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.....

Slammed a Grand Slam...

The lips relax, the hands lose grip, the whole world around turns into deep shades of black, something inside tells you dont lose it up but someone else says give in to me, life is beautiful on this side, and then there in that dilemma someone shouts out in the most unearthly voice possible a single phrase which sounds like "Endoneel" and I realise that I had drifted off to a place much more wonderful than Switzerland called Sleepland sitting right there in the client office with my boss infront of me and my onsite PM on the other side eyeing me with disgust. The look on his face would say it all that if ever this project goes out of our hand, this sleeping beauty is the one who would be thrashed and smashed and bashed up in the most beautiful manner on the streets of chic Paris. The French obsession of removing the R when it comes to pronunciation of words with R has made me Endoneel from Indranil.

So here is a post from chic Paris with me desperately stopping myself from falling asleep after a tummy full meal of pizzas that had cheese spread on it in similar plethora as makkhan is spread on alu parathas in the dhabas of Haryana and Punjab highways. The pizzas with its thing crust and Margarita cheese toppings made the entire office crowd hog like anything and what better way to celebrate a bon appetizing lunch than to drift off into a siesta and bring the Spanish influence to France. Yet am alive and awake and am trying to procure toothpicks from somewhere so that I can hold the upper lids in place and not fall asleep. This unique technique comes from a purely British soul called Mr. Bean and considering the immense love for the Britishers that the French posess I might be a dead soul walking the streets of Paris if I tried any of my pure British ideas. Colonialization has had its own disadvantages as I see it now.

Chic Paris, as I refer to this place because of its obsession with anything fashionable gave me the chance of a lifetime last weekend to do something that I had so desperately wanted to do. Well later about that part but firstly about the fashion brigade called Paris. Everyday from dawn to when the metros and the RERs finally stop for the day late at night (lifelines of Paris, I take one everyday and I realise how important it is to my existence) , the streets of Paris seem to be transformed into big fashion ramps. The old, the young and even the kids on the street seem to be fashion concious and seem to be wearing something so chic, so fashionable that you can compare it with any of the glossy Vogues or Elles. So here I was in Paris where smooching on the streets is as common a sight as people peeing on Indian roads acheiving one of the rare dreams that I never thought would ever be possible. I got to watch a grand slam match (the French Open) at the Roland Garros. Even if it involved standing in the line for 3 long hours and being subjected to a real PITA sardar for some 6 hours yet at the end it was all worth it. The website of French Open apart from hosting an obscene amount of Maria Sharapova photos and thanking the sun for showing its face finally also talked in fineprints about entree de soir. Now going by my knowledge of French which is of as high quality as Jayalalitha's knowledge of Hebrew, I was able to understand that soir in French was evening. This was more to do with the complimentary copies of Direct Soir that are handed out every evening on the entrance of the La Defense station. So finally it was so deciphered from the site that evening tickets would be available for sale from 5 p.m for the last match of the day for seats that had got empty since morning. The optimistic sardar of MDI who had an opinion about almost every thing on earth wanted to see the best match that was being held in the Chartier court (a Nadal match) finally realised after about 40 minutes of waiting that it was not supposed to come our way. So finally Mr. Opinion had to change his opinion and shift to the second best. Thus we bought tickets for the Court 1 match without even knowing who was playing whom. A mere enquiry from a 40 something tennis enthusiast standing ahead of us in the line to get in the stadium about who was playing whom bought a sarcastic answer which sounded like McEnroe. Mr Opinion beleived in him and tennis enthusiast 40 something had a good laugh about this. Then there was another war of opinions between surd and tennis entusiast about Paes and Bhupati parting ways which slowly drifted off to discussions like if they were gay or not?

Hewitt was playing Nienmen (a Finnish guy) on court 1. The clay court's brown effect, the BNP Paribas green ads, Lacoste ads on the stands, the sheer power of Hewitt's serves, the stamina and of course the gibberish of Sardar made it all the more memorable. The sun shining down, the mexican wave and the match which lasted for 3 hours and the sheer stamina associated with it, enticed me. All in all it was a great day watching a great match which Hewitt one with his sheer stamina but with a Finnish guy giving him a tough time.

Cook na Kaho.....

And before Ekta Kapoor, if you ever watched television devoid of the Saas-Bahu sagas you might have come across a chef named Sanjeev Kapoor with a million dollar smile hosting a programme called Khana Khazana cooking delicacies and smiling away to glory. Seeing him host this show for years I had this weired notion that cooking is one of the most fun activities you can ever indulge your own self into. After spending 15 days away from the country in a different continent I can fully vouch that my notion about cooking was as much away from reality as New Delhi is from New York. So everyday on the 4th floor of the Indian hostel in Paris, you would see a cook with as disgusting a look on his face as a person subjected to hours of Sidhuism trying to make some delicate cuisine which finally looking nothing more than blobs of green and red and hating every bit of it.

The only solace is that everybody on the 4th floor except Mushtaq (a lawyer who looks 40 but claims to be 20) hates to cook. Considering the fact that it is easier to procure camel meat rather than proper Indian food at an affordable price in Paris there is no other option than to cook dinner and to pour out obscenities while doing the same. While the lunch always lasts of items like pizza, panini, pasta or burgers, items for which in Paris you spend a fortune when you convert the same into INR from euros. It just took me 3 days to convince my mind not to do the conversion and curse myself for spending a fortune on lunch. So its been poulet(chicken) cheddar or menu viaggio or a thon(tuna) and dinde(turkey) pizza on which I am surviving in Paris. The cooking misadventure started with the ingredient buying misadventure from La Chapelle which happens to be one place in Paris where you will see more saree shops than boutique shops, more hindi and tamil DVDs than French DVDs and more Indians and Sri Lankans than French in general. After the initial delght of finding stuffs that looked Indian the biggest decision that I had to take was what all things I could take to cook. Considering that my knowledge of any kind of recipes was no more than anything which you could count on one hand, it was too easy to make that choice. I bought the bare essentials that Air France had refused to carry with its horrendously low 20 kg restriction and then I set of cooking. And from then on I have cooked egg curry and forgot to put salt in it. I have cooked scrambeled egg and burnt the container in which I was cooking. I have cooked rice that required another round of microwaving after they were cooked to soak up all the water, and I have perfected the art of microwaving already cooked rotis. I guess the same plight is shared by every resident of the 4th floor of Maison De L'Inde well except Mushtaq that is who is ever ready to cook. So we have a Sarathi Da who tried to make a curry out of cucumbers and it turned out to be one of the most disgusting dishes I have ever had in a long time. Then there is Bhaskar Da who stays the life of a bachelor even while being married and curses his post doctoral research for this plight. He has perfected the art of making different kinds of chicken dishes and is one of the most resourceful guys on the floor in whose closet u will find every masala and even ginger garlic paste. Then there is the guy from IIT and the duo from MDI who beleive in nothing but ready to eat menus. I guess the topline of Kohinoor has increased drastically with these guys coming to Paris. And finally there is Prashant who stays with his wife in the hostel and calls me Indhra inspired by a Chiranjeevi movie (supposed to be a big hit) and cooks every night for his wife. Last Sunday he was seen wearing an apron covering him from tip to toe which his wife had bought for him so that his clothes dont get soiled cooking. Its such a nice feeling to see people love each other like this and get closer because of a common dislike for cooking. Evenings in the fourth floor are times when you will find everyone sharing the disgusting things that they have cooked and eating together as if competing for the title of the worst cook. But still its fun....Its the way of life and it is what life together in a hostel means. There are strong attachments that you build waiting for the pressure to build in the pressure cooker to cook your rice, which takes a great deal of time on the hot plates of the hostel. And I guess this one year which would be spent cooking makes me a better cook to share a kitchen and take up half the cooking responsibilities with the one whom I want to share the rest of my life with. Over the phone she has been teaching me a lot of new recipies and so have I been teaching her microwave cooking in which I have perfected myself over years. Aur isiliye mujhe ab se cook na kaho, chef keh lo yaar. Sanjeev Kapoor you better watch out, a competitor is on his way in the romantic city of Paris learning the tricks of the culinary trade.

When things turn French.....

And it has been eons since I logged into blogger and certainly a lot of things have changed since then. Firstly I was welcomed by an unknown blogger.com interface when I suddenly realised that the default language of my blogger account had suddenly changed into French by some voodoo magic all of a sudden. While till the last time I posted in this blog it welcomed me with a happy "New Post" link, it now decided to welcome me with a "Nouveau Message" link. And this was one of the last things that could have changed because suddenly everything beside me has happily decided to change itself into French. And apart from the popup which says "Now Blogger saves your drafts automatically!" and the things that I have scribbled over here everything near me is horribly French, even the Diet Coke bottle that I am using as a water bottle these days has every information written in French. The worst is the keyboard which I am using presently, its one of those French keyboards wherein the @ button is where the " button should be and vice versa and suddenly learning French seems to be the priority of the minute because I have somehow landed up in France.

Its been long since I applied for the French work permit thanks to a project that I was working on for a French client. And finally I got a stamped visa, the very first one on the passport that took me some 5 months to get thanks to the capriciousness of the passport issuing authorities. So here I am in the land of fashion, the Eiffel tower, the Louvre, the Roland Garros and Fashion TV trying to adjust to 17 hours of sunligt and a sun that does not want to set till 10:30 at night. So after a irritating wait for more than 5 months to procure the work permit that seemed to take the Fench authorities as much time to process as an Atal Behari speech I landed up here after seeing most of India ( considering my visa interview was in Mumbai and my work place is Bangalore and my home is at Kolkata and my flight was from Delhi) I landed here last Sunday in an Air France that seemed to be so huge as to fit in an entire playground of people with temperatures that were 10-11 degrees centigrade.

I got my reservations done at the Indian hostel in the Cite Universitaire area of Paris and straight out of the airport I had to wait for some 2 hours before I finally could find someone to open the door for me for the hostel. Finally an old lady, a doctor by profession who had some very strong views about corruption in India and who was very usure if opening up the gate for me could land her up in serious trouble decided to chit chat with me finally giving me an entry to the hostel. The best part was the chance of being driven in a Mercedes at 120 kmps/hr from the airport to the hostel and loving every bit of the journey which cost a whooping 53 euros (close to INR 3500). And since then life has been about discovering the Paris way of life. It is about reading maps and getting used to the zone system of the local trains called RER. It is about sharing kitchens with a bunch of Indians and cooking together (includeds 3 more bengalis). It is about discovering different Indian things in the shops of a place called Gare du Nord. It is about paying 2.5 euros for a cup of tea and fretting about it. It is about being mesmerized by the serendipitous feeling of discovering a park with a big lake in it just next to the hostel. It is about getting complimentary newspapers in French and trying to solve the Sudoku on the way to office trying to avoid being crushed in the RER crowd. And it is also about being mesmerized working in La Defense area of Paris among high rises and the Grande Arche. And finally before I push off here are some pics of the place that I am working at....more to come...

Poyla Boishakh after 6 years......

I do not deny the fact that I am a foodie of sorts and you can surely find a few extra pounds hanging here and there even after trying to slog for hours at the gym at my workplace. Nonetheless food attracts me with an attraction that can be compared to the fascination that Captain Haddock has for alcoholic things or Obelix has for wild roasted boars. And this weekend was all about falling in love with Bengali food over and over again and coming into touch with the Bengali roots of mine that has become a bit hazy since the last 5 years that I have stayed outside Bengal missing every possible festival and fanfare.

The ocassion was the Bengali New Year also known as Poila Boishakh which during my childhood I was content with calling Koyla Boishakh. The Bengali souls whom I have lunch with at my workplace, wanted me to treat them for an imminent onsite assignment that has stayed imminent for a very long time at 6, Ballygunge Place, a very upmarket Bengali food restaurant. So on the 14th of April which was supposed to be the last day of the year 1413 accroding to the Bengali calendar we landed up at the restaurant in the Indranagar area of Bangalore. I was literally starving thanks to an all night power cut on Friday which did not allow me to microwave my Maggi for dinner and finally I had also skipped my breakfast. Though we did not have any reservations we still could manage to get seats without much fanfare. Incidentally the only thing on the menu for the day was the buffet priced at a whooping Rs465+ taxes. Surely the rates were a bit too much if you were not that hungry on any given day. But since the three of us had been hungry enough on that day we decided to gulp down as much as we could to make the best out of the 465 that we were about to spend. It is a seperate story that if people were as like minded as us three, 6 Ballygunge place would have seen its P&L account for those two days in deep shades of red.

To make the lesser mortals jealous here is the list of things that we had in our unlimited buffet:

1. Aam Panna Shorbot

2. Bhat

3. Cholar Daal

4. Alur Dom

5. Alu Potol

6. Luchi

7. Begun Bhaja

8. Fish Fry

9. Chingri Macher Malai Curry

10. Bhapa Ilish

11. Doi Chicken

12. Mutton Kosha

13. Chatni

14. Papad

15. Lengcha

16. Shondesh

17. Roshogolla

18. Mishti Doi

19. Pan

and as in any Bengali menu card the 20th item was surely Abar Ashben (which translated into Bengali meant Please come again...), which after gulping down multiple quantities the abar ashben part was quite an improbable thing to do. And obviously after this kind of a gastronomic adventure my condition was similar to that of a Bengali film actor in a movie of yesteryears who in a film had eaten so much that he had to be carried home in a charpai. Realising that no charpai was coming my way, I was contended with the thought of going back to my home in an auto and drop off into a deep afternoon siesta in a typical Bengali ishtyle.

Sunday saw us continue with the insane idea that started off as a small conversation on the bulletin board of our organisation on Friday afternoon and make it a huge success. Friday afternoon events on the bulletin board saw some desperate soul suggesting the idea of a Poila Boishakh celebration in typical Bengali style. And then it started with people adding up names to the list of people interested in any kind of Poila Boishakh celebration. Soon the list was filled with names who were very much interested in the idea. Friday evening saw some 7-8 people assemble in the Cafe Coffee Day of the workplace and after a heartful round of adda of more than 2 hours, we finally came up with a plan to celebrate Poila Boishakh in a typical Bengali way. So it was Ranajoy's bari in BTM that became host to a celebration of the Bengali spirit.

A group of 20 people, had finally made it for the adda, which by any estimate was a good number. Barely knowing each other, the spirit of adda spread wide and fast and finally every one was affected by the adda virus. The topics ranged from outrageous teachers in classes, to Saurav Ganguly, going forward to Arsenal and Satyajit Ray's films and finally moving on to more mundane topics like work and coding. Discussed over sips of beer from the big Kingfisher cans bought for the occassion it was one heck of an adda session. Lunch consisted of Biriyani (finally the North Indian style) and chicken allong with mishti doi and sweets. Post lunch the mood turned creative with Kishore da songs being sung followed by the more contemporary Baranday Roddur of Bhoomi. A guy amongst us called Avra mesmerized us with his sarod playing skills and followed it up with a performance on the mouth organ. After 6 years of being out of touch with the spirit of Poila Boishakh, it was a beautiful feeling going back to the roots and bathing myself in the spirit of Bangalinaya. And before I sign off its a Shubho Noboborsho to one and all. Tomra shokole boro ebong choto ra amar shubho noboborsher priti o shubhechha niyo. Beche thakuk Bangaliyana spirit.

Weakness-e-pedia

It took 277 tries to successfully clone clone the much famous sheep Dolly as one of my teachers had said in one of the famous Bio classes way back in school. And it took almost the same kind of effort to procure tickets for the newly released Mira Nair film called Namesake based on the book by the same name written by Jhumpa Lahiri. The sheer lack of quality theatres in Bangalore had ensured that Namesake was released in only one movie hall making the possibilty of getting tickets as remote as listening to Rabri Devi speak fluent english. So there I was enquiring about the tickets at Rex for the next day's show when the guy on the other side obviously bored with the mundane job of scratching off seats on the seating sheets and counting money and tearing away tickets from the colourful ticket books gave me a nasty look and suggested that I better read the fine prints that adorned the many sides of the window and hence I found that I was 45 minutes late and advance booking was again scheduled to start at 10A.M the next day. As an afterthought the guy who had just given me the nasty look told me to come back the next morning for the tickets. So there I was the next morning all decked up for Mission Ticket when a notice at the movie hall caught my eyes and making me feel as stupid and angry as possible. Apparently the 5-15 show of Namesake did not have any advance bookings and booking was to start at sharp 3-30 for the show. I landed up at a friend's place and promised her that I would cook only to fall asleep and considering the kind of lazy bum that I am we both landed up eating junk at Mc. Donalds rather than taking the pains to cook. At the much auspicious hour of 3-30, the shubh lagan, the shubh muhrat when Namesake bookings were to start I found myself standing in a line that had kind of snaked its way to look as big as a python. In flat 8 minutes the entire balcony tickets were sold out and when the shutters were downed as I stood awaiting my turn, third in the line feeling as sheepish and angry as possible. Finally it had become a matter of pride to get the tickets after being turned down three times on one pretext or the other. The Rear Stalls did have seats to spare for our group of 6 and the movie was much enjoyable though the seats were uncomfortable, the popcorn was sad and the security were all angry and shouting at the same time.

And finally I became aware of the Frankinstein in me when one of the select few people who read my blog (a number that is less than the number of Amur Leopards alive in the world) suggested that I should list down my weaknesses in one of the posts here. At first glance it looked like a typically MBA entrance or two years down the line from that an MBA placement kind of a question but on closer examination it seemed like she wanted to know what makes me feel vulnerable. Considering the fact that I have bugged her a lot, I am sure about this fact that if she meets me (ever that is) she would bring with her an entire army of well built, Akhada going, Hanuman worshipping pehalwans to beat me up. So here is a list of all the things that make me the Frankinstein that I am and by the time u reach to the end of this list you would be sure that I am the one whom your mom told you to stay away from!

1. I am scared, morbidly scared, scared to the levels of a phobia of getting bored. I dislile people, jobs, situations that make me strive to follow a routine. After all if life were so predictable what would have been the fun of living it? I am the one who would love to stay awake all night and sing his heart out or gaze at the stars rather than fall asleep just because it is the night. So if there is something that draws on to becoming mundane, I am not the one who would be dragging along a relationship like a committed boyfriend. And that makes me one who is always a misfit for relationships, a guy whom girls can never trust. But on the flipside I am the one who would love to drink and graduate to the Nile from the Ganges. The voice is shouting something while reading this.....err it sounds like "You are too self centred an asshole."
2. Am a non confrontationist of obscene standards, I am the one who would prefer just to walk away from an autowalla who is charging extra and asking someone else rather than indulge in a fist fight or verbal abuse with the first autowalla. That makes people beleive that I am coward who does not have the guts to fight. Maybe they are right but it is more of a feeling of being in peace with my ownself that kind of draws me back from falling for a fist fight or verbal abuse. I am not the modern genration Gandhiji who would give his other face for a slap when he has been slapped at the first instance. I would be the first person to move out of the situation and land up in greener pastures if you rub me in the wrong ways. Err what did you say Mr. Voice??"Banda c****** hai, fight nahi kar sakta!"
3. I am one of the laziest creatures to have walked the face of the planet. Much lazier than the overweight ball of fur called Garfield and would have surely had a pole position if I were to compete for being lazy. But alas why compete, because that would make me active in certain ways. This fact can be well proved from the pile of clothes that lie around in my house at any point of time awaiting to be washed. Awaaz aa rahi hai Mr. Voice ka "Chullu bhar pani mein doob mar, kalmuhe lazy bone"
4. I put on my MBA cap everywhere and in every aspect of life. That makes me go in for all kinds of practical approaches to face life and find out solutions for every problem. That makes me shun my ego, get my clothes dirty in the mud of unethical practices and finally accept the fact that not all can be acheived given the limited resources and situations and hence look for short cuts. I am way too non emotional at times making me seem like an apparent monster. The voice says "Unemotional ass, you should be hanged and stripped and flogged for being like this!"

For the rest of the worser qualities and much more of the weakness part of it get in touch. And yah before I finish off someone forwarded this and I found it cute enough a demonstration of lateral thinking. Check it out:

DJ comes back!

Much more disastrous than India getting ousted from the Cricket World Cup 2007 without even getting to see a glimpse of the Super 8 was the fact that DJ returned to Bangalore from London after two whole months. For the lesser informed in life DJ is the psuedo name of one of my flatmates who was a batchmate at IMT during my MBA days. Alas during the whole of two years of the MBA drill I only remember talkin to him in numbers that could be happily counted in one finger. And mind it these talks were not heart to heart talks but more of talks that lasted as long as Robin Uthappa innings in the World Cup. DJ as he had been named for his innane ability of DJing and making us listen to songs that seemed to be played by Satan himself in college parties. By a sudden twist of fate, it so happened that we landed up jobs in the same city in companies that consolidated their balance sheet into one. And hence it was presumed that he was a brethren. After all we all were called infoscions collectively making him my brethren of sorts. Once I was transferred to Bangalore, the really frustrating job of finding an accomodation haunted me. At the same point of time DJ was also in a house hunting exercise and by another sudden turn of fate we became flatmates along with a third unsuspecting guy called Yadav. And thus started the eighth wonder of the world...me and DJ sharing flats. It was quite a news for our batchmates at IMT and last June my number saw quite a many inquisitve calls asking me if I had turned insane after I joined my job to share a flat with DJ. I guess he also got similar number of phone calls asking him about his insanity status considering that I was his flatmate. And thus the misadventures continued.

Living with DJ has its own unpredictabilities associated with it. So one has to be prepared to be woken up at the obscene hour of 3 o clock at night with his Creative speakers blaring out unfathomable music, or for that matter watching him sleep for 18 hours in a row once he gets high. Getting high is something that has kind of mutated his genes to such a drastic extent that if you convinced him that drinking saline water can numb his senses and get him high, he would be off to the nearest sea shore to drink down gallons of it. And thus anything that can make his sense numb for a while are on the top of his all time favourite list. Once high, it is best to feign that you are on the verge of dying so that he does not get motivated enough to start off long drawn conversations with you. If incidentally you show some interest at the onset you are in for some real doomsday. The deep rooted philosophy keeps flowing on and on with every second line being some kind of a narcissist comment about his own good self. At the 20th minute of such kind of a conversation you would feel bored, at the 40th minute you would feel depressed and by the 60th minute you would be happy contemplating committing suicide or better a homicide to get away from the torture.

So Mr. DJ (I always thought it meant Disastrous Jerk rather than Disk Jockey) after giving me immense bliss by deciding to shift bases to London came back to India this weekend. And immediately the decibel meter of the house could be seen overflowing and reaching disastrous levels. I drifted off to sleep sad over the fact that the 2 months of honeymoon period had drastically come to an end. I woke up on Sunday morning to find the great flatmate of mine had drifted off to sleep with the speakers blasting off to the music of a band called "Infected Mushrooms"and he had kept every possible light on in his room which included a tube, a bulb, a night lamp and even the bulb of the attached bathroom. No doubt we get electricity bills that run into thousands of rupees just because of this kind of insanities. This was nothing considering the fact that he has left the gyser and the microwave running in a number of ocassions often for hours thankfully not burning down the house. The next day it was the taps of his bathroom that he left open for the water to leak and god knows how many gallons of water he choked the drains with considering that parts of Bangalore have serious water problems. I have no idea how his ears dont seem to respond at the sound of flowing water. So life is moving fine with me having to hear to Infected Mushrooms and praying to god that the house does not blow up thanks to one of his insanities.