customer is king kong…

India is a land of plenty… plenty of people that is… my cynical argument is that that is the reason for the current economic boom and prosperity of the nation despite there being millions of people who cannot affort a basic one meal per day or a roof over their heads or even a piece of cloth to cover themselves…

Businesses in India have woken up to the sudden cash inflow… in India they see many countries – just based on the economic divide… we have people with riches competing with the richest of the world to those competing with those that are starving for basic necessities as well and millions of people at different levels in between… result – we have a market for everything… if I were to launch a simple safety pin priced at a million dollars, I would probably find a buyer, no actually, I would find many bidders for it and I could possibly sell it at 10 million… maybe more.

No this is not due to inflation… too much money chasing too few goods is not the case… yes that is there too, but it is definitely not the problem because if it were it would affect the business men as well… it is a callous attitude typically contributed by the Indian consumer himself…

If we go back to the annals of Indian history we have always had someone categorized into “traitors”… these people typically used to sell off their fellow countrymen to invaders for no better deal than what maybe they would have all had gotten had their been a united effort at nation development… but no, Indians have always thought that they were always better than fellow Indians… not that they deserve better, that they can afford better…

If a fellow Indian is getting screwed at some service offered, the first sympathy of other Indians would go to the service provider… for example, if I am in a queue for a movie ticket, the guy behind me would grumble that I am taking too much time in buying tickets rather than that the guy issuing the tickets is taking too much time to give the tickets… and the businesses make the best of it… even if they fall short on their delivery promises they would always find a buyer for their crappy service…

The finest example is the pizza delivery 30 minute promise… I have never seen deliveries happening within 30minutes… but never have I seen people getting it free… why… because we know that the guys who are gonna go hungry are not the pizza delivery guys or the pizza makers… it is the guys who ordered it… because I definitely don’t think that pizza if it were ever returned would translate into a loss for the company… because in all probability, the pizza would find a buyer among the many people who want to flaunt their buying power and are still waiting their turn outside the restaurant…

Definitely we cannot boycott the goods and services because these are bare essentials… there was a recent fwd about the real estate boom which implored all peoples to stop buying houses for a couple of years so that the builders could actually feel the impact of a joint boycott… but that mail is getting forwarded like a hot cake but in a different sense… the psyche of the guy forwarding the mail is explained using the game theory… “if I forward it to some 10 people and they boycott the buying of the flat then I would end up getting the flat cheap…” the problem with this idea is that all the people reading the forward are Indians… and hence we think alike…

Businesses no longer look at customers… they look at target segments… because things average out in a bigger population… it is a statistical funda applicable to India definitely… gone are the days when the business people used to bend backwards to treat customers as kings and that the customer is always right… wait… I don’t remember those days at all… I have only seen an attitude of “the customer is right, so what? I will find somebody else…” according to them customers are just monkeys providing amusement with their rantings… but maybe king kong would get a better response because he is a big monkey – with due respect to racism…

New years resolutions and stuff…

mmm… actually I have nothing to write about… but I did not want to give up on my new year resolutions so soon… I want to blog often… more often than I am currently doing. This is definitely not going to be a list of resolutions that I want to keep and then fail to do so and later on somebody digs up the archives and sues me for not keeping my resolutions… as if I care…

well anyways, before i start boring you I have already broken one resolution (refer above)… another one is to not procrastinate… well for those who don’t do hindu crosswords and have not come across such stupid sounding bombastic words in english, I meant – putting off work for later… so here goes my first blog post for this new year – although a little late (thank whoever thot of that “better late…” proverb…)

I actually don’t know what to write… I cannot recap what happened the whole of last year… hell I can’t recap whatever happened yesterday… my memory is so short lived (thank god for that) and so a recap of 2007 would be so factually incorrect that I would get more brick bats than the… the… the er whoever is the recipient of the maximum criticism last year…

So, I look for inspiration within… nope much as I break my head, I wont write about my new year resolutions… no way… million other peoples have written it already… and have already started following it… just the other day, just like any other day I went to the gym only to find it extremely crowded… the other day was the 2^nd of jan and note that it is not my new found new year resolution about fitness… I went to the gym just like any other day – I am a regular!!! And there were so many people there at the machines that there was a queue even at the weights section – the maximum demand for the lightest dumbells… and what a sweat everyone was working out… but wait a minute… where is that hum of the ac…

And yes of course the treadmills are the worst hit… any body and everybody is so obsessed or should I say paranoid about cardio work outs… and the first thing that jumps into the head is the tread mill… so we have a whole bunch of waist size 40s panting and heaving at the belt at a godly speed of 3km per hour hanging onto the support bars for dear life… and they will put in all their will power to make people wait for the whole 20 mins… because 20 minutes of using a treadmill is more value for money than 1 minute at the weights…

What is so pissing about the increase in the crowd and the hence the waiting time is that there is no proportionate increase in the number of pretty faces and the sex ratio… so should we safely assume that more men are getting unhealthy and our women are already possessing that perfect body… too bad that there will be more eyes for that few tight tracks doing that routine on the steppers…

Well come to think of that the new year is a time when the male hormones are at their peak… it is something like the full moon for werewolves… so women who feel quite comfortable and safe generally walking half naked into a mob of drunk sex starved local people should actually abstain from it on new year eves… especially in cities that are considered safe like mumbai, delhi and bangalore… all these liquor manufacturers must be sued – haven’t we all heard that drinking alcohol and smoking tobacco makes you impotent… then why are all these men behaving like this…

It is not just the people, but even inanmate objects like wooden platforms behave strangely on new years… like the one in chennai that stubbornly refused to support the weight of all that people on it… it was the effect of the new year moon… the hotel authorities were so careless to have overlooked the effect of new year on wooden supports… the fact that there were about a million people precariously perched on the platform to welcome the zeroes on the clock had nothing to do with it… sue the greedy hotel authorities who brought in unaccomodating hostile timber…

And then there were so many more things that happened that I have forgotten them over the last few days at work… new year now looks like years ago… to me it is just another holiday hopefully spent at home in front of the TV switching between the 8 or so free to air tamil channels that show some movie simultaneously… so while superstar is romancing nagma in one channel I wont miss out on the punch dialogs of captain on another or a good comedy track on yet another… a very nice example of mix and match at work thouch totally out of context… maybe we can launch a make your own movie idea… or a remixed movie… hmmm that sounds like a nice business plan…

So on this note I close this post… it has been waiting for a nice ending and I have been like working on this here and there… lots of things have happened already and I will have to start writing about them too… and yeah better late than never… like so many of my orkut mates who are still wishing me…

HAPPY NEW YEAR…

mein, meri lappie aur woe

my laptop has to be in the geriatric hall of fame. This fossil was dug up by our ceo on his archaeological expedition cum vacation somewhere in the remote locations of the Antarctic… or it was maybe somewhere in the hot locales of the USA… but yeah somehow this artifact was unearthed… thus this piece of prehistoric paleolithic processor came to be in my company… and has stayed on in the company since then… actually we should say “thus the company stayed on since then…” but since we pride ourselves in being a modern IT company we will live in the bliss that the laptop came after the company was founded…

so when I joined this great organization, we were given a t-shirt that said “since 1852”… ok ok not 1852… but yeah we were given a t-shirt that was left over from last year and a laptop… for me it was “the laptop”…

it is a simple dell d600… maybe it is a cryptic clue for “direct from hell” or “the devil” himself… but it is the beginning of all my woes. First it has been handed down through generations – manhandled and each and every key has taken the beating of centuries. And the top right hand corner of the lid is actually worn thin with all the scraping aways of the old label of the previous owner and the track pad is so smooth that your finger just slides without actually moving the mouse pointer… the indicator leds have grown senile and continuously blink on and off in different colors with absolutely no meaning…

and then the internal organs have also eroded with age. The wireless adaptors keep searching for adaptors that are not available ultimately realizing that the adaptors were anyways disabled. But then like most senile beings the memory is short lived too and the search begins pretty soon again. But the normal wired network is always unplugged even with a full blast network… (of course the modem is working fine I checked it… I am not that dumb, ok…) my lotus notes always locks my mail account – come on boss, it is my official mail, I can read that during my office hours…

Funnily my laptop was the only one in which there is a dvd drive that does not have the combo of cd burning too… but of course now you understand why dell buried it in some excavation site to fossil away… so when I pointed it out to the helpdesk guy he promptly made another laptop as the one with the unique distinction of having the non-cd-burning-dvd-drive… aah the wonders of the ultra-bay technology… I was just awed by his dedication that I quickly took my laptop away to my cubicle to test it in privacy lest the owner of the combo drive were to trace it to me and demand it back…

and the helpdesk people have ingenuous and fool proof ways of finding out the fault in your laptop. They take it up and hold it near their ears. If it makes a “krr krr” sound then your harddisk has crashed. If it makes no sound, then they shake it till it rattles and then say that the screw is loose there and tighten it and give it back – and they wont forget to make you close the issue and mark it as satisfied!!! And why not? The laptop worked so well under their hands. Is this what is called artificial intelligence?

Speaking of intelligence, the laptop has a mind of its own… first it waits for me to do some very important work like being halfway through a blog post or better still, a very interesting blog post that I was so enthusiastically typing away that I even forgot to save it even at the title…

(wait that reminds me… aah ctrl + S 10 times…)

Ok… where were we? … yeah, when I am in the middle of something very important, like a blog post or a chat, it decides to hang… that is it… freeze… frozen… I have to force shut down and restart the system as the great “ctrl+alt+del” combination is rendered useless here. But the system is not finished with me yet.

So much for Mr.Gates’ panacea of shut-down-restart – it does not go all the way – stops at the blue screen(not the death wala) without the login prompt. Ok another force shut down restart.

Now it does not recognize my OS… the bios says that… what cheek!!! Force shut down restart no.3…

now slowly my login also happens and my personal settings come up one by one on the system tray… hey wait… are we done? That is it? Only 4 icons… there is something definitely missing… aah !!! where is the network icon that says unplugged with that huge red cross? That is it… no network adaptors loaded. Another restart – this time I do it the normal good way – start menu etc etc… but then, there are some programs that tired of being mistreated being called as and when the OS is restarted that they refuse to shut down…

ok, now that we are experts in force shutdown restart we can do it anytime… easy… but no network icon this time too… next time and the time after the next too till I lose count… finally the frustrated me turns to religion – there is no particular god for computers, but I generally invoke all of them – it is good to keep them all happy you know, you never know… and even then no network… one more time, this time with more bhakthi and shraddha… yaay… that is it… the network is up and running too…

I almost do a jig, but then since I don’t want to make an over enthusiastic noise and make Murphy angry again… so I go back to see what is left over of my blog post – haha gotcha… trick question… with friends like Murphy, you should not even think about the blog posts… and the friends who were patient enough to wait to hear my story of why I had just rudely logged off in the middle of listening to them bitch about their companies and bosses…

But despite my best begging skills the helpdesk will not believe and give me a new laptop. It seems that the top management and the marketing people are looking at brand ambassadors for enhancing our company image and they need widescreen and faster processor speeds in their laptops to download all those pictures of prospective models… of course we are talking about images of great ceos and company heads and leaders here… not those cheap skimpily clad (clad?) ones out there… you pervert…

Till then I think I will have to live with collecting new spare parts… today I got a new hard disk… previously a new OS… next time a new motherboard maybe… then a new key pad… slowly I will have enough to make a new laptop within a realistic period of say 6 more months…

PS. ssh don’t mention the cd drive switch to anyone ok… thanks…

taare zameen par…

I can’t help envying ishaan… he is so lucky to be dyslexic… or am I abnormal to think of a feeling like envy when everybody else is shedding copious tears in sympathy of his abnormality… woe betide the heartless me…

How normal is a normal kid in the third standard… come on…

Teacher: class today we are going to study plants. Plants are the green things that you see on the roadside and parks… sometimes they look good with flowers and fruits then we call those places where these plants grow gardens… Can you name some plants…

Student 1: Rose plant

Teacher : very good

Student 2: Sunflower Plant

Teacher: mmm good

Student 3: tomato plant

Teacher: good good

Student 4: Brinjal plant

Teacher: mmm good

Student 5: white rose plant

Teacher: mmm ok, but somebody has already said a rose plant…

By this time there is a mad commotion in the class to name a different plant and show off and so by quite some time the class has exhausted almost all know plant names… and then there goes up an excited hand to name a plant that is not yet named…

Teacher: yes Anand…

Excited student: miss… steel plant…

Teacher: unh !!!

And with one casual sweep of her hand gesturing me to sit down, she killed one of the future, maybe the only, competition to mittal and the tatas… gone… nipped in the bud… (haha got that pun… I am a natural !!!)

Then by different episodes which I am too shy to expose here, my creativity was beaten out of me so that I could lead a normal life… occasionaly though it does try to surface, but then it is easily curbed due to the infinite yogic meditation techniques and tai-chi and feng shui I have been taught at school and also managed to research on the net…

No… I didn’t suffer from dyslexia… and I was a pretty good student academically too… that was until some other friends of mine decided to take over my responsibility and let me focus on er…other interests of greater consequence… so I definitely don’t envy ishaan for suffering from dyslexia and getting to act with aamir khan… and he actually shares the dubious dyslexion of his condition with aamir khan himself… (ok ok that word play didn’t look as good as the pun, but I am working on it…)

So why do I envy ishaan? At least he had a teacher who told him thinking of steel plants was ok and helped him to learn the difference.

Ishaan is lucky… the dreamy eyed kid that he is portrayed to be is the way that kids should be… let their creativity run wild… let their inquisitiveness be unhindered… and find more kids like ishaan act in such movies and make more such movies…

Yeah aamir khan’s directorial debut TZP is an awesome must watch movie. It got 4 stars in the TOI, but I am ready to give it millions of stars… it is impossible to quantify in terms of stars the intangible ROI from the movie… ok to cut the crap and put it in layman’s terms the individual performances are great… including the khadoos dad who seems to have no feeling for his son… and it would be an understatement to say that the kid and aamir khan have done justice to their roles… the whole performance is so natural that it is unnatural to believe that they are acting… even the crying scenes don’t make you cringe in emotionless boredom…

Of course the movie has its mistakes and some dumb scenes, which is probably the reason why the one star was penalized by the TOI critic… but the overall delivery more than makes up for the deficit… the way ishaan learns that he is abnormal and the way he is unable to understand that he is actually having a problem can’t be better portrayed… and there are so many subtle moments in the movie that help us appreciate the amount of perfection attempted…

And the best of all is the magic of the kids… the kids are made to behave in the most normal way even though they are extremely special ones acting in aamir khan’s special movie (at least the media says so)… unlike some movies where 8 year old kids are mature enough to arrange a wedding of their dad with his college best friend by just reading their mom’s letters, these kids are acting their age. Even the paintings done by ishaan despite his high IQ only portray his creativity, to which age has no significance and does not show him as a da Vinci or a Picasso… The songs are good too… especially the “tumhe sab hai pata hai na maa!!!” is so soulful, that ishaan’s silent acceptance is so perfectly balanced in it.

If I have to sum it up in one word – “too good”… ;)

I am alone !!!

I pity will smith… I can’t spend a short weekend alone despite having a television filled with millions of live programs involving live people and he spends 3 years in a world that has no other fellow human being. It is a real scary movie. No I am not talking about the stupid screaming zombies who are always asleep during the day… the whole idea that you are the last man on earth is what is extremely scary…

If I had been him in that world, I would not have lasted 3 minutes, let alone 3 years. I would not have wasted so many bullets trying to kill all those virus infected zombies. Just one bullet would have been enough. (Here I have a small question, when people bite the bullet, do they get time to chew? Probably I should write a letter to that organization in switzerland. But what is the point when I am the last human on earth… nobody would be there to answer back.

Scary thought. When almost 30% of your batchmates are in the same city you are living in and quite a few of them are in the same area, you should say “how can you say that you are feeling lonely ?”… yeah rite… it actually goes like this.

Me: hey dude1… wanna go to that movie “abc”?

Dude1: hey why do you want to go to abc da? And it is a stupid movie. The actors in it are all commercial stars. Lets go to some slow boring play where we will have lots of time to appreciate the individual performances.

Me: er… actually at that reminds me. There is a K-serial I want to watch. Maybe we will catch up for dinner sometime after u finish the play eh?

Dude1: ummm… ok… but then I will actually be some 200kms away in another city because the play is running only there. Bangalore is too fast paced a city for that kind of plays.

Me: huh ok, how abt lunch at a place near your house tomorrow?

Dude1: you mean I have to move 10 meters away from my place… how could you be so cruel?

Me: ok ok… fine… chalo… enjoy your play… maybe we will catch up some other time.

After sometime:

Me: hey dude2… wanna go to that movie “abc”?

Dude2: hey, no man… actually I have some work at office today. Hey lets do one thing… why don’t we wake up around say 4am in the morning go for a short jog for about 10kms, play football with a few guys and jog back home. And all this on an empty stomach. And once you reach home you will get one nice juicy tiny cute orange!!! Exciting no ?

Me: huh… yeah… actually I was planning to get sloshed tonite, so I won’t be able to wake up that early tomorrow morning.

Dude2: Hey no probs man… I will wake you up…

Me: er… actually I would be too disoriented after that party… moreover my physio has said that running after drinking alcohol causes cramps in the muscles due to the anaerobic respiration cycle…

Dude2: How about next weekend?

Me: yes man!!! That sounds good… chalo will call u next Friday.

Dude2: ok ciao bbye!!!

Me: bbye (phew!!!)

After some more time

Me: Hey dude3… wotsup da… wotcha doing ? (see I learn fast… no “want to go to that movie abc” line)

Dude3: nothing da… am feeling damn bored. Just donno wot the hell to do… am so vella and I don’t feel like watching a movie on my laptop… or tv… or even sleeping…

Me: same here da… hey say how about we catch a movie… heard that there is a cool movie abc running in a nearby theater…

Dude3: yeah I know… but will you get tickets for this weekend? There is no point going to all the trouble and finding that there are no tickets. Bangalore is a very crowded place man… tickets are sold off even before the movie is released…

Me: yeah, but no harm trying rite… I will chk on the fone booking… or the internet…

Dude3: they never pick up the phone da… or else it is always engaged… and the net never has more than 2 or 3 tickets at a time…

Me: ok, then how about going to that arcade and play some pool and bowling and some video games…

Dude3: I don’t play video games da… they never interest me… and the bowling ball is so heavy and you have to do all sorts of gymnastics to play pool… sounds like too much work…

Me: yeah da… there is nothing to do… this is one useless city… we are so bored to death…

Dude3: yeah… we can do nothing but crib about it…

You know it is very difficult being the bored one in a group of bored ones. And it gets so boring that I get hungry and I have to order some food – I hate eating out alone. Thanks to these friends I know who to blame when I get that bulge in my midsection – I don’t get any exercise yaar!!!

So what do we do about it? We blog !!!

Here and here !!!

PS. “I am legend” made me really appreciate the crowded Ranganathan Street of chennai.

scary story

scary story

claimer: this is a true story

Our boss announced that we were in dire need of a team outing. We were working too hard to meet the deadline and we were close to losing our marbles. Tempers were flying and mistakes were becoming pretty common. We needed a break. So we decided to hit it.

A picnic in the wooded area behind our tech park was suggested. It was not actually a wooded area. It was actually an abandoned construction site. People said it was cursed. The land was bought by a leading construction company and they were building huge office complexes to house the ever-growing software population of the city. But some misfortune fell and the great entrepreneur died in that very area. The place was deemed jinxed and the company lost all its money and was another riches to rags story. Effectively it was an abandoned building site with half finished walls and floors and ceilings and overgrown with trees and bushes. It was abandoned for quiet sometime that it actually started looking like a forest. Rumor had it that it did have some wildlife too – snakes and stuff.

But we were an adventurous lot. So we packed a huge picnic basket and some cricket gear and some more games with big balls and started off. We found a clearing and fixed our cricket pitch there. A game of limited overs was followed by another and then another and then another till we were tired and hungry at the border of collapsing.

We attacked the picnic basket. Slowly our energies returned and our bodies were hydrated again. And we were just relaxing in the cool winter sun chatting up on each one’s old times and laughing at the goofs of our client.

And then it happened. The ground shook. A steady thump-thump as if some distant pile driver was boring into the earth. Only it grew slightly louder with every thump. The trees in front of me parted and out peeked the head of a tyrannosaurus rex – looking directly at us.

There was no need to tell us that it was hungry. And we did not care to find out if it really was. The guy next to me screamed and that set off the t-rex’s roar and then everybody screamed. The t-rex started towards us. A split second later all of us started too… in different directions. We headed for the trees hoping to get a good cover.

But I was the wise one aka smart-ass. I looked around for a second, analyzing my situation. The stone buildings were a little further away from the closest cover of the trees. And it was not running away from the hungry dinosaur but would actually mean running a slant path that was closer to the monster than the others. But I had always prided myself in not following the crowd and I would live up to it today as well – if I lived that is … Gulp !!!

Much as I try to make others believe that I actually stopped and thought out my options for a second, I was actually not thinking at that time. I just ran and since I hated crowds I just ran towards the half finished buildings. The predator followed its instincts it is easier to catch the odd man out – I mean the odd dumb animal in the herd as it usually makes a mistake that causes it to go slower than the herd. I watch a lot of discovery and animal planet. And today I like the chosen one.

I could visualize the animal behind me – snarling and madly hungry… it would only be a matter of time before I lost track of time. I did not have time to think if it would be painless or how would it feel inside the stomach of the beast if it were possible… yeah I know – it is gross, but how else can I fill more words here?

I hit the trees before I was caught. The animal hit it a moment later, panting heavily too. The new medium had momentarily slowed its pace. But it was used to it – after this was its playground and we were the visitors, and was gaining its lost momentum. I could suddenly see the white stones of the unfinished walls just up ahead and I put on a new burst of speed with renewed hope.

The t-rex sensing my new hope roared out and as expected increased its speed too. Then as its hot breath almost hit the back of neck I took a sideways plunge into the nearest opening I could find. I skidded through the gravel and sand in the half laid floor watching the surprised t-rex skid in its momentum outside. I turned just in time to see the other side of the wall coming in to hug me but I could do nothing about it. My head hit it with a sickening thud and I lost consciousness.

I don’t know how long I was out cold but when I woke up it was still sunny outside. I looked at my watch and it showed some time close to 4 pm. I was unconscious for nearly 2 hours. I looked around the place I was in. It was a small room with a part of the wall crumbling away on one side. And that is when I found that it was not over yet.

The t-rex was still nearby patrolling the area – waiting for me to surface so that it could well u know what. I held my breath and stayed silent and unmoving till it crossed. Even though I had read that t-rex can only see moving objects my lying motionless was because I was petrified. Slowly the t-rex went farther and farther away and slowly the air in my lungs went out as I exhaled noiselessly.

And then it happened.

Beeeeeeeep!

The t-rex paused, listening. I quickly saw my watch that was lying a little away, probably came off when I collided with the wall. I grabbed it and pressed some button to stop it from beeping more. But the keys themselves beeped when pressed and moreover the sound was not coming from the watch. It was my cell phone alarm.

BEEP BEEP BEEP !!!

I frantically searched for my cell phone, but the damage was already done. The t-rex had seen me move for the watch and now I was jumping around like a monkey to find my phone. It turned and started running towards me. BEEP BEEP thump … thump … thuMP… thUMP… BEEP BEEP it was getting closer and closer and there was a roar. I could hear the ground vibrating now and the thumps went THUMP THUMP… my body was shaken roughly…

The t-rex opened its mouth to roar again as it closed in on me; I watched in horror unable to move…

“DUDE… YOU ARE LYING ON TOP OF YOUR CELL PHONE… SWITCH IT OFF AND LET ME SLEEP IN PEACE”… roared the voice of my roomie.

enakkoru girl-friend venumada (loosely translates to "i want a girlfriend")

dedicated to all those career oriented fine young men who are uncorrupted by the western cultures and are bent on upholding the indian culture of a traditional arranged marriage

disclaimer (because at this point in life I can’t take any chances)

All characters in this post are fictitious and are just a figment of my imagination. Any resemblance to anyone living is purely a coincidence and is welcome to make frand-sheep with the author; anyone dead can kindly ignore.

When I was in pre-school, I just wanted a friend to play with. And within the perimeter I was allowed I could only find her. We just about got along well, but we almost always ended up with her mom telling my mom what games we should be playing. Looks like she didn’t take kindly to my road safety games of running over her dolls with my cars.

When I was in primary school, I just wanted someone to talk to. And thanks to the alphabetical order in which we were seated, I found this girl who would talk to me. Not just that, she could talk non stop too. It did not serve much purpose though because me being the polite one could not ask her to shut up, and the gender biased teachers would always make me the outstanding student in their classes.

When I was in high school I wanted a girl who was smart and intelligent and may be even be a good study partner… that was a good way to start a relationship I thought. But then she turned out to be too smart and scored more marks than I did in all the exams. And finally she took up biology.

When I was beginning junior college I wanted to make frand-sheep with the new girl in our batch. She was beautiful and smartly dressed and looked good even in that stupid school uniform. But as it happens with all good looking girls, she was in the commerce stream, and that ended a possible love story.

When I was in the first year of engineering, I exchanged notes with a girl in my class. I was pretty studious at that time and was curious to know what that particular professor had told the class about the exams. Seriously! But little did I know that she was under radar of some seniors and that night they made me understand why I should rely on myself and not ask for help from other people – especially girls who have a potential boyfriend among the seniors.

When I became the senior, I scouted around for good looking juniors. But the management decided that they would go by merit for girls too from that year onwards. And I was left with just my all boys gang for company.

When I got my first job and was posted to a city that was famous for beautiful girls, I hoped I would accidentally bump into a hot chick and that it would be love at first sight. But despite all the loves at first sights there was a high probability that you could get accidentally bumped by those jealous boyfriends who were busy pumping iron while these chicks applied make-up.

When I had made some significant career progression I wanted a career oriented girl, preferably in my same company. She was so career oriented that she became the VP of our department and started playing with our careers.

When I got bored of my job and wanted a break, I wanted a girl who was a bit tomboyish and had a spirit of adventure in her blood. She was pretty tomboyish and even smoked cigars and rode a macho bike and had lots of spirits in her blood. So much that I started to feel womanly in front of her.

Now, I am tired of looking for a girl. I just want a girl who my mummy wants me to want.

Format adapted. Original source available on request.

bitter medicine

I had the privilege of experiencing a cold night out in bangalore recently. And to top it off I had such spicy food that caused a running nose and a glass of mausambi juice that effectively sealed my fate. The next day I woke up with a sore throat and a body ache feeling all warm – that I immediately guessed that I had the FCC – fever cough and cold.

Well this is such a common phenomenon and that is why it is has been rightly named the common cold. It is so common that the average person would not know that there is no cure for it – it comes and it goes whenever it pleases (you see I am very well read). So the average person would say – “nonsense, for the fever take crocin and for the cough take a cough syrup – I recommend TusQ… and for the nose I recommend vicks”.

Personally, I prefer phensedyl… it was so sweet and tasty… and it felt good inside you… and it used to take at least 2 bottles for satisfying my thirst… er… cough. No I am not alcoholic… hic… stop getting ideas… hic hic… I get hiccups when I cough hic hic!!! Cough cough !!! see…

But the government saw to it that all good things must come to an end and they promptly stopped selling of liquor through medicine stores… oops… I mean phensedyl was banned from being an OTC drug (mba mba – OTC => over the counter). So it was only TusQ.

It was easy to prescribe medicines for this kind of situation. “Oh, you got fever – where is the crocin left over from the last person’s fever dose…” it was so common that any other form of the antipyretic drug (yeah another well read knowledge) was called crocin… it was much easier to pronounce crocin than say pa-ra-cet-a-mol… sounds like some mountain peak in karnataka… well the point is that crocin has been in the family since time immemorial that nobody knows how it came into being…

However the story of TusQ entering the family was much different. I was coughing my lungs out in a particularly desperate bid to get my mom to buy some alcohol… er… phensedyl when my extremely friendly neighbor dropped in and said “I have TusQ – the most tried and tested cugh syrup ever” with a plastic smile that looked as if she would have landed a part in the commercial, if only the TusQ people were there to witness it. So my mom got the medicine and forced it down my throat… wot a disgusting taste that was… especially for someone who was expecting a better one… yuck !!! it was green coloured too – somehow green always associates a bitter taste with me after that…

After that I have seen many changes in the color – yellow, pink, orange… And everytime I go sniff-sniff-cough-cough on the phone while talking to home, I would get the standard advice – “have some TusQ and pop a crocin and take rest.” And that has been so ingrained that I always had a inventory of the two in my kit.

So, on this particular day when I woke up and found that I could not answer the phone that woke me up, I decided that this time I would go to the doc. Somewhere my well read self had read that OTC drugs should not be taken indsicrminately without medical advice. I marched off to the nearby hospital to meet the general physician. I was not going to take the usual stuff no more. I will not jeopardise my health for a measly 100 rupees on the consultation fee. No way… then what is the use of my education… an mba at that… moreover there were newer and better medicines these days that helped you get well faster…

I wait in the line to get my token. I marvel at the sophistication of the hospital. They have an id card for every new patient and a records file that they will maintain. What customer service yaar… amazing. My number is 24. that meant there were 23 people before me. Ok… so that meant that the doc was good, else why would so many people want to see him?

But he was not in yet. Blame the stupid bangalore traffic. And yeah it was the peak time as well. So what if he is some 10-15mins late. I found a a chair and started looking around and after every full revolution looked at my watch… it was very painful – one thing even the prettiest young things don’t look good sick in a hospital and it takes only about 30seconds for a full round view… it is tough to see the face of the watch twice every minute… especially when you are longing for that warm blanket.

The doc arrives a full hour late and starts seeing his patients by the FIFO rule… I wait patiently (haha good pun isn’t it… so cool of me to think of humor even in the saddest of times). The crowd of patients doesn’t seem to be reducing at all even after a long time. I look at my receipt (yeah they take the consulting fee in advance) – it says 10:32… I look at my watch – 12:45… man this is too much… I have been here more than two hours… how much longer !!! something inside me tells me “another 1 hour…” . I murmur a sarcastic thanks and go back to my seat to my old routine of looking around and looking at the watch.

Finally I hear my name being called. I look triumphant at the little voice that told me 1 hour – it has been only 45 minutes – buhahaha!!! But then there is a guy who is very very sick and needs to the doc immediately… the great kindhearted soul lets him go in. He was out in 10 minutes… and then a desperate mother with her 15year old child barged in to make sure that the medicines she had bought were the same as the ones that the doctor had prescribed. By the time I went in, my inner voice was rolling on the dirty hospital floor laughing… “I told you one hour more”. One thing I hate is a wise-ass-inner-voice…

Anyways, what matters was that I finally met the doc. He asks me a couple of simple questions. Asks me to take a couple of deep breaths and starts scribbling in his notepad. What the hell??? Dude I have fever – take my temperature at least… nope – no sticking of the thermometer into your mouth or anywhere else… and I was out in less than a minute… I felt like I had just been in and out of tirupathi… sans laddu…

But at least I am triumphant – I felt like I had a prescription for ambrosia. Clutching the scribbled paper on which the doc has given me the greatest relief from my fcc, I march towards the medicine shop as fast as my tired body could carry me and put the prescription on the counter.

The chemist brings out the medicines the doctor ordered in his illegible scrawl – Crocin and TusQ.

The key to all happiness – part 2

This is not a sequel(like jurassic part or harry potter) and has almost nothing in common to the previous post except for the damn !^(#!%@ key…

It was a normal day, bright blue and cloudless skies, cool sunny day. Work was the normal non-existential affair and I had a breeze of a day. In the evening some of us had agreed to meet up for dinner at a chettinad restaurant – one of my favorite cuisines. So there was excitement in the air in anticipation of the good food that lay ahead of me later in the day.

And hence I decided to leave a little earlier than usual, caught the bus that was home bound and reached home a nominal travel time later. But since the winter was setting in, it had grown dark already. That was where I should have donned my paranoid hat and looked occasionally at the skies, but I didn’t. If I had I would have noticed the stealthy accumulation of rain clouds that had added to the drop in temperature and a nice cool breeze that was blowing was actually the result of a local shower at some other area in the city.

I briskly walked home from my bus stop with a spring in my step and a song on my lips (it is good when you cant hear what you are singing – the loud clear sound of the ipod takes care of it) and bounded up the stairs and opened the main hall door. I put my hand into my pocket for my room key and voila – it was not there.

I did not have to think too much – I knew exactly where it was – in my drawer in the office. And I also knew where my office was – some 20kms away. The song in my lips changed into a loud groan that even my ipod could not eclipse.

But I was an mba, so I was getting into the solver mode even as the groan was dying out. I had 3 choices in front of me

plan A - go back to the office and get my key

plan B - stay with my dinner mate

plan C - wait for my roommate

The first one was the most uninviting. Come on said my brain – you just traveled 20 !^(#!%@ kilometers and you want to do it again? Twice ? no way !!! and I can’t feel un-guilty looking at the smiling faces of the late leavers in my team (I left early remember).

So lets move on to plan B. Only problem, I will have to sleep in my formals. Pretty uncomfortable. I want my comfort sleep. And I will have to wake up early to get back to my room for my fresh clothes. I want to sleep those 10mins I will spend traveling from my friend’s place to my room. I can’t sacrifice that.

So plan C. Wait for my roommate. But then that would mean that I would be in the cold till he got back… which would be around 2am… that is if at all he decided to come home… which is a difficult situation altogether.

Wait!!! that exhausted all my plans. I don’t have any more plans. Of course I cant break the lock etc because that would mean breaking the door itself. This plan was dropped even before I had the three choices.

That was when a savior came in. Well not actually a very enthusiastic savior, but more of the reluctant Rambo types(Well at that moment I would call anyone a Stallone if they could help). And there was this guy who could but didn’t want to and all he wanted was to help build that Buddhist temple in Cambodia. Ok ok, not Cambodia. Ok… ok... no temple either. This bugger had just driven back on his bike from his office and was not interested in being a driver to a desperate madman. And I was in no mood to take a no for an answer. At the end of some 15 minutes of haggling he decided to humor me. For what? Yeah I forgot. By some weird twist of fate, I had my roommate’s phone number. I called him and decided to make that great trip to his office to collect the key. So what if his office was 10kms away. It was at least only half the distance to mine. Well, this rambo was not very impressed with this argument, but thankfully he moved.

But all was not well that ended well. We were just approaching the 2kms mark on the trip-meter and there was a splat on my face… ummm... the optimistic me thought it was some stray water vapor that I managed to pass through. But it was not to be and obviously my negative self was proudly surfacing that it had been right all the time – it was raining (remember the seemingly unnecessary mentioning of local showers somewhere up there). But we kept at it. Hardly had we moved some 500mts when the little big drops got bigger and became big big drops. And they were coming down faster.

Of course, I hate rains. So there was a frantic turnaround and back to the place of accommodation. And then I made that decision to revert back to plan C. Or was it plan B? Ok. Whatever alphabet it was, it was basically to wait – to wait for him to come back. And btw, the rain had stopped (%#%@$$#%#^%&@#).

But then, I had to have my dinner as well. So putting all my trust in my angelic roommate (who by another weird twist of fate was planning to come home earlier) and in the unknown god (who was enjoying all this on his sim-city console), I decided to go on to dinner. And my what a dinner that was, but then this is not the time for that description. Maybe some other time.

And when I came home, my roommate had already come back and the door was open for me. So that was it, all was well that ended well and I got to sleep in my pyjamas.

The end.

PS. Thanks srk, for finally unclogging my pipeline with your Murphy post.

PPS. I must stop this PS-ing. It is getting too regular. Somebody once said they directly jumped to my postscripts in my mails – that saved them a lot time. Any suggestions?

life in a metro's volvo

Pre-script: This post is jinxed… this has been a long pending post. Whenever I start it during the time I have wait for something to happen, that thing happens very fast… when I am not waiting for something, something else comes up… or else if there is no something coming up, then there is this thing called nothing… I have almost written and re-written it a million times in my head, but putting in print has always been outta reach

Post-pre-script: No claims that its gonna be a great read just because its been in the grill for so long. Anyways, thanks for reading it.

First love:

I am always fascinated by foreign models... automobiles I mean… they always seem so superior in technology... I have always gaped open mouthed they are paraded on the motorshows on tv even if they sounded stupid when they say “yeh Yamaha rd 6 tho bahut bemisaal hai”… pardon my hindi – am so busy looking at them models that I didn’t pay attention to the exact words… but yeah it is nice watching all those auto shows and dreaming how nice it would be if I could be that reporter or camera guy, and getting paid for looking at all those beautiful models…

The first time I saw this bus I didn’t believe it… was it actually a Volvo… what has happened to the Indian government? How could they turn a blind eye to such a good thing on the Indian roads… that too in the potholed roads of Bangalore… it is a sacrilege to allow good things to happen to the people of India… then I assumed it would be damn expensive like all good things… and I even assumed that it would be totally useless one on the roads probably doing a very small route and asking for an exorbitantly huge fares for the stupid air-conditioning and the suspension… and of course the Volvo safety that is a fallacy on the Indian roads… hah… I am not falling for the looks - can’t we see that it is predominantly empty because of the fares… I catch the local BMTC bus that is looking like a fevicol ad bus and manage to squeeze myself in and hoping that in the long journey that is going to take me about an hour to clear through the traffics of MG road, Richmond Road, and Majestic I would get some more space to put my other foot down on the flat floor of the bus… and all the while I keep watching the Volvo to find out where it is gonna turn off in some different direction... that day I found that kempegowda bus terminus is the same as majestic aka city railway station when the Volvo followed my overcrowded bus the whole damn way…

I know what you ate last night:

This bus is not one I would recommend for claustrophobics or people with highly sensitive noses (u know those noses that are usually blocked when a nice smell like a sweet perfume or aroma of great cooking, but perks up when you are passing by some open drain or railway track settlements). Especially during peak hours. Well since this Volvo is a completely closed container, with the air being circulated mostly within the bus itself, you are normally breathing some 50% (eupho-optimistic estimate) stale air… and it smells stale because it is a mix of body odor (after a hard day’s work and lunch) plus the engine’s diesel fumes odor and the smell that you get when sunlight falls on a seat through the glass windows… well this greenhouse effect (wot else will you call a mix of green house gases and a glass container) is what I hate about the Volvo… at least if you are in a car you can roll down the windows for a while and be happy that you are breathing the pure pollution rather than the refined ones that pass through the Volvian filters which helps me identify what the guy seated next to me had for lunch or dinner… good luck if you find a good cook and you can maybe get invited for dinner…

The woman in red:

It is one thing that we are in a Volvo – a sophisticated looking means to travel that puts us in the league of the developed nations of the world in terms of the modern public transport systems that have arrived in India… but the similarity ends there… people still want that 50% reservation for women in the buses… too bad there are no hooks in the back of the center seats where we can hang a chain and block out the women’s section from the men’s (and the men can travel ticketless as the conductor is usually trapped on the other side…). But the people have found an invisible chain by which they are bound to the culture of India that says all men who travel in buses are out there to “eve-tease” women and the women who travel in buses are poor things who are so beautiful and helpless that every hormone driven male wants to propose to her to make her his n^th wife (except of course the driver and the conductor who are gentlemen).

So there is this 4 seater section in the front half of the Volvo that is with the seats facing each other (which any engineer would point out that it gives the maximum leg space)… and since I am blessed with long legs, obviously that is my fav area to get seated… so there is this invisible chain that is the great gender divide stops women from taking the empty next to a guy in the men’s side of the four-seater-section even if that is the last seat in the bus… in some ways it is good for thick-skinned-long-legged person like me because I get to extend our legs well and have a comfy ride without having to knock the knees of the person opposite to you…

So this day I find myself in a pretty decently crowded bus and the seat in front of me is empty… I look around and can’t believe my luck when I find all the standees are women… so I happily get adjusted to slouch into my seat and start extending my legs deep into the recess under the opposite seat at the same time feeling unhappy that the Indian society has such a bad impression about males… and I am now settled comfortably and looking forward to a comfortable ride, when suddenly this dark-fat-ugly woman in a gaudy red colored saree makes me get back to my uncomfortable upright position and takes the seat opposite… the #^(#!%@ 8!+(#

The girl in white:

There are many good reasons to travel in the Volvo and most of them are the good looking girls who are regulars… (what to do, at this age all you can think of is getting a good life partner who matches your like and dislikes, for example love for foreign vehicles). So there I am in a particularly crowded one ogling at the regulars hoping that at least one of them might hit it off…

Getting jostled and pushed in the bus built for even standing comfortably (but it fails here too because of the great Indian crowd) I manage to reach a seat that was getting empty… and then I saw her. She was bright intelligent looking and dressed in a simple crisp white shirt and black trousers; looking specially cute with those rimless glasses and short loose curly hair. Well I tell myself what is the point day dreaming man – what is the probability that she is going to come over and sit next to me (remember the Indian culture thingee above) and even if she did what is the probability of having a conversation with her?

I immerse myself into the product manuals so that I can prove myself at least at work when I see some movement from the corner of my eye… the guy seated next to me gets off and then the impossible happens – she is there waiting to occupy the vacated spot… wonder of wonders – she is seated in the seat beside me… so what? That is probably the end of the story and I get back to my reading…

Then, a small voice asks – “does company X (the one I am working) have a branch in location Y (where the bus is headed)?” (she had noticed the huge logo in the printout). I am surprised as this is probably the first time that somebody has shown some cognizance about my company, and that too a girl, and a pretty one at that and on top of it she started it. So I say proudly (because I am billable) that I am at a client location and as I am still recovering from my shock at her knowledge and intelligence, I ask her how do you know about this company?

“Oh that, my husband works in the same company… his name is …”

“Murpheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee !!! what were you thinking when you wrote that law.”

Btw, looks like by the sheer sample size TCS has a lot of good looking girls, but there is no safe statistical way we can find out their marital status.

PS. Nowadays I have switched to the bus that is run by my tech park… saves me a lot of heartbreaks and I even get to sleep all during the way.