because ..then..yes...I have to ...plans..where...?

And most often than not, this discussion leads Ramesh to promptly hold back his resignation.

This lure in our industry is coined Onsite Deputation where you get a chance to rake in some extra moolah and of course simultaneously give that degenerating ad in Shaadi.com a much needed facelift.

Now this concept of travelling to foreign shores however has never traditionally been extended to the faculty members of the training department whose job, I feel, is one among the toughest in this industry.
They are periodically given fresh packs of over enthusiastic engineer pass outs, a motley group, who could any day do more honours to the local zoo than a corporate office.
The task of moulding these individuals into entities which would quietly gel into the corporate lifestyle, taking orders from superiors and holding their bottoms on to one chair for close to eight hours a day, is certainly not an easy task.

Some scenes from the classrooms,given below are indicative of the reason why many faculty members resort to stress therapy classes after office hours.

Classroom A-
Faculty Member - "Today we are going to discuss the concept of Universal data access using ActiveX Data Objects or ADO."
"Radio ?? Sir why would we need to learn about radios in these age? Do we still have clients who sell radios...Ha ha ...Such losers!!! opines a back bencher with a minute hearing disability
Faculty Member ---We are ....
Barely awake Back Bencher 2 -- Thats fine Sir, Don't listen to him ..Radio is just cool! I always wanted to be a Radio Jockey. They are so in with chics man !!
Faculty Member - Excuse me , we are actually discu....
Back Bencher 3 ---Sir I still have an old radio in my house.I last used it to bang the head of my neighbour's dog...some incident da !! Its gone numb since then. Does the company reimburse the cost of repairing Radios Sir?
Faculty Member - What the $%$**$$...No the company does not and we are not talking radios here for Chrissake!!
Back Bencher 4 to BackBencher 2 -- Huh much ADO about nothing man ..We were just trying to know more about the company policies.

Classroom B
Faculty member to young recruits - Today we are going to talk about the PL-SQL.

Female Student 1- Sir if it's like the story of Luv-Kush then please excuse me from the class. I found the concept of twins fighting with their Daddy so repulsive..eeks ya!!
Female Student 2- On yeah,Well what would you then say about a father striking off the head of his son and replacing it with that of an Elephant's eh ?
Female Student 1 - (Swoons).
Faculty member (clears his throat and continues) Well Ahem, PL-SQL stands for Procedural Language-Structured Query Language and resembles closely to Pascal.
Back Bencher again- Sir I take serious offence at the language that you are using in the class. We may be freshers but you have no right to abuse us in this manner.
Faculty member -But I only said Pascal.
Back bencher 1-- Hear hear friends ,there he goes at it again !! Is this what you call corporate ethics...abusing a poor physically handicapped person like me...Sniff Sniff..
Faculty member- Calm Down..calm down, You need to concentrate in this lecture as you would need it in your ABAP programming.
Back Bencher-- Sir, Baap pe kyon jaate ho ? Yeh thik nahi ho raha hai !!!
Whole class rising in unison and walking out--Yes yes.. Down with insensitivity !! Down with corporate high-handedness, as all make their way to the office canteen to douse their hurt feeling with some Masala Dosas.

Coming back to the topic of onsite travel, a few months back, these members of the training department decided that enough was enough and that they too deserved a better life.(Read : The matrimonial was not cutting much ice)
When their initial demands for onsite travel were not addressed, they quietly floated a few pamphlets with some minor modifications to the official Code of conducts..

Some of the pamphlets read as follows:

Do's & Don't's

* The company is responsible for the health and safety of all its employees.Spitting of Guthkha and Smoking will not be allowed anywhere except within the office premises.
* Drug abuse will not be tolerated under any conditions but some exceptions may be made for employees who offer a joint or two to the security personnel of their floor.
* Employees should always be formally dressed and anyone wearing his underwear like Superman will be considered for immediate mid-year promotions.
* Camera phones are not allowed within the office premises. Instead please bring proper digital cameras with at least 6X optical zoom to get a good shot at any client sensitive data.

The Management relented soon after and decided that faculty members too would henceforth travel to onsite locations and impart necessary trainings to the employees based there.

Now Onsite is the other word for Corporate Rehabilitation.
Employees who have been sucked dry of all enthusiasm in life after around 2 continuous years of milking (Gender irrespective) are usually sent here so that they spend the next few months calculating the conversion rate of Dollars and Pounds instead of conjuring up novel ideas to put into their resignation letters.
Much like the hill-station-after-a-long-illness funda that we have in Hindi movies.

Thus while the company buys some time, the employee too starts feeling a temporary high as he sees his bank balance gain back some respectability in the eyes of the Credit card agents who had completely shunned him after his first few salaries.

Reaction of Credit Card Agent on your first salary...Really ??
Reaction of Credit Card Agent on your second salary... Ha ha ha ..Are you sure Sir??
Reaction of Credit Card Agent on your sixth salary...Ho ho ho Ho Ho ...Can I lend you some money mate!!!
And then there were None.

Anyway so this group of people at onsite are the Been-there-Seen-that kind of people and the company usually does not bother them much to avoid situations as below :

One Ruffled Employee to colleague within Client earshot -- Psst..Psst...Dude this business logic is worth around 5 million dollars in the market..You aren't interested to earn some extra dough are you ?
or of the deadpan kind,
Hi Richard, my manager just emailed me and he thinks that you have a very large butt and that you should give us a project to bring it back to shape.

Thus, to keep things in control as well as to accommodate the demands of the harassed training dept guys, the management came up with brilliant ideas of holding sessions of the kind of Cultural Sensitization Programs and one such we had here a couple of weeks back.

It was fun from the word go. We were taken through different adaptation theories and given directions on how we should behave ourselves in the company of clients, that asking personal questions of the genre of "What is your good name?" were a strict no-no and that applying oil in our hair was also not acceptable while oil-laden food etc were best avoided.
(Oil and Indians have such a beautiful love story !!!)

But the programme surely gave the employees an opportunity to unwind a bit and most of us thoroughly participated with great enthusiasm and interest,particularly during the coffee breaks and the Pizza lunch. Did I forget to mention that the company bore the entire costs for the same?
It was a comfortable Saturday afternoon and with pizza-filled stomachs we enjoyed the session all the more.Infact some were so sensitised that they could hardly stay awake after that.

But hats off to the training department for reminding the nosy pack of us that we should not be picking our nose while in office and Three Cheers to them for having managed to win this round with the Management!!

An ode to Maggi

2007-11-27T22:32:00.001Z

Some millions of years ago....
A scene from a typical evening in a bachelor cavehold .The language which was spoken in those days was Cavespeak

Cave Dweller Bachelor 1 - ool ..ool? (Food ..Food ?)
Cave Dweller Bachelor 2 - Maka keega kidneeee (Big dinosaur's kidney)

Cave Dweller Bachelor 1 - Maka neh zook !!!( Terrible !!!)
Cave Dweller Bachelor 2 - Yumma Morona !....Zazall v ave..(Eat you moron! That's all we have)

Cave Dweller Bachelor 1- Bolu...Gonna-maka-zook lom ni gu-tawa (Mate..Hot babe in next cave)
Cave Dweller Bachelor 2- Tooka-Tooka ? (Any Chance for sex ?)

Cave Dweller Bachelor 1- Neh...Neh ... (No way !!!)
Cave Dweller Bachelor 2 - Bolu, zez boondo de bincha ( Chill mate,lets drink Beer)
Cave Dweller Bachelor 1 - Yeh Yeh..Yeh Yeh !!! (Some expressions need no translations)

Nothing much has really changed over the eons, has it ?

However, if one were to choose one invention that has truly revolutionized the lives of bachelors, then that distinction would have to invariably go to Maggi noodles.
I would think that all bachelors here would agree that no other invention has brought more collective joy to them.
Well.......................??
.........
............
..................
Whats wrong with you people !!!! This is a 12A rated blog,for heaven's sake!!!

The noble person responsible for bringing these small packets of joy into the bachelor kitchens was a man named Julius Michael Johannes Maggi who founded the Maggi company in the year 1872 in Switzerland though of course the Maggi noodles came some time after.

For most bachelors with severely demented cooking abilities like yours truly, Maggi has always come as a saviour in moments of crisis.
It was there for us in those hostel days when the mess gave us zebra fodder in the name of dinner or when our initial attempts at cooking had left us with tar-like curries and even darker self esteems.

Some roles which Maggi Noodles has been shouldering for many many years now can be enumerated under the following heads:

Maggi -The Healer
Maggi is a true healer of lost faith. When the male ego is brutally shattered day after day at the altar of the cooking gas,when you can hear the utensils and jars in the kitchen sarcastically sniggering away behind your back, when even those tiny tiny peas keep running away from you in morbid fear, it is then that a small yellow packet in that corner of your shelf peeks out to you as a beacon of renewed hope.You reach out to it with outstretched hands and a weak and broken heart.You feel like crying and running back to the warmth of home where food means 'to eat' and not 'to cook'.
Like a true friend, the 2 minute logo in the packet gives you confidence and puts a comforting hand on your sagging shoulders. (Where else did you think ? Think straight...please think straight)
You put the water to boil and gently drop the noodles and the tastemaker masala. You can still see the spoons, the plates, the glasses and the knives all scrambling over each other's shoulders to get a view at their favourite clown
But today the circus is not to be.
It soon takes shape, the noodles smarten up and the tastemaker blends itself wonderfully with it giving it the perfect look.And before you know it, its done !
And then you taste it. Tears come rolling down your cheeks and you look upwards and just manage to whisper a choked 'Thank you'.
Resurrection can well come in small packets.

Maggi- The tower of Selflessness and Simplicity
Maggi noodles are true proponents of selfless service.They come with no starry airs and instead Nestle you within the warmth of their exceptional taste and ease of preparation.You may well give it the step-motherly treatment every now and then but it would always be there for you on a rainy day.
Nothing pompous, nothing too flashy, just a simple packet with no bombastic claims and yet so efficient.

Maggi- The Management Guru
We,in the software industry are taught to give an estimate to the client which should be at least twice or thrice the time we would actually need to do the work.
This is usually to buffer out emergencies like 3 hour lunch breaks, 12 stops to the coffee vending machines and all the time that goes to buy farewell gifts for the ever resigning people.Damn the attrition rate in this industry.
Maggi,in stark contrast, is a true professional in this sense . It sticks to its time of 2 minutes and in the process teaches us the true value of time.
Maggi also demonstrates with great efficiency how coiled things in life ease out when put in boiling water.
(Disclaimer -The blogger does not guarantee the results, should this be tried upon spouses.)

Though the page on Maggi noodles in Wikipedia lists around 28 flavours of Maggi noodles sold all around the world, my personal favourite has always been the Masala flavour. Some other unnecessary variations such as the Vegetable Atta Noodles and the Dal Sambhar ones have only scored a Saawariya with the masses.

Some things are best left original.

Though the impact of Maggi on a bachelor's life cannot certainly be measured, nor completely expressed in a single blog post, this is just a small tribute to something which has understood the bachelor psyche in a manner like very few others things have.

"Be not afraid of laziness"

2007-11-20T22:05:00.000Z

Some are born lazy, Some achieve laziness and Some have laziness thrust upon them"
Some many years from now, when I would be retrospecting on the days gone by, I'd think that I belonged to all the three categories.

In a predominantly Bong locality where I grew up, almost every kid of my age was learning the Tabla, the choice of instrument being all the more obvious as his sister was invariably going through the motion of learning "Robindra Songeet". A Bengali bhadralok's daughter may well be devoid of the right lung and the left kidney but Rabindra Sangeet is something she must know.
"Age 24, Fair skin, very homely, very beautiful, very understand, 5'2'', know East Bengal cooking" are some other accolades that get added with age.
Thus every morning at around 6, these bunch of singerly-sisters started their Riyaz with sleepy eyes and hoarser throats and needless to say, there was no need for roosters to wake people up in our locality.
There was not much to differentiate between the two species anyway.

Of course I was the charcoal black sheep of my family as far these classical skills were concerned and thus I never learnt the Tabla or for that matter never acquired any skill which required patience and tenacity.I could, on the other hand, carry sacks of potatoes or rice with more ease and my mother was happy that way.
Not every Bengali need be an intellectual after all. Some should still remain idiots so that they are never able to comprehend what phrases like paying back in their own coin mean.

Coming back to laziness, I think that it is a grossly misrepresented term. Predominantly it would seem to imply to many as physical inactivity and the disinclination to work. But what these judgemental people seem to miss is that all this seeming inactivity may actually well be a part of a larger picture, a slice from a continuous process of which we all are unknowingly a part and where each of us has an assigned role to play and more importantly at a predestined time. You just can't hurry on to things always. It simply spoils the scheme of things which God has so intricately balanced. Such harakiri only unnecessarily adds on to the pile of work that we lazy people already have, of slowing down things to a pace that nature is comfortable with.

Recently CNN-IBN was airing an interview on Javed Akhtar, when the famous lyricist made some poignant remarks in response to the interviewee's question on whether he was lazy.He said that he indeed was but went on to define that laziness is not really as is popularly conceived to be. Laziness according to him gave him the time to think and ponder which people are so not doing in their mad wild rush these days.
One couldn't agree with him more.

Ultimately,it is only you who will have to carry out the tasks assigned to you.There is no escaping the fact.If your mother wants you to get a wife and settle down, then you will have to get one sooner or later and if that wife wants you to keep your own house clean then you will have to keep the house clean and if your kid wants you to help him out with his Maths homework while the Indian Ocean concert is in town then you will have to tell him that only Rats teach Maths and thus he should go to his mother and quickly avoid the knife that the wife throws at you. That is all in your Karmic cycle.

So guys don't rush on to things.
The concept of time is only a relative and man-made concept. Time is a continuum and how much ever we try, we cannot confine it within the narrow boundaries of today ,tomorrow or yesterday.Lets think bigger and plan to get things done but not attach any narrow time frames to it. It only questions your faith in God's scheme of things.You certainly don't want to be remembered as a blasphemous soul after you leave this world, do you ?

It is the job of Time to take you forward, so sit back and relax for you will go forward, no matter what. Do not be involved in acts which would make Time feel insecure about his job. For if He gets angry, God save your already receding hairline, your teeth, that glowing skin, those muscles.

So don't draw up schedules for projects, do not send reminders to your subordinates to get the work done, don't respond to emails from your manager enquiring you of the status of the tasks.
Burn the estimation template.
Throw the watch (But let me know where you throw them).
Severe all ties with any person who uses the word ASAP again and recommend a No-Smokingish Prayogshaala for him/her !!

Work in Peace my friends and let others around you stay peaceful as well.
It is no sin to be lazy....

Diya Jale....Jaan jale

2007-10-16T19:32:00.000Z

What the fish....Three months since the last post in this blog ?? What is this ..a blog or a fog ???? Har har Har!!! (Such self deprecatory comments invariably draw the appreciation of intelligent critics...so I have heard....and also my ability to write humour, it seems, has died a premature death.)

In these three months a lot of water has flown down the Thames.(Man am I turning English in my expressions !! Claps claps!!)
The whole of last month was festival time in India and was I in India celebrating all the festivities with my family and devouring wonderfully delicious sweets and chasing prospective brides ??? Well Noooooo.....of course not ... Did I not pledge my whole life to the service of the suffering mankind the day I chose this life of struggle and hardships over those high paying management jobs (which nobody anyway gave me)?
Everyday I enter my office and see those expectant little faces and chirpy pleas clamouring for a little helping hand, it reminds me of the enormity of the task that I have undertaken. The IT industry is such a noble profession.

Naaaaah who am I kidding !!! These clients are fast learning the tricks of the trade and as soon as they realise that with a little effort, they can do it all by themselves will they outsource it entirely to China where I hear the government these days are doling out incentives to all couples who volunteer to procreate in an English medium school premise. But till then, thousands and thousands of desis like me will have to spend their festivals in foreign lands far far away from the warmth of their homes.( Whoa was strength of sentiment here !!! This would have made Nirupa Roy cry.)

Well Dussehra came and went by and so did Diwali and while Lord Rama may have returned home after a successful venture down South, we continue to struggle with our own self created demons some of which come packaged with horrendously polite messages such as this :

And come to think of it, running back to home was so much simpler just a few years back.
My only worthwhile achievement in college was the path breaking research work which I, along with some of my friends did in the field of Elasticity leading to some startling discoveries in this field of work.
We demonstrated that when around 15 Bengalies get together (and not discuss Communism) and the threat of suspension from hostels is not that severe, a one week Diwali break can safely be stretched back to an extent that it comfortably includes the days of Durga Puja in its scope.
(Durga Puja by the way occurs 3 weeks prior to Diwali.)
Some of our critics had claimed that our work was not authentic enough and that it borrowed much of its material from the proven theory of Mass-Bunk.

I tell you India is so not an ideal place for scientists.

The journey from Surat to my hometown took a mere 3 and half days by train and most often than not Indian Railways gave me a festival bonus by rounding off the days to a wholesome four. Reservations on these journeys was as unrealistic a concept as Tanushree Dutta winning the National Award for her acting skills and thus while we boarded the trains as humans, there was not much to distinguish us from dirty beddings when we finally disembarked from them.

Oh my home is not in Timbaktoo by the way. I in fact grew up in a smallish town, which till recently was not known by many to actually exist in India but all this changed when a lad with whom I once went to school thought of auditioning for Indian Idol.
While Amit Paul swayed the nation with his amazing crooning abilities, many people came to know that when one said 'Shillong me Khasis rehte hain', it did not mean that Shillong is inhabited by various kinds of Coughs.
Also I hear that the IIM Management has pulled a fast one this year by clandestinely opening a centre there. Cheers to my lovely city which for long has not got its due liimlight.

And while Diwalis come and Diwalis go, bugs too are resolved or camouflaged and left to be discovered by some innocent Chinese some twenty years from now.
Tigers are so much more smarter than Dragons ....Muhuahhaaa ..haaaa...MUhuhuaaha aaa!!!

Question of the Day- What are the thoughts of the pregnant lady as she goes into labour on Diwali night ?
Answer- Dard-e-Disco....Dard-e-Disco...Dard-e-Disco!!!

A Homeward Journey.....

2007-08-02T09:30:00.000Z

The first passenger airplane I ever boarded was a Vayudoot Fokker.
I am not sure how many of you have heard of such a plane, but one such did exist.That it could fly and fly with people inside it, ranks very highly in the list of unsolved mysteries of the world.

The flight was quite an experience and I remember it vividly though I was hardly 7 or 8 then. The air staff had given us some cotton to plug our ears with, so that no matter what they should shout in case of an emergency, we should remain blissfully unaware of it and die a peaceful death.
Irrespective of a man's age, if he is told to do something by a well shaped pretty female in very tight skirts, then he would usually do it without questioning too much and I was certainly not an exception to this rule and duly plugged my ears.
However my ever enthusiastic sister whose constant chattering at that time was being considered by RAW as an alternate torture method, took the ear-plugging thing a bit too far herself and the poor thing had to be taken to a hospital to have the piece of cotton extracted.Later that day a group of very traumatised doctors and a vast number of nurses of that hospital were seen drafting a letter to the National Human Rights Commission with their demands for safer working conditions.
She still suffers from selective deafness though, which aggravates to serious proportions whenever I ask her for money or remind her of my wish lists for my birthday. At the same time however, I must acknowledge with immense humility that when during the days of my engineering, the debt situations turned to proportions of the genre of Those-Which-Must-Not-Be-Told-To-Dad and our canteen owner broke down inconsolably at our sight, she had many a time given the deafness a rest and thus made the future visa processing for her brother much simpler in the absence of any unpaid debt related court convictions.!! Cheers Didi !!

Anyway, aeroplanes and the airplane industry in India has surely come a long long way since those days of the Vayudoot.

I recently sold all my belongings here to buy a return ticket from London to Kolkata and I chose Air India as their baggage limits were allowing me to smuggle around 5 kgs more than the other airlines.
By the way, the advertisements of this company with pictures of those glamorous air hostesses with their 7 inch smile and perfect set of teeth stand testimony to the old adage "All that glitters is not gold".
Every school has a lady teacher or two, who are born under the Irritation Constellation and no matter how well you perform, the maximum appreciation that you can get from them is a smirk or if you are lucky enough, maybe even a throat clearance.
Air India has a policy of hiring precisely such individuals as their air hostesses after they retire from the schools.
And as luck would have had it, it seemed my flight was the chosen one for the Annual General Body Meeting of all these individuals.

As I entered the flight, two of them stood with hands folded to welcome us, but with an expression so forlorn that it seemed to convey that they would be much happier if I just turned away and went back home.
Unconvincingly I scrambled my way to the seat and while I made a desperate attempt to accommodate myself in the cramped space which was just about enough for a honeymooning rat couple, I also discovered that the flight had no personalised entertainment system.
An unwritten disclaimer seemed to be floating in the air conveying that if you are so eager to watch the movie which would play on the blurred wide screen a quarter of a mile away, then Air India will not take responsibility for any broken necks or twisted shoulders.
I compromised with my situation. I was flying economy class you see.
I at least had the window seat and could play Cloud-Cloud-Foosh-Foosh after so many days. (Details of this game in some later post)

The flight was scheduled for 9:30 pm and departed some time around 11 pm which was quite acceptable by international standards.
I had had a very hectic day and before long fell asleep, wondering if it was some new company policy to deprive economy class passengers from any sort of food or beverages during the flight.
As one can imagine, it is mighty difficult to sleep in an airplane seat in that crouched position and particularly when the person in front of you thought is wise to kick you viciously every time your sleepy feet intruded so much as half an inch into her territory. She was around 235 years old I think and the strength of her kick made me check out whether she was actually using a hammer or rock to hit at my feet. Satisfied that it was only her foot, we smiled at each other and I went along in my attempt to catch some sleep still wondering if it would be bad manners to ask the air hostess for some food as I was pretty hungry by then.
However the indifferent and extremely constipated look of the air hostess attending to our rows held me back from requesting anything, lest she come and beat me up.

The food did come eventually after some passengers started to queue up in front of the pantry cabin with their tiffin boxes in hand.
I was so sleepy by then that I hardly understood what I ate and it may well have been the leather of the seat that I actually ate, thinking it to be meat.
I could see Salman Khan gyrating away in a movie with a very silly looking dwarfish Anupam Kher and thus realising that everything was still normal in the world, finally went off to sleep in such a state of coil that I was on the threshold of being disqualified as a vertebrate.

But before long, I was all awake again and there were these sun rays dancing all over me in some mad mad glory ....Inspite of being in an extreme state of grogginess,I was pretty sure that it could not have been more than an hour since the lady in front had last kicked me and surely it could not be morning so soon.
It was then, that the faint corner of my brain, which still remembers that I have been a student of science at some point of time, started throbbing very hard and I realised that I was actually travelling east at around 1000 kilometers per hour.The sun had already risen where we were now.
Rarely has a truth dawned upon me with more ferocity.

The screen told me that it was Iraq that we were flying over and somehow from my seat up there, everything seemed so calm and picturesque down below with beautiful red mountains climbing up to kiss the skies and the tributaries of what may have been the mighty Tigris or Euphrates pirouetting with unbound gaiety and childlike curiosity, lending the whole picture a touch of pristine beauty.

The person who sat in the front seat (probably the son of the Foot-Killer Lady) also had trouble sleeping and thought that the best way to kill time would be to start a conversation with me at 3 am in the morning and initiated it by asking me if I was going to Kolkata !!!!!
With the help of some frantic sign language I made him understand that I could not speak in English or Hindi or Bengali and uttered some gibberish and shouted "Malliallum wonly".
He gave a very dejected look as he got up in his search of some other prey...
(Forgive me my Mallu friends, for I knew not what I was doing.)
I called for the air hostess and asked if I may have another blanket as the screen had just flashed the outside temperature to be -63 degrees centigrade.
"Certainly Sir, as long as the business class guests do not ask for one" was not what she said but must have meant when she uttered "Sure", for it took her around 3 hours more to bring me the extra blanket.
The sleepless man soon found out that no one was really interested in his friendly overtures and came back to his seat waking his mother instead, who cursed him so loud that he may well suffered a nervous breakdown.
He looked back at me for sympathy and I scowled back with tongue out and squinted eyes.

I usually avoid using a toilet while in a plane. Not because its a public one but primarily because of my fear of the flushing mechanism that they employ. It is one of the scariest man-made things and certainly not safe for thin people like me who run a grave risk of being sucked away into space under the sheer force of the mechanism, which actually seems more like a statement of protest made by the pot for our audacity to have peed on it.
"So you filthy man, you peed on me ..did you ?? .Relieved the stress of your bladder on me...eh ?? ...And how do you think I felt about it...you rotten human being..? Now take this and this and this ...as the gushing sound seemingly thrashes us thoroughly for all our effrontery.
However a 10 hour flight was too long a test for the bladders and no sooner did I use the flush that I ran for all my life only to find that they were re-running the Salman movie again !!!
I was left wondering if being sucked by a sanitary pot would have been the less painful way to die.

We soon entered into Indian airspace and one could feel a distinct change in the emotion on board.
While the pilot drew our attention to the far away Himalayas which seemed like a marble fortress guarding the frontiers of her kingdom with all her raw might, I was equally thrilled to see the Ganges traversing its long and magnificent journey towards its final destination of the Bay of Bengal.
Breakfast was on time. The movie had finally ended. The sleepless man seemed comatose. I had hidden one of his mother's sandals in her hand baggage and the air hostess twirled her upper lip while serving me tea which I took for a smile.
In Rowling's language ..All was well.

With no further incidents worth blogging about, the plane touched down at Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose International Airport, Kolkata at 12:30 pm in the afternoon. It was right on time.
After the customary custom declarations where I did not declare 4 mobile phones, 2 digital cameras, a sony handycam, 3 ipod nanos, a diamond ring and a Sony home theatre, none of which I was carrying anyway, I came out and was soon mobbed by a dozen cab drivers each yelling and jostling at his best to catch hold of the
'phoren returned'.....

I had arrived in India after one and a half years and it felt good to be back home.

Will you kindly cover your face with a hanky when you bark !

2007-07-19T22:17:00.000Z

There are no street dogs in England. Technically speaking every dog in this country has a comfortable house to live in with a caring owner to take care of all his worldly needs.
I see different species of dogs everyday while walking to my office.
(Yes I can't afford a car even in Britain and all donations are welcome and would be tax exempted under the Help-the-Extremely Poor-Desis Act of UK).

Anyway coming back to the subject in hand, the English take their pets very seriously and it clearly shows when they bring them out for their daily walks every morning. While all are invariably well groomed with shining hairs and pedicured toes, the more pampered ones would be decked up in ribbons, hair bands, bow ties and even bandanas. Often they make me feel grossly underclothed.

All this attention and care however seems to have domesticated this species more than their wolf forefathers would ever have imagined in their wolfest of dreams.
There is something so very serene and calm about the dogs here that I have started to believe that it may well be only the sinners in the dog community who actually are condemned to bark at people or other dogs.
Those who go on to bite a person surely belong to the lowest strata in their social hierarchy or so the attitude of dogs in England makes me feel.

The British politeness which at times is nothing short of genocidal has penetrated deep into the psychology of the dogs here as well.

In India when owners take their dogs out for a walk, their direction is usually at the mercy of the animal and his subject of interest on that day.
While some day, Tommy would think it wise to rush in search of that fascinating looking frog in those hideous bushes while of course nearly strangulating his master in the process, on some other days, it may well be his desire to chase all the auto rickshaws in town leaving his master in a state of severe distortion and unwanted elasticity.
So though the chain may well be on the dog, it is usually the owner who seems to be dancing to the tunes of the chained.
Also when two such enthusiastic individuals happen to meet each other, they would politely exchange a few harmless expletives seemingly questioning each others family credentials and go along in their task of finding the best car to urinate upon.

Thus while on one hand our Indian dogs have earned a repute for thier uncouthness and utter lack of manners, their British counterparts, on the other would resemble more like the convent educated, finishing school outputs with an air of that all pervading sophistication.

An example of a typical conversation between two English dogs on a sunny morning would go somewhat like this :

Mr.Nobarker- "Good Morning Ms.Lacie, it is a mighty pleasure to see you on this beautiful morning."
Miss Lacie - "Good Morning Mr.Nobarker...Oh how honoured am I to meet you.I hope you're doing well."
Mr.Nobarker- "Very well indeed thank you. Please allow me to pay my compliments to nature on that lampost near you."
Miss Lacie- "Oh you are so kind."(smiling coquettishly).
Mr.Nobarker - "Also may I just make an effort to admonish this very insolent fly who has been continuosly bothering your behind?"
Miss Lacie - "Oh you are so kind. Pray proceed."
Mr.Nobarker - "Miss Lacie, this fragrance is wonderful, is it Davidoff or Elizabeth Arden ?"
Miss Lacie- "Oh Mr.Nobarker, You always flatter me so. Why don't you join us for lunch today? Mother has dug out some vintage cat bones and would be so delighted to see you."
Mr.Nobarker- "Oh that wonderful old bitch...she always had such a knack for searching bones..didn't she? I'll be pleased to come.
After all its raining cats and bones for lunch isnt it ...Har Har Har !"
(Note : Such attempts at humour have landed many Englishmen in jail)

Khooni Sheena and Dada GullyRaja from Kurla East also happened to meet in the morning and their conversation went somewhat like this.
Disclaimer - The blogger takes no responsibility of the kind of language used below and has merely presented a transliteration of the actual dialouge.

Dada GullyRaja-- "Kameeni kahan thi raat bhar, bulaya tha peet khujane ko..aayee kyon nahi??"
Khooni Sheena -- "Aye chirkut, bhankas band kar re...subhe se waisich dimaag ka pech dhila hoyela hain"
Dada GullyRaja -- "Kayko fuljhari ban rakhi hain be???..Kisi Pandu ne laath maarke uthaya kya tereko ya subhe subhe Chatri Gang se panga le ke aa reli hain ??? "
Khooni Sheena -- "Are Nahi re ..Gayi thi Bandra Kurla ka chakkar lagane ko...Wohan Memsahab log morning vaak karne ko aata hain aur jaate jaate Biskoot bhi khilata hain aisa mereko woh Langda Tony bola..."
Dada GullyRaja -- "Phir ?"
Khooni Sheena -- "To apun jaake pahucha ...do teen aunty log baithele bhi the....Ek do baar paas jakar poonch hilakar Vyajantimala jaisa haseen bhi diya ..pan sala biskoot to kya ek mumphali tak nahi diya aur upar se Shooo Shooo Dirty Dog, Dirty Dog karge bhaga diya.....Khaali Peeli neend khoti kiya saala..
Aur dekh kismat apun ka ....Usi time me Moonicipalty wale bhi aakar sab Garbage lekar kalti...Kal woh Chopra ke wohan chicken bana tha ....Chamaila...ek haddi tak nahi mila...."
Dada GullyRaja --"Hmmm...bad day.....chal apun jaata hain abhi...Woh Kurla sewage ka Naala kiske territory me aata hain uska decision hain aaj.....apun ke favour me nahi gaya na to kutton ki maut marunga salon ko."
Khooni Sheena- "Chal phoot le."

While Miss Lacie would have a delightful lunch and look forward to a cozy siesta in her new Danish Design Snozeee bed, Khooni Sheena would consider it lucky if she managed to fight out a piece of rotten bread for herself and is not run over by a speeding truck by the end of the day.

The world is so diverse isn't it?

Freedom of Speech- Article 19

2007-07-12T10:36:00.000Z

While casually roaming around in search of some Bong movies available in YouTube I chanced upon such a fascinating foreword to one of the old Bengali classics that I could not resist giving it a wider audience.

The movie is question is "Saat Pake Bandha" of 1963 starring Soumitra Chaterjee as the lead actor while the all-time beauty Suchitra Sen played the heroine's role. This movie was also remade in Hindi a few years later and named Kora Kagaz which starred Vijay Anand and Jaya Bhaduri in the lead roles.

The original Bengali movie directed by Mr.Ajay Kar brilliantly captured the angst and pain of two individuals in a failed marriage and their stoic acceptance of their destiny.
Suchitra Sen became the first Indian woman to win the best actress award at an international film festival when she was bestowed the honour in the Moscow International Film Festival for her performance in this movie.

The fantastical foreword to this movie which can be found here read as follows and I quote completely.

"The movie “Saat Pake Bandha” is one of good movie of 1963 in Bengali language that have ever made.The directors of this movie KAR and Ajoi had set the story that are related to our society. This movie starred with the popular bengali actress “Soumitra Chatterjee” also carries some real moral lessons to the society as well to the whole world.
The story is about Soumitra Chatterjee, the daughter of Subrata Chatterjee who performed her role like a real. In this movie she fell in love with a poor professor of the college eventhough she is from a rich family.But their love story is not acceptable to her mother and opposes their marriage.
But Soumitra who is crazy in the love of the professor, marriages the professor against her mother wishes.But at the end of the movie she eventually realises the value of her own marriage, and tries to repair relationships which is the main storyline of this movie.
This movie provides full entertainment to the audience with a message that love is the most valuable thing in the world than the money…and there wouldn’t be any status of rich and poor in the real love and cannot be break out easily"

Maybe the legendary and enigmatic Suchitra Sen who now lives a life, completely alienated from the public eye could be enticed to come out of her life of seclusion, should this charming article ever happen to reach her.
As for the 72 year old veteran actor Soumitra Chatterjee, I am sure news of a gender change at this age would not be very beneficial for his health.

Hats off to the genius who wrote this article.

Rashtrapati ya Rashtrapatni ??

2007-07-01T21:55:00.000Z

When I was in junior school, the school authorities bought a piece of land just adjacent to our school building to give young kids like us, more space to hone our sporting skills and that we surely did with full enthusiasm. We innovated on some very popular games like the farthest-spitter event and the tadpole-catching competition which however wasn't too well received by my mother when she saw her water-storage tank playing host to around eighteen well-caught-future-frogs. They all went down the drain and with them my ambitions to one day become the world's leading frog-breeder.

However what was remarkable about all these games was the manner in which they spread and caught on with the fancy of the entire school.
So while a few weeks would see numerous squatting huddles engaged in very serious games of marbles, the next weeks would see the entire school divided in groups with each banging their Hot-Wheel cars head-on to see whose wouldn't overturn.
Often the head banging could not be restrained to the toy cars alone and after around five or six hospitalisations, a new game such as Fart-Jumping would crop up from nowhere and all would be friends again.
(**--Many such wierd things happen in all boys schools most of which are kept under wraps to leave us happily with the illusion that we are still civilised.)

The whimsical and fairly ridiculous manner in which we came up with our games however fades in comparison to the fascinating selection process adopted by our politicians over the last few weeks to choose a candidate, competent enough to be our country's next President.

I hereby briefly touch upon the profiles of some of the candidates whose names have cropped up in this presidential race.
Guest appearances in this race by stalwarts such as Amitabh Bachchan and Narayan Murthy did not qualify them to merit a mention in this list.

Somnath Chatterjee
This angry old man of Indian politics who started his political career in the early seventies has a kind of ever-frowning face that would make you think that either his favourite underwear is being stolen every morning or that he suffers for chronic piles.
In his position as the speaker of the Lok Sabha, he holds the record for having staged more walk-outs than all the other MPs put together.
A cartoonist's delight, this man's desire to be the next President of India has been chosen as India's official entry in this year's list of 10 most hilarious comments made by a politician.

Dr.Karan Singh
This scholarly gentleman's existence in the Congress party is acknowledged every 5 years whenever there is a question of shortlisting candidates for the presidential post and he too very well knows that he will never be really chosen and instead spends his time authoring autobiographical books with extremely relevant titles such as 'Brief Sojourn' and 'A Tryst with History'.
This periodic media attention seems to be the only candy offered to him for his unquestionable alleigance to the Gandhi family which goes to such extents that he is rumoured to have undergone surgery to stitch the Nehru cap to his skull.
Of course he has also been appointed the Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Cell of the Congress Party and his personal website summarises his position as follows:
"In this capacity he is present whenever a visiting Head of Government calls upon the Chairperson of UPA, Shrimati Sonia Gandhi, or when she calls upon visiting Heads of Government."
Rarely has a former king been bestowed with more gracious a post.

Atal Bihari Vajpayee
Mr Vajpayee, the poet-politician was the choice of the Trinamool Congress, a party whose only contribution towards social welfare till date has been in the field of calling statewide bandhs thus giving the people of West Bengal a well deserved mid-week paid holiday every now and then.
Their dimunitive leader Ms.Mamata Banerjee whose histrionics in the public arena is the basis of many a Bollywood movie script however could not pull this one off for though she had been advised that bachelors invariably suffer from senile dementia after 75, Mr.Vaypayee held on to his wits and politely declined the offer. The party is considering on a West Bengal Bandh on this issue soon.

Sushil Kumar Shinde
Elementary geometry books often use his face to describe a perfect circle.This man who sports a goatee in his head however was never a serious contender and his name was proposed primarily to fill the OBC quota in the presidential nominee list.

Shivraj Patil
Our Home minsiter was actually out in the market to choose the right design for his new name plate to be used in the Rashtrapati Bhawan when he received a call from Dr.Manmohan Singh's PA who said " Non sarete il presidente Sig.Patil" (Italian is the lingua franca of the Indian Cabinet these days) which translated to "You will not be the president Mr.Patil".
This soft spoken, former Lok Sabha Speaker who often uses the powerful weapon of his stern looks and stony silence to counter Lashkar-e-Tayiba and Al-Jaish terrorist threats, reacted to this message in his typical fashion and has dutifully gone back to his daily routine of political inaction and professional inefficiency.
After the bomb blasts in Delhi on the eve of Diwali, this man who aspired to be the Supreme Commander of the Indian armed forces was quoted to have said
"I appeal to the people to please go back to their families immediately. They will feel secure when they see their relatives."
Although retirement for Indian politicians is considered unconstitutional, this man if he ever thinks of quitting active politics, would be best advised to not take on a career as a motivational speaker.

Pranab Mukherjee
He has been the country's Finance Minister,Defence Minister,External Affairs minister and is currently the Foreign Affairs minister.With no other top ministry in sight, and the Prime Ministership not on offer, he thought of becomming the President of India and got all his Bengali comrade friends to support his candidature. Soniaji who is rumoured to have a memory stronger than that of many elephants put together, sweetly reminded him of two things. First he had opposed the Congress's choice of Mr.Rajiv Gandhi as the next Prime Minister of India after Indira Gandhi's death in 1984. Second his experience in governance is so highly indispensable and so very invaluable to the UPA government that it would be quite impossible to let him go.
Soon after he was seem roaming in the corridors of the Parliament House listening to Mukesh's all time hit song "Jaoon Kahan bata aye dil...Sonia badi hain Sangdil... Gaandhee aayee ghar jalane....Sujhe na koi manzil....""

Bhairon Singh Shekhawat
He is 84 years old and has 17 election victories and two open heart surgeries in his rather impressive resume. While most other people in the above list have been sidelined in this fascinating race, this man continues to run the marathon 'independantly' claiming to have some secret winning formula which goes beyond plain airthmetic. Maybe he is banking on the conscience vote factor but he would surely be aware of the loose sand he is building his hopes upon, for conscience is something which tops in the list of Ineligibilty Criteria to be an Indian politician.

Pratibha Patil
When people grow old in politics, they usually become Governors and lead the next 5 years of their life inaugurating everything that opens new in the state. Pratibha Patil was no exception to this rule and was leading a fairly ordinary politician's life with only one murder accused brother and a loan default of only Rs.17.5 crores. Once Mr.Shivraj Patil's candidature was rejected by the Left parties, the UPA government did a quick search in their database of other available Patils who would not mind naming any child born in their families after Soniaji. When the search results showed that all Patils in the Congress party were willing to do so, they thought of conducting a quick survey on some other fundamental aspects of Indian presidency. The questions were as follows :

a) Do you have the strength of character to take the firm decision that everything needs to be decided at the 10 Janpath residence?
b) Are you adept at changing nappies and willing to baby-sit Priyanka's children during the 2009 elections?
c) Do you know the difference between Oregano and Orangutan.

Though the last question filtered out most of the contenders, yet when no clear choice emerged out of the survey, Soniaji decided to take matters in her own hands and she came up with that one defining criterion which she felt must be their in any individual who was aspiring to be the head of the largest democracy in the world which was
He/She should have seen and communicated with an actual ghost!!

(Hasn't surrealism always been an integral factor in Indian politics ?)
And it is here that Mrs.Pratibha Patil Shekhawat beat all other contenders and raced ahead to be the official UPA nominee for India's next President.
With her exhaustive and entensive knowledge on both Indian and Italian culture and history, she indeed seems to be the most eligible candidate to replace the Padma Bhushan, Padma Vibhushan and Bharat Ratna awardee and current president Dr.Abdul Kalam.
Her husband who in all likelihood is going to have the rather dubious distinction of being the first male 'First-Lady' of our country was quoted as saying "We are in a state of shock" and for once, I think we can completely empathise with this gentleman.

This completes my humble effort to touch upon the profiles of these luminaries and any hint of sarcasm anywhere in this post is purely speculative on the part of the reader and absolutely unintentional.

Jai Hind .

O for Orkut

2007-05-20T11:51:00.000Z

Google has a company policy which allows its engineers "20 percent time" in which they're free to pursue personal projects which aren't necessarily related to their official assignments.
This according to Google creates a healthy environment for creativity to prosper.
Of course our Indian companies need not come up with such policies as we already spend around 35% of our time in office on our personal interests and an additional 45% on that of our colleagues'.

Anyway one of the employees of Google made use of this time to create a networking site which he not very modestly named after himself Orkut.
Thankfully he chose to leave out his surname Büyükkökten from the address of the site as having to type in the text www.orkutBüyükkökten.com each time to log into a socialising and networking site would have soon led many to severe demophobia and chronic depression.

Soon after the public release of the site, it was alleged by his previous employer, Affinity Engines, that he had created something similar while he was working in their company and they filed a lawsuit against Google claiming that the code of Orkut was infact theirs.
Rumours have it that Google pulled a few strings here and there, bribed a few judges, kidnapped a handful of relatives of the CEO of Affinity Engines and thus amicably settled the lawsuit out of court.
It is such gentlemanly behaviour of these large companies that must truly be appreciated.

Orkut surely has come a long way since then.
In early April 2007, the number of users having an Orkut profile was over 49 million, majority of whom hail from Brazil and India- two visionary countries who are contemplating laws which would soon make it a criminal offence for its citizens to not have an orkut account.

Nowadays in our Hindi film industry, they do not anymore make movies of the type of "Yaadon ki Baarat" (The Bridegroom's party of Memories) where 3 brothers, separated at childhood recognise each other and finally reunite after around 20 years by singing that common song which their composer and lyricist mother had so affectionately taught them just minutes before she was shot dead by masked dacoits. So ecstatically did they come running to embrace each other after thorough mutual verification of the lyrics from a distance that one would have to be a true stone-hearted demon or an employee of my company to not shed a tear at this emotional reunion.
(While true stone-hearted demons do not cry, we in our company exhaust all our tears on the days we get our salary.)

In one of the other masterpieces, the elder brother takes a very difficult vow to never have anything to do with water again as he had been separated from his kid brother while he had gone to fetch some drinking water for him !!
No wonder that they named that movie Haath ki Safai or Cleanliness of the Hands.
(See, tissues never really caught the fancy of the Indian public.)

Anyway Orkut addresses such potential hardships brilliantly.

No longer do you have to rely on songs and fortune to find your long lost loved ones. A simple search in Orkut is all that you need, for there is rarely anyone who does not have a profile page in Orkut today.
What accounts for its huge popularity is probably the concept of open profiles where anyone and everyone can browse and read your personal messages, take a peek at your photo albums and drop in their own messages as well.
(No Ma, they cannot wash my dishes and do the cooking for me.)

This unique opportunity to discreetly invade the privacy of other people under the pretension of socializing was too good to let go. Quite naturally you would come across many known faces while carelessly wandering around here and there.

There are many kinds of characters that you would meet in this wonderfully interesting forum some of which are discussed below:

The Evolutionary kind:
Do you faintly remember that fat kid from junior school who used to fervently dig his nose with all his ten fingers as if in anticipation of excavating some gold from there? He is there in orkut and has pictures with a lady so beautiful that you would want to go back to those days and dig his nose for him, for maybe just an introduction with her.

The Missed-the-boat kind:
The doe-eyed girl who gave you those coyish and inviting looks in your tuition class but whom you could never manage to ask out is also there. You look at her album and there is a wonderful photograph where she is seen hugging a cute chimpanzee in a beach in Pattaya.
While you are admiring her love for wildlife, a small caption below the photograph saying 'Me and my cho chweet husband' would affect your attention momentarily.

The Friends:
This extremely interesting creed is in abundance in orkut. Frustration is given a new dimension by this junta. All you need is a name resembling a female and if you have a picture as well then you are done for.
The brigade would march up in full force to pay their respects.
Some actual extracts are jotted below.

First Stage:
Scrap - "hiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii girl king wanna ur freind"

Scrap - "I know I m stranger 4 u.may b u have some problem to b my friend.
I think friendship is the word which introduce two strangers and bond them in a lovely relation called “FRIENDSHIP”."
(Wow did anyone know this about friendship???)

Scrap - "hi.how are you ya.i am dude from Kurnool no.i want to be your friend ya.
if you agree than
........plzzz reply me
else if dont agree than
........also plzz reply me ya
else I sorry no.
(Syntax Error: Endif statement Missing !!! And is this guy from Kurnool or not ?)

Intermediate Stage
Scrap - "Why no reply...am I not coal?
(No,you are bitumin and tar my friend... why restrict yourself to just coal!)

Scrap - "I think I have wastting my time,by disturbing you.........
anyways,if you can`t reply......delete your self."
(Just how exactly does one delete oneself ????)

Final stage
My personal favourite in this category is this one

Scrap - "wat a person u r guess i pitty.................to the guy...........................anways wats up ........................???"
(Last ditch efforts by attacking the ego I guess)

And did I read somewhere that Orkut is an old Turkish word that means city of happiness, pleasure, joy and luck ?????

There is then this concept of communities where a group of people with some common interests get together to share and discuss views on a common platform.
So we have varied communities like Funny incidents in Dentistry (2,559 members), I hate Greg Chappel (2,885 members), Down with Apostrophe Abus'e! (721 members), A Glass of water (5,653 members), Alcohol improves my english (4,059 members), George Bush´s Penis (853 members !!!!), Men are big pigs! (109 members ), Why are girls so dumb? (1,855 members), This Is Not A Community (65,938 members) and so on.

Indeed this is a motley and colourful congregation here and for people like me who are reluctantly social,this site is just the answer to our prayers.
No more do you have to go through lengthly telephone calls or emails to get to the point.
Scrapping is the new Mantra !!!
"Hi wanna frenship ?"

Felis Silvestris Catus -II

2007-04-17T14:38:00.001Z

The IIMs are always in the national news.
If its not about a 22 year old fresher plucking out all the nostril hairs of the 42 year old bum who got the Rs.38 lacs/annum job offer while he could only manage a Rs.8 lac one, it has to be about some over-enthusiastic house-fly which managed to land itself in some soup or the other there.

Recently ofcourse the OBC quota issue has hogged most of the liimlight.
With the government of India being made to pull their ears and do sit-ups by the Supreme Court on this issue, the IIM administration is at a loss again.
Though the institutes have complete autonomy on most issues of the college like deciding on who the milkman will be in the hostels ; for some insignificant policy decisions like student admissions they are bound to follow what Mrs Phulki Debi, the 89 year old deaf mother-in law of the minister of state for Tribal affairs, hallucinates on Saturday evenings.

The journey of the management-aspirants till this stage is briefly touched upon here.

The two of you who read my blogs may remember that I left my discussion on this exam process here when this crowd of MBA aspirants gets demarkated into two categories.
One who would sleep peacefully for the next 4 months and the other who would not.

For this group of Jawans, once the euphoria of the written results has passed away and Chunnu ki Ma has been to his house 4 times reminding his mother of how fortunate she was to have borne a magnificent child like him, the reality of the task ahead would slowly dawn upon him.
There is still a group discussion and personal interview in a months time where a panel of usually three nutty professors play chinese checkers and the one who loses gets to bang the heads of the other two. After 3 hours of this activity, they come to take the interviews.

Pagalguy.com, an online mental institution camouflaged as a web portal provides just the kind of platform that the Jawans need to prepare for this stage of the admission process.

Stage 1- Preparation
Forums have topics as below :
First timers :
1. Can I wear my favourite Orange and Yellow shirt to the interview ....please ? (26 replies)
2. Are we allowed to pull the hairs of and claw at other candidates in a Group discussion ? (454 replies)
Veterans:
3. Hey Rocker, is Prof Jagadish Murthy in the panel for Mumbai this time ? (8 replies)
Moderators:
4. IIM Calcutta has not issued any directive that all interview takers will need to take a bath with Margo soap only before coming for the interview. As last year it was Margo and Hamaan so we have no reason to think that this has changed this time.
(Members spreading such wrong information will be banned permanently. Ha ha !)
5. Pschyometric tests if any, will not test whether you are insane. So you're safe.
6. There would be invigilators from the HRD ministry in the interview halls to see that there is no discrimination being done on the basis of your nose-picking habits and belching disorders or even the length of your footnails.

Stage 2 - GD and Interviews
New thread added at 3 a.m. in the morning some hours before the first interview :
Veterans
Prof. Mule , Prof Mukherjee alongwith Prof Khandelwal's pet dog were seen in the airport today evening.Man we are done for this time !! Please post your GD and interview experiences asap.
New thread added at 5.14 a.m. in the morning some hours before the first interview :
First Timers
Urgent. Hello Please post your GD and interview experiences asap.My bowels are jamming.
New thread added at 6.03 a.m. in the morning some hours before the first interview :
First Timers
Very urgent.Hello Please post your GD and interview experiences asap.I think I will faint.

This goes on till we have some frustrated software engineer sitting in his client location in Japan jotting down 'his' GD and personal interview experiences.

Hi,
My interview and GD went quite well I think.
The GD topic was " When will Arjun Sing ?"

There were a lot of civilized discussions and when the the third sonofabitch and the F-word was heard , Prof Mule (the shorter one) let loose Prof Khandelwal's dog amongst us and sanity prevailed.

My interview was even better infact:
Prof Mukherjee - Surname ?
I- Mishra.
Prof Mule: Are there any places where we can take Prof Khandelwal's dog for his potty ?
I - Yes sir there is the Gateway of India which was built to commemorate the visit of King George V and Queen Mary and was built between 1911 -1924.
Prof Mule - ok ok...how far is it ?
I- Sir would you need it in foot, meters,yard or furlongs ?
Prof Khandelwal's dog (clearly under pressure) - Gnarl Gnarl !!!
I- 10 mins walk Sir.
Prof Mule - Say something about Terrain Contour Matching Navigation system and Digital Scene-Mapping Area Correlator used in cruise missiles .
I- Can I take the dog out for the walk instead sir ?
Prof Mule-Yes you may and that will be all. you may go now. Thank you.

I- Sir can we do this one more time please ?
Prof Mukherjee - Surname ?
I- Lumbeechu
Prof Mule- Hello my son . How are you today ?
I- Not too bad...kind of hot in here ..
Prof Mukherjee - Would you like some tea or coffee, my son ?
I- Beer would be good !
Prof Mule to Prof Khandelwal's dog - Go get Beer !!
Prof Mule - So what does your father do, my son...?
I- He is the Additional District Collector of Hingoli district.
Prof Mukherjee - Oh how unfair !! Such discrimination in this 21st century. Unthinkable.
Prof Mule - You must have had a very oppressed childhood isn't it with no proper schooling and means of expressing your natural self ?
I- Yes indeed so, The dean of the Doon school in Dehradun was a real pain in the ass at times you know. He didn't allow us to stage the play titled "Say of the Gay".
Prof Mukherjee - Ahem...Indeed such disbalance and disparity in the society must be done away with immediately.
Prof Mule- Son , can you name 2 of your subjects from class 12 ?
I- Yeah sure Physics and Sociology
Prof Mukherjee - Excellent Excellent.
Prof Mule- Its really an honour to have you in our institute. If you wish, you can join the campus placements right away. We have forced the Lehman Brothers to reserve their offers for such exceptionally talented people like you, who have been so unjustly held back in their march to progress by unscrupulous meritorious candidates.
Prof Mukherjee- Yes yes Down with merit.
Prof Khandelwal's dog - Woof Woof !!

Stage 3 - The Wait
This is the most familiar phase for the Jawans. Anyone who has been to an engineering college would know how to react when he hears "Semester results are to be declared this evening".
If its the first time he hears it, it usually means that the professor has just received the answer sheets and is waiting for the inevitable annual visit of his wife's now 9-year old nephew to whom he will give them to be corrected.
Aakhir Sale ke bachche hote kisliye hain .

Around the 34th time when an engineer hears that results are to be declared that day, does he walk upto the administrative building and gets to see his results. I remember mine in the 4th semester which came with some additional inputs from my professors:

Subject 1 - Marks 41 ---"A half-eaten Parle-G buscuit is not considered as bribe to the examiner these days."
Subject 2 - Marks 36 ---"Beta nikal gaye haath se isbaar."
Subject 3 - Marks 38 --- "Sexual intercourse is not the answer I was looking at to the question 'Give a few examples of Heat and Mass transfer reactions .' "
Subject 4 - Marks 45 --- "Illustrate Carnot cycle does not mean drawing a Carrot plant and a Tobu cycle beside it."
Subject 5 - Marks 54 --- "Shit, Pee and Fart" are not examples of solid, liquid and gaseous micronutrient fertilizers."
Subject 6 - Marks 48 -- "Expecto Patronum ,Expelliarmus and Crucio are still not the steps in a Acid/base Oxidation-Reduction titration."
Ah those were the days when the professors really cared for you !

Anyway coming back to the subject at hand, our group of Jawans now expectantly wait for April 21st, the date announced by the IIMs when Mrs.Phulki Debi is expected to have her next set of hallucinations.

Wishing them all the best in this endeavour to be a manager.

World Cup --- Chapter !

2007-03-02T23:05:00.000Z

My highest score in cricket during my 20 years of glittering playing career is a remarkable 12 which I scored against a very strong bowling opposition of three girls, two of whom bowled underarm while the third attempted to bowl over arm with an action and expressions similar to that of a drowning project manager who apart from not knowing how to swim, suddenly remembers during those last frantic moments that he has not yet applied for the reimbursement of the canteen bill for yesterday's dinner and has also forgotten to disapprove the leave plans of Mahesh and Aniruddha and approve that of Ragini and Jyothika.

As far as my bowling is concerned, although I may not have taken wickets that regularly (a lifespan being a unit of my regularity), but I assure you that I am quite a terror with a cricket ball in my hand.
Strangely, after a pretty decent runup for a person with my degree of lankiness, once out of my hand, the ball attains a brain of its own with an uncanny desire to epitomise Camus' abstruse philosophy of The Rebel. If I aim the ball at the stumps, it usually reaches the second slip (full toss) and if direction is not a cause for rebellion on a day, then the ball usually soars just 5 feet above the stumps....Barely missing them, a cynical reporter would say but we sportsmen do not usually react to media reports as it affects our performance.
During one such flight of one of my deliveries, the late nature poet William Wordswoth appeared and parting the clouds, sonorously recited the following lines dedicating them to my ball.***

"Ethereal minstrel! pilgrim of the sky!
Dost thou despise the earth where cares abound?"
***(I mean the cricket ones...you naughty one)

Anyway without sounding too pompous (psst..I have held 3 catches also ....okay 2), I would delve on the news piece which caught my attention today.

The Board of Cricket Control of India is truly a master when it comes to understanding the game of cricket and the concerns of our often run-parched, performance-dry and advertisement-hungry national cricketers.

It was announced today that a team of National Security Commandoes who provide Z-category security to our politicians (to avoid being lynched by the common man) , alongwith a Bomb Disposal squad would accompany the cricketers during their month long all-expenses paid vacation to the Carribeans which some senior members have been told also coincides with the World Cup dates !!!!
Some players have of course voiced their displeasure at this odd coincidence and while squarely blaming Jagmohan Dalmiya for this fiasco are suggesting having a relook at their contracts once they come back from their vacation. Their argument is plain and simple : No one works during vacations apart from Indian software engineers.

The Ministry of External Affairs have said that the commandoes will accompany the players everywhere they go.
I mean, isn't this streching it a bit too far? Was this really necessary ?
We understand that the BCCI is aware of the level and kind of performance that this team will dish out and thus is naturally bent on taking all necessary precautions for the safety of the players.
For if they are harmed, who will wear those Nike T-Shirts and on whose underwear will Sahara print its logo and pay an additional Rs.10 cr for that must-display clause in the contract.
We completely understand and empathise with the BCCI's cause and concerns but commandoes and Bomb Disposal squads?
When Salman Khan can live without fear in India after genocidal performances in movies like Hello Brother,Lucky and Maine Pyar Kyon Kiya to name a few, what fear should Indian cricketers have ?
We Indians have accepted failure and mediocrity as a way of our lives isn't it so why bother.

This is a complete waste of money I think, just like the Rs.4,680 crore provision allocated for the Rajiv Gandhi National Drinking Water commission and the Rs.720 crore allocated for the Rural Sanitation Campaign in the Union Budget of 2007-2008.
While the money in the first Drinking Water scheme would attempt to quench the undying thirst of a few party workers of the late Prime Minsiter whose name adorns the scheme, the second would of course be used in such a manner that the Finance Minister will have to allocate more funds under the same head of Sanitation next year to clean the filth resulting from the misuse of the funds in this year.This is cyclical and we Indians accept this.
Similarly I am sure sending out Black Cat commandoes with the cricket team too is unnecessary and a sheer wastage of the taxpayer's money.

On seeking the opinion of a few members of the side on this latest development their reaction were as follows :

Rahul Dravid : "Ya ,the boys are performing well now and we are confident that we will beat Bermuda.......The commandoes can come back during the Super 8 stage. Great to have Ganguly back in the side."

Sachin Tendulkar : "Ya, I mean its fine you know. Well ah yes....I can use one commando as my runner you know. Ha ha..."
"He can open fire when I am given out. Sharad Pawar has told me so. Great to have Ganguly back in the side."

Anil Kumble: "No comments" ....(Thinking )...."If I bribe 3 of them and get them to frighten Chappel, then maybe I can get to play the Bermuda game. ...Do they tap thoughts too these days? "

Virendra Sehwag : "Mere pass Ma hain ............"

Greg Chappel :(Shouting) "Well it'll be tough to beat the Australians with just bats and balls and 4 pairs of 33+ year old legs. Why don't you try to coach such a team without black cat commandoes..Huh"
Just as the cameraman raised his right hand to adjust the lens Chappel toned down taking him to be another Oriya slapper and added,
"We are open to ideas from all quarters which positively impact Indian cricket. Please don't get emotional.Great to have Ganguly back in the side."

Irfan Pathan: "Are you kidding me ? Do I have an option ? Vengsarkar Sahib has asked 4 of them to particularly point their guns at me when I am on the field."

Sourav Ganguly : "Ha ha ha ha ha .....Ha ha ha ha"...(Dancing like Mamta Kulkarni did in Karan Arjun and singing.......)........"Jai Ma Kali"
Sreesanth, Uthappa and Dinesh Karthik forming the rest of the dancing troupe.

Wishing the Indian team with all the best of luck for the World Cup.
They would need loads of it, to live upto even half the expectation of the Pakistanis.

An English fHairy Tale

2007-02-08T23:21:00.000Z

I have never really been much of a haircut-friendly person.Infact I loathed them when I was a kid.
It was always a Sunday when I was virtually dragged out of the house and placed in charge of Tultulda, an otherwise very friendly acquaintance, who used to coax and cajole me to the dreaded saloon, often with grossly unfair means such as Amul Milk Chocolates.

All this, to make me sit on a queer chair with a curious looking Y shaped stick behind it which gently rested your head in its cusp while a heartless and shameless barber would meticulously gnaw away any remnants of a human look which you might have acquired since the last visit to his place.
Haircuts always left me very bruised mentally and an uncanny sensation of being without clothes in the street, lingered on for at least a week after the cut.

We usually had mutton as Sunday lunch which partially drowned my grief while Didi came up with sympathetic consolations of the kind that I should actually rejoice, knowing that the relatively less frontal tapering of my face clearly still distinguished me from porcupines and skunks.
After all what are elder sisters for!

The hair butchers charged Rs.5 for each such unwanted service then.
The last hair cut I had, cost me a whopping Rs.860.

No, Shilpa Shetty has not yet adopted me (inspite of me being able to pronounce her name correctly) nor was I under any vow for the past 13 years which disallowed any creature of the barber species to lay hands on my precious locks and thus my hair were not really celebrating any kind of Jata Sammelan which should have necessitated such an atrocious sum of money to have them dispersed.

It just happens that I am still in the United Kingdom where the creatively deranged are usually rehabilitated by the government and made barbers, who thus naturally charge such exhorbitant rates to showcase their art on our heads.

A haircutting session is usually a big occasion for us desi folks here.
A lot of planning goes into the event.Phone calls are made,discount deals are fished, appointments are taken. On D-Day which usually still is a weekend, we book cabs, often forsake lunch and sleep and all this, to again sit on another queer looking chair with another forky Y protruding behind it with all its devilry intact....
"Come child , if not be a son of Satan ,atleast look like one" written all over it.

The barbers here are much meaner than their counterparts back in India, to the extent that they have categorised inhuman looks into simple Roman numerals. 1,2,3,4 ...You just gotta pick your number and lo behold in less than 3 minutes you can look at yourself in the mirror and guffaw away at the creature in front of you.....so agonisingly trying to look human.

Human beings try to demarkate themselves from other animals in a lot of curious ways.
Not only are humans one of a kind in their ability to convert every season into a mating season by simple mental titillations but they are also the only in the animal kingdom with an uncanny fetish to cut their hair.
For the majority of the male kind, no sooner do the poor hairlings(*) get anywhere near the soft terrain of the neck after spending months attached to that hard bony cranium shell, will a scissor appear out of nowhere and have their dreams cut short.
* -- (Freedom of Blogger Speech Act)

And the curiosity does not end here.When after years of such suppression, the hair community voice their protest by suicide uprootings, men start crying foul.
While some spend a fortune in having a whole new generation of hair replanted on their scalps, the less fortunate have to do with wigs which most often than not originates from hair gathered from numerous horse tails !!!!
Can you beat that ? While you have your own, pay to get them cut and when all is gone, get some from a creature who used them for swatting flies and covering his excreta orifice all his life.
We humans are truly unique.

I so wish people spent more time,being smart than trying to look smart.
The world would surely be a more beautiful place that way.

Felis silvestris catus

2007-01-11T19:05:00.000Z

A week back, the CAT results were announced.

For those of you fortunate enough to not have had a brush with this monstrosity, CAT stands for Common Aptitude Test,something that these Indian Institute of Management blokes hold once every year to have a good laugh with the complete expense borne by the participating jokers.This time round there were nearly quarter of a million of these jokers who usually come from all walks of life for their 2 (now 2 and a half) hours of tryst with destiny.
CAT is something like the Daddy-promise to get the He-Man toy on your birthday if you stay good for the next six months and do your homework everyday and help your mother out in the kitchen and.....and .....(Parents always have their camouflaged win-win conditions. don't they ?). Anyway quite similarly, this bunch of jokers slog for their He-Mans to come and make life simpler for them or so they believe.

These jokers,and I'd restrain the discussions to the ones originating from the engineering sector, hereby referred to as Jawans, usually start talking about CAT during their first years in college with the firm decision that they'd specialize only in finance and nothing else when in all probability,their extent of knowledge about the financial world is comparable to Mallika Sherawat's affinity for clothes.

Gradually once the ragging period is over though and no one anymore feeds them with information of the type that Balubhai who sells eggs in the First hostel is also an electrical engineering passout from the same college, the Jawans usually ease out and dedicate the next three years in search of pornography in the internet.

Then comes June of final year ...its 5 months to CAT and many rediscover their long subdued passion for feenance.This time round the Jawans come armed with loads of Business world magazines and months of Economic Times which all of course goes to Balubhai who uses it to demarcate his omlettes from the half-frys. Red paper-Omlette, White Paper-Half Fry.
Simple rule of finance.

The poor souls lead a non engineer's life during the next few months trying to figure out things like who was Ramu's father if his second cousin was married to Sheela who had three daughters, all females one of whom was a school teacher and neither of her cousins Jatin and Rani were doctors. The lawyers in the family were not vegetarians and Deepika was the only ShahRukh Khan fan. Their pet dog Jimmy was allergic to vodka without any lime cordial and Ramesh and Jiten were not brothers!!!
They compare and analyse the sugarcane production, wool generation and alluminium output of 12 South American countries with bar diagrams, histograms, Chi-Square tests, normality tests and remaining sanity.
The hapless souls burn many a candle to try and figure out what Carl Gustav Jung meant to say when he spoke of integrating spirituality and appreciation of the unconscious realm and then deciding whether the tone of the author in the paragraph was fuzzy,pedantic,obstreperous or regressionist.Four unknown words as choices are all that he had till last year! This year they added the choice Confucian and so now Jawan has 5 choices to direct his destiny.

Jawan takes simulated exams named after all available species of Cats and by the time he reaches the actual exam hall on a nice November Sunday morning, he can barely remember his name and it is for this purpose that such cases are provided an Admit card with a name, photograph and address so that people can help these poor souls find their way back home.

What happens during the next three odd hours will certainly need another post so I am skipping that portion here.

A month or so from that Sunday ,the results are announced in a website and if you wished to see your score on the same day that the results are released, then you might as well type the website's address, press enter and accompany your mother to her long awaited trip to Amarnath and on the way back maybe make the visit to Rishikesh and Haridwar and then if you've washed away some of your sins of this life and the one previous to it,then you may be blessed with the home page of the IIM on your return.

Now you may click the link which says CAT 2006 results and doesn't Dad always talk about the Aurobindo Ashram in Pondicherry and the serenity there? So why not make that visit with family and the Rameswaram temple is something to be seen to be believed !!

While some Jawans come back from their trips, type in their CAT registration number, ask their mothers their date of birth, type that in and wait for their results to appear.................................some just wink and go on with their lives.
There are dogs too you know !

Miles to go before you sleep.....seriously dude!!

2007-01-09T22:35:00.000Z

I am completely exhausted.
Times of India,Garfield comics 1981 strips,the complete analysis of India-SA tour on howzzat.com and a few hundred harmless scraps in orkut. How much more work can an average software engineer be expected to do in a single day anyway? I am no software geek and get tired very soon.

There are moments,albeit rare,when I sit back and try to plan out a future for myself.Every bachelor has the ability to do so but few exercise it and mostly all end up marrying ,in the process losing all control over their cognitive abilities.
Well this depletion of intelligence quotient in the world is God's way of maintaining His Supremacy upon humans and so be it.

Recently during one of those days when I am saddled with work in office with tough deadlines to meet (Read as :www.jigzone.com) I thought of taking a break and searching something cool in wikipedia and lo behold I came up with Chaos Theory. Extremely sexy name for a theory ..what say ?
This is what it had to say in wikipedia and I quote :

(Note: Please read slowly as it took me close to 3 hours 18 minutes to untangle the knot my poor little diminished brain had got itself in after reading the below paragraph at normal reading speed)

"In mathematics and physics, chaos theory describes the behavior of certain nonlinear dynamical systems that under certain conditions exhibit a phenomenon known as chaos. Among the characteristics of chaotic systems, described below, is the sensitivity to initial conditions (popularly referred to as the butterfly effect). As a result of this sensitivity, the behavior of systems that exhibit chaos appears to be random, exhibiting an exponential error dispersion, even though the system is deterministic in the sense that it is well defined and contains no random parameters."

In simpler terms, we call it marriage !

Now you may re-read the definition above with the help of the following appendix :

Chaos - Ask any husband.
Nonlinear dynamical systems - Wives.
Butterfly effect - Their hysteria at the supposed nosie you make while eating with your mouth open.
Contains no random parameters -Do not have any external claws or visible fangs
Exponential error dispersion -Read on.

He : "Hi Darling I'm back"
She : "Did you get the laundry?"
He : "Well...ahem...you know ..lets see...I got this chorlmint for you"
She : "So you been smoking all day"
He : "Oh no no...so whats for dinner today dear.Shall we eat out today..something with a candlelight maybe"
She : "Your mother called"
He : "Oh what did she say?"
She : "She was worried that I am starving her son to death"
He : "Ha ha ..did she say that ?"
She : "No she said that your sister cooked Chicken Do Pyaza for Jijaji"
He : "Well..so"
She : "Sniff ...sniff..sob"
He : "What ??"
She : "Sniff..Sob Sobb..."
He : "Oh cmon now darling ..dont cry..lets go out for dinner "
She : "So you really can't eat the food I cook isn't it? You think its junk"
He : "Hey cmon I never said that"
She : "Sob sob....sniff sniff ..I wish my mother was here for me...Can we get her for a month or two?"
He :"Well..ahem..you know.... a month..aa...yah why not" (Below belt attack ...not defended)
She :"Excellent.I called her up today afternoon and she is reaching by tomorrow morning's flight at 6:30 am.Please go get her from the airport.Now lets go out for dinner.Cmon hurry up darling!"

Game, Set, Match .............

I dedicate this post to a friend of mine , a particularly lively fellow with a good sense of humour about life.
He is getting married next week.
May his lively spirit rest in peace thereafter.
Amen.

Main Aisa Kyon Hoon -- Part I

2006-07-28T15:38:00.000Z

There are moments in a software engineer's life when he suddenly realises that he has been staring at the computer screen for close to 14 minutes without any other activity,physical or mental accompanying this stare and it is precisely at these moments that he lets out an agonising wail which emanates from deep within but gets stifled somewhere near the throat for software engineers do not usually express opinions as long as the payslip arrives on the last working day of the month.

Immediately he sets out to get the feel of the Outlook Inbox and eventually manages to bring back circulation by sending out a few forwards and re-reading a few of his favourite oldies.
Memories of his college days flash by often making him sit up in surprise at the amount of activity that the familiar looking guy is doing running here and there for sponsorships,participating in debates, wild ad campaigns,Floyd sessions, canteen,organising the quiz papers and that immensely popular Treasure Hunt, taking time out for a few harmless flirts and yet passing those exams with fewer than expected hiccups. That certainly wasnt me,he wonders.

This following bit is just for information courtesy www.qrd.alzheimers.org.uk

"Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a progressive neurodegenerative disorder that results in the slow death of subsets of nerve cells in specific brain regions. The brain regions most affected are those involved in memory, recognition and personality, so resulting in dementia. Regions that are relatively spared are, for example, those for controlling movement. This is the reason why Alzheimer patients have memory problems but can walk and move normally, at least until the late stages of disease."

If one were to check about the contributing factors for this disease,I'm sure software engineering would be high on that list. No pun intended here.

This poor soul during those days of campus placements had no idea about the soup he had landed himself in, once his name was called out in that elite list of students.His joy was unbridled then.He had spent four years in the campus using the computer for very useful purposes such as games,pornography,movies,pornography,games,movies.
The day he joins his office, he sees hundreds of computers in front of him and again his joy is unparalleled.This is LAN where Age of Empire would thrive.Man this place rocks.
Fifteen minutes into that classroom which spoke of Pl-SQL,tables,queries,triggers and he politely stands up to leave the room for he surely is in a wrong room.Ha Ha ..these poor guys will have a tough time here,he smirks at the guys in the class.

The first rude shock : He is one of them.

The second rude shock : Computers are used for something called programming and not AOE.

The third rude shock : This is not a bad dream.

The fourth rude shock : This is really not a bad dream.

The fifth rude shock : There is a test day after.

The sixth rude shock : Lunch is postponed.

The seventh rude shock : The canteen is vegetarian.

The eighth rude shock : You cannot surf the internet in office.

The ninth rude shock : You have to sit till 8 for the lab session.

The tenth rude shock : This is only the first day in office.

Software morphing of personality in the next part.

The Dead Indian with lost Pride

2006-07-13T10:42:00.000Z

May God be with all those departed and injured in the horrible horrible blasts.
As regards the perpetrators of this crime,I can only smile at their misfortune at having been born such.

When I wrote the blog below,little did I know that the people of Mumbai will be called upon to show their large heartedness so early and in such a tragic circumstance.
As regards shouts of Mumbai being back on its feet is concerned let us be smart enough to understand that the Mumbai people have not much choice but to go ahead with their lives. It has nothing to do with pride or resilience .
It is a mere question of hunger that drives them.Let the administration not bask in this 'glory' that things are all normal.
Can things be normal for the families of the over 200 dead ever? Are things normal because the people are using the same trains to travel and going about their daily work as before.Can we all sit back and relax at this 'normalcy'
I despise this spineless attitude we have ingrained within ourselves.Year after year and month after month our ineptitude is laid bare.When can we shove aside the political impotencies and expect the authorities to act; to act in such a manner that a fear is instilled within these inhumans.A fear which will make them shake at thoughts of hurting an Indian the next time.
All we have is the spirit of the citizens which is holding the country together.
Please let the ministers know that a few lakh rupees for the dead is not enough a price for lost Indian honour.More needs to be done. We cannot just board the same train the very next day , pat our backs at our courage and carry on with our lives as if nothing has happened .200 lives have been lost and many deformed for ever . Something has happened.Please remind yourself that something has happened.We must act and act now.
Strike or else never hold the pompous republic day parade any more for it only makes us hang our heads in shame.What purpose is all that pseudo might which cannot protect the citizens or does not bother to avenge the brutal murder of its citizens.Shame on us.

Our Prime Minister addresses the nation and says that India will not kneel in front of terror.
Please show him the photgraphs of limbless people affected in the blast. Forget kneeling , they have no legs left to walk.
Show him the headless body of the person and somebody please tell him that he has no more head to hold high for the growing economy which the Prime Minister says will not be affected because of the blasts.

Is India an identity only when we consider 110 crore people?Were the 200 people who died and the above thousand who were injured not India ?If they were and the world over is expressing their condolences for these Indians then Mr.Prime Minister ,we are kneeling and we are kneeling, be it in Mumbai, be it in Srinagar, be it in Coimbatore or be it in Delhi.We have knelt always in the face of these ruthless activities.
I feel sad today, very sad at my helplessness.

Reader's Undigest

2006-07-05T14:35:00.000Z

We are the rudest proclaims a magazine because we dont pick up papers dropped by someone else, because we dont say thank you after our purchases and because we dont hold the door open for the person coming after us.
New York has the most courteous people on this earth and we in Mumbai have the least.
In other words,New York is the most polite city in the world and Mumbai the least.

Some statistical fodder for thoughts:
Reference :
http://newyork.areaconnect.com/crime1.htm"
Based on the latest available crime stats of New York of 2004 where Results were tabulated using the New York crime collection area population of 8,101,321, there were 226876 recorded crimes committed which includes highly impolite crimes such as murders,rapes,armed robberies,aggravated assaults,to more polite crimes such as burglaries, house and vehicle thefts.

Will the esteemed magazine care to explain how a city, where every third person in a group of 100 is a known criminal, be the politest city in the world ?
I wonder if the polite robbers of New York say thank you before leaving with their booty or hold the door open for the owner of the house to raise an alarm ?

This logic of comparing the survey results with the criminal data sheet of the area is highly stupid and irrational.I agree.
Similarly ridiculous are the tests taken as the benchmark to define the politness factor of a city.

Is the civil war initiated by the US in Iraq in the name of destroying non existent weapons of mass destruction not rudesness?
Does making the mockery of the United Nations and ordering air strikes anywhere in the world not amount to rudeness?
Does cheap political manipulation by a country leading to a Rwandan massacre or a Somalian civil war amount to good manners?
If not, then a magazine which has its headquarters in that very 'polite city' which orchestrates the above , will do well enough to not take up utterly stupid surveys and voice a biased opinion that people around the world have grown tired listening.

Let these 'polite people' of New York with a per capita income of $40,507 come to Mumbai and try to make a living with the city's per capita income of Rs 48954 which is atually more than 3 times that of the national average and then pick up a fallen paper on the street.
Let them face a reality where a missed local train may mean spending the day hungry for some, where many a 15 people live in a space meant for 2 and then say thank you for their daily purchases which include a piece of bread and nothing else.
Let them hold open a door for the person after them in a city where survival is a matter of pure instinct.

Politeness cannot be measured by a universal constant for many social and demographic factors group together to shape a persons expressions.When Mumbai was flooded last year, people from all hues of life came together and brought back the city to its feet.People formed human chains to transfer many for trapped homes.
Lives were lost to save others.Thank you may not have been said always but was expressed in more than just words.Still Reader's Digest calls us rude.
People travelling 3 hours each day to reach home in a jampacked Mumbai local have a smiling face while forsaking their seats to a stranger who is feeling unwell .Yet Readers Digest calls us rude.
People in a city like Mumbai live with their hearts in their sleeves and a 10 minute walk from Victoria Terminus to ChurchGate will make you realise that.

We know what we are and we dont need any magazine to give us lessons in manners.
We may not say thank you on making a purchase , we may not pick up papers dropped by someone else and we may not hold the door open but we will surely help a stranger in an accident to the hospital.

Let us continue to express ourselves in more genuine acts of good manners than those set as a benchmark by Reader's Digest.
Let us demarcate ourselves with our Indian genuineness.

Is Raat ki Subha Nahi ....

2006-04-12T16:12:00.000Z

Those of you who were not born as the Khandani Rayees with 257 acres of farmland and a few hundred Aaam ka Bagichaas,with seven people turning up when you shouted Raamu ......or if you were unfortunately born with no lineage of tribes or castes and have been deprived of the priviliges under articles 46,243D,243T,330,332 and a few more of the haloed Indian constitution,then in all probability you would have taken an overnight bus journey sometime or the other.....

Well I recently took one to Edinburgh...the first one outside my country.....It was a 10 hour journey with a gap of an hour in between which is provided to do the same things as we do in India.Well almost.

The journey started with the driver announcing in the most pleasant tone he had ,that he was very pleased to have me on board .....which got me real worried for a minute and that he wished that I had a nice and comfortable experience travelling with National Express which then relaxed me quite a bit for though the English are corny at times with their language, they usually refrain from drawing similarities of their personal abilities to something that has a national reference.

I settled down and took out my chappals,red pyjamas,blankets,Dabur Dant Manjan,a severely chewn blue brush, yellow towel,pink comb,Ponds cold cream,Air Pillow,the polythene with the oil stained Aloo ki sabzi and Brown Bread ..No Mummy...No Roti... ....Oh did I forget to say that these guys also have a toliet within the bus and you are well allowed to get the same feeling of satisfaction as you do you in Ganga Tapti Mail,holding the train handle and completing your duty towards Nature.....
Well Almost

The bus was kind of empty and after a quick Pao-from-the-Burger-and-Bhaji-from-my-polythene dinner,I said my daily prayers to Wills Navy Cut at the next bus station and thought of grabbing some sleep.I took out my socks which were really cross with me as they weren't worn long enough to give them the fragrance of 33 dead rotten mice intestines and strecthed out to all the the four seats which came within the longitudinal ambit of my 175cm body.I pushed the seats in front of me a little ahead much to the dislike of the English lady who pushed them back again .After doing this for seventeen times ,she fell asleep in exhaustion and I got my space.Persistence is something we Indians are so exceptionally brilliant at ..So what Mandal bill wasnt passed in 1989...so what we lost bright lives to stop its implementation then ...it will be passed in 2006 ...Hail Democracy !!

Well I was almost asleep and the dreams for the night were just beginning their castings after the "Vicco turmeric ...nahi Cosmetic" commercial, when I was jolted back to my senses.I was suffocating.My whole breathing mechanism had taken a cue from the State Bank employees and were seeming to go on a strike.I sat up and took huge gulps of air.For a moment,I had this feeling again .....when the whole world flashes before your eyes...I have read in some guidance books that this is a sign of your impending death.The last time I had a similar experience was when I saw Kareena Kapoor in Main Prem Ki Deewani Hoon attempting some heavy emotional scene and simultaneously make a face which betrayed complete Baboon lunacy.
This time someone had just farted within the bus and in the name of the father and the son and the holy Ghost, I have not smelt hell, but it could not be worse.
I felt like a guinea pig trapped in a container closed from all sides being injected with lethal cyanide-like air shots.I cried in desperation but the bus had no windows for it was a centrally heated one and boy someone had just added to the heat.
I survived again.Well Almost.

The Dreams cried foul too and packed off for the day... There were to be no more shows unless proper ventilation measures are taken ...they said before leaving .The only one smiling after this were my pair of socks...Damn this species !!!

No sooner had my eyes closed ,when the driver politely announced that we would be taking a short and refreshing break now .The bus would be kept open and all items left in the bus were at the mercy of werewolves,vampires and a few robbers and that we may not worry about the same.It was bloddy 3 a.m. in the morning ...This English politeness kills me .

This country is an advanced one as we all know.Their toilets are spick and span,their mirrors dont have the Birju loves Maina written with the pink lipstick over them...and I was so thrilled so see such a lovely washroom in a bus station that I nearly forgot the purpose of my visit there.Just like the Brits...They are so infatuated with procreation here that they just forget to go the entire distance.The population of UK including England,Wales,Scotland and Ireland and whatever lands that come under this not so united kingdom ,sums up to a little over 6 crores....and let me tell you that the 3 for a pound Condom vending machine within the toilets is certainly not helping matters much .....

After the well avoided refreshment, I fell off to sleep again ....Just as you too might have ,if you have read this far ....
baki ki kahaani kabhi baad me ....bore ho gaya type karte karte ...

2006-03-16T16:46:00.000Z

Chitti aayee hain ....

I have been trying to attend to my severely malnourished blog for quite some days now.....and I must admit that the attempts have been pretty ridiculous at best.

But today I am about to write about something,the very thought of which may affect many people with violent internal physical reactions where the long intestine tries to strangulate the smaller one leading to highly abnormal behavior by the orifices of the gastro intestinal tract; it may affect some with severe psychotic disorders characterized by wild hallucinations where they visualize pale kings and warriors and slaves all with starved lips and parched looks betraying a deep sense of loss or pain .So please read at your own risk .

I wish to talk about a scene when you wake up in the morning,waste about 5 and three fourth minute in the bathroom,get dressed ...spray the anti-perspirant ....hail the cab....reach the office...log on to your system with the stage all set for the day's activity to begin and then,just as you are about to click on the Outlook icon on your desktop, you see a small note fluttering near the cubicle which says in bold

"We are currently experiencing problems with email servers KINMLVEM03 and KINMLVEM04.
We will notify you once this problem has been resolved.
On behalf of the IT Department
Thank you"

You just sit back in disbelief...Your world just comes crushing down and you are left helpless in this rude sinister world all alone to fend for yourself bereft of the company of the Sri Ganesha mail which I could not forward today to 20 people within 3 minutes of receiving it ,thus losing out on a very needed promotion,without the morning mail from Subhash with the word Paplu in the subject lines which makes me aware and deeply regret that I missed out on some photographs of some very worthy female who was not afraid to show us what God had sent her with.

This is a catastrophe of a very high degree and this has happened to me today.

What is a software engineer's life without a mailbox....May God spare me from hell for these sacrilegious thoughts ..but I sometimes wonder.
What would have happened had the messages in the mailboxes been delivered by the concerned peoples themselves at everyones desk.Imagine 33 people standing in a queue in front of your cubicle coming one after the other trying desperately to wish you a good morning .Some have come with flowers,some with small rascal puppies in their hands..some are standing with a landscape making you realise that you can never go there with your company's salary but can always be wished a very good morning with it .....some have come with Keats himself ..blah blah blah..
Once you have digested the smelly Upma with the watery tea of the canteen and courteously replied good morning to all dogs,poets,snakes,bears and mountains comes the chance of the daily dosage of Thoughts of the Day.

Story 1#
An old wizened gentleman maybe 123 years of age ,comes and makes himself comfortable in the chair near the server and speaks of how his son is in jail for murdering a chicken in Maneka Gandhi's garden and how with great intellect he helped his old father in digging up his garden sitting within those jail premises..This old man comes every week to tell me the same story again and again...Seems to be a very popular hitch hiker in forward mails...this gentleman.....Man some parents can be real panicky about their children's acheivements..I tell you.......I still remember Ankit's mother attempting to put up an article in the local newspaper after the poor soul came second in the sack race in class II.....
I shifted this old man from the server to the Delete button and the last I heard of him was that he was blissfully travelling amongst the Recycle Bin files amazing the .bug files with tales of his son's chivalry...

Moral of the story : Meet the Parents but leave the Focker's alone

Story 2 #
Two poultry farmers in very high spirits came with their bottles of ale.They also invited my project manager to join thier mirth.They told us of how their hens had suddenly become fertile after they had the bright idea of changing the cock.They were patting their own backs as for the first time their wives too had taken the cue and done the same.

Moral : Never equate wives with hen and always drink beer.

After them,came a crow and a rabbit teaching us valuable management lessons,
Then a turkey's sister came and touched our hearts with the story of how her brother was mercilessly shot by a hunter on a tree top.When we asked her ,how he reached such a height she said a bull friend of theirs had helped his brother gain the strength by allowing him to have the nutrients of his droppings.

Moral :Bullshit might get you to the top, but it won't keep you there.

Soon we had people from all departments involved....the HRD, the Finance guys ,the hardware people ..everyone was looking into the problem of one person or the other , one animal or the other ...A team of 4 people were sent onsite to Uganda to do a project on searching an uncle who had recently died leaving $23 million to our Account manager's name .
The HR guy spent the afternoon running around the whole office trying to shooo away the fox who came to declare the quarterly profits....some said it was the personifiation of the CFO's mail .....only few disbeleived ...
Amidst all this chaos,when everyone was chasing away someone or the other,the peon replaced the fluttering notes with the latest one which had just been faxed from the corporate office.....It read

The issue with email servers has not been resolved.Please leave for the day as it has just been informed that one of our very esteemed clients has had a very productive hour long meeting with four managers only to be later learnt that the four were infact four ignorant donkeys who had come to narrate the poor story of their exploitation, to one of the employees.This fact will however not be conveyed to the esteemed client who was very pleased with the meeting outcome and has agreed to do business with our company...Let us all work together and take the company to ne.........................blah blah blah ...and more blah blah .....
Sent on behalf of Corporate to the IT Department
Thank you

This is a place where I work. Nice place it is ...What say ???

2006-02-26T15:00:00.000Z

A Friendly conversation

My favourite pastime while in Mumbai apart from introducing amazing bugs in existing software applications of my project was swatting mosquitoes.However offensive it may sound to the Mosquito community and its a very strong one let me tell you,it gave me an uncanny pleasure to see the smashed carcass of this extremely dangerous animal plastered against the light creamish or maybe offwhitish background of a not so dirty wall.

I share this fascination with quite a few world leaders such as our very own Mahatma Gandhi who was the worst affected primarily because of his aversion to anything remotely familiar with cloth. Classified files (mostly leaked) say that what people later came to know as the Dandi march was actually initiated by one such mosquito bite on a cold wintry night which so infuriated the elderly gentleman that he thought of taking a fast and spending his remaining life in the Arabian Sea with whales and jelly fishes and had infact set out from his Ashram to this effect.People joined him in his protest and as it always happens in India where plans never work out,they ended up making salt instead.

Richard Nixon was perennially harrassed by a specially trained female Cuban biter of XXIVth Bay of Pigs Squadron.In her biography named "Water through those Gates" ,she writes of her fascination for the President's soft bottom and unhygeinic habits of leaving his litter uncleaned.Though Gerald Ford who succeeded Nixon pardoned him for all his offences, one particular female of the Culex genera could never forgive him for prematurely vacating the White House washrooms as she took an oath of never falling for any US President's bottom ever.The last we heard, was that she was ceremoniously discharged of her sevices,decorated with the Iron Cross by Fidel Castro himself.She leads a quiet life today teaching the younger generation from her new book titled "Ek Choti Si Love Story",which I have learnt has been made into a highly unacclaimed and very unsuccessful film in India with the same title.

Every organism has some part to play in the bio ecological system of Nature or so I thought.Thus after spending a particularly painful hour plucking out nostril hairs on a very mundane Saturday evening ,when I was presented with an interview slot with the extremely busy and well decorated Mosquito General Mr.T in charge of Extremely smelly Armpits and waxy Earlobes infantry division Thane Shakha, I was naturally thrilled.
(For the general information of those who bother to know,Mumbai mosquitoes are named after the English alphabets as the average lifespan of members of the Mumbai Mosquito Branch is 26 days ,slightly above the national average of 23.24 courtesy the great help provided by the inactive sewage cleaning services of the Brihan Mumbai Municipalty corporation.Mosquitoes of Balia and Golaghat are named after Chinese alphabets owing to some similar reasons as stated above.)
Having never had the honour of interviewing a defense personal before,I was naturally apprehensive and arrived sharp on time as scheduled at 6:24 p.m. behind the Kitchen door ,underneath the wet mopper ,within the third hole from the top of my once discarded and profusely smelly brown socks.

Me : "Ahem ,Mr T Good Evening,Honoured to meet you Sir"
Mr T : "Aha Mr.Dasgupta a very Good evening to you,so how has your left armpit been doing of late? I hope my men are taking good care of it "
Me : "Indeed Sir.I had a particularly big pinkish inflammation yesterday evening caused by two of your men's bites ....er...expeditions...you know.... Are you by any chance using stronger toxins and anticoagulants these days ?"
Mr T: "Oh yes we recently recieved the best quality ones from the drains of Khiddirpore you know ....Its tough to get the undiluted ones these days...(Sighs)...A lot of corruption has come within our ranks as well...Its only day before that one of our colonels from the Andheri Brigade was drain marshalled after he was caught red handed sleeping on a Good Night mattress...."
Me : "Oh what a shame.Sir would you like to tell me something about your illustrious career spanning a long 22 days "
Mr T : "Its funny you know , when I look back on my larvaehood days.My mother used to regale me with stories of how I was brilliantly conceived on a particularly moist neck of a Pao Bhaji seller within the vendors compartment of the 6:49 Virar local packed with a total count of 33251 types of animal species.My father seems to have heroically flown over furious rivulets of hot steamy sweat and managed to seduce my mother just as the train crossed the Dharavi slums"
Me : "Oh how fascinating,it must have been for your mother"
Mr T : "Yes (Sighs)... she was a brave Mosquito.I decided to join the defense forces the day I was born alongwith my twenty three thousand five hundred and fifty two other brothers and sisters."
Me : "Oh how chivalrous of you, and I hear that you soon rose very swiftly in the ranks courtesy that amazing proboscis of yours which can even penetrate the thick skinned Patels of Dalal Street...Is it true Sir ?"
Mr T : " Oh ...(smiles and some blushing)..."
Me :" Sir any particular reason to choose my flat as your bastion now ..Of course you are most welcome Sir ..but was naturally curious as regards my good deeds of my previous birth to have earned such an honour "
Mr T " Oh no not at all..on the contary the honour is all mine Mr.Dasgupta..Where else could we find such a rich natural source of continuos carbon dioxide,lactic acid and vegetation than within those immensely fertile armpits of yours"
Me : " Ahem ..Er...Sir, what are those medals for that you are wearing?"
Mr T : "(Smiles and more blushing)...This red one here is a personal favourite you know.I got it for blood sucking the entire Agarwalla family of Flat 102 Block C and the other one you see here is also special as Mr Chinchpokli was very drunk that night and the liquor had begun to get on to my head after the first two bites.However I carried on bravely and managed three more bites....I did bang myself nastily against his huge tummy....he he ....Ah....those bygone days ...........Anyway Mr.Dasgupta ,it has been a real pleasure sharing these special moments with you ,but I must take your leave now as I have to conduct a Special Green Belt Certification program on " The terrains of a Bihari wasteline: Risks and Mitigation plans "

Mr T bowed and flew down to the pool of the stagnating dog pee in the first floor steps where this certification program was to be held.

I switched on my TV and lay back with a sense of complete satisfaction.
I had just realised that Project Managers among mosquitoes too actually do nothing and they share the same Family name with all other PMs of every other species known to mankind.
Viz. "Basicallio Bekaris"

2006-02-20T10:40:00.000Z

Dellu and Billu ki shaitani

When you start your laptop and the progress bar meant to keep a watch on the boot up of your Windows XP Operating systems thinks of taking a stroll each time to the far ends of the Galaxy for a cup of hot cofee with Cleopatra and returning at its own sweet will ,sometimes even stopping by to watch Aurora borealis from the hilltops of Jupiter...you know theres something wrong with either the lap or the top on it ....

My laptop is ill for the past few days and you feel really sorry to watch her in her pitiable condition. She is hardly a month and a half of age but having seen highly X rated stuff which took me the whole of adoloscence to find ,I must say she is mature way beyond those numerals signify.
Anyway coming back to her illness ,I assume she is going through some gastro intestinal problems and the bloody quacks here have made life worse for both her and me.
Initially her problem was limited to some continuos gurgling sound when fed with music files.But when the gurgles soon turned to gargantuan belches,I put the problem over net to seek advice from the doctors who spend their noble lives in the selfless task of solving any sort of computer ailments from psychedelic crashes caused by an overdose of pornographic downloads to minor problems such as traffic disorders caused by buses and their drunk drivers who practise racing on Lappy's mother's boards.
Anyway the noble doctors had a heated discussion with solutions ranging from importing some latest chipset from the Ethiopian black market to sending hate mails to Bill Gates saying "I really really hate you Bill".

One very dedicated noble person also wrote this :
"Capacitors help manage electricity flow on motherboards."(What Blasphemy !!!)" When capacitors don't work properly, you can probably imagine what happens : meltdown. Ultimately, many motherboards go bad when the capacitors burst and leak brownish goo. Can you see that ?"I strained my eyes for close to 16 minutes to notice any such behaviour but to no avail.I guess Dell does teach their automated children to have better sanitary habits than that.

After much deliberation, sanity prevailed and it was suggested that I reinstall Windows Media Player version 10 from the official site of Microsoft which i had already done 3 and a half dozen times by then .

My friends who call themselves software engineers thought of coming to my "rescue".People at onsite mostly are a frustrated lot primarily because tissues take precedence over water, but that is no reason to take it out on my poor lappy.A Virus Hatao Andolan ensued and downloaded were hundreds of Anti Virus Sprays alongwith Sweet Shirley Flea and Tick Powder and Happy Jack Flea-Tick Powder II.These idiots are infatuated with bugs ,I tell you.
Each of these idiots (the married ones are dumber man !!) kept their Yahoo Messenger windows open so that any latest medication for my lappy's condition is instantly available to them or thats what they told me.Wonder what hairless_ball_01 or luckless_virgin prescribed ,but all these efforts finally took its toll.

Lappy has stopped speaking to me .I tried pleasing her with a specially pirated DVD of Rang De Basanti but after 11 minutes I realised that either I had bought the Deaf and Dumb version of the movie or My Laptop had upgraded herself for Bats or Humpback whales or maybe Bottlenose Dolphins who can hear the ultrasound frequency.

My absence from the bloggers park may be attributed to manifold reasons ranging from Ismail Haniya's hair loss to the abysmal un-"conscience-vote" by the British House of Commons to implement a full smoking ban in all enclosed public places in England from Summer 2007, but this hiatus is primarily because of my poor lappy's condition.

Here's wishing her a speedy recovery and a fervernt appeal to all the softwares engineers to take the pledge to never fiddle with their friend's laptops ever again even when they have nothing better to do than take a hyena census in the Savannahs.

2006-01-22T12:09:00.000Z

Inglease ................

My first principal was an Australian.....He was a funny chap whom we lovingly called Uncle Sir.Now Uncle Sir was in love with the Queen's language and would go all the way to make us understand that a gerund and a giraffe were not exactly cousins !!!This was in those days when my mom went to drop me to school holding me with her right hand with no more respect than she did the Bazaar ki thaili in the other......I remember R.B stores ..the bakery shop where there was an uncle who used to give me free biscuits to munch ....Its fun munching free biscuits you know .Wonder why Manoj Bajpai said "Kya main kutta hoon kya" in the movie Road when Ms.Mali offered him a few ? Uncouth chap he was !

Haan so we were on the verge of discussing my Australian principal when another very interesting character comes to mind .This guy was from my second school ..No they didnt kick me out of the first ...my Bapuji got transferred and quite a few of my possible and prospective romantic comtemplations met an untimely death......I took it in a very manly way and did not shed a single tear..Within 27 days I had scratched a hideous S in my left hand with the compass expressing my enduring love for a female whose name i cannot fully recollect today. That Ms. S never gave me a penny's worth of attention were all bad rumours spread by jealous classmates.......This character's name,whom I wish to mention here, was Mr.Hajra and he was supposed to be our Physical education teacher ...By the way he never gave the education we wanted though and it was left to those magazines of the genre "They who must not be named" to be our guardians during those tender ages of 13 or 14. Now this guy carried a huge Danda with him (of the Udham Singh species but a little shorter )and especially targetted the soft bottoms of innocent children like us.His lack of respect for our bottoms however earned him no fame and soon there were cat calls behind his back with a minute grammatical modification of his name which disoriented his very sexual direction or lack of them.I learnt the first lessons of morphing in my school toilet walls.
Now there was a daily inspection in our school to see if everyone had dug their noses clean , to check if the number of lice in our hairs had not increased the school defined quota of 18 per male student head and 224 per female strand and quite a few other things one of which also included the particulars of the tie .
Now in the sweltering heat of the summers my tie on that particular day was just a little more attracted to gravity than as had been defined by late Mr Newton.
So Mr.Hajra blocks the school gate with his Udham and asks me " You boy !! Why tie not tie ?" and gave my bottom a shot which had brought out the choiciest of expletives from the poor thing...I read the following day that my Australian principal in Shillong had had a mild stroke at around the same time of this incident.

I traversed a few more years which brought me and my father to our first visit to Gujarat to get me admitted to an engineering college or thats what they had told me in the college brochure ....(Psst....its still says so...Ha ha ha )
The long journey had us ravished and craving for anything that barely resembled food to the Bengali tongue.Little did we realise that where we went in to pacify our stomachs was actually an illegal den where they smuggled the rarest of South Indian reptiles and sold them to KK (thats what every smuggler is named isnt it ?)
But I was very smart and told my Pops that we shouldn't indulge in such activities promptly showing him the menu which read in bold "SOUTH INDIAN SNAKES"
The goon looking guy with the moustache who sat for all transactions at the entrance said in Hindi...Are sir Snacks nahi maloom kya ..Naashta...South Indian Naashta !!! and gave us a comtemptous smile .......Son and father looked at each other ruing their lack of knowledge.My Australian principal who was critically ill after the afore mentioned incident of my school left us for his heavenly abode soon after.

Today here in England ,I feel the same as a Togo Island native would if he were asked to coordinate a conference of the Vogons of the Hitchhiker's fame.
I simply can't understand what they call English.It is more heavily accented than my Granny's pickles were with all that mustard oil. After four months here i have understood that " Venjacumhey " actually is a question which enquires about the time when i reached a particular place where the person asking this has already been present for some time prior to my being there.
Grammar that i never learnt from Mr Wren and Mr.Martin doesnt seem to have an existence here.

But at the end of the day you can just sit back and pat yourself saying "Awrite mate We savaieefd anotha day here.
May the soul of my Uncle Sir rest in peace for he was a nice person and never targetted the soft bottoms of 12 year olds.

2006-01-20T14:15:00.000Z

Vilayat se..........

England, the country which is so much a part of the Indian psyche.
It starts from the pages of that Indian History text book of class 6 amazing us with tales of Indian chivalry and bravado in fighting off the firangs.From Lala Lajpat Rai to Bhagat Singh,Gandhi to Bose,the Unknown to the Unheard....We fought for and gained our freedom or thats what we learnt in those history books.What happened thereafter is just anyones guess.... Anyway without anymore sounding like the 44 year old painter working as a High court clerk,I wish to pen down something about my days in this country of firangs where strangely they do not anymore shout 'Kutte' at us in an accent which makes Hindi sound like Crocodile fart,nor do not carry whips or wear those wooden hats ..... :-(

Daru aur unginat Budhdhe
This is a strange society though.Quite contrasting at times.The old roam around in Tobu cycle sized scooters which move at say 5 miles an hour while the young are bred on a mixture of concentrated Hydrochloric Acid and AntiIce.
The old are sedate.the young are Punk Shit !!The old are gentle ,The young are Football.The old man sits in the town centre with a paper in hand and some memories,whereas the number of times the young would say Fuck in a single sentence would make one imagine as if its been injected through hypnopædia in their systems.But I must say that one thing all generations revere and hold in the highest esteem is Beer.These English are fishes when it comes to drinking Beer.There is no beating them and surely Keshto Mukherjee must have had British lineage.

Ruk kyon Gaye ......Bajao
My ears are parched to hear the sound of horns in cars.It is assumed to be impolite to bray the horn here and should be considered equivalent to a 'Behen**** kya mera hi gaadi mila tha marne ko', if you are lucky enough to get a horn to your name.

Sahab ..kharcha paani
I recently visited a government office here for some National Insurance number..I met with hospitality and courteousness there and damn it, not a single person forwarded his greasy palm to me for the 5 pounder note.My reaction to it was quite similar to what Evander Holyfield's would have been, had Tyson said "May i bite them please?"

Food. The Lunch plate.....
A mound of mashed Potatoes brimming with the Nobel it got for dumbness.
Some green substances possibly some fern or moss and ...and nothing !!
Thats it ..Well did you expect more .This breed of people have an amazing lack of tastebuds and a bounty of obesity.
Tuntun too must have been British .......

Well its a funny place to be honest....

2006-01-15T14:13:00.000Z

An Introduction to foolishness

This bloke that you see below is Yours truly .....The look but confirms the fat ass pseudo intellectualism that is so inherent within that fat head of mine .......Of course the Arjun Rampalish hairdo is no longer there. A bloke in Southall(aka Punjab of UK) murdered all those with the swirl of some machine which marauds poor hairs in such a manner that would have put German concentration camps to shame..This guy calls himself a barber and I even paid £5 to have this murder done .... What a shame ....Of course he had warned me enough as the person who came for a hair cut just prior to me saw his Empire of Hairs raised to dust in exactly 1 min and 22 secs and all that was left was a barren field as if bereft of the Indian monsoons ,parched ,dry yet expectant.

2006-01-12T17:18:00.000Z

First look into this Bloggers Park .....We have a strike

The stage meanders from the days when I fought over lost marbles through the nights spent discussing the lunatic from Floyd's album.From the days when the only trigger i knew was the one that Rajnikanth or was it Mithunda who pulled the same to split a single bullet into two,killing both the fleeing villians instantenously.(Spelling thik hain na?) "Dhishoom" was all that was required to fire this slightly curved object.Today a trigger (not curved) is ruining my life for it just refuses to update some godforsaken table in some far corner of my personal computer which itself is a misnomer for this very personal thing of mine is repeatedly accessed and ravaged by 1400 other personal computers over the day.In civil terms they call it networking or some shit.
Now this trigger is behaving as an old obstinate mule with constipation, or as the Bai of my Mumbai flat on a rainy day would .They just wont work !

There was a time when the notion of this table for me was where a small and happy family (From the Pyar Hua Ikraar Hua ad shown over DD)used to sit to have a cozy dinner of daal roti and chawal.
Windows was an outlet in a room through which I dreamt of my future ,saw myself flying fighter planes bombarding enemy posts to precision,scoring 114 runs in 40 balls and then capturing 4 wickets in 2 overs and then the final catch which wins India the world cup. And today corruption has seeped into even the small crevices of my table where even the nastiest of termites would have bet quarter a pound to reach and would you imagine all my windows were paralysed .Doston ne kahan ke Hang ho gaya. Is this what they call development, hanging poor harmless windows.

So they wont work either !

A primary key was the one my Thamma (granny) used to keep knotted over her saree's pallu.It was a huge key by all streches of imagination,one old rusted piece of iron which I felt had no worthwhile purpose for it wouldnt open a lock in thirty three thousand forty nine years but if the poor thing was misplaced, then all hell broke loose.

Somewhere along the line the meanings changed.
This corruption of my table and my trigger in my very personal but available computer was all initiated by some such stupid key and thus Its a Total Strike today in this day of a software engineer squatting at his client location wondering just where did things go wrong !!!!!!

I also know how to add a link in this page YAHOOOOOOO !!!!!!
Rediff.com
...........................Or Rediff Whatever