Canvas of Random Thoughts
Titbits from my uncanny life!
Sunday, July 17, 2016
Gaga over Pokemon go...
Sunday, July 10, 2016
A long hiatus...
Saturday, June 28, 2008
Au Revoir mon Paris.....
The last few days in Paris just seemed to fly away. It was heavily invested in giving knowledge transfer to another guy in the project whom everyone calls Bappa. I guees no one even remembers his true name which incidentally is Basant. Well I guess the French as well as the Indians find it difficult to pronounce and hence they have stuck to the name Bappa for ages now. The KT as it is called in the IT terminology was the longest ever marathon KT that ever happened in the history of AL--as proclaimed by a few noble colleagues of mine. A farewell party at our veteran Indian restaurant called Namaste finally gave me the feeling that the 11 months in Paris were finally getting over. While I shopped a bit, I always wished that my dad was the customs official who would just let me pass by with the loot of perfumes and wines and chocolates. Alas nothing of that sort was going to happen and so I had to be contended with the few euros of shopping that I did.
Saturday, April 5, 2008
The naked dream.....
Always wanted to see u get naked while u wore spects and smoked that cigarette in tht stylish manner.....
Love you.....
Tuesday, January 8, 2008
I heard in Paris and around.....
"You know....the the the.....you know"
"Baith ke khaunga"
"What nansense"
"Just update"
"Sabji lane ja raha hai"
"Kaam to yaar tum kuch karte nahi ho"
"Bokhduuuuuuu" read this as Bordeaux
"Man-madrasa"
"Who is Suganya talking to?"
"Oh ji thand hai na woh haddiyon mein ghus jati hai.....badi kharab hai ji"
"Moniqueeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.......Pascallllllllllllllllllllllllllll"
"Wolfgang"
"Sayeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.......Swamiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii"
"Haan woh sab to thik hai but tell me one thing"
The inspiration comes from Saadibhasad (http://saadibhasad.blogspot.com/)
The new year as we welcomed it.......
So after a torturous day at office, I headed home asking one and all to call me when they would be ready to leave office. Since given an option I always leave office the first, I was out of office as the clock struck 6 P.M. Later on the office guys decided to drop in at our place for a mini alcohol session and then as they say, what happened is history. It is also youtubed and as I write it the video has been viewed 51 times. Have a look here
Happy new year to one and all.....
Tuesday, November 20, 2007
Old Monk et Old Memories.....sponsored by Mohan Meakin
Speaking of other inane and mundane things in life, that Saturday night/Sunday early morning post was under the effect of a deep intoxication caused by the burnt variant of malt whiskey, namely black rum. The person responsible for this deep source of intoxication was the one and only Chintu Parikh. The person had somehow procured maybe even smuggled a bottle of Old Monk from India to London and was bragging about the same by putting up a status message on his Gtalk (see I told you how Google is solowly ruling the virtual world) which read like "Khub jamega rang jab mil baithenge teen yaar....aap main aur old monk". Alas that aap could have been me had UK not been seperated from mainland Europe by the cold and wild English Channel and the very petulant immigration officers at the border. The last time they actually checked my schengen visa with all sorts of magnifying glasses that watch repairers wear to see the anatomy of watches. So Chintu Parikh sitting there in some remote part of London made me nostalgic about the precious black rum. The magic of black rum has never failed to smite any soul who has ever stayed in a hostel during the formative years of life. The advantages of black rum leaves its charm on every soul dying for some alcohol in their blood stream. Firstly it is one of the cheapest varities of alcohol available in the local daru ki dukaan. In terms of alcohol it has a high 40% content and hence you dont feel cheated to spend some penny on alcohol. It helps in getting the body warm in the cold and of course you never get a hangover the next day, so even if you have a presentation or an exam the next day, its not screwed at all. Before IMT, drinking used to be a one off incident in the dry state of Gujarat. Bootleggers never made it easy for us to procure it with their exhorbitant premium pricing models. So rum was not the thing that was ever favoured. The choice was more obvioulsy whisky. I still remember the one time in ahmedabad at a friend's place, someone got so drunk that he slept a considerable amount of the night on the bathroom floor. The charm of drinking black rum especially the one christened Old Monk started for me in Ghaziabad during the IMT days. Coupled with the fact that Mohan Meakin had its manufacturing base in Ghaziabad and that any other brand in the market not bottled in UP was exhorbitantly priced made Old Monk an obvious choice for us not so rich kids. I never was a regular smoker in college, but the once in a while factor made the crow of the college give me a new name called Page 3 smoker. A smoke in hand with a glass of old monk mixed with Coke in the other, singing away to glory on the terrace of the canteen block are the vivid memories that are left of the last few days at IMT. After the college days the next time black rum flowed like water was in Hyderabad during the induction programme of the company I got placed. Alas since the company thinks that drinking is almost equivalent to sin the scene was shifted to the hotel where we had been put up, a shady hotel with a faulty AC system that had not worked for almost decades. Incidentally Chintu Parikh was a part of this drinking group and as is his specialty, he had invited the whole world to drink. It was over here that I got acquainted with a guy Abhishek Deb. At first look he looked like a complete football but as time passed we became good friends. After that the black rum story in my life drew to a complete halt with more amount of disposable income at hand with thanks to a good package made the preference curve shift from the black to the white variety. It had more to do with Sumit Baheti's re-entry in my life. We had been friends since class 11 and had gone to the same physics tuition, the teacher was a bearded guy who was morbidly scared of his fat wife. The kid they had was a total brat. And last but not the least the bearded man had predicted that our future would be doomed had we not given him enough moolah to secure a seat in BIT Mesra where he apparently went to teach. So sharing the same doomed future over two years we had celebrated every such occasion in those olden long lost days by creating world records in gobbling up fuchkas. For the lesser informed its the same as gol gappa of Delhi and the pani puri of Mumbai sans the pudina minced water. We in Eastern India prefer the tamarind minced water. But all these records came with a lot of effort and our stomachs did have to go on an overdrive trying to digest some 40 fuchkas at one go. In Bangalore the fuchkas gave way to more dangerous things like white rum. And as predicted we were still celebrating a doomed career as was predicted by the wife fearing bearded guy. While Sumit had landed himself up in a competing IT services company as compared to mine, he was confused as to why on earth even his onsite location was Bangalore and why he slogged all weekends. While I was confused about what I was doing in an IT company. My only sojourn with IT was restricted to flunking a few basic papers way back in school followed by copying out of notes in the diploma exam and getting mass laddoos in assignments for the two IT subjects that we studied in our MBA course. Drinking was as regular a feature in Bangalore as washing clothes (once every weekend). The inclusion of Banner (oh boy he would surely kill me if he saw this) saw the per capita beer consumption of Bangalore reaching record highs. The presence of Banner in the pub hopping gang always ensured that me and Sumit set up self imposed curfews on our intake. Banner would reach new highs every time, and it is a known fact that a drunk Banner is more dangerous than an insane military dictator who has suddenly declared emergency. So whenever Banner was not there to accompany us to the usual hangout on Church Street called New Night Watchman(thanks to its cheaper prices) me and Sumit used to nurse a hangover over our doomed careers on the next day. Well it is a separate story that an intoxicated state coupled with some petulant neighbors had resulted in memories worth keeping for a lifetime. The outcome was that three souls had landed up in the lockup of the nearby police station for no apparent reason. Back now in the present day Paris, Chintu's status message had brought back memories of the charm of black rum and a dying need to get drunk with rum. Me and Aravind had to rush to the nearest store to see if we could get our hands on a bottle of the same. We apparently realised that the mini shop that we visit for emergencies (supplies) doesnt even store alcohol. It was quite a shocker and so we had to run to an almost shut down Monoprix and come out with a 10 euro bottle of exquisite black rum ( a brand that I have completely no idea of at the present moment) . What followed afterwards are mere figments of imagination and reality coupled and intertwined. After 5 drinks the old man of the house was no more singing, he was rather shouting songs. The guy who will any day give a competition to Dagwood of Blondies for being flat on the couch for 24 hours had opened the glass shutters and was romancing the nipping, below zero temperatures of Paris and I was busy writing the stupid blog below this and throwing up some words of emotional support to a friend on gtalk who had suddenly had a major breakup. Though it all sounded so bull and I was not even sure what I was doing, I guess I did a great advice session under alcohol. And then everything went black and as I drifted away to sleep I could just hear a voice saying arey bho..... ke....u r sleeping on the floor between the two sofas. Then everything turned into a kaleidoscope for a split second and it was all dark after that.