Gaga over Pokemon go...

As the world goes all hoe and gaga (no I don't like Lady Gaga and am not talking about her) about this new Pokemon game app I am reminded of those days around 13 years ago when I became a big fan of these Japanese mythical creatures thanks to a friend named Darshan whose ambition in life was to make parodies of Hindi movie songs and watch Cartoon Network for a straight 12 hours a day, It was those days when I was in my second year of college in Ahmedabad and while my friends were only building up their catalogue of pornstar collection, I was the weird one collecting and saving pictures of Pokemon as well on to the hard drive of the first computer I had in life. Neither did the computer survive, nor did the pixels of pornstars but what survived and suddenly again began to thrive in a big way was Pokemon. A few months earlier I was busy shuffling up my old stuff and looking through the inane amount of weird collections I had amassed over a lifetime which included matchboxes, airline boarding passes etc., I found a Pokemon card collection which I had long forgotten about. Triven, Ankit and Rohit some friends from the past had given that to me as a birthday gift. It was a different story that some people in the institute we attended for our preparation for getting into the best of the MBA colleges and where this entire birthday gifting drama was unfolding were pretty much amused at the mental maturity of mine and were seriously questioning my intentions in life but nonetheless I loved amassing Pokemon memorabilia. The next such memorabilia was when during the MBA days when Akshara and Nishant and me, me being the Kabab mein haddi in their campus love story went to McDonalds where with a happy meal the gift was an amazing Pokeball. Needless to say I gave up my quest for taste for the Big McChicken and ordered a Happy meal. My stomach was not at all happy at the limited amount of food and the value proposition seemed such a rip off but nonetheless I was happy at the conquest of getting myself a Pokeball. So this Pokeball was operated by the same principles of potential energy converting into kinetic energy which wasn't really a big hit when taught in Class 8 physics chapters or complex Calculus formulae in engineering colleges. But in the hallowed corridors of IMT it was quite a sight to see everyone screwing the innards of the Pokeball and then leaving it to blast open and out came a small Pokemon walking for a feet or so before looking up cluelessly. The Pokeball got seriously abused one day with a lot of my classmates rolling on the floor laughing at the immense capabilities of the toy. There was a professor who saw the entire drama unfolding and threatened us to only do such nonsense in the hostel block and not the academic block. After getting into the corporate world I lost touch with the Pokemon world but somehow could relate to many of the concepts of the use of the right resources in the right circumstances. A Pokemon master collects Pokemons and tames them to use them in the right circumstances. Inspite of being such cute little creatures the likes of Bulbasour, Pikachu or Togapi have immense strength when used in the right circumstances. The idea of the whole cartoon was about analysing the whole stituation and using the right Pokemon to make the best out of the situation. If I had my way with training programs for the HR folks I would have made them watch hours of Pokemon to get a view of what getting the right resources in an organization means. So now Nintendo has come out with its first game for smartphones which would surely be a stiff competition to the nonsense called as Candy Crush and I am eagerly waiting for it to be released in the App Store for India. 

A long hiatus...

It has been exactly close to eight long years since I have not penned down anything on this blog of mine. I did come up with the idea of starting a lot of new blogs on passions that developed over time like a blog on aircrafts which even I forgot about completely, a blog on wines which never went beyond the first 2 posts and finally a new blog which just had one post which said something about me not being able to relate to the contents of this blog of mine and having moved my house to the other blog. If only creating a blog was as difficult as buying a house, I would have stayed on and decorated this house of mine (blog) where I had collected some rare artifacts to decorate it. Memories and a hell lot of them which now seem so alien sometimes that I sometimes feel surprised that I had written them. But today while reading through a lot of blogs and finishing off seasons of Orange is the New Black on a day that seems to have been all about clouds and rains and atrocious multiples of Uber and Ola fares, I was amused to figure out that this blog has had close to 5300 page views. That has been an inspirational insight to possibly start penning down once again. No doubt life has moved on and I have written more Linkedin blogs which sound like a lot of professional bullshit lets see how this resolution ends up being?

Au Revoir mon Paris.....

I am back to Bangalore after the onsite project manager's profit and loss projections showed that keeping me employed in Paris was more like rearing an elephant. So here I am back to saddi des after almost a year of fromage and bacon and petit fille. So after a year of sipping red wine and rushing away home from office as soon as the clock stuck 6:30 PM, I finally left the city of Paris behind me and on one fine Sunday I took the Lufthansa flight out of Charles de Gaulle Airport and flew back to the Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose Airport. So here is the story of my coming back. It all started one fine day, when after months of calculation and re-calculation, the project manager proclaimed that according to his calculations kicking me out of Paris was very very beneficial to the project. Unluckily for the guy who was giving me the news (read as my manager) came to know that even he was being kicked out of Paris because of the same reasons. My departure's decision taken, the next step was to book the flight. Not to be left in the bad books of miss lady luck since while flying to Paris I had only got a meagre 20kg baggage allowance on Air France, I booked my tickets early and explicitly mentioned the 30kg allowance at least 3 times in the travel request. Since destiny never made anything easy for me, the people who were assigned the task to book the tickets by the system happily forgot to book it for almost a week. Reminder mails and constant threatening finally got me a response and after calling up agents in 3 different cities I finally had my Lufthansa tickets to Kolkata and a connecting one to Bangalore after a week in my hometown.

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.

Another notable thing that I did before coming back was that we went drinking to a pub that once upon a time Sayee and Aravind my two flatmates had once been to. Well actually we thought we were going but alas we never reached that place because both of them could not locate the place and finally after an hour of seeing every street and asking every suspicious police guy we gave up the futile search. The general consensus was that the pub could only be found when both were drunk. So after going through the futile exercise we decided to haunt our favourite pub on Latin quarter near Notre Dame. Alas when we went there, we found that the place had been converted a bit and ordering drinks alone was not on their cards anymore. So we necessarily had to order dinner which consisted mostly of cold duck meat and some herbs and bushes and a rice and curry thing (well seemed like curry). I still do not understand as to why the French love all their food so very cold and refrigerated. I guess it is something to do with their laziness that makes them go in for refrigerating and half cooking their cuisines. So along with the not so happening dinner me and Aravind gulped down at least a litre of long island iced tea. Well the others were happy mixing all kinds of beer together and waiting for a misadventure to happen. The bartender with whoom we were chitchatting with was saying all nice things about India and Indians. The guy seemed to have a nest on his head, if you remember Rudd Van Gulit from the world of soccer you might be able to relate. Finally the appreciations about India and Indians did not last long as Kostubh also known as Chota Chetan for his huge height got fully sloshed and emptied his entire stomach contents on the table. We cleaned it all up and bid adieu to that place with a fully sloshed Koustubh and caught the M4 and M1 back home. The ride was a total misadventure with people literally running away seeing Koustubh vomit over and over again. And after tripping twice in the platform of the metro station Koustubh proclaimed that he is not drunk at all. The night had some more adventures in store. After reaching home we gulped down a 2002 wine bought from Saint Emilion which had been lying around for such a special occassion. The night finally ended seeing Nilesh dance or rather jump to the tunes of marathi songs. Well considering his size it was more like watching an elephant shaking his body.

The last day in Paris was spent having lunch at a typical French restaurant and trying to order good wine and cheese. Last heard courtsey Abha Dawesar's book A summer in Paris, the ideal combination of wine and cheese on ones pallete might cause an orgasm. Alas did not happen to me. And considering the quality of wine and cheese and the price of it in India its not going to happen for a long long time. After the lunch filled with wine that left Basant talking all rubbish we walked all the way to Eiffel. From the Eiffel we took the river cruise on the Seine finally touching upon all those places and alleys on the river bank remembering every bit of time that I had spent photographing on the banks of that amazing river. The nostalgia of the last one year spent in that beautiful city came back to me. As the sun set to my last day in Paris, I did feel a tinge of sadness leaving this wonderful city with its Rues, its river banks and its structures and churches and colleagues who had become good friends in a span of one year. Night fell and John Denver again raised his score with All my bags are packed am ready to go.......am leaving on a jet plane....dont know when I will be back again......on my laptop. Its a song of leaving something dear and every year I have been singing this song over and over again leaving one city for another, one home for another. The ride to the airport in the dead of night in the taxi with its radio humming soft french numbers and known and unknown territories passing by was equally nostalgic. Even I was leaving on a jet plane and even I never knew when I would be back again to this wonderful city called Paris.

Since misadventures never seem to leave me, back in the aiport they were not able to print my connecting Frankfurt to Kolkata boarding pass. Moreover I was given a word of caution when my cabin baggage exceeded its requisite 7 kgs restriction (happens when you stuff it up with all kinds of cheap novels bought at second hand english book selling stores). Moreover I forgot to collect that very piece of luggage after the security check and realised it only after a good 10 minutes. Finally I managed to get the second boarding pass and found to my utter dismay that all my dreams of buying liqour were going to be thrashed away as the duty free shops were all closed. But luckily the shop opened up 5 minutes prior to boarding, and I finally managed to dash and rush and get a Bordeaux 2004 red wine. And if Deeghii is reading this I did bid farewell to Paris in the" Tata Bye Bye" way....As the Lufthansa flight taxied along the runway and the early rays of the sun painted the eastern sky with its vivid red, orange and purple colours I bid farewell to Paris for the last time. Then the flight gained altitude and passed above the cloud cover and the city of Paris was out of sight. 55 minutes later I was close to Frankfurt over a sea of clouds and the sun shining bright on my side of the plane and I saw another 3 on different sides circling around in invisible circles as we prepared to land. The sea of cloud beneath meant that Frankfurt would be very cloudy. It indeed is a great city to be in though the streets are as deserted as a public museum on weekdays. Frankfurt airport is the hub for Lufthansa, and if you ever saw a taxi stand full of cabs, the airport looks more like a taxi stand for Lufthansa. The logo of a bird on a blue and yellow background was everywhere to be sighted. The bus left us at a terminal from where I had to figure out which way to go for my connecting flight to Kolkata. A small gutten tag to an airport staff did the trick and I proceeded to see a whole set of guys sitting at the passport control eyeing everyone suspiciously. My French carte de sejour was enough for them to not even glance at me twice and soon I was officially out of the European Union. I headed straight for the duty free to buy another litre of alcohol, this time a whisky which my father had wished I would buy for him. I bought a litre of Jack Daniels and saw that my flight was a wee bit delayed. The two bottles of liquor had ensured that my hand luggage had gotten all the more bulky and hard to carry. With two bags of duty free stuff and a hand baggage and the laptop I was way too much loaded. Frankfurt airport at any point of time in the day especially the terminal 3 looks like an Indian airport. All major cities of India are connected by Lufthansa, well except for Bangalore on sundays which is operated by Air India, and as usual Air India known for its worser than Deccan record of flying on scheduled time was delayed by more than 15 hours. Imagine the plight of the people who were to travel in this god forbidden airline. Luckily for me our flight was just about 45 minutes late and as the time for departure I came, I proceeded towards security check, which was in every mood to strip me of my clothes to check for any signs of me being a terrorist. France never does indulge in so many checks. The passport control guys in Paris are more interested in chit chatting and once for a colleague of mine, they did not even stamp his passport. The excuse given was that, there was a huge queue and they did not want to waste much time checking up everyone. After the security check, the waiting area seemed to be straight out of the cafeteria of any Salt Lake sector V IT company. There were all kinds of IT people who had all descended from various parts of the world (well mostly US) to take the flight back to Kolkata. And just like in any cafeteria of any IT company everyone was busy voicing their opinion about everything, straight from the falling dollar affecting their way of living in the US, to who was getting married and who was trying for a shift and who belonged to IBM and who worked for TCS. This was the face of India, that was taking up all the possible jobs thanks to the world becoming more and more flatter (this is how we call offshoring in Infsoys). So after another half an hour of hearing all kinds of possible stuff like onsite allowance, the cold weather and the worsening market for Dot net professionals, there was a call for boarding. The flight was one of those huge airbuses, and I was allocated an aisle seat thanks to a very boaring Canadian man who seemed to be in his later 50s. The flight took off after another 20 mins, and as usual there was a huge thrust common for such huge airlines. One really feels the power of these rolls royce engines during such take offs and ladings. Once in the air above the cloud cover, and the captain having switched off the fasten your seat belt sign I ventured to the loo to freshen up a bit. Not sleeping for more than 24 hours now had taken its toll on my appearance. While coming back an old lady blurted out help-help and I realised that the lady's husband needed assistance. He wanted to go to the loo and could not stop talking all the way. In those 10 minutes he had told me why he was on the plane(he was visiting his younger daughter who was married off to some person in the US), that he had had two heart attacks and his older daughter was in Australia and she had a beautiful daughter who was a chartered accountant and almost my age, and that he carried a photograph of her which he wanted to show to me. Now this is where, I was shell shocked. The old man repeatedly called me his son and asked me for my parent's contacts. So the Paris tag had made me pretty much a marriageable element, I thought. The old man on his way back from the loo wanted me to fill up the immigration forms required for stepping into India. Seeing the alley was being blocked by the cabin crew distributing snacks, I told them that I would fill them later. After a snacks of peanut and wine I found old man selling the same concept of marrying off his grand daughter to a man seated on their side, well a bit older than me who was busy filling up old man and old lady's immigration form.

These nine hour flights are damn boring when you have sleeping men in their 50s sleeping on both sides of you. I tried watching friends on my laptop, flipped through the channels of Lufthansa, saw half of Nicholas Cage's National Treasure and felt very very bored. Everyone else seemed to be enjoying their afternoon siesta. Mr 50something Canadian had not even touched lunch for the love of snoring. Then it was again time for dinner as I saw the flight plan saying that we had entered India after crossing over from Pakistan. In 2 hours after a great meal of chicken fried with some rice and an aborted landing attempt at Kolkata thanks to a Spicejet flight not listening to ATC orders, we had reached the parking area of Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose International airport. After seeing the biggest of them like CDG, Heathrow, Schilpol, Frankfurt and Fumicino, the internation one 7 kms from my home looked so small in comparison. After the formalities with the passport control and getting a range of glances from the customs officials and saying repeated nos to the porters, I finally could retreive my luggage and was on my way out to see Ma and my sister waiting there. The first word they said was that I had grown lot fatter than the last time they had saw me. After all a year of cheese, wine, fries and burgers were showing its toll. A short ride back home through the streets of Kolkata, the streets that I had grown up on during my school days again welcomed me back to known settings and there in a wee bit small corner of my heart I missed the year long experience called Paris......

The naked dream.....

Was a dream this one...for someone special.....

Always wanted to see u get naked while u wore spects and smoked that cigarette in tht stylish manner.....

Love you.....

I heard in Paris and around.....

"Ca Va?"
"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.......

And if you thought that the end of 2007 was joyous and filled with mega and gala plans to set the dance floor on fire since I am in the city of romance and fashion, think again. As far as I remember 31st december 2007 was spent infront of the computer at office with most of my French clients on extended vacations, while I was handling the query of one Pierre fellow who was atrocious because of some stupid issue. He first asked, then ordered, then threatened and finally abused me as morning became afternoon and finally evening and his issue was still not solved. Not my fault buddy if someday the connection of the ERP system of the entire company decides to fail. So finally Pierre was a happy man when his issue was solved. I think he had some kind of self imposed targets of getting over all work headaches before the new year sets in maybe also because the year-ending is on the 31st of December in these parts of the world. But when you consider that 90% of the population is outside the office enjoying vacations, you just ask why?

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

The one trying to fly is the one and only Aby Paul, and the one behind him in the monkey cap, dancing just like an overgrown monkey is Sabya (the French among us Indians). And considering the fact that someone was trying to fly when it was almost yet another 3 hours to midnight and 2008, things really were creepy. By 9:45 Aby was history, he was sprawled on the dance floor from which he was trying to fly 45 minutes ago. And picking him up and trying to get him to drink butter milk with litres of lemon juice was really a Dard-e-disco experience. When Aby did not revive even after litres of buttermilk and lime juice we decided to let him be senseless and we headed outside for Champs de Elysee. The sight at Champs de Elysee was just like a Brigade Road of Bangalore or Park Street of Kolkata or C G Road of Ahmedabad. Things were just the same. There were people everywhere waiting for the new year to come along. Those who have the money or the contacts go to the gala parties, while others crowd the best known road expecting something( I do not know what till now) as the clock approaches 12. Since Champs de Elysee was way too crowded we decided to walk towards Eiffel. The temperature was dripping all the time and the weatherman had not been able to ward off the rain with his voodoo power. And when we reached the bridge on Porta Alma, the Eiffel lights started twinkling brightly and it was new year. We had expected some kind of firework spectacle, but the only ones visible were a few tarabatis (sparkles) and a few rockets that would have been hopeless competition when compared to Diwali. Anyway people were very happy about 2008 coming into their life, as Anirban became more grumpy because he had to go home. 2007 became 2008 but grumpy Anirban was still the same. Though, we had no such intentions of going back home, we finally realised that staying on Champ de Elysee was out of the question. By the time we had came back there, the riot police was all ready to use the baton. People had broken every kind of bottle on the street and it was utter chaos. Risking that 1st January 2008 could well have seen us nursing beatings from the riot police, we also headed back home.

Happy new year to one and all.....

Old Monk et Old Memories.....sponsored by Mohan Meakin

Finally after a long hiatus the login page of blogger suddenly did not turn into arcane french when I logged in to post this. But anyway, these days my french has improved drastically. Though I have no idea about what they pronounce and why on earth they eat up half the consonants while they speak but still if people write to me in French, I get a gist of what they are trying to communicate. The French's love for their language has a lot many times landed us lesser English speaking mortals into deep merde situations. So much so that my boss (happens to be an Australian) who learnt French the hard way by leaving Australia and settling in France for the sake of his French girlfriend fully empathised with us and made our signature in official emails read out that, All correspondance with us lesser mortal english speaking group should be in English (the template is in french and english). Ocassionally the mails are one line long but the signature is usally 5 lines long to accomodate all such instructions. Yet people prefer sending us a hell lot of communication in arcane french that I have finally managed to pick up helped by another spectacular tool from the house of google, their translation tool. I tell you one day in the near future, they will surely be the China of the virtual world. As in today's world any product that you pick out of a shelf in your nearby retail store has a tiny weeny microscopic "Made in China" label, in a similar way every tool that we use in the virtual world would soon have a Made by Google label. Now can anyone of you at Gartner or Forrester who ever manages to pass through my blog and read uptil this point please offer me a job of some kind for giving such a wonderful analysis on the prospects of Google? And yah hey if you guys out at google are reading this, VP HR types, senior manager HR, manager HR, trainee HR or for that matter even the admin guy or the guy who cleans the floor of Google.....anybody.....just inform me if there is some job for writing such wonderful things. Now starts the long wait for a flashy career ahead ;-)

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.

After a few pegs of rum......

I havent done this for a long long time. The last time as far as I remember, it was the one and only famous party that we had at IMT after the disgusting financial services paper in the 4th semester that turned out to be the most disgraceful performance in my life. It was one of those papers which was an open book paper and we had no clues what we were supposed to reproduce in our papers. Apart from our lesser mortals who had the audacity of taking up finance as our majors in a college like IMT, there were others who thought that the financial services was one paper that could give them a well deserved placement in the financial services thanks to the boom in the banking and insurance sector. Alas they never expected that the whole end term exam would just consist of one question with a 100 twists and turns. Man it was worth a sight when we all came out of the exam hall with a big question mark written stark on their face. Though it was an open book exam people had this one question all over their worried face, was it a pass or fail? Alas we all knew the outcome, even if it was an open book exams which we long craved for. The toppers were obviously trying to find out the %age difference in their scores while us lesser mortals had headed towards Noida to celebrate the disgusting performance in the FS paper. And lo in the middle of these celebrations I did get some 5-6 calls from the topper of our claass threatening me to complete the strategy project. Poor thing she never had any idea that I wanted to get so very drunk that strategic management seemed as arcane as nuclear physics. Today I am as drunk as that day in the hostels of IMT, when we drank and Arti shopped to feel better. Today she is married and enjoying a life away from financial services and neither do I care about financial services in this world of Interface monitoring in the SAP world. It seems to be a far off world than where we wanted to land ourselves at. But still everyone has survived with a little bit of gloom here and there. But at the end we are what we are. MBA seems to be a far off dream that we managed to indulge in. Alas no more of it survives in real, it is what survives in our sweet nice dreams. But what really remains is this sense of intoxication that makes u ponder about the way your life is taking. After all that perspective changes with time. When u consider that Sumit Baheti was drinking vodka yesterday, I must say that life has chaned a lot. There were times when we had resolved never to drink vodka. And today things have changed. Even six moths is a long time. Today Baheti is indulging himself in litres of vodka. Alas there were days when even 250 ml of vodka would have made us puke. Alas things change, we change, preference change. Time changes every soul in us. If only we could have made time stand still....life might have been a better place to live.......alas never would happen.....

Much ado about cleaning

I finally had the august opportunity to meet the person for whose welcome our house in Paris saw four well fed, pot bellied persons making war like arrangements for a whole of two days in an attempt to clean up all the mess that the flat in Courbevoie housed apart from the four people in question. It was the day of all days that usually comes once a month but for the last two months I had avoided the D-day by rushing away to neighbouring countries when the day came. Considering the fact, that the D-day beaches are very nearby when you consider my geographical location on the map of the world, I had every plans to rush off to the D-day beaches when these once in a month occassions came, but since it was clear that I would most probably be threatened with dire circumstances if I avoided it another time I finally decided to act and clean the house for the grand arrival of our landlord. It has been months since I shifted from the Indian hostel to this appartment with three of my colleagues, in a vain attempt to save some money. Alas I have spent everything on travelling Europe and presently my bank balance looks very much disbalanced. The day I moved into this appartment the smell of gross neglect welcomed me. A sight of the dining table was enough to give the landlord a massive heart attack. There was everything on the table and it looked like the sight of a mini explosion. Bottles and cans of used pickles and sauces were there. There was even a carboard case that was home to a shoe once upon a time. Now it was home to a whole host of masalas that were last used a decade ago. Though I do like my stuffs to be clean and my room to be tidy, cleaning up a community mess is not something which I am used to. The table was left the way it was lest it again decide to explode on me.

Historically I have been blessed with flatmates or hostel roommates who have had dubious records of being clean. Notable is the wonderful time that I had with the great Banner. Room number B-57 in IMT hostel was one of the smallest rooms that could accomodate two people. To meet the problem of space we had joined our two beds and hence were crowned as the undisputed presidents of some well known society of IMT which is best kept secret in a public forum like this. The space constraint problem saw clothes being heaped on the lonesome chair in the room. The chair seemed to be heaped in the same way as a donkey's back when being taken to the dhobi ghat. Books used to be lying here and there on the bed as were newspapers on which we sometimes slept too. These newspapers were hurriedly disposed under the cot to rest in peace with all the dirt of the world. And then once in a while came a frantic SOS call from the great Banner announcing the arrival of his parents. A call like this meant something much more graver than 9/11 for us because if his parents would have seen the condition of our room, the way we kept it, we would both have been shot dead at point blank for being so unclean. The SOS meant I had to run and push every item of clothing inside the big almirah and lock it up. If they would have opened the almirah once, they would have been buried under debries of fallin clothes of all kinds. The next step was to shove everything under the bed and if still unwanted things remained they would be pushed into the neigbours room. Equally unclean the duo of Bindra and Sohar never minded an intrusion into their room. Bindra's cleanliness record had the whole cleaning staff of IMT prying for his blood. He had happily forgot to clean a bucketfull of clothes that he had soaked in soap for more than a month. When he finally threw them all away, it was anybody's guess how many lesser mortals might have died of the stench. The next phase of room cleaning would be the jharu pocha wala stage with me struggling with the jharu and Banner doing the pocha. The speed at which we cleaned the room would definitely have put a high speed TGV at shame. The finishing touches were provided by lighting up a whole plethora of incensce sticks in an effort to shoo away the smell of stale cigarette smoke that lingered on in our room. The wallpapers of our PCs changed from a raunchy Monica Belluci staring at us to a picture of godess Saraswati in no time. And this is how I had saved my ass for a whole year and had managed reasonably well to portray myself to be a clean person to the outside world. Second year in IMT, was an individual affair, with people getting single rooms. I had managed to keep my room clean for the better part of that year and thanks to a lot of initatives taken at the begging of the year of putting up wall hangings and fancy lamp shades nobody ever raised eyebrows. Though in second year also a mount everest of old newspapers rested under my cot. In the latter part of the second year, we stuffed the mountain in Akshara's car and took it to the local kabadiwala and made a mini fortune of it. The money was enough to sposor a booze party for our group of friends. The next stop which became home for a few months was the guest house of Infosys during the training period at Hyderabad. All our combined efforts of keeping everything out of place proved futile by the constant monitoring of the housekeeping staff of the guest house. Bangalore also saw its share of dirtiness thanks to the laziness of us few souls who stayed in a house at BTM layout. The only saving grace was the cleaning woman who did not understand even one word we spoke and vice versa. It was easier to talk to an alien than the cleaning woman, but she did clean the premises and clothes of ours quite well. And now in Paris, cleaning the home is a ploy to keep the owner happy, lest he throws us out of the house into the cold streets of Paris in a winter month. The regularity of cleaning stays in sync with his regularity of coming to collect the rent. That means once in a month the house gets a full revamp with four hatta gatta naujawan becoming the opressed Cinderella taking up the mop and bucket and going around the house cleaning, mopping, strugling, falling and freeing everything of dust and stains including the table that looked like an explosion site. Finally after hours of fighting with the dust and stain and emptying a bottle of stain remover the house looked habitable and sophisticated including the table which no more looked like a blast site of age old curries. Expecting the owner to go ga-ga over our cleanliness initatives but when he came he talked about complex things his bank was doing in a french accented hindi. Later on he started talking about how he desperately wants to learn SAP, a skill that I havent been able to learn in so many years even after sitting infront of the SAP interface every single day. So if you want a clean up of ur house, u know whom not to invite. I am better at cleaning up entries from database these days.

Chocolate, cheese and a lot of beer....Belgium unlimited...

I have never been a great fan of Himesh or his hat since the day the driver of the Volvo to Ernakulam decided it would be very funny to wake up the sleeping passengers by playing Himesh songs on full volume. Since that day I have gazed suspiciously at people who sport a Himesh beard or wear a Himesh cap lest it turns out to be Himesh himself. So moving thousands of kilometers away from the subcontinent of India, I never expected the spirit of Himesh or his cap to follow me in Europe. After I shifted to Paris, I heard the movie goers were swept out of thier feet by the commendable performance of Himesh in the wonderful movie called "Tera tera tera suroor". The fact that the movie was shot somewhere in Europe did give me creepy feelings, but still I was lucky enough to be quarantined from his disastrous songs till I landed up in the wonderful country of Belgium known for its chocolate, cheese and beer and of course glass. All deadly stuffs when you consider the fact that three of these can make your poor tummy inflate and blast away and the fourth thing can rip off ur belly at one go. So before my trip to Germany I went on this trip to Belgium where the spirit of Himesh and his cap managed to haunt me with a guy called Bhaskar from the hostel. Bhaskar is a been there and done that kind of a guy while I am progressing on his foot steps. So he acts as an inspiration for me coz he is almost bald and I am on the path of balding, majority of hair on his head is grey while mine are growing grey slowly, while he has embarked on the journey of marriage a long time back I am seeking motivation to get married sometimes in the future. So both of us set off on this weekend escape to Belgium thanks to the cheap first class ticket that we got on Thalys. So after much oohs and ouches and ifs and if nots from his side finally we did manage to find each other at the Gare de Nord station in Paris and set out for the land of Belgium. After a hearty breakfast on the Thalys where I was cautioned repeatedly for grabbing more than one of every item on the menu, we reached the city of Brussels. Taking one of those cheap intercity trains that runs every half hour to Bruges we set out again towards one of the bigges tourist destination of Belgium famous for its canals and beer. Passing the city, once you land up in the countryside the average Belgian looks like the cows he rears. He is as fat and as white as his cows. No doubt so much of beer, cheese and chocolate does take its toll on the average Belgian.

Once in Bruges, and after purchasing a city map which looked much more like an arcane treasure hunt map than a handy helpful city map we set off towards our hostel on one of the city buses. One small enquiry about the stop of the buses that we needed to get down at got a Belgian totally excited to help us out and then began a walk for 20 long minutes till we reached the hostel. The email from the hostel had promised a 5 minute walk from the city centre. Incidentally later did we realise that the man had taken us through all the wrong lanes and it was almost more than double the distance from the place we had started walking from, that he had taken us on. Once in the reception, the snob receptionist told us to come back at 2 in the afternoon to get our rooms and she gave us a map of the city that was much more readable than the arcane one we managed to get at the station. This map was hilarious in its own ways with suggestions about how one should not pee on the streets of Bruges as the fine amount would amount to some few hundred euros per litre of pee passed, that the best way to peev a Brugeian is to ask him/her where the nearest Mc Donald's is. So off we went with our huge bags exploring the lanes and canals of Bruges clutching the hilarious map which seemed to mock every place in its own way. The first place we entered made us pay 5 euros and it happened to be a church. Now I have never seen a church which charges entry fee since I came to Europe, but the person at the counter convinced us that it had a very beautiful museum and hence the entry fee. Alas the museum turned out to be a museum that had all kinds of lace attires and nothing more. The only good thing was that the church had a very clean and precious toilet that we made full utilisation of. The next stop was the chocolate factory that provided insights into how chocolate beans were used as currency in the olden days in some tribes and how 100 chocolate beans could buy you a strong and sturdy slave in the slave markets. I picked up a handful of chocolates from the complimentary counters irrespective of the muted protests of others and saw how they made chocolates. Overall the entire chocolatey experience in the museum of the chocolate fairy was quite a treat to the senses. Heading ahead we tried climbing the Belfry tower in the market square that has an epic 366 steps, the passage goes on getting narrower as one reaches the top. It was quite a harrowing experience carrying our bags to the top of the tower. Once we reached the top, the clock at the top started ringing horribly with its huge dongs that could have easily made a non susupecting soul go deaf. We came down from the Belfry tower after giving our whole hearted support to the Indian cricket team which was just across the English channel playing a test match against England(we met a British couple who were more interested in discussing cricket than climbing the stairs). After having a lunch of burgers and fattening fries we set off to claim our rightful rooms in the hostel and after struggling with the locks and the sophisticated security system we were finally able to get into our room. The room was cosy yet typically featureless and overlooked the kitchen of the restaurant underneath which had stacked up crates and crates of beer bottles which is yet another Belgian passion. To realise this passion we head next to the famous Bruggian Zot brewery that has guided tours that show how beer was made previously in the olden days. After buying a ticket for the tour that was supposed to culminate in a free glass of beer we realised that the smell of beer was enticing enough for us to buy a few more glasses till the tour started. The tour was conducted by a lady infected with the horrific Belgian sense of humor who took us around the old beer distillery sharing anecdotes with a face as serious as any of our politicians, but spiced with a very strong sense of humor. So the Belgian beer factory lady told us that packing Belgian beer into cans is an insult to the beer and that the Belgian beer should always be served in the right glass to make it taste all the more better. And finally that one should never complaint if the Belgian beer was served with a whole lot of froth. Pouring beer out of bottles or jars with the least amount of froth, was a game that we enjoyed and associated it with some kind of weired macho masculanity ideas, but in Belgium the beer lady proved it to be all wrong. According to her, the initial froth allows people to start up conversations while the froth settles down. She also said that people also start talking to their beer once in a while and it only becomes serious when the beer starts talking back to you. Then you know, that it is the last glass for the night. The customary beer followed the tour and with all the newly gained knowledge I analysed the contents of the beer- barley turned into malt, mixed with water and hoop for the customary smell and then cooled and fermented and bottled to make the golden yellow liquid that has long left me intriguied with its taste. The beer factory tour was followed by a 30 minute ride on a boat on the canals of Bruges. A sign on the boat at the end of the tour again proved the classiness of Belgian humor. The sign read that "Tipping is not a town in China". We followed the boat trip up with a trip to the old windmills on the outer fringes of the town and again wandered back along the canals to reach the city centre. There were roadside shows and a huge saturday night rock concert. By the time we realised that we were hungry, most of the restaurants had already shut down their kitchens. Finally we found this French continental restaurant that had kept its door open till late. As we sipped beer waiting for our fish and chips the music system started playing "Saiyan dil mein aana re". Sitting in a French restaurant on the northern fringes of Belgium and listening to a Bollywood song is nothing you would expect. But Europe seems to be filled with all these surprises and French guy from the restaurant said that his father in law is a big fan of Indian movies and hence he has a collection of Bollywood songs too. He even named Amitabh Bacchan though it did sound like Amitabh Bachpan. After a hearty meal and clicking pictures of the city canals illuminated at night by lights, we headed back to the hostel and slept like logs. The next day, the weather god was all angry and as we left Bruges for Brussels, the sky was pouring rain like cats and dogs. Brussels is a disaster when compared to Bruges. It looks like one of those post World War 2 towns, cold and damp and not so pretty. We took the city tour on top of those open air buses which could not be converted into open air ones thanks to the huge amount of rain that Brussels was subjected to on that very day. We were the only duo who seemed to be getting down at all the sight seeing stops, every one else seemed to be contended seeing Brussels from the bus. Finally at the end of the day, we landed up near the famous Mannekan piss. The small boy's statue that keeps on pissing all day and night in a narrow lane of Brussels. And finally we heard the much horrific music of the soul who had made my sleep on a bus en route to Kerela blaring from one of the shops near Mannekan's piss. No doubt he was a Pakistani who had set up a souvenior shop near the famous statue and Himesh was blaring full volume from the music system saying "Dil se pooch le, jaan se pooch le". Incidentally I did want to ask my dil and jaan that till what time I would have remained sane listening to naam tera tera Himesh. And thus ended our Brussels trip, on the way back the Thalys stopped at least 4 times on the track and was 20 minutes late to Paris. They said it is one of those for the record books. I said lets not talk about the Indian Railways record books.

Bidi on the streets of Nurnberg

Being 25 and acting like a kid requires a lot of efforts. Specially when you are in a distant land where every word worth its money starts or ends with a Z and has Z in the middle to supplement the effect, it takes a lot of effort to throw out the composure of a mature person and do things that you always wanted to do as a kid(more about it later in the post). The scene was in Deustchland or more commonly Germany which I visited last weekend thanks to the fact that one of my project mates had been sent there much against his wishes of leaving Paris. So his double room in the hotel was the perfect abode that I required for planning such kind of a trip and ensuring that I need not pay much. Well it is a seperate story that the way I am draining out all the money from my BNP Paribas bank account, that I might soon have to sing on the streets and make people pay me money for shutting up the horrible cacaphony. I am pretty sure that if the darconian FERA was still in practice in India, these guys from the law enforcing bodies of India would surely have caught up with me to help me save some euros. So last friday at the holy hour of 1700 I escaped from office with tickets in hand for Germany. The holy hour of 1700 is just another holy hour including the holy hour of 1800 where leaving office is considered a henious crime. If only my manager would have seen me, he would have had a fit. I reassigned work here and there much against the protest of other lesser mortals and headed straight to Paris East to catch my train to Frankfurt with that big bulky bag that one of my roommates Sayee had given to me. It was a seperate story that the bag looked dead bulky if you put in just 3-4 T-shirts. So with the bag and the big fat 7th edition of Harry Potter in hand, I reached the Paris East station not before bumping my bag into some unsuspecting souls and getting to hear a mouthful of obscenities in French. I had a window seat and unlike others who appear real casual about not getting one, its an honest confession that I am really thrilled when I am given a window seat. Incidentally the person beside me, a German with a blonde moustache (man it was damn scary) also had the 7th Harry Potter in his hand. A father of two, he convinced his sons to solve the Sudoku while he glanced through pages of the Harry Potter. The German versions of the super fast trains unlike the Belgian versions or the French versions have a display that gives all kind of nasty informations in four languages and also shows the speed at which the train cruises. Soon we were cruising at close to 307 kmph. I mean imagine the shock of a poor guy who used to do a 12kmph on a standard blue and white bus of a specific company on the mother of all higways Hosur Road way back in Bangalore, being hurled forward towards Germany at 307kmph. The train journey on board the DB(DeustchBahn) ICE(Inter City Express) was worth every euro spent on it. And it did give me a chance to plan the acting like a kid stuff when I saw that the driver's cabin was only one glass partition away from the passenger seats.

An ICE

The next day after a sleep of less than 4 hours me and Anirban set off on yet another ICE journey (this time sitting in the cafe onboard the train sipping Bavarian beer) to the beautiful city of Nurnberg known for its castel, its famous Nazi parade grounds and the famous Nazi trials is a cute little city with a lot of things to see. The churches are old and really impressive with the typical gothic structures. They looked like the famous Notre Dame church of Paris. The insides of the church were serene and quite and the sunlight created amazing patterns when they passed through the tinted glasses. After going up the stairs and down the escalator and losing track close to 5 times we were finally able to land up at the tourist information centre of Nurnberg. The small old town with all its sceneic attractions finally of its fountains and the weekend markets, the churches and the museums, the town hall and the excise house finally lands you up at the foot of the castle which houses a museum too. It seemed to be a strange place with more museums than public lavatories on the street. The castle was small and typically German. The tour was of no help as it was also in German. There were hardly 5 people including us two who wanted the English version, rest all seem to have a fair idea of how german was spoken. The most impressive feature of the castle was the watch tower from which the whole city was visible and the well that ran down 305 metres deep into the ground. There were candles placed on a plate with the help of a pulley which were hoisted down to show the depth of the well. We had a Thai lunch in a Bavarian restaurant and sipped down Bavarian beer out of those huge glasses which store more than 500 ml of beer at one go. It gave me no doubts as to why Germans looked as big as boulders and had bellies as big as a 15 months pregnant cow. Post lunch we headed off towards the Nazi parade grounds on board a tram not before running into a store that was selling stuffs that looked very much Indian. And I was rather bemused to find the store selling packets of bidis at the exhorbitant price of 3 euros per packet. The guy from the store with his huge blonde eyebrows explained how bidis made in India were hot favourites in these parts of Germany. Considering the margin that one can gain on this kind of a business, I would have to look no further if I want to start a business. I would be happy enough to import crates of Dum Dum biri at around Rs.1 per packet and sell them at a whooping 3 euros per packet in Germany. The Nazi parade grounds were kind of scary and bore witness to the acts of Nazi. The guided tour of the rooms showed the story of the rise and fall of Nazism in Germany. It was a real pity that had ended in the trial and hanging of Nazi leaders in Nurnberg. After having another round of Bavarian beer and the famous sausages from Nurnberg we set sail again for Frankfurt on board another ICE. And this is where I turned into a complete kid much against the muted protests of Anirban. We had landed up seats in the front row right behind the drivers cabin and every bit of me was interested in landing up into the driver's cabin for once and seeing how they ran the ICE at that huge a speed. Suddenly out of nowhere there were two kids accompanied by their father, who had asked for permission from the train manager entering the drivers cabin. And seeing them go inside I felt the compelling need to go inside the cabin all the more taking grip of me. And finally I asked the ICE driver if I could make my way inside the small cabin and he readily agreed. And thus was fulfilled a dream to be inside the drivers cabin of a train, and since the train was running at around 250kmph, it was all the more exciting to be on board. The driver told us how the throttle was handled and which was the brake and the horns etc. It was 15 minutes of pure ecstacy at the end. Later on I realised that even the drivers feel bored and are happy to show people the tricks of their job rather than sit straight for more than 4 hours and gaze ahead on the tracks. After all even they need some entertainment which they get thanks to unsuspecitng souls like us. Sunday was spent in roaming Frankfurt which incidentally has nothing that interesting except for a boat ride on the river Maine and a metro that runs underground before suddenly appearing out of nowhere on the road and even following traffic signs. A metro on the streets is something that I have never encountered in any other city of the world. Monday morning saw me boarding another ICE and as a co passenger I got a very good looking German girl who seemed to know every language in the world. On the way she was seen reading an English fiction, which gave way to a German one before landing up on to a French guide about Paris. Talk about being multi linguistic!!

With a huge Bavarian beer in hand

Inside the driver's cabin of an ICE

The weired Metro of Frankfurt that runs on the road

Pottermania

I realised I was a very insignificant creature in this big bad world of ours. If only you could spare and overlook my non vegetarian eating habits you would have realised that I am one of those guys who are contended staying deep down at the bottom of the food chain. So the thought that somebody would have dedicated a book to me came as a rather rude shock. But when the realisation set in I was ecstatic, enthralled and subjected to a whole lot of states of mind which presently I dont remember. The significant event in my life was that J K Rowling had finally decided to dedicate the last book of the Harry Potter series to all her readers who have followed Harry Potter religiously through the last few years in the battle against the dark lord Voldemort. Well it was an honour that I rightfully deserved when you consider that I was one of those 11 million guys who contributed to the record breaking sales on the very first day of the release of the book. But here are some other top reasons why the dedication of the book to readers like me made perfectly logical sense.

• Deathly French hallows: I had prebooked the final copy of Harry Potter at the Virgin megastore near my office. Now considering the fact that the French love their book smeared with French (i.e. they always have a fascination for reading the translated version of English bestsellers) it was quite a difficult task to make the French speaking book store attendants understand the entire concept of pre booking the Harry Potter book. Considering the fact that they already had a big Harry Potter release countdown POP display it was a very horrendous experience.
• Misorder of the phoneix: Prebooking of the Harry Potter book proved to be quite a misordering when you consider the fact that the book was as freely available as wine bottles in almost all the bookstores of Paris. Well finally I realised that prebooking is only necessary when you are sitting in some remote corner of Timbaktu (wherever that place is).
• Goblet of Disaster-Barry Trotter: Incidentally apart from the 6 and half books of Harry Potter that I have had the auspicious opportunity to gobble down, I also have discredited myself by reading two books of the Barry Trotter series. It is a spoof showing the pornograhic side of Barry Trotter who has a strong resemblance with Harry Potter and whose life is a total disaster. I survived two Barry Trotters and according to some it was quite a credit that should be applauded.
• Fool Blood cousins: My cousins have always been great fans of the Potter movies. I mean till the time somebody is a fan, it is ok with me but being a fanatic is quite something different. So when the kids channel POGO had this glorious idea of airing Harry Potter flicks 24*7, my cousin had tortured me by making me see the same old movies of Harry Potter over and over again and again. Think of any worser way to spend a weekend in Bangalore!! Had felt myself to be a fool blood bloody fool after that, subjecting myself to such torture.
• Philosopher's groans: For more than half a decade now I have had the glorious opportunity of listening to Potter philosophy from humans in various forms shapes and sizes. The most outstanding among them was Darshan a pal from college days who had this immensly irritating habit of relating everything with the life and time of Potter. So the discussions included such hilarious complaints like "our college building does not look like Hogwarts","Wish I could do magic and sneak the question paper before the exam", "Will Voldemort die in the end?" I dont know whether he has finally got his answer with the seventh book because last heard he was honeymooning in God's own country Kerela blissful with his own marriage. Maybe Potter is passe infront as compared to a newly wed wife.
• Chamber of Secrets: The little secret is that Bloomsbury would be very disappointed to hear that I bought the pirated version of the book till the 5th edition. That was the only option available to an unemployed guy like me who wanted to know the outcome of the good versus evil story. I hope hearing this bit of information, Bloomsbury does not classify me as a death eater. The other little secret is that Bloomsbury would be very proud to know that the pdf version of the 6th book was available in a matter of hours from the release of the book on the file server of IMT. So the 6th version was also gobbled down by me in a pirated form.
• Prisoner's of Pottermania: Love him or hate him but you cant ignore him. I guess the Potter craze is something which is very much a reality and yes a lot of people like me have been prisoners of pottermania since a very long time. And finally the end is here and the series would be remembered as one of the best written series of all times that has appealed to children and youth and also elders (like my mother).

So it does make proper sense for Rowling to dedicate the book to me and the likes of me. This tribute to Harry Potter was all the more inspired by the fact that I saw at least 5 people balancing the huge book in their hands and trying to read it while waking to their offices. I have never tried that kind of insane stuff myself. But I guess everything related to Potter is as unexpected as the books are and one last thought does haunt me like crazy. Doesnt Voldemort tire of losing the duels over and over again. I mean he looks more like our very own Mahishashur who loses the battle against Ma Durga every year and again comes back the next year to lose again. This rare fact inspired a cartoon series which showed that Mahisashur was utterlly frustrated with the every year losing business and tried to outsource this little piece of non value adding work of dying every year to somebody else. I guess Voldemort also requires to think of such options to make the real Harry Potter more in sync with the Barry Trotter that I have come to love. Goodbye Potter, we would surely miss you.

Google your way to serendipitous Etretat

It was much like any usual day at office with the irritable Kakkar complaining that I do not work and only he does and Anirban trying to convince me that I might be sent back to Bangalore when he came to know that I wanted to download Calvin & Hobbes pdf out of the net and enjoy it in office hours. So there I was sans work because everything seemed to be working perfectly in the huge labyrinth of systems set up in the place I work. A very rare feat indeed and it gave me a chance to explore the full potentials of the unique lifesaver at times created by Sergey Brin and Larry Page called Google. Now most lazy bums at office would not care to find out the lesser known tourist attractions in Europe and would settle for the much obvious choices. But in a backpacker's heavan like Europe, this kind of an attrocity is a crime. And as I had already been convicted by the irritable Kakkar of shying away from work I headed to google and tried to find out a place on the coast of the English Channel with which I had fallen in love while crossing on a ferry from Calais to Dover, one fine trip that is best kept a secret.

A lot of googling on the site of the french tourism department and google photos with a frequent trip to the thalys website for finding out train links to places on the coast finally brought out Fecamp and Etretat as the natural choices. It was supposed to be beautiful, an awesome place on the coast with the cliffs of white rock rising from the waters of the Channel. Just a three paragraph writeup on the place on the Lonely Planet book for touring France did give me doubts about the place. A few French words thrown into the google translator and navigating through a completely french site got me the bus links to the station from far off Etretat. Google has its own potentials provided you know what to search rightly. So off we were on a Saturday early morning to Fecamp and Etretat. The explorers included me, Anirban and the workaholic Kakkar. The inclusion of Kakkar was the glorious idea of Mr. Anirban as he wanted to gel with his soon to be hommie. By the way did I spell that correctly? The Corail Intercity trains were quite a treat to be travelling on. The pleasant Bonjour from the ticket inspector made me compare her with the grumpy faced TTE on Indian trains. Indian TTEs never seem to smile, as if the code of conduct of TTEs as specified by the Indian Railways does not allow them to smile or wish somebody good day or a thank you. The Corail dropped us at Breaute Bruzeville and from there a small train got us to Fecamp. The coast of Fecamp was a pebble beach with cliffs lining both the edges of the beach. The conditions overcast and the weather windy, thanks to the English Channel had made it chilly and enjoyable all the more. There were people on the beach engrossed in their activity of fishing for nothing because for the half an hour I was nearby, one had not even managed to catch one fish from the channel. There was a lighthouse in the distance jutting out into the sea and high up above the cliffs were windmills whirling about at huge speeds (grand vitesse--could not resist showing off my French knowledge :-D ). After a meal of delightful kababs and posing with a lot of rusting anchors on the road, we set off to visit the Benedictine factory of Fecamp. Acutally more of a palace in nature, it houses the only place in the world where the alcoholic drink Benedictine is made at. The history of Benedictine dates back to the time when a Venetian monk Dom Bernardo created an elixir with 27 plants and spices. The commercial production was started in 1863 by Alexander Le Grande in Fecamp. The exhibition of the palace was magnificient with the tour taking us to the production area with its huge barrels for fermentation of the drink and it finally ended with us getting to savour a taste of Benedictine.

We left Fecamp in a bus headed towards the town of Etretat through lush fields gazing at huge cows having football sized udders on the route. The trip that lasts for 16 kilometers takes about half an hour on the Keolis bus. Etretat welcomes you with its very old structured appearance. There are hotels that have stood for ages and look rustic en route to the coast. On coast the beach still seems rocky but one is welcomed by the pleasant sight of the cliffs jutting out into the sea and look like white elephants with their trunks out in the sea. The weather in France changes much in the same way as Zaheera Sheikh's statements in the famous court case. At one instance it is as cloudy as if it would rain and within half an hour the weather would have changed drastically, with the sun blazing down on you. And much faster than the change of weather, the clothes on the coast change for most French guys. So with the conditions overcast and wind fast, there was no one on the beach who could be seen wearing swimsuits. A moment later with the sun out and blazing literally every one on the beach was wearing nothing else apart from swimsuits. No doubt it was a royal treat to the eyes, but we three looked kind of the most overdressed persons on the beach with our jeans and T-shirts. The trek to the top of the cliff was awesome. The whole town could be seen in the distance, and there was a golf course on the other side of the cliff, lush green in appearance and ever appealing for an 18 hole match. Considering my knowledge of the lovely game, even Tiger Woods would have felt ashamed to see me in any golf course around the world. The scene from the top of the cliff was quite awesome with the English Channel infront of us with its deep blue appearance. The stupid asses that I went with were too tired to trek up the other cliffs and hence we settled for the huge caves on the bottom of the cliffs. Incidentally these caves get completely submerged in a high tide situation. Cursing the worn out sole of my shoe and slipping along the algae mass on the way, we finally made it to the weired looking caves. The trip finally ended with a siesta on the rocky beach. While coming back to the station, the bus had a total of 3 souls for the journey of 20 kms, incidentally we were the only 3 on board. Ever criticising and cribbing Kakkar also was contended with the trip which is a big acheivement in itself. Its easy to please a Paris Hilton than a Dinesh Kakkar as I have realised in the last few months.

The pics are here:

http://picasaweb.google.com/ainindra/FecampAndEtretat

Illimtie movies....Illimite snores.....

As compared to the fourth movie in the Harry Potter sequence, the fifth one was a major disappointment and all expectations came crashing through the roof with Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix not being able to keep up to the standards of the other Potter movies. With a lacklustre screenplay and a horrible script and roles, the movie seems to be moving around in circles leaving the audience confused and dazed and made people like me doze off for a few minutes, which according to my moive watching mate was quite a depressing performance considering that in a movie called Hoax, I had fallen asleep when the commercials were being aired and woke up when the credits were being shown. It was accomapnied by a few snores of the utmost decible level according to him, though like every god fearing, soul searching human who snores, I vehemently denied that I had snored. The venue of such a fantastic snoring resort is the UGC Cine centre near my office which has 16 halls which incidentally shows the latest Hollywood movies. At 18 euros per month for an unlimited number of times UGC cine centre of La Defense has become like a second home for me and Anirban. There have been days when we have fitted in 3 movies back to back. The movie mania bug has bitten us so much that the security at the entrance of the multiplex seldom check our bags which they follow very religiously for the other viewers. Considering that we were spending so much of time in the movie hall, we became the prime victims of a office humor. The joke was that we two can save a lot of money, if we just buy a tent and set it up inside the UGC and stay there, considering that we spent half our free time in the multiplex. If you want a gross scale discount and watch movies without even shelling out a single cent from your pocket, you just have to catch hold of some unsuspecting souls, some fresh souls who would have arrived from India for the project and make him a patron of the 18 euro offer. You just have to introduce one new person to the concept of the 18 euros per month offer and you would get one month free of any liability and watch unlimited movies for free. Just that the competition to get new members into the foray of the 18 euros per mois offer. Going by this I am really tempted to make the much required comparison with wathcing a movie at Bangalore. The last city that I stayed made me shell out the maximum of amounts for accomodation, fooding, auto fare, kaam wali bai and finally going out for a movie. At Rs. 220 for a new movie at inox and Rs. 180 at PVR, Bangalore was a real killer. 18 euros per month for an unlimited set of movies is really cheap when compared to even Banglaore standards where tickets were a rarity on weekends and you had to push and shove and try by standing in lines, check online or the ticketing machine at the movie halls and pray that some seats were empty so that you had an option to buy the tickets. As compared to the PVRs and INOXs,at UGC there have been times where I have realised that there were 7 people watching a show of a movie. Though the only real sad part of it is that there are no Bollywood movies to cherish and enjoy. Going by the last set of jokes in the column of office humor people around have speculated that for me and Anirban, they would soon start showing Hindi movies. So lets see how far these predictions of the lesser mortals become correct coz I did once manage to see a poster of Govinda and Karishma Kapoor trying to say something in French to me. Incidentally with my knowledge of French being restricted to Sortie, Merci and Bonjour I understood nothing of it. So good or bad, humor or horror, cute or ugly we watch it all, as long as it is 18 euors per mois. And the latest office humor doing the rounds is that Anirban Mookherjee's smiling battisi dikhau photo will soon replace Marie Duval in the card below and he would soon be turned into the brand ambassador of UGC illimite. I guess I will watch more movies this weekend, to catch up with Mr. Mookherjee.

As London beckons....

In dino dil mera, mujhse hai keh raha.....tuuuu khwab saja....tuuu jee le zara.....hai tujhe bhi ijazat kar le tu bhi mohabat....sings loud the music player of my laptop as I am penning down this blog entry. Berang si hai bari zindagi....kuch rang to bharun.....main apni tanhai ke vaaste....ab kuch to hai karun....And as I listen to this song from Life in a Metro I feel life is the best thing that has ever happened to me. The journey of life which we take up everyday, moving ahead experiencing things sometimes does leave you sometimes with situations that cant be analysed on the rule book of rationality. And I have fallen in love with life over and over again because of these reasons and situations that have made me feel so alive, so needed, so fulfilled and so loved. But most of the time we give reasons and justification to lose all these chances of picking up life and placing it on a roller coaster ride by citing n number of reasons. Maybe even I have done that a lot due to various reasons at one point of time finally seeing life moving away from my hand and leaving me deeply in grief. But somewhere it did teach me that these chances of living are very short lived, and so sometimes impulse should guide you on your journey of life at least when these opportunites of living are thrown up infront of you. In these ocassions you just have to get on the roller coaster and enjoy the thrill of the fast speed at which life goes over there and experience the significance of living altogether. And maybe that is what I have learned from the trip to Pune one fine day in April, suddenly impulsive to the core. And the roller coaster has not stopped moving since that day, bringing in it wake new experiences and making me feel all the more alive every day.

Pune happened one friday evening. With no plans to go, I was still enticed into the brashness of it by an impulse for doing something for somebody, who really expected it. There is a great sense of acheivement one does feel when one meets somebody's expectations. Pune was just like that. The mind was hazy about the details but I do remember today, the flight booking part and calling up somebody and saying "Can you do me a favour and book a hotel for me at Pune?". And as they say, rest is history. Barely 36 hours spent in the city of the ferguson college made me see life in a whole new way, made me feel that brashness and impulse need not be negative thoughts and feelings, and that someimes the eyes do speak more than the words uttered. And the same thing happened in Pune, Pune was about exploring, expressing, sharing, nurturing, caring and a whole lot of knowing. The games that we played till the dead of the night, in the form of sharing the secrets of our life was one game that I would remember for a lifetime. And when the time came to leave Pune, that Monday morning as the dawn was breaking, and it was early morning, and the taxi was waiting and blowing its horn, I really did hate to wake somebody up and say goodbye. The moment would always be there in my memory well inscribed with its intricate details. There was so much to be said, so much to be expressed and yet there in the airport we could not even speak more than a few words. There was so much to say but so little time and watching those last moments perish and the seconds ticking away was really painful. If John Denver's song ever seemed most appropriate to me, it was at these moments. Thanks Pallavi for making me listen to this song and Deeghii for making the meaning of it known on that monday morning at the Pune airport.

And when Pune, intense with its 36 hours of experiencing life happened, it was a matter of praying hard for the universe to conspire for just another chance to experience the life that 36 hours had offered us in Pune. And Paulo Cohelo in his famous book The Alchemist has said that if you want something really hard, the whole universe conspires to make it happen. And lo it did happen, in the city of Mumbai in the form of a visa stamping. Deeghii came down for me from Pune in search of the string of life, for the thrill of life, for experiencing it all in those few days of Mumbai before we both flew off in search of new places to the Europe and middle east. Mumbai as a city is synonymous to life, its fast pace, its local trains running by the seconds hand of a watch, its night life, its hurridness all make it one place where life cannot be missed. Its there to be grabbed with open hands right infront of you and making you feel that it is yours fully. You tend to blend in the liveliness of Mumbai and experience it in its own way. Mumbai would remain etched on the contours of memory for all the reasons it did have to offer. The night spent watching the light waves on the stairs of the gateway. The whole world infront of us was just the sea with its innumerable launches all shrouded in shades of black and so peaceful and the towering gateway in its gleam of orange behind us. The heart to heart talk we had there, which finally did break the ice and gazing at the stars made me realise that even the city of busy billions could have places that offer its own serenity. And Deeghii you made that night special with your voice against the serenity and calmness of the waves splashing against the rocks. The rythm of the waves clashing and the heart to heart chat that we had are to be cherishd for a lifetime. If one were to ever experience the wild adrenaline rush, my suggestion would be to go to Chowpatty and get on in one of those human operated giant wheels (not really giant-but it does seem like a giant). With every risk of toppling, which incidentally I did make it do once, a complete wobble, I was very scared to hop into one of those. But still on Deeghii's insistence I did try to enjoy the ride and keep my eyes open while it went up and down. Alas most of the time my eyes were shut close. The day ended with another brash incident in the form of a visit to the Hard Rock cafe in Parel. The entire feeling of hard rock being played in that great factory kind of a cafe with famous rockstar posters hanging from here and there, and all illuminated in the faint low light of the cafe, it was one heck of an awesome feeling getting completely sloshed in gallons of beer and tequila and we both partied for hours together till late at night. The other days were spent roaming around the entirity of Mumbai and finally culminated in watching the movie "life in a metro" while experiencing every bit of "life in a metro". I would remember the way you shouted when the monkey snatched away the black berries packet from your hands, the way we had tons of green mango, the launch ride to Elephanta in that special launch, the way you poured the beer, the way we saw the stars and the planes flying out of Mumbai sitting on the Juhu beach and telling ourselves that a few days hence we both would fly out of the country. And fly we did in search of our destinies, but Deeghii you made me experience life in its fullest form every moment we spent together in Pune and Mumbai. And now London beckons, inspite of a whole lot of problem including the visa and the recipisse and a whole gang's misinformation about leaving France for London. And all this is just to experience life with you and make it feel special. You are the alchemist chosen by destiny to give the golden touch to my life. Make it happen. Honestly, truly, deeply London here I come.....

Taxi No. 9211 in Paris

Last Sunday and for the french, Dimanche I was out on an assignemnt. An assignment that cost me a healthy meal of chicken biriyani and raita by the famous chef of the fourth floor of Maison de L'Inde called Mr Mushtaq. I was supposed to go to the Charles de Gaulle aiport for the second time in more hospitable climatic conditions as compared to the first time and pick up a colleague cum friend who was coming from India for the same project. I say that climatic conditions were more hospitable because of the fact that the day I landed straight from a scorching 43 degrees Delhi heat, the temperature that welcomed me to Paris was a mere 8 degrees centigrade. Considering the fact that I had fully disregarded any ideas that had come into my mind of carrying a jacket along in the hand luggage instantly hit me in the form of a cold shock as I repented putting the lone jacket in the check in baggage. Nonetheless things were not that bad this time as the temperature was a comfortable something, but I surely was sad to miss the chance of not being made to cook combined with the joy of eating biriyani prepared by some non suspecting good soul. I also realised that no matter whatever way you try, and even if you have a 3 zone monthly pass it would still take u to some 8 euros to reach the airport from the place I stay which incidentally is the same even if you have not shelled out 70 euros for the Orange carte 3 zone monthly pass which by any estimates is very very unfair. The permutation and combination that I tried to do to save some money to reach the aiport with my much beloved monthly pass left me frustrated and made me reach late to the aiport even after spending the same 8 euros.

So finally the mission came to an end when I safely spotted the one and only Anirban Mookherjee at the CDG airport desperately searching for me as you would search for a public urinal when your bladder is seconds from bursting away. I was at the CDG on a Sunday afternoon trying to spot the one and only Anirban who was coming from India on one of those Air India flights that makes you realise why Kingfisher is a hit with its pretty beauties in red as compared to the dreadful aunties in sarees. Last hard on board an Air India flight, the pretty aunty who was serving drinks, when asked for a second helping by a young gentleman on board to fulfill his dollar dreams was flatly refused a second helping with a strict glance and a small lecture on the effect of alcohol on young livers. Must have been a cost cutting measure of the aviation minister I guess, which aims towards making people feel miserable by portraying horrifying thing so that they give up any notions of asking for a second something. So there he was at CDG, hard to miss because of the extra flabs that made him one of the boradest creatures roaming the terminals. After all the formalities and encashing of the travellers cheques which is like a regular feature that is entrusted on people's shoulders to make them feel all the more uncomfortable when they reach onsite finally we made our way to the taxi stand.

Well the story gets interesting henceforth as we both decided that if it is a taxi that we are going to hire it would be a Mercedes. Daimler Chrysler needs to be the preferred choice as we cruise down the roads and alleys of Paris. Well not that we were spoilt brat sons of big buck dads who own oil mines or Hilton hotels but still this was more to do with the fact that the first taxi fare from the aiport to the destination is always refundable from the coffers of the company provided you insist and not forget to take the bill. Later on it becomes a really miserable affair to book a taxi to take you from one destination to another on the streets of Paris when you consider that it takes the same amount of money for a to and fro bus trip to London from Paris as it takes to come from the aiport to the centre of Paris. So our Mercedes dreams were all the more justified under this kind of economic disequilibrium situations. Safely avoiding a Peugot we got into the Merc taxi parked behind and incidentally thanks to all the conspiracy that god plans out high high up above there much above the tropospheres and stratospheres the taxi driver knew english. The Queens language in the land of the Louvre and the Eiffel tower is as uncommon as finding Polar bears in the savanna grassland. So, intellignet is the human who does a course at the Alliance Francais centres spread across the cities of India before landing up at CDG so that the merci and the bonjour and the et and the le and the homme and the femme do not seem to be things that an alien is speaking to you. So the queen's language speaking cab driver was inquisitive about everything and more than the inquisitiveness he had an opinion about everything. So at the mention of the fact that we were from India, his inquisitiveness went on to which city we were from and form that to why we were there and which company and what postion and finally when this ended, the barge of opinions started. So he started off with an opinion of India followed it up with an opinion of the cities of India and finally reached a climax with the opinion about Shahrukh Khan and bollywood movies which he said his wife likes, his kids like and possibly his neighbours also like.

The famous Merc Taxi....

Unluckily even if he had an opinion about Indian actors and his knowledge seemed to be far and spread, he confessed sheepishly that he was not well aware of the roads of Paris and was completely unaware of the place that we wanted him to go to i.e. Gopi's house which was soon to be Gopi and Anirban's house. Now this place is too small to give anyboday any persepctive about the person called Gopi. His irritating nature has most of the Infosys staff and a lot of French citizens utterly delirious and prying for his blood. Anyway more updates about Gopi would follow in later posts as I get to know this person better (its a torture beleive me). So Gopi's abode which was somewhere in a god forsaken place was our destinantion. And I was at the helm of guiding the entire convoy i.e. the lonesome taxi to the destination of Becon les Buryeres where incidentally I had been only once. So being entrusted with such kind of jobs was quite a nightmare in its own way when you consider that in Paris a single wrong turn can land you up in circles as you would be sitting happily in the taxi seeing the meter go further north too many cents at a time.

The only way out was to consult the map. Unlike the streets of India where asking directions is as simple as peeing on the roadside. But in Paris just like the way you cannot pee in the open roads and lakes, in the same way the first thing you should set your hands on, not to get lost is the ubiquitous lanes, bylanes and the metro network of the Paris city is a map. Incidentally all the metro stations have such maps which are very much gratuit and hence you dont really have to think of shelling out some 10-15 odd euros for the map. So off we went on a wild goose search for Gopi's house with the help of a Paris tourism map which had safely disregarded most of the roads and only concentrated on the 14 metro lanes and 6 RER lines that have penetrated the city of Paris and now rest on layers and layers of tunnels. So with the map, I told the cab driver to go right, then left, then again right and so we went on traversing paths that the map showed till we reached what was the station of Becon from where Gopi's house was a stone's throw away. Alas the only problem was that the house was on the other side of the station and unlike India you were sure not to find any unmanned level crossing to cross over to the other side. So off we went on a detour of a further kilometer and finally reached Gopi's house who was err not waiting with open arms but more of a whole container full of sambhar and rice which we safely avoided by feigning overeating at Mc. Donalds at the airport. But more interesting is the fact that Mr Cabbie was hell bent on convincing me to the fact that I was quite a good choice when it came to Parisian taxi drivers and I should really think of becoming a taxi driver if I really had any kind of appreciation of the talent that god had bestowed on me. Inspite of repeated interruptions with me saying "I work over here for an IT company", Mr Cabbie made all efforts to convince me to take up the full time profession of a cab driver, which by any standards is worth considering as an average one way from the airport to the city usually costs some 50 euros which by any standard is more than the one way flight ticket to Amsterdam next weekend. It seems Paris is giving me the opportunity to explore a lot of these alternate professions if I am by chance kicked out of my job which I feel seems highly probable considering the last two weeks development where I have goofed up like anything. But in this case like in all other case where you goof up, the actual goofing up part could be attributed to someone else. So the latest dilemma is that of choosing between becoming a cook or a taxi driver of the taxi carrying a number plate of 9211. Still pondering.....