No, I am not an Akshay Khanna fighting the Pakistani regiments in the border town of Jaisalmer leaving behind a sweetheart in a field of yellow sarso and a visually impaired mom in some unknown village of Punjab, and hence my mom and sweetheart are never heard singing emotional songs of the Ghar kab Aaoge kind. The song is really touchy and it is hard to beleive that copycat Malik could have actually composed this song but hey miracles do happen once in a while, jaise kabhi kabhi Kaif bhi century bana leta hai. So even if I am not an Akshay Khanna whose mother in the form of Rakhi sheds tears that could fill up reservoirs and permanently solve the water crisis that India faces every summer, still once in a while I do get these jitters that drive me towards home. So after 5 months of being in Namma Bengaluru and fighting with a lot of autowallas, spending a night in a lockup, going on innumerable shopping excursions with lot many girls, washing clothes, cooking maggi in a microwave and haggling with the disastrous DJ I am off to Amar Kolkata. Back to the city of trams, humid weather, Maidan, Book Fair, Jhal Muri, Sandesh, Victoria Memorial, Park Street, my darling and home. And I am excited to indulge myself into such utter delicacies like Mach Bhaja, Alu Sheddo Bhat, Dal Bara, Posto Bata etc. that are so easy to prepare anywhere in the world but has a seperate taste associated with itself when Mom makes it for you. So even if it is a Deccan Airways that is flying me to Kolkata at the unearthly hour of 5:30 in the morning when I am usually in my REM sleep mode I do not mind. So here is wishing Namma Bengaluru and my readers the pleasure of not seeing my obnoxious posts for the next 11 days. So in a typical John Denver style "I am leaving on a jet plane, and I do know when I will be back again (everyone at office has raised quite a few eyebrows on hearing the number of days leave I am taking)".
Wednesday, February 28, 2007
Thursday, February 22, 2007
Livin La Vida Loca
Manish and Me
For a perenially hungry person like me, no other object has a strong lustful appeal on all my senses and emotions as food does. Actually not many objects have been entrusted on my capable hands since childhood because of the great trust my parents had on my handling skills. So the sheer pleasure and bliss of banging the family car into the ubiquitous cycle rickshaws on the streets of North Kolkata never came my way. I had to manage the same feat with the driving school car that I had finally been allowed to drive after quite a few disastrous performances with the cluth, brake, accelerator and gear combination. Well the huge hit on the back of the cycle rickshaw almost had the whole of the rickshaw puller community prying for my blood but still it was quite a blissful feat considering that I was at that point of time quite impressed with Ricky Martin's "Livin la vida loca" number. Much to my parents displeasure of spending a whooping amount for the driving lessons I never did manage to get my driving license made in the "City of Joy" as the RTO authorities did not want me to turn it to the "City of Disasters". Barring the fact that presently I do have a driving licence issued by the Gujarat government, nothing really has changed. I still am not entrusted with anything that resembles a four wheeler by any one, neither a three wheeler. And from the time I landed up in Bangalore, I have been at the mercy of autowalas who have been held prime accused for my ever bleeding pocket.
After all life has been the same as Ricky Martin's "Livin la vida loca" song in the last 10 months after Mr. Ratan Tata handed me a piece of paper that proclaimed the fact that I had finally been able to complete the degree called MBA, that was supposed to take me places without even indulging in anything as sacred as studying. And plus I had a job at hand at one of the largest software services company of India. Though I had not the slightest clue what I would be doing in a technology company considering the fact that my knowledge of technology was at the same level as Mayawati's knowledge of nuclear physics, but still who cared as long as I was being paid well for it. The first two months at Hyderabad, after joining the job was the so called honeymoon period with nothing more to worry than the ridiculous food that the food courts of the office served at night time and a test in which 95% of the batch flunked. The so called luxury of staying in a company managed guest house that had a TV, iron, electronic safe, tea maker, AC rooms and 24 hours running hot water soon came to an end with the imminent transfer after the two months of training.
That is when Bangalore happened. For a person who never did manage to have a bank balance that read anything more than 500 rupees at any given point of time had to manage with giving 40 thousand rupees as the 10 month advance. For a person who shrugged at the slightest mention of washing clothes in the MBA days and was always on the lookout for handing out his undies to the famous dhobi of IMT for cleaning (against the dhobi's washing policies) today washes bucket full of clothes on weekends. For a person who never had talked for more than a few miliseconds to a very interesting character called DJ (known for his obnoxious eating, sleeping, drinking and all kinds of ing behaviour) in the MBA days made him his flatmate and also got to know a lot of interesting things about this soul in this process. For a person who wanted to be a financial analyst during his MBA days has not even seen a balance sheet or P/L A/c in the last 10 months, leave apart any dreams of analysing it. And this happened to be the prime point of discussion when there was a mini IMT reunion at M.G Road last weekend thanks to my beloved next door neighbour at hostel called Bindra coming down from Chennai. The love hate relationship that we had developed in the 2 years of our stay at IMT had seen me writing out poems on his room's door that ridiculed his age (he was 27 and I was 21), fist fighting, locking up rooms and throwing away the keys, stealing pillows, pouring cold water on each other's sleeping face and a lot of shouting. Incidentally both of us had landed up in IT companies, me in Infosys and he in Satyam. And sitting at 20 feet high on Church Street we bunch of Bangalored souls and Chennaied souls pored our heart out about issues that ranged from the batch topper's marriage with the batch's 3rd topper called very rightly as the intellectual couple, the rishta of a guy from the Placement Committee with a girl from the Alumni Committee considering that both these committees looked like the USA and USSR of the 1980s always on the verge of a full fledged world war. The topics also constituted about people who had been almost on the verge of joining their fourth job in the 10 months since the convocation day, about failed relationships about all the fun that had literally come into non-existence after last April, about how we had stopped protesting and seemed to care the least if someone called us techies instead of managers. The pack having representation from all major IT companies like Wipro, Satyam, i2 and Infosys finally were able to solve a puzzle of why the IT tag on the forehead of an MBA was more difficult to wipe out than the "Mera Baap Chor hai" thappa on the forearms of Vijay in Deewar. The fact that spending a few years in the confines of cubicles for 9-10 hours without any kind of physical exertion and no work on the weekends makes MBA's in the IT sector less and less willing to hit the markets and haggle with the DSAs and distributor. Braving the rain and heat loses priority and the AC office appeals more to the senses and finally numbs it and one sticks on to IT with the same kind of passion as a leech on ones supple skin.
We were literally kicked out of 20 feet high after the waiters realised that we had no such plans of leaving after making us pay a whooping 4000 rupees for the damages on food and drinks. And "Livin La Vida Loca" it was again while coming back from M.G Road when the auto driver was doing a mini Schumacher on the streets of Bangalore which incidentally are narrower than the Monte Carlo race track. And before I sign off with this post I am still reminded of an incident where the Livin la vida loca concept was stretched a bit too far in this very land of Bangalore for a harmless soul like me that led to one night in a police station.....Guess I would post it some other day....till then keep guessing.
P.S. After what seemed like an eternity, I finally have a credit card...actually two considering that ICICI sent me an add on card. Pretty efficient supply chain I must say considering that the dispatch information of the same was sent almost a month ago.
Friday, February 16, 2007
Of a visit to God's own Country
I have been absconding from the blogging scene for more than a week now and I feel really guilty of neglecting this alter ego of mine. Well to start off with it wasnt supposed to be like this but considering the crazy things that have been going on at my workplace which ensured that I work till 8:30 p.m on a friday evening, my blog may just forgive me for the cold shoulder that I have given to it for almost a week. Somewhere on thursday last week the realization crept in that monday being a bandh for the sake of the Cauvery water issue, we had what could be termed as a really long weekend at our disposal. It was anybody's guess that staying three days at home without office would have bored me more than any kind of boredoom that our class 10 history teacher subjected us to during our school days. On a lighter note the history teacher was called "ONIDA" considering that he looked just like the Onida devil without the two tiny devil horns jutting out of his head. And all of a sudden a colleague of mine who ironically once happened to be a teacher of mine during the MBA entrance preperations suggested god's own country as the ultimate destintion to make the weekend seem more meaningful. So Mr.Chintan Parikh often referred to as Chintu and a true spirited Gujarati at heart whose bargaining skills ensured that shopkeepers downed their shutters planned the logistics of the entire tour safely leaving out the option of seeing the Venice of East's backwaters and only leaving mountains and jungles in our itinerary. The entire trip to Kerela was marked with clashing motives including a clash about this itinerary that lacked the backwaters as a destination, which could be well explained in terms of astrology when you consider that two fire signs were out on a trip with two water signs. It is anybody's guess that how well we would have gelled throughout our trip.
The disasters started off very early in the trip with us paying almost 200 rupees extra to get a Volvo to Kochi. Incidentally the bus that was supposed to carry us to Kochi had its air condition burned down and we had to spend 140 rupees extra on auto to go and collect the new tickets. Later on did we realise that we had got 2 tickets in the bus that left at 8:30 p.m and 2 tickets in the bus that left at 9 p.m on friday evening. Finally after a lot of requesting and begging we were able to get all our tickets on the same bus. Shama Travels had every mood to spoil our holiday spirit when it started off by playing a Malayali movie on the Volvo with almost 70% of the population of the bus crying foul play as the majority of them did not understand the language. Another round of begging and pleading got the helper of the bus playing "Phir Hera Pheri" the CD of which seemed to be as scratched as the "Phati Eriyan" they show on any Crack cream commercial. After every five seconds of playing it froze for a happy ten seconds. The night was pretty uneventful though the stars on the sky on one side of the bus and a glowing moon on the other side seemed really romantic and I drifted off to sleep only to be woken up by the weight of the huge frame of Chintu Parikh's body that had overflowed into my seat not being able to fit in the seat that had been allocated to him. I pushed him back into his seat only to be woken up early in the morning with nothing worser than Nasal Reshmiya shreiking "Tera tera tera suroor". Normally at any other point of time in the day Nasal Reshmiya is still hearable but being woken up to the tunes of him is very very nauseating. So finally after the repeating and re-repeating of the Himesh CD we reached Kochi only to find ourselves in even more trouble with a cab search. After spending close to one and half hours in the search of a cab we were finally able to convince Jolly Bhai(the driver) and his ambassador to carry us to our destination and back to Kochi at Rs 6.25 per kilometer. Compared to Bangalore standards it was way too costly. So we headed off to Munnar on the roads of Kerela which reminded me and Sumit (both Kolkatans) of Bengal. Me and Sumit could not stop comparing the similarity between Bengal and Kerela that included the lungi, the lal jhanda rule, the papaya trees, the mango trees etc. The road to Munnar was dotted with mini waterfalls that had decided to dry up and pictursque landscape. Jolly Bhai's CD collection just had one hindi CD, the one of Kal Ho Na Ho which he had kept on repeat mode. The monotone made us buy another CD on the way which featured the pop hits of 2005. Slowly the weather got cold as we reached Munnar and finally the newly bought sweatshirt of Adidas did feel comfortable. At Munnar Chintu Baba again resorted to barganing which slowly turned into haggling and a lot of hotel hopping which made me feel as irritated as possible. Finally we checked in into a beautiful hotel which literally had rooms that never knew what the concept of cross ventilation was. The room apparently had no window that looked out into the outside world. The rooms seemed to be an acoustic disaster as they all seemed to echo. So we could very well hear the next door couple pouring out sweet nothings. But we did not have time to waste so we rushed out after pouring a few drops of water on our bodies considering the fact that the water was way too cold and we rushed off to the Malankara reservoir. It was simply breathtaking with the moutains on both sides of the reservoir. After taking in the breath taking sceneries at the reservoir and seeing couples on honeymoon escapades enjoying the delight of boating in the huge reservoir we rushed on to a place called Echo Point. The problem with Echo Point was that there was no echo but a lot of people selling a lot of things. The adventurous Chintu Baba tried out a thing called passion fruit. To give a honest feedback it did not really induce any kind of passion but it was worth a try. The next stop was a small dam that had not been used for years together. The place sported a small joint where we hogged on omlettes like crazy and finally moved towards the place called Top Station situated 1170 metres above sea level. The road to Top Station was a narrow stretch snaking up the mountains and eneveloped in a thick layer of fog that made Jolly Bhai switch on the fog lights. Standing at Top Station seeing Tamil Nadu to our left and Kerela to our right enveloped in a thick coating of fog and the light fading away into darkness was simply fabulous. Incidentally the mobile networks of Tamil Nadu looked to be in full force on Top Station and I was finally able to make some phone calls from the 1170 metres above sea level area as Munnar had a serious shortage of mobile networks. By the time we descended back to Munnar the weather had turned really chilly inducing us to buy a Mansion House brandy on our way back to the hotel. Dinner consisted of a lot of chicken dishes well cooked with rich spices along with rice at a hotel opened by a Dubai returned guy who kept the door to the loo of the hotel under lock and keys. The lavish way in which they had used ginger and cardamom to prepare the dishes finally proved the point as to why Vasco Da Gama had been so fond of this part of the country. After the customary brandy shots we dropped dead on our beds only to be woken up later by the grunt like snores of a guy who did not want his name to be mentioned in this public space.
The next day we got up early in the morning and again heard next door couple deliberating on what all things needed to be packed from the echo effect. The hotel had finally decided to circulate some hot water that made us have a comfortable bath and finally after settling the bills we moved on towards Thekkady. The scenic beauty of the road that went from Munnar to Thekkady was breathtaking. The tea plantations spread across both sides of the road. Entire mountains had been made into tea estates and the road snaked its way through these mountains. We had a flat tyre on the way and while we stopped to get that repaired few kids from the nearby tea gardens came and we started chatting. One was known as Tenzing Beckham and incidentally he had no love for the legendary David Beckham but was much inspired by the batting skills of Mahendra Dhoni as India was bashing up Sri Lanka on the same day. The road to Thekkady was lined with cardamom plantations. Finally close to noon we reached Thekkady which houses the huge Periyar reserve that was known for its tiger population as we had heard. The boat safari on the Periyar lake was supposed to be one of the most adventurous forest safari but when we asked the same to the guard who was checking the tickets the look on his face said it all. The honest feedback provided by him consisted of mono syllables like 40 tigers, huge forest, less chance of sighting etc. On the boat we were accompanied by a group from TCS Trivandrum and it became less of a sighting adventure and more of a picnic with jokes running here and there and song sessions. What we finally did manage to see were a few storks and other water birds, a whole lot of deers, wild boars and a pack of elephants out of sheer luck, crossing the lake. The adventure continued but not having eaten anything since morning barring a few idlis our stomach was desperate for some fuel. We stopped at a town hotel which took a whole lot of time to prepare every dish but the dishes were with such huge portions that nobody ever complained about the delay in bringing the food. We started from there and landed up in Kottayam late at night barely managing to find a lodge and paying an advance when Jolly Bhai had pangs about not staying over there as they did not have a proper parking for his ambassador. And hence we had to negotiate and get back the advance and again make way towards Kumarakom some 30kms away from Kottayam and right in the middle of backwater land. The humidity factor had crept in and the easing and soothing cold weather of Munnar had been replaced by sweat and heat. Jolly Bhai led us to a resort called Tharavadu Heritage Home set up 120 years ago. The sheer elegance of the place was spellbinding. The rooms were laid out as mini cottages having cozy balconies and was a visual delight. Again Chintu Baba came into action with his barganing skills and finally convinced the person incharge to provide us rooms at off-season rates when it was the season rates which should have been applied. A lot of barganing made it possible for us to have an abode in a very luxurious cottage. Sleepy eyed we crashed into the bed and slept like logs till morning came. Me and Sumit had a glorious idea of going photo clicking early in the morning of the backwaters. It was very spell binding to see how the people had made the backwaters a perennial part of their lives with people selling vegetables out of boats or carrying constuction equipments on these long boats. We struck a good deal and hired a boat to take us to Allepy also called as the Venice of East for its breathtaking backwaters. After a quick bath followed by an equally speedy breakfast we set sail for Allepy on a boat that had seats for at least 10 people. We passed through the hustle bustle of Kumarakom to land up in the backwater highways that went all the way to Cochin. On both sides were paddy fields, lush green in appearance and we cruised through the calm waters of the place and finally landed up at a eating joint on the backwaters that served the local liquor called Todi made from coconut water and many varities of fishes. We packed the stuff and had a gala time feasting in the boat eating and drinking till we reached Allepy. On the way the breathtaking house boats that had all the amenities of any five star hotel caught our fancy. Shelling out 5000 bucks for a day on a houseboat was way too much for us poor souls and hence this bit of adventure was left for later years to come.
At Allepy we visited the beach, which was one of the cleanest beach I had ever seen in my life. The golden yellow sand glistened under the rays of the sun. Though the beach was a beauty but the waves showed how violent the sea was on those shores. After walking along the beack and getting our jeans wet by the huge waves we rushed back to the boat that had given us clear instructions to come back in an hour. Back on our way to Kumarakom, three of us drifted off to sleep while one sat on the top of the boat as it cruised along the Vembanad Lake lurching and splashing water, sometimes violently till we reached Kumarakom again to find a very furious Jolly Bhai cursing us for coming in late that had ensured that he had missed a golden opportunity of taking some people on a 5 day trip of Kerela on his ambassador. We were driven back to Cochin by a cribbing Jolly Bhai who left us near a restaurant on Cochin's M.G Road. The starving four souls had all the food that the hotel could have offered and set out to the bus stand to catch the Volvo that was supposed to bring us back to the hell of traffic jams, dacoit like autowalas called Bangalore. A very non eventful bus ride to Bangalore followed and we realised that God's own Country was history when the autowala asked for 30 rupees for a distance of less than 2 kms. The pocket had grown lighter by 4500 rupees, it grew 30 rupees lighter withing 2 kms.
The disasters started off very early in the trip with us paying almost 200 rupees extra to get a Volvo to Kochi. Incidentally the bus that was supposed to carry us to Kochi had its air condition burned down and we had to spend 140 rupees extra on auto to go and collect the new tickets. Later on did we realise that we had got 2 tickets in the bus that left at 8:30 p.m and 2 tickets in the bus that left at 9 p.m on friday evening. Finally after a lot of requesting and begging we were able to get all our tickets on the same bus. Shama Travels had every mood to spoil our holiday spirit when it started off by playing a Malayali movie on the Volvo with almost 70% of the population of the bus crying foul play as the majority of them did not understand the language. Another round of begging and pleading got the helper of the bus playing "Phir Hera Pheri" the CD of which seemed to be as scratched as the "Phati Eriyan" they show on any Crack cream commercial. After every five seconds of playing it froze for a happy ten seconds. The night was pretty uneventful though the stars on the sky on one side of the bus and a glowing moon on the other side seemed really romantic and I drifted off to sleep only to be woken up by the weight of the huge frame of Chintu Parikh's body that had overflowed into my seat not being able to fit in the seat that had been allocated to him. I pushed him back into his seat only to be woken up early in the morning with nothing worser than Nasal Reshmiya shreiking "Tera tera tera suroor". Normally at any other point of time in the day Nasal Reshmiya is still hearable but being woken up to the tunes of him is very very nauseating. So finally after the repeating and re-repeating of the Himesh CD we reached Kochi only to find ourselves in even more trouble with a cab search. After spending close to one and half hours in the search of a cab we were finally able to convince Jolly Bhai(the driver) and his ambassador to carry us to our destination and back to Kochi at Rs 6.25 per kilometer. Compared to Bangalore standards it was way too costly. So we headed off to Munnar on the roads of Kerela which reminded me and Sumit (both Kolkatans) of Bengal. Me and Sumit could not stop comparing the similarity between Bengal and Kerela that included the lungi, the lal jhanda rule, the papaya trees, the mango trees etc. The road to Munnar was dotted with mini waterfalls that had decided to dry up and pictursque landscape. Jolly Bhai's CD collection just had one hindi CD, the one of Kal Ho Na Ho which he had kept on repeat mode. The monotone made us buy another CD on the way which featured the pop hits of 2005. Slowly the weather got cold as we reached Munnar and finally the newly bought sweatshirt of Adidas did feel comfortable. At Munnar Chintu Baba again resorted to barganing which slowly turned into haggling and a lot of hotel hopping which made me feel as irritated as possible. Finally we checked in into a beautiful hotel which literally had rooms that never knew what the concept of cross ventilation was. The room apparently had no window that looked out into the outside world. The rooms seemed to be an acoustic disaster as they all seemed to echo. So we could very well hear the next door couple pouring out sweet nothings. But we did not have time to waste so we rushed out after pouring a few drops of water on our bodies considering the fact that the water was way too cold and we rushed off to the Malankara reservoir. It was simply breathtaking with the moutains on both sides of the reservoir. After taking in the breath taking sceneries at the reservoir and seeing couples on honeymoon escapades enjoying the delight of boating in the huge reservoir we rushed on to a place called Echo Point. The problem with Echo Point was that there was no echo but a lot of people selling a lot of things. The adventurous Chintu Baba tried out a thing called passion fruit. To give a honest feedback it did not really induce any kind of passion but it was worth a try. The next stop was a small dam that had not been used for years together. The place sported a small joint where we hogged on omlettes like crazy and finally moved towards the place called Top Station situated 1170 metres above sea level. The road to Top Station was a narrow stretch snaking up the mountains and eneveloped in a thick layer of fog that made Jolly Bhai switch on the fog lights. Standing at Top Station seeing Tamil Nadu to our left and Kerela to our right enveloped in a thick coating of fog and the light fading away into darkness was simply fabulous. Incidentally the mobile networks of Tamil Nadu looked to be in full force on Top Station and I was finally able to make some phone calls from the 1170 metres above sea level area as Munnar had a serious shortage of mobile networks. By the time we descended back to Munnar the weather had turned really chilly inducing us to buy a Mansion House brandy on our way back to the hotel. Dinner consisted of a lot of chicken dishes well cooked with rich spices along with rice at a hotel opened by a Dubai returned guy who kept the door to the loo of the hotel under lock and keys. The lavish way in which they had used ginger and cardamom to prepare the dishes finally proved the point as to why Vasco Da Gama had been so fond of this part of the country. After the customary brandy shots we dropped dead on our beds only to be woken up later by the grunt like snores of a guy who did not want his name to be mentioned in this public space.
The next day we got up early in the morning and again heard next door couple deliberating on what all things needed to be packed from the echo effect. The hotel had finally decided to circulate some hot water that made us have a comfortable bath and finally after settling the bills we moved on towards Thekkady. The scenic beauty of the road that went from Munnar to Thekkady was breathtaking. The tea plantations spread across both sides of the road. Entire mountains had been made into tea estates and the road snaked its way through these mountains. We had a flat tyre on the way and while we stopped to get that repaired few kids from the nearby tea gardens came and we started chatting. One was known as Tenzing Beckham and incidentally he had no love for the legendary David Beckham but was much inspired by the batting skills of Mahendra Dhoni as India was bashing up Sri Lanka on the same day. The road to Thekkady was lined with cardamom plantations. Finally close to noon we reached Thekkady which houses the huge Periyar reserve that was known for its tiger population as we had heard. The boat safari on the Periyar lake was supposed to be one of the most adventurous forest safari but when we asked the same to the guard who was checking the tickets the look on his face said it all. The honest feedback provided by him consisted of mono syllables like 40 tigers, huge forest, less chance of sighting etc. On the boat we were accompanied by a group from TCS Trivandrum and it became less of a sighting adventure and more of a picnic with jokes running here and there and song sessions. What we finally did manage to see were a few storks and other water birds, a whole lot of deers, wild boars and a pack of elephants out of sheer luck, crossing the lake. The adventure continued but not having eaten anything since morning barring a few idlis our stomach was desperate for some fuel. We stopped at a town hotel which took a whole lot of time to prepare every dish but the dishes were with such huge portions that nobody ever complained about the delay in bringing the food. We started from there and landed up in Kottayam late at night barely managing to find a lodge and paying an advance when Jolly Bhai had pangs about not staying over there as they did not have a proper parking for his ambassador. And hence we had to negotiate and get back the advance and again make way towards Kumarakom some 30kms away from Kottayam and right in the middle of backwater land. The humidity factor had crept in and the easing and soothing cold weather of Munnar had been replaced by sweat and heat. Jolly Bhai led us to a resort called Tharavadu Heritage Home set up 120 years ago. The sheer elegance of the place was spellbinding. The rooms were laid out as mini cottages having cozy balconies and was a visual delight. Again Chintu Baba came into action with his barganing skills and finally convinced the person incharge to provide us rooms at off-season rates when it was the season rates which should have been applied. A lot of barganing made it possible for us to have an abode in a very luxurious cottage. Sleepy eyed we crashed into the bed and slept like logs till morning came. Me and Sumit had a glorious idea of going photo clicking early in the morning of the backwaters. It was very spell binding to see how the people had made the backwaters a perennial part of their lives with people selling vegetables out of boats or carrying constuction equipments on these long boats. We struck a good deal and hired a boat to take us to Allepy also called as the Venice of East for its breathtaking backwaters. After a quick bath followed by an equally speedy breakfast we set sail for Allepy on a boat that had seats for at least 10 people. We passed through the hustle bustle of Kumarakom to land up in the backwater highways that went all the way to Cochin. On both sides were paddy fields, lush green in appearance and we cruised through the calm waters of the place and finally landed up at a eating joint on the backwaters that served the local liquor called Todi made from coconut water and many varities of fishes. We packed the stuff and had a gala time feasting in the boat eating and drinking till we reached Allepy. On the way the breathtaking house boats that had all the amenities of any five star hotel caught our fancy. Shelling out 5000 bucks for a day on a houseboat was way too much for us poor souls and hence this bit of adventure was left for later years to come.
At Allepy we visited the beach, which was one of the cleanest beach I had ever seen in my life. The golden yellow sand glistened under the rays of the sun. Though the beach was a beauty but the waves showed how violent the sea was on those shores. After walking along the beack and getting our jeans wet by the huge waves we rushed back to the boat that had given us clear instructions to come back in an hour. Back on our way to Kumarakom, three of us drifted off to sleep while one sat on the top of the boat as it cruised along the Vembanad Lake lurching and splashing water, sometimes violently till we reached Kumarakom again to find a very furious Jolly Bhai cursing us for coming in late that had ensured that he had missed a golden opportunity of taking some people on a 5 day trip of Kerela on his ambassador. We were driven back to Cochin by a cribbing Jolly Bhai who left us near a restaurant on Cochin's M.G Road. The starving four souls had all the food that the hotel could have offered and set out to the bus stand to catch the Volvo that was supposed to bring us back to the hell of traffic jams, dacoit like autowalas called Bangalore. A very non eventful bus ride to Bangalore followed and we realised that God's own Country was history when the autowala asked for 30 rupees for a distance of less than 2 kms. The pocket had grown lighter by 4500 rupees, it grew 30 rupees lighter withing 2 kms.
Monday, February 5, 2007
Cauvery Tribunal Judgement and the water crisis...
For a guy like me whose life entirely revolves around really important things of everyday existence like the following:
1.Hunting for the mobile early in the morning to switch of the monotonous hum hum of the alarm;
2.Making a frantic attempt to grab a window seat in the most non-chivalrous manner on the right hand side of the company bus so that the early morning sun rays does not wake me up from the morning slumber;
3.Fretting over the regular dosage of curry patta during the breakfast;
4.Ordering some dish that resembles biriyani in every food court of my workplace at lunch;
5.Making every possible excuse to bunk the gym in the evening etc, a small petty issue like the judgement of the Cauvery tribunal did not hold much of a charm for a man on work on a Monday morning. Now, I know u guys who do manage to read the gibberish that I write over here must be thinking that what kind of a pathetic human being this ass is who does not seem to be fazed with such a major decision regarding a dispute that has run for more than 300 years and the court cases of which have stretched for more than 16 long years culminating in a final order that runs into 1000 pages in 5 volumes which when hard bound and hurled at anybody's head could have well killed him/her, inspite of being a resident of Karnataka at present. But once you consider that the guy in question braved a horrible hangover to land up in office only to find his official mailbox being migrated to some other server, his virus definition being unable to protect his PC from new virus threats, transactions he required which he did not have access to at the most auspicious moment and a whole bunch of errors that need resolution waiting for his dizzy brain to act on; you would realise how Cauvery would be the last thing that you would lay your thoughts on. Its ironic how the god of IT and networking collude and conspire against you and make you land up in a deep shit situation on the very first day of the week.
So there I was braving issues that threatened to make my existence on the project network a thing of past till I heard that the mother of all verdicts about the two part of hydrogen and one part of oxygen was out and that Karnataka was in a very bad mood about losing out to Tamil Nadu. The tribunal had ordered Karnataka to share its scoop of ice cream with Tamil Nadu and naturally like a young kid whose passion lies in licking up every bit of the icecream's existence being told to share was too much of a sacrifice that he could take in his stride. And of course the grapevine of my workplace populary called as the BB (Bulletin Board) began flooding with news trickling in about how there law and order problems were being detected in the city and some frantic mails from the HR department pleading not to spread rumors. And I got calls from friends whom I hadnt talked for months telling me to quit office as soon as possible because they had heard from some friend that riots had broken up in certain parts of the city. So the entire office made a frantic rush to the gates at 3 in the evening to get back home safe and sound. Sadly only 2 buses leave at that auspicious hour for people having to quit work for varied reasons like a sick child needing attention, a parent teacher meeting or an appointment with the dentist. Unluckily the transport department did not have the resources to accomodate a thousand people in 2 buses and the service got scrapped for the day. People who had made desperate attempts to quit office on a monday at 3 in the evening to enjoy a leisurely evening had their plans going awry. And there I was still getting calls from people I did not even remember as to how threatened my life was as I was in Electronics City which happened to be just 20kms away from the Tamil Nadu border. My life was seriously threatened, not by the law and order though but by the amount of work that had accumulated since morning thanks to a not so well done mailbox migration. A rough estimate revealed that I could only think of leaving office as early as 8 in the evening which so as to say is a very unfortunate event for a monday at work.
The situation got really out of control when the HR shot a mail saying that all buses were supposed to leave only in 2 slots at 5p.m and 7p.m and the regular schedule of every hour buses in the evening stood cancelled. The final set of approvals came from the PM when he came and convinced us to leave by 5 so that we could reach safe and sound. I made a frantic attempt to finish off the important work at hand so that I could also vanish from the scene and land up being 32kms away from the TN border as compared to 20kms. Finally bang at 4:45 p.m the office wore a deserted look as cubicles lay empty and we finally made our way to the gate for the security check threatening a project mate called Chandru who happened to be a localite. We told Chandru that if something happened to us his life lay in grave risk the next day. The lines for the security check were breathtaking. Total chaos prevailed at the bus terminal and you could see thousands of heads looking here and there for a bus they could push themselves into. Every one of the bus seemed to be packed with people like sardines. It looked like a mini Kumbh Mela which has seen itself being immortalised in the scripts of so many Hindi movies. The utter chaos at the bus stand did make it seem very much possible to lose your twin brother/sister in a typical Hindi filmish way.
Me and my flatmate were finally able to push and shove and get ourselves into an already overcrowded bus. It was quite a new feeling acting so very unsophisticated in the company bus and pushing and standing on people's feet. Normally the bus journey from office to home is the most boring of things with about 75% of the junta passing on to a deep coma kind of sleep only to wake up near the Silk Board flyover some 11kms from the office and the rest trying to struggle to keep awake by reading some novel or simply cootchie cooing with their respective lovers on the phones. For a human like me who has been used to literally playing gang wars by throwing bottles and bags and even bricks if one was fortunate enough to get it, and hitting up people to get a seat in the school bus for some 14 long years this journey seemed to be a relatively non risky affair. But Monday at work was different from the other days. It was a back to school days experience with bags being thrown here and there, 4 people sitting in seats meant for three and a hell lot of noise and jokes being cracked here and there. The jam packed bus finally left with me being the third person sitting on a two seater barely managing to get my ass to not fall off the seat. Once on the Hosur Road life seemed to be as normal as possible with all shops having their full shutters up and no visible signs of any disutrbances. So it was definitely a false alarm that had made me leave job to be done early on Tuesday morning to save myself the agony of getting abused by the client. The rest of the journey back home was pretty much chaotic with me slapping the bus wall in the typical style in which a Kolkata conductor would stop the blue and yellow painted tin cages that play on the roads of the City of Joy, in a frantic attempt to stop it for people to get down. I got complimented by a girl for the valiant attempt of stopping the bus in the typical Kolkata way. The compliment sounded something like "He just does it the conductor way at Kolkata". Not going into the intricacies of how higly she regarded my skills of being a conductor of a bus, it was a compliment and I basked in the glory of the same.
Finally home came and unlike Hosur Road which was much closer to TN than BTM and still had shops with shutters open, the shops of BTM had merrily downed shutters and had merrily gone off to sleep. Well finally the water issue did land me in trouble not for the riots that never happened but because of the fact that we had completely run out of drinking water at home and the shop that gave supplies had merrily called it a day off. The drinking water crisis at home did make me feel concious about the 270 TMCFT that Karnataka was getting as compared to the 419 TMCFT that Tamil Nadu was getting. Maybe if I was in Chennai I wouldnt have had to face a drinking water crisis as Bangalore offered me one yesterday. Its time to stock up Bangalore junta for the bandh on Thursday. Is the IT city going the Kolkata way now?
1.Hunting for the mobile early in the morning to switch of the monotonous hum hum of the alarm;
2.Making a frantic attempt to grab a window seat in the most non-chivalrous manner on the right hand side of the company bus so that the early morning sun rays does not wake me up from the morning slumber;
3.Fretting over the regular dosage of curry patta during the breakfast;
4.Ordering some dish that resembles biriyani in every food court of my workplace at lunch;
5.Making every possible excuse to bunk the gym in the evening etc, a small petty issue like the judgement of the Cauvery tribunal did not hold much of a charm for a man on work on a Monday morning. Now, I know u guys who do manage to read the gibberish that I write over here must be thinking that what kind of a pathetic human being this ass is who does not seem to be fazed with such a major decision regarding a dispute that has run for more than 300 years and the court cases of which have stretched for more than 16 long years culminating in a final order that runs into 1000 pages in 5 volumes which when hard bound and hurled at anybody's head could have well killed him/her, inspite of being a resident of Karnataka at present. But once you consider that the guy in question braved a horrible hangover to land up in office only to find his official mailbox being migrated to some other server, his virus definition being unable to protect his PC from new virus threats, transactions he required which he did not have access to at the most auspicious moment and a whole bunch of errors that need resolution waiting for his dizzy brain to act on; you would realise how Cauvery would be the last thing that you would lay your thoughts on. Its ironic how the god of IT and networking collude and conspire against you and make you land up in a deep shit situation on the very first day of the week.
So there I was braving issues that threatened to make my existence on the project network a thing of past till I heard that the mother of all verdicts about the two part of hydrogen and one part of oxygen was out and that Karnataka was in a very bad mood about losing out to Tamil Nadu. The tribunal had ordered Karnataka to share its scoop of ice cream with Tamil Nadu and naturally like a young kid whose passion lies in licking up every bit of the icecream's existence being told to share was too much of a sacrifice that he could take in his stride. And of course the grapevine of my workplace populary called as the BB (Bulletin Board) began flooding with news trickling in about how there law and order problems were being detected in the city and some frantic mails from the HR department pleading not to spread rumors. And I got calls from friends whom I hadnt talked for months telling me to quit office as soon as possible because they had heard from some friend that riots had broken up in certain parts of the city. So the entire office made a frantic rush to the gates at 3 in the evening to get back home safe and sound. Sadly only 2 buses leave at that auspicious hour for people having to quit work for varied reasons like a sick child needing attention, a parent teacher meeting or an appointment with the dentist. Unluckily the transport department did not have the resources to accomodate a thousand people in 2 buses and the service got scrapped for the day. People who had made desperate attempts to quit office on a monday at 3 in the evening to enjoy a leisurely evening had their plans going awry. And there I was still getting calls from people I did not even remember as to how threatened my life was as I was in Electronics City which happened to be just 20kms away from the Tamil Nadu border. My life was seriously threatened, not by the law and order though but by the amount of work that had accumulated since morning thanks to a not so well done mailbox migration. A rough estimate revealed that I could only think of leaving office as early as 8 in the evening which so as to say is a very unfortunate event for a monday at work.
The situation got really out of control when the HR shot a mail saying that all buses were supposed to leave only in 2 slots at 5p.m and 7p.m and the regular schedule of every hour buses in the evening stood cancelled. The final set of approvals came from the PM when he came and convinced us to leave by 5 so that we could reach safe and sound. I made a frantic attempt to finish off the important work at hand so that I could also vanish from the scene and land up being 32kms away from the TN border as compared to 20kms. Finally bang at 4:45 p.m the office wore a deserted look as cubicles lay empty and we finally made our way to the gate for the security check threatening a project mate called Chandru who happened to be a localite. We told Chandru that if something happened to us his life lay in grave risk the next day. The lines for the security check were breathtaking. Total chaos prevailed at the bus terminal and you could see thousands of heads looking here and there for a bus they could push themselves into. Every one of the bus seemed to be packed with people like sardines. It looked like a mini Kumbh Mela which has seen itself being immortalised in the scripts of so many Hindi movies. The utter chaos at the bus stand did make it seem very much possible to lose your twin brother/sister in a typical Hindi filmish way.
Me and my flatmate were finally able to push and shove and get ourselves into an already overcrowded bus. It was quite a new feeling acting so very unsophisticated in the company bus and pushing and standing on people's feet. Normally the bus journey from office to home is the most boring of things with about 75% of the junta passing on to a deep coma kind of sleep only to wake up near the Silk Board flyover some 11kms from the office and the rest trying to struggle to keep awake by reading some novel or simply cootchie cooing with their respective lovers on the phones. For a human like me who has been used to literally playing gang wars by throwing bottles and bags and even bricks if one was fortunate enough to get it, and hitting up people to get a seat in the school bus for some 14 long years this journey seemed to be a relatively non risky affair. But Monday at work was different from the other days. It was a back to school days experience with bags being thrown here and there, 4 people sitting in seats meant for three and a hell lot of noise and jokes being cracked here and there. The jam packed bus finally left with me being the third person sitting on a two seater barely managing to get my ass to not fall off the seat. Once on the Hosur Road life seemed to be as normal as possible with all shops having their full shutters up and no visible signs of any disutrbances. So it was definitely a false alarm that had made me leave job to be done early on Tuesday morning to save myself the agony of getting abused by the client. The rest of the journey back home was pretty much chaotic with me slapping the bus wall in the typical style in which a Kolkata conductor would stop the blue and yellow painted tin cages that play on the roads of the City of Joy, in a frantic attempt to stop it for people to get down. I got complimented by a girl for the valiant attempt of stopping the bus in the typical Kolkata way. The compliment sounded something like "He just does it the conductor way at Kolkata". Not going into the intricacies of how higly she regarded my skills of being a conductor of a bus, it was a compliment and I basked in the glory of the same.
Finally home came and unlike Hosur Road which was much closer to TN than BTM and still had shops with shutters open, the shops of BTM had merrily downed shutters and had merrily gone off to sleep. Well finally the water issue did land me in trouble not for the riots that never happened but because of the fact that we had completely run out of drinking water at home and the shop that gave supplies had merrily called it a day off. The drinking water crisis at home did make me feel concious about the 270 TMCFT that Karnataka was getting as compared to the 419 TMCFT that Tamil Nadu was getting. Maybe if I was in Chennai I wouldnt have had to face a drinking water crisis as Bangalore offered me one yesterday. Its time to stock up Bangalore junta for the bandh on Thursday. Is the IT city going the Kolkata way now?
Thursday, February 1, 2007
Shop till you drop...oops bore!
The wardrobe section of the room I stay in, yah exactly the same one where a mouse had taken shelter for a happy one month before I finally was able to find out the mystery behind the "rat-a-tat" sounds the wardrobe made and was able to drive it out of the house needed a desperate revamp. Well not that I am one of those shoppers who would love to splurge a mini fortune of their hard earned salary on buying clothes keeping up with the latest fashion trends and stuffs that Vogue magazine portrayed as the latest collection but still considering the fact that for the last 4 months I was actually surviving on just two formal trousers, when my office wanted me to wear formal clothes for 4 days in a week it was quite necessary that I do something to put me out of this poverty of clothes. Even the security guards who wore the same uniform everyday seemed to have a better assortment of black trousers as compared to the only one that I had. If the black trouser was a human with real feelings and emotions it was sure to come out in an open rebel for overuse and overexploitation. Considering the fact that all the stores had their year end sales running and all stores shreiking of offering 50% off with a miniscule "Conditions Apply" print that needs a magnifying glass to view, it was an auspicious time to go and eliminate the poverty stricken condition of my wardrobe.
So after office on Monday, I rushed to Forum and in a shopping effort that resembled winning the hot seat in the fastest finger fast, I was done with shopping for a whooping amout of close to 3500 rupees in a matter of less than 40 minutes and I had 3 T-shirts one which had a beer mug all over it, 3 formal shirts and 2 formal trousers to flaunt. The entire swiftness of the shopping episode reminded me of a disaster that happened just after the end of the mid term exams of the 4th trimester during my MBA days. An episode as much disastrous as being forced to see a movie with Jayalalitha as the female lead gave me a rude shock and petrified of shopping. The disastrous event was accompanying Gundu Patas a.k.a Aarti on one of her shopping sessions. A bunch of 2nd year MBA students who had all intentions of getting wild after a torturous mid term that had taken all its toll on us we landed up at Centrestage mall Noida. The journey part of it is also worth mentioning when you consider that Nishant's dilapidated Maruti 800 did not give up with the likes of Madhavi, Nami, Aarti, Anupama, Akshara, Nishant and me packed like sardines in the red 800. I was precariously seated somewhere in between Aarti and Nami's lap and I could not stop my head banging into the ceiling of the car every 3 minutes. Once in the mall, while every one of the other girls went to shop in Westside I was hijacked off the group by Aarti to go shopping with her. I thought it would be a regular thing which would max stretch to hopping around 3 or 4 shops and would result in a purchase decision. It started off with Westside where Aarti spent some half an hour giving me logical explanation about shaded, hues, cuts and styling. Though it really did not make any sense I just hoped she would like something. And she did like two tops on display and I felt the same as Dada would have felt on striking a century on debut and was rejoiced at the prospects of having a half hour shopping spree. But alas it was like getting bowled at 99 when she uttered in Tamil laced Hindi "Haan thik hi hai! Par utna khas nahi...Aur kahin chalkar dekhte hain.." I did not realise what I was getting into. It started from the ground floor of CSM(Centrestage mall) and went up to the 5th floor. Any store that seemed to have anything like clothes behind the glass veiled doors was Aarti's destination. We went to every branded, unbranded, semi-branded, in-house branded store. Pepe, Levis, Lee, Scullers, SF and a lot more of them just came and went on path for that one perfect top. Finally after 2 whole hours of running up and down the entire mall and visiting every store that it housed Aarti finally declared that enough was enough and she was going back to Westside to buy the same top that we had seen at the onset of our shopping excursion. I was speechless, dumbfounded, angry, tired and was bored as anyone who had had the luxury of listening to Vajpayee's ramblings for more than an hour. Finally Westside sold one more of its tops and I wasted close to two and half hours of my time running around the mall.
Aarti was full of praises about how I had not complained and how I was not the typical male who hated the favourite recreation of girls i.e. shopping though deep down I had this strong desire of choking her with the same top that she had bought. Now it is true that mom had well prepared me for all this kind of shopping excursions that females usually undertook by taking me shopping when I was just a child and finally treating me to an icecream, but still wasting so many precious hours of life over a top and that too without the regular treat of icecream was quite a painful torture. From then on I was the proverbial messiah who would go on any kind of shopping trip with any female species provided the female species did not force me to buy anything for them or for that matter me. Going shopping with Anu would involve a lot of approving and disapproving. Usually it only lasts one or two shops but she tries out a lot of things and always asks for approval. She took me once to a jewellery shop to get the upper cartilaginous part of her ear pierced. I was pretty much psyched out by the entire exercise and at one point of time I was assuring her and her dad on the phone that things would be ok though I was not at all comfortable seeing the rather horrific sight of seeing the cartilage being pierced through. Last time she came to Bangalore she was contemplating on getting a tatoo done and I was contemplating a sudden heart attack to avoid the torture of seeing a shreiking Anu and pacifying her. Then there is Akshara who shops more like a guy, never spending more than a few mintues finalizaing any purchase. I was overwhelmed when she was done with her shopping in less than half an hour. Then there is Sree who would give me a frantic call at all desperate moments to accompany her shopping. Last time was some 2 days before the new year eve when she desperately needed party clothes. Now my social standing is such that no body really bothers calling this rather abominable creature to anything that looks like a party. So hunting for party clothes was quite a disaster with me and her going down and up Commercial Street and Brigade road finding that ideal party dress that could bowl any guy out on new year's eve.
So finally I am most grateful to these women in my life starting from my mother who have made me immune to the shopping virus. A special thanks to Aarti who tested my patience to such great extremes that every other shopping excursion seems to be a cakewalk after CSM. I do not know if the patience of accompanying a female species would still persist post the very horrifying event of marriage when I would have to swipe my credit card out of a feeling of chivalry. Oh by the way forgot to add, even the ICICI credit card I applied for has not reached my hands though they shipped it ages back. As usual its stuck between Chennai and Bangalore...And I am still credit card less...anyone listening out there??
So after office on Monday, I rushed to Forum and in a shopping effort that resembled winning the hot seat in the fastest finger fast, I was done with shopping for a whooping amout of close to 3500 rupees in a matter of less than 40 minutes and I had 3 T-shirts one which had a beer mug all over it, 3 formal shirts and 2 formal trousers to flaunt. The entire swiftness of the shopping episode reminded me of a disaster that happened just after the end of the mid term exams of the 4th trimester during my MBA days. An episode as much disastrous as being forced to see a movie with Jayalalitha as the female lead gave me a rude shock and petrified of shopping. The disastrous event was accompanying Gundu Patas a.k.a Aarti on one of her shopping sessions. A bunch of 2nd year MBA students who had all intentions of getting wild after a torturous mid term that had taken all its toll on us we landed up at Centrestage mall Noida. The journey part of it is also worth mentioning when you consider that Nishant's dilapidated Maruti 800 did not give up with the likes of Madhavi, Nami, Aarti, Anupama, Akshara, Nishant and me packed like sardines in the red 800. I was precariously seated somewhere in between Aarti and Nami's lap and I could not stop my head banging into the ceiling of the car every 3 minutes. Once in the mall, while every one of the other girls went to shop in Westside I was hijacked off the group by Aarti to go shopping with her. I thought it would be a regular thing which would max stretch to hopping around 3 or 4 shops and would result in a purchase decision. It started off with Westside where Aarti spent some half an hour giving me logical explanation about shaded, hues, cuts and styling. Though it really did not make any sense I just hoped she would like something. And she did like two tops on display and I felt the same as Dada would have felt on striking a century on debut and was rejoiced at the prospects of having a half hour shopping spree. But alas it was like getting bowled at 99 when she uttered in Tamil laced Hindi "Haan thik hi hai! Par utna khas nahi...Aur kahin chalkar dekhte hain.." I did not realise what I was getting into. It started from the ground floor of CSM(Centrestage mall) and went up to the 5th floor. Any store that seemed to have anything like clothes behind the glass veiled doors was Aarti's destination. We went to every branded, unbranded, semi-branded, in-house branded store. Pepe, Levis, Lee, Scullers, SF and a lot more of them just came and went on path for that one perfect top. Finally after 2 whole hours of running up and down the entire mall and visiting every store that it housed Aarti finally declared that enough was enough and she was going back to Westside to buy the same top that we had seen at the onset of our shopping excursion. I was speechless, dumbfounded, angry, tired and was bored as anyone who had had the luxury of listening to Vajpayee's ramblings for more than an hour. Finally Westside sold one more of its tops and I wasted close to two and half hours of my time running around the mall.
Aarti was full of praises about how I had not complained and how I was not the typical male who hated the favourite recreation of girls i.e. shopping though deep down I had this strong desire of choking her with the same top that she had bought. Now it is true that mom had well prepared me for all this kind of shopping excursions that females usually undertook by taking me shopping when I was just a child and finally treating me to an icecream, but still wasting so many precious hours of life over a top and that too without the regular treat of icecream was quite a painful torture. From then on I was the proverbial messiah who would go on any kind of shopping trip with any female species provided the female species did not force me to buy anything for them or for that matter me. Going shopping with Anu would involve a lot of approving and disapproving. Usually it only lasts one or two shops but she tries out a lot of things and always asks for approval. She took me once to a jewellery shop to get the upper cartilaginous part of her ear pierced. I was pretty much psyched out by the entire exercise and at one point of time I was assuring her and her dad on the phone that things would be ok though I was not at all comfortable seeing the rather horrific sight of seeing the cartilage being pierced through. Last time she came to Bangalore she was contemplating on getting a tatoo done and I was contemplating a sudden heart attack to avoid the torture of seeing a shreiking Anu and pacifying her. Then there is Akshara who shops more like a guy, never spending more than a few mintues finalizaing any purchase. I was overwhelmed when she was done with her shopping in less than half an hour. Then there is Sree who would give me a frantic call at all desperate moments to accompany her shopping. Last time was some 2 days before the new year eve when she desperately needed party clothes. Now my social standing is such that no body really bothers calling this rather abominable creature to anything that looks like a party. So hunting for party clothes was quite a disaster with me and her going down and up Commercial Street and Brigade road finding that ideal party dress that could bowl any guy out on new year's eve.
So finally I am most grateful to these women in my life starting from my mother who have made me immune to the shopping virus. A special thanks to Aarti who tested my patience to such great extremes that every other shopping excursion seems to be a cakewalk after CSM. I do not know if the patience of accompanying a female species would still persist post the very horrifying event of marriage when I would have to swipe my credit card out of a feeling of chivalry. Oh by the way forgot to add, even the ICICI credit card I applied for has not reached my hands though they shipped it ages back. As usual its stuck between Chennai and Bangalore...And I am still credit card less...anyone listening out there??
Monday, January 29, 2007
Weekend of House hunting and a gorgeous movie
The utter irony of life much ironic than being head butted twice like Materazzi is to be awakened again bang at 8 in the morning by the maid again on Saturday. This time I could not resist myself from shreiking a few obscenities which I guess she never did understand becuase of the communication barriers. Couple it up with the mission that I had on Sunday and I finally realised that the entire weekend was spent in waking up early after sleeping late thus missing out on cruical sleeping time. The only time I remember myself getting up early on a Sunday was in Class 11 and 12 when I had to go to this chemistry tution coz my parents and near relatives and the neighbours and their relatives and anyone in the ecosystem in which I survived and thrived never gave up on convincing me about how much an engineering degree would help me acheive a plush job, a good looking wife and much more. What they never told me was what being Bangalored was, about the ten month rent advance which is never negotiable or about what damages one's taste buds undertakes when it is subjected to a regular dose of Idli and Sambhar. Much to my parents and relatives and neighbours and their relatives displeasure I never did become an engineer of any kind but I still landed up in this southern part of Bangalore in a company that has more than 90% engineers.
So Sunday was mission day for the sake of a tortured soul who was sick and tired of staying in a rat hole sophsitcatedly called a PG and eating blobs of red and green mass which was called food. She wanted an accomodation in a rented appartment in which she could sleep, cook and call her parents to stay and invite us without getting the customary stares and comments which are so common in a PG. The first phase of the house hunt was to find the broker who had successfully made us walk across almost all lanes and bylanes of Indiranagar in a kind of a wild goose chase. Finally he showed up at the designated place close to one and half hours later than the designated time without even an apology for the late arrival. Then started a round of house hunting which took us into narrow alleys that led to dark and shady houses without cupboards and horrible sanitation facilites. And the charges for these prized accomodations never seemed to reach anywhere below 5k per month accompanied with a statutory 10 month advance. So we saw small house with no cupboards, large house with lots of cupboards but disgraceful toilets, shady house with no light, house with a big bore well in the vicinity to fall into and the exploaration continued. Even the broker gave up after some time handing us onto some other broker guy who was supposed to show us his assortment of appartments to be rented. Now this guy no doubt had his marketing fundas in place. He tried using phrases like safety, security, affordable, good neighbourhood etc which did impress us and finally he showed some really good and affordable places at Domlur. And finally one was selected alas the bliss of finding a "mahal ho sapno ka" was cut short when the broker called in the evening to give us the bad news that the stuff had already been taken. So an entire day of running around, auto hopping, visiting all sorts of shady places didnt do any kind of good.
The best part of the day was the lunch we had at the rather special Bengali restaurant called 6 Ballygunge Place at Indiranagar. Being a Sunday afternoon every one of those pampered Bengali wives who do not like to waste their Sunday in the confines of the kitchen had decided to throng the place. The place was teeming with all sorts of happy Bengali faces and Bengali music and lots of bulky looking pretty females mostly married in their best of attires. Me and house hunter looked in our horrific worst with all the running around that we had subjected ourselves to on that day. No doubt the Bengaliness (if there is any such term as outrageous as this) of the place made me a fan of the restaurant. Even the unfriendly "Excuse Me" at the entrance of the restaurant by a pretty and loaded with attitude thing nor the bulky body of a self righteous female draped in a jeans that could have fitted two like me gave me the jitters and I thoroughly enjoyed the entire experience. The feeling of being a Bengali at heart and specifically a Bangal overwhelmed me when I saw that they also surved a dish called shutki. It is usually a preperation of dried up Bombayduck in lots of spice and the pungent smell is definitely not for the faint hearted. If in Japan Sushi rocks then in Bangladesh Shutki is very near to that. Food that day consisted of Pabda mach and Mutton which I dug into with my hands. After all it was not one of the etiqutte training courses in my organisation. After all Bengali food was best enjoyed with hands and there was no need to feign any of the table sophistication I was so unused to. The family on the next table to us was seen throwing ugly glances at us as they struggled to have Bengali food with a fork and spoon.
And finally because of a very decent caress of lady luck on me I found myself sitting in a movie hall watching the Leonardo Di Caprio starrer Blood Diamond with a bunch of very talkative Delhites, the house hunter and a lady who was very badly bitten by the shopping bug. Actually another guy who was supposed to come had incidentally dropped out after he got too many calls from mother nature. The movie was really worthwhile for the 200 bucks I spent on it and I was not seeing cribbing about the price that I had paid for the same. The movie was one of the very best that I had seen and for the very first time Leonardo seemed to have left his kiddo looks and acting style to really do a great job as a diamond smuggler. The movie was about man's greed, the effect that capitalism does, about lives that were lost in the unknown, about how precariously the balance of life and death exists in some countries torn apart by civil war and finally about the love for a family that can make a person do anything, even change the way the world things and take a stand against what is wrong. And finally the movie is about starry eyed people who dream of diamond rings who know nothing about the immense amount of innocent blood that is lost to give the pure crystallized carbon its sparkle. Please do not buy Conflict Diamonds is my earnest request to everyone after seeing this movie.
So Sunday was mission day for the sake of a tortured soul who was sick and tired of staying in a rat hole sophsitcatedly called a PG and eating blobs of red and green mass which was called food. She wanted an accomodation in a rented appartment in which she could sleep, cook and call her parents to stay and invite us without getting the customary stares and comments which are so common in a PG. The first phase of the house hunt was to find the broker who had successfully made us walk across almost all lanes and bylanes of Indiranagar in a kind of a wild goose chase. Finally he showed up at the designated place close to one and half hours later than the designated time without even an apology for the late arrival. Then started a round of house hunting which took us into narrow alleys that led to dark and shady houses without cupboards and horrible sanitation facilites. And the charges for these prized accomodations never seemed to reach anywhere below 5k per month accompanied with a statutory 10 month advance. So we saw small house with no cupboards, large house with lots of cupboards but disgraceful toilets, shady house with no light, house with a big bore well in the vicinity to fall into and the exploaration continued. Even the broker gave up after some time handing us onto some other broker guy who was supposed to show us his assortment of appartments to be rented. Now this guy no doubt had his marketing fundas in place. He tried using phrases like safety, security, affordable, good neighbourhood etc which did impress us and finally he showed some really good and affordable places at Domlur. And finally one was selected alas the bliss of finding a "mahal ho sapno ka" was cut short when the broker called in the evening to give us the bad news that the stuff had already been taken. So an entire day of running around, auto hopping, visiting all sorts of shady places didnt do any kind of good.
The best part of the day was the lunch we had at the rather special Bengali restaurant called 6 Ballygunge Place at Indiranagar. Being a Sunday afternoon every one of those pampered Bengali wives who do not like to waste their Sunday in the confines of the kitchen had decided to throng the place. The place was teeming with all sorts of happy Bengali faces and Bengali music and lots of bulky looking pretty females mostly married in their best of attires. Me and house hunter looked in our horrific worst with all the running around that we had subjected ourselves to on that day. No doubt the Bengaliness (if there is any such term as outrageous as this) of the place made me a fan of the restaurant. Even the unfriendly "Excuse Me" at the entrance of the restaurant by a pretty and loaded with attitude thing nor the bulky body of a self righteous female draped in a jeans that could have fitted two like me gave me the jitters and I thoroughly enjoyed the entire experience. The feeling of being a Bengali at heart and specifically a Bangal overwhelmed me when I saw that they also surved a dish called shutki. It is usually a preperation of dried up Bombayduck in lots of spice and the pungent smell is definitely not for the faint hearted. If in Japan Sushi rocks then in Bangladesh Shutki is very near to that. Food that day consisted of Pabda mach and Mutton which I dug into with my hands. After all it was not one of the etiqutte training courses in my organisation. After all Bengali food was best enjoyed with hands and there was no need to feign any of the table sophistication I was so unused to. The family on the next table to us was seen throwing ugly glances at us as they struggled to have Bengali food with a fork and spoon.
And finally because of a very decent caress of lady luck on me I found myself sitting in a movie hall watching the Leonardo Di Caprio starrer Blood Diamond with a bunch of very talkative Delhites, the house hunter and a lady who was very badly bitten by the shopping bug. Actually another guy who was supposed to come had incidentally dropped out after he got too many calls from mother nature. The movie was really worthwhile for the 200 bucks I spent on it and I was not seeing cribbing about the price that I had paid for the same. The movie was one of the very best that I had seen and for the very first time Leonardo seemed to have left his kiddo looks and acting style to really do a great job as a diamond smuggler. The movie was about man's greed, the effect that capitalism does, about lives that were lost in the unknown, about how precariously the balance of life and death exists in some countries torn apart by civil war and finally about the love for a family that can make a person do anything, even change the way the world things and take a stand against what is wrong. And finally the movie is about starry eyed people who dream of diamond rings who know nothing about the immense amount of innocent blood that is lost to give the pure crystallized carbon its sparkle. Please do not buy Conflict Diamonds is my earnest request to everyone after seeing this movie.
Friday, January 26, 2007
Sleepless for her!!
After years of trying to inculcate the values of patriotism I am sorry to inform that I have not been able to get anywhere near to that feeling. I mean you can very well make it out if I say that I am desperately waiting for my french work permit to get processed soon so that I can fly off to Paris. Well the trait of patriotism does run through the genetic constitution of my family a live example being my grandfather who was a social worker and fought an election and also his brother who joined the army and fought wars, but I guess it has happily decided to remain unexpressed in me. My idea of patriotism has not crossed its stage of infancy till date, it could be best termed as superficial. I mean I do respect the people who are there out on the borders guarding us from our hostile neighbours and I do stand in an attention position whenever the 52 second song celebrating the spirit of our country is played but beyond that I am not the one to wake up early in the morning of a red lettered day on the calendar to go to the parade ground and bath in the full glory of patriotism. It is a seperate fact that no one has actually invited me to see one in its full glory in the last 24 years of my existence. So it has been Doordarshan which has come in handy to such spectacles like the Republic Day parade.
So coming back to the topic of me being not so patriotic, post the honeymoon stage of life of school and college days of mine the national holidays have been days to sleep like a log till the sun reached midway on the firmament and possibly even extend it a bit more further. Well considering the fact that I have to wake up dot at 7 every morning to reach office by 9 to start the daily drill I guess people would be kind enough to offer me the luxury of sleeping some extra hours on such holidays. But alas fate had something else stored for me today. Dot at the unearthly hour of 8 in the morning the door bell rang. I just thought it to be some figments of my imagination of a dream where some friends were supposed to drop in for a drink and I could see myself opening the door for them. But the tung-tang drone of the doorbell still persisted and finally it got so loud and restless that I had to wake up and go and see which inhuman was asking for access waking me out of a deep REM sleep. I opened the door and there she was out of all human beings you could have expected on planet earth. Inspite of telling her not to come before the clock struck 11 on any kind of holiday she was there dot at 8 to finish off with her daily dose of cleaning the utensils (the few that we have been able to amass in the last 8 months of our existence in Bangalore), the cleaning of the rooms and the clothes. Well it is a seperate story that she bunks her daily activities with greater efficiency than my graduation day classes where attendance was never a criteria to earn grades. So there she was with a smiling face trying to gain access to the dark dingy 3 bhk that we called home for the last 8 months, so that she could make a disaster of the sleep that I was in with the innumrable clanging of the utensils and ensure that I wake up in a grumpy and sleepy mood to waste all the day. Inspite of using the four languages that I knew I was unable to make her understand about coming later in the day. And it was imminent that if I dint allow her in the house at this moment she would bunk the entire house cleaning exercise for another day. Considering the fact that the entire mass of unwashed clothes that looked like a mini mountain now would remain unclean for yet another day I decided to let her go on with her cleaning exercise after wishing any chances of an extended sleep goodbye. So here is a hitchiker's guide to managing with the obnoxious behaviour of the bai in a place like Bangalore if she does not know anything apart from the local Kannada and bunks like the one at our place.
1.Be prepared for threats at odd hours: Just like today she announced merrily that the washing powder had extinguised its stocks and she needed a refill or else I could still be sitting on the mountain of unwashed clothes. Today was not the first time for such a request which does sound like a threat. So one day I would be running around for a Rin ki Tikiya and the second day for a Jharu. So today also I had to rush out to the nearest store to get a refill of the washing powder.
2.Learn Kannada or go on speaking like aliens: Considering that the Dravidian set of languages is alien to people who have stayed all their lives in the northern part of the country it is of little surprise that communication is a big big problem. The only way out would be to learn Kannada which is a very impossible proposition if you were working in an IT company like me. So unless you are a line manager at the TVS plant in Bangalore and have mastered the language well (one of my punjabi friend actually did learn it) make sure to use all sorts of sign language to affirm and reaffirm the things that you would have stated in hindi to the bai. Well sometimes I have had this weired feeling that if I meet aliens I would be able to interact well considering the effort that I have to put in to make her understand anything.
3.Learn to live with half: Dont even expect to see all the activities being completed. So do not feel sad if the bai does not sweep or clean your room. Whenever I am not around watching like a watchdog she is bound to forget sweeping my room's floor. So either become a watchdog and keep her in close scrutiny or else learn to live with half the rooms sweeped and the other half not.
4.Turn heartless to the plight of your clothes: Seeing her wash my clothes I have really felt pity for the torture they undertake in her hands. It seems that all the fibres of the cloth rebel against the torture desperately trying to tear apart and in turn make my favourite blue shade shirt worthless. So its better to turn heartless at the inhuman torture that she inflicts on anything in the form of a cloth and only pray that they survive the torture.
5. Third Party Interference: Always seek third party interference whenever you have crucial issues to discuss like wages, the fraction that has to be cut from the wage for constantly bunking work for 20 days etc. The third party should be an interpreter who is supposed to reduce misunderstandings if any. Such a kind of misunderstanding in laying down the rules cost a lot of money to me.
I guess I can lay down 17 more points to make the work simpler for you folks but I am feeling very sleepy and it is close to 2 at night and in case she just shows up at 8 in the morning like today I would be in very bad shape to get up. So I guess I should be hitting the bed now with a prayer to lady luck to not start tomorrow with the same stroke of ill luck as I had today. And I do not want to be sleepless for her anymore.
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