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2008-12-28T22:09:00.001+05:30

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Days Gone By

2008-04-16T13:04:00.001+05:30

30 long months have gone by. Now looking back it all seems so unreal and far away. Call it destiny or anything else, but something brought ten different individuals together and put them in a cauldron. Only three remain now, others have either gone on to pursue higher levels of nirvana or are running towards achieving their goal in life. It is time for me look back, as I chose to live in the past, cherish those unforgettable moments.

Long ago, some 30 months ago we- me, vivek, Venkat and vinay decided it would be good if we reached Bangalore a good three/four days ahead of our joining dates in our company. It was a bad idea, even before joining I had lost little faith I had in Bangalore . If I had any way of looking into the future, I would have willingly changed my mind there, but then those uneventful days of September 2005, I didn’t have any vision2020.

So we joined the company on September 9,2005. It was a Friday. We were among hundred others who joined on the same day. For many it was a dream come true. For me it was my first job, I had so many dreams to fulfill. I already had visions of a big car, a three bhk apartment with split a/c. Although we joined on September 9, the company chose to put our joining dates as September 12 – some obscure setup where they prove that although I enrolled on September 9, I officially was into ‘office’ only from 12th, there are other reasons I was told. Since me, vivek, Venkat and vinay happened to be from the same college, we hung on. Soon we met up with a person who was so happy, so smiling it was difficult to remain aloof and not smile. In came Sai sundar – the wonder boy from Crescent Engg College . Sai has always remained the same from that day till today, always ready with his close-up smile. We also met up with the boys from Venkateshwara college - Kishore, Saravana and Krishnamurthy. Kishore turned out to be a gentle giant, Kiccha not so gentle but more of a cool dude type who wore trendy cargos. Saraba, fun to be with. I knew very little about the man from Perambur then and even now. The lonely foursome became excellent eight.

The induction program was supposed to mould from a college going cool dude to a office going cooler dude. It was also supposed to build team work, better interactions and other stuff which MBA’s feel proud to give lecture over. It hasn’t helped much though. I still believe I met far mature characters in my college than in my office. I have met cheaper characters in office than in my entire life. May be people develop after coming out of college, or may be they believe by passing out of college they have achieved something that they can be cheap or may be they were always like and we never found out the truth. Anyway the induction program was supposed to help us do all the team work stuff.

The first day we had to do something called icebreaker, where about fifty new joinees were supposed to randomly chose a person whom you haven’t never met till now and introduce yourself and both of you tell about each other to the audience at the end of two minutes. I am never comfy with this ‘meeting new people’, especially when it involves English. There were a few PSBB( that’s a famous school in Chennai where even the watchman speaks high profile English, I had a difficult time once talking to a LKG kid who spoke only English and I could barely frame out a sentence in English then!) type guys and gals around I was hoping to find a ‘ok english’ person but unfortunately I met up with this lanky fellow from Stanes, Coimbatore. But he was soft spoken and didn’t seem anything like the other English dudes I knew. He was kapil. Kapil introduced us to captain that day. Captain, always smiling, his ‘don’t know don’t care’ attitude at times has given us more than a laugh.

The induction program went on for three days. There was one event where the people who volunteered (some 16 of us) were to form a human square blindfolded. It was in this blind maze that I met Sonia and Priya as I got stuck between them at what we thought was a corner of a square. At the end of the induction program the kochi gang were to told to pack and move on. It was then I really saw the 24 scapegoats being packed off to Kochi . I knew 9 of the guys already, I also met RajaV. So we were 11 guys. Among the girls I had only talked to priya and sonia once when blindfolded.

A week later, the same 24 met at Avenue centre, Panampilly nagar for our vlsi training which would go on for another month. The induction program being long over, we were back to familiar grounds, a room, 25 people, one presentation, one person trying to teach us something. It felt like we were back in college that one month in Avenue centre.

Kapil turned out to be our savior in cochin by finding us 10c. Saran – our beloved captain, in a chain mail put into words how difficult it was to find a house in a new city and praised Kapil for the service done to mankind by giving us 10c. We all salute Kapil for his brave deeds. The venkateshwara guys and RajaV soon formed the palarivattom club and were promptly renamed the ‘palarivattom gang’. Together we – the 10c gang comprising of seven of us, later Rajan the great joined us to make it eight and the palarivattom gang rocked in the backwaters of kerala.

Dreams only last until the moment you wake up. we soon woke up to reality, the harshness of life. Individual needs, family commitments, better opportunities beckoned all of us. One by one, the gang disintegrated until it longer can be called a gang. Now as I look back I see all the funny moments we had, the arguments we fought, the trips we went, the red-devil buses we dared to set foot on, it seems the journey as a group has come to an end. Only individuals travel from here. As another September draws near, for all I know important person/people in my life may leave for greener pastures. Until the moment nothing is sure. Life is about living the moment and right this moment I am going to gulp down a cup of steaming crap tea as I call it.

10-c

2008-03-24T11:11:00.000+05:30

It’s all over folks. From ‘is’ 10-c has become ‘was’. With Kapil moving on, only three members remain, of that only two of the original 10-c, the third one being a part of amendment. From living a hundred feet up in the air, it is fair to say, we fell down hard. It is only now we are ‘really’ exposed to cochin . While in 10-c we were in our own atmosphere (you can actually take it literally given the state of that house while we were in) and came down to Cochin only once in a while, be it heavy rainy days, or sultry days, 10c remained unaffected. Now we live in the first floor hardly ten feet above the ground and in the heart of an giant ecosystem. It is a entomologists dream come true. The variety of insects on display is simply fascinating. From the fire-fly on your blanket, to the our friendly visiting 5 inch banana spider, there is a wide variety. Not to forget the raw mango eating rats in the ‘galley’. The problems we are facing are only because we were too used to 10-c, to used to living up high there, that we failed to see down near the earth. No power cuts in 10-c, always had generators. So in effect we had a better time in 10-c that I had in Chennai where our flat doesn’t have generators.

· Kapil has moved on. He leaves behind a lot of things other than his blanket, jeans and t-shirt. He leaves behind a trend of which we are proud. I had never heard of barista before, I never knew I could go to coffee day. I had my first pizza in cochin . My first Baskin Robbins ice-cream. Whenever we go to such places, he would shower us with his experience on the variety – what to take and what not to (although he himself screwed up a few times in coffee day hehehe)- he would have been there a zillion times. Now kapil is back home in Coimbatore looking for the right way to move forward.

· Vinay has moved on too. He leaves behind even more things! His blanket. A huge pile of books. Carefully torn pieces of paper enough to fill a normal sized dustbin to the brim. His old navy blue t-shirt. A pair of ‘wudlands’ shoes ( wudland is not woodlands). He tried a lot of things. He thought of a fitness regime in going to office to cycle. He even bought a new cycle for the same. His never ending arguments with everyone in sight would be remembered for long.

· So has Jvk/Venkat. He gave the PDP. His Pentium 2 pc. That was a life saver for a long time in 10-c before rajan brought in his high handedness. We watched umpteen movies in the PDP. The most hilarious being ‘Finding Nemo’ ‘without red colour’!! ( there was a problem with the cable in the monitor which was duly replaced). Rajan has still not forgotten Venkat’s ‘towel’.

Ps: sai, saran, vinay, kapil

venkat,

one,two, three

three different paths, similar goals. Some day the third path would merge with either one or two. It might be an biography of the remaining or an auto.

Beep Beep !!

2008-02-21T14:45:00.000+05:30

Of late two of my friends have gone on record asking me why I haven’t written any new blogs! I am proud to say that atleast ten to fifteen people read my blog. My blog visit counter has recently crossed the thousand mark (I think more than 200 of them would have been because of me alone :D). If only I had the email id of my English teacher at school Ms.Subhadra krishnakumar I could have proved her wrong that I too can write. But I fear she would remark sarcastically that my grammar was still wrong and without Ms-Word’s auto correct feature, this blog would be a mess of mis-spelt words. I remember she made me look like an idiot in an exam hall when I was in twelfth std then, it was quarterly exam and on the fateful day I had missed the ‘r’ written ‘quaterly’ on my answer sheet. I was happy that I had finally completed the paper on tim and submitted my answer sheet to her-the examiner- and prepared to leave, and she bellowed “Ramakrishnan, your spelling is still bad !! Cant you spell quarterly” and laughed out loud. It was soon followed by sniggers all around. Even then I was what would be called “thimuru pudiccha payyan” (thickheaded – Kapil, am I correct?). While the entire room was laughing I was wondering for a person who couldn’t pronounce my name properly (she use to call me Raymakrishan) she was going far over the limit, but with my poor oratory skills in english I couldn’t think of anything decent to say out to her. So I glared at her, and left the room when it became very uncomfortable for her. I became extra careful in exams later that year, taking care to spell correctly on the first sheet of the answer paper. It was a lose-lose situation anyway, if I spelled everything correctly from then on, she would say it was because of her constant criticism that I corrected myself and if still make those mistakes she would say she always knew I was a good for nothing fellow and wouldn’t improve. So there you have it, people higher than you always have an upper hand and they will always win any moral battle you throw at them.

Many times I have wondered whether I should kill the person honking from his car behind me in traffic or should I beat him up to death. As a barking dog which doesn’t bite, I do neither and carry on. Have you asked yourself at traffic signals, when you have no inch to move any further, why the people in bikes and cars around you honking their horns incessantly? I have two points of arguments for not using horns at such situations:

One, if you are on a bike and in traffic, you can always move into nooks and corner and come out, so you have no reason for using horn unnecessarily.

Two, if you are in car, you are anyway at the mercy of the driver in front as you cannot move any inch right or left lest you scratch your sweet little car. So why not stop playing with people’s eardrums and wait for the other guy to move, after a cursory honk to let him know someone is waiting behind?

There is one more thing I don’t like is people honking when you can see clearly that the guy in front is making a U-turn. Why not wait for him to complete?

But people have different needs and urgencies, for all I know the person sitting in the white santro could be late for his meeting with George Bush, and not to the forget the NASA return lungi clad man on his Indian hayabusa aka splendor, ofcourse the next-door-aunty late for her desh bachao andolan in paris. And ofcourse the cool dude on his karizma with his tight t-shirt and tighter jeans really tense because of his exams at IIT. All the while I sit humbly on my bike waiting for the din to die down and huge tanker in front of me to move on knowing that even if I did honk my horn the lorry is not gonna move anyway

One fine day in Chennai mail

2008-01-28T21:45:00.000+05:30

Rarely have I written two blogs on one day, I am really bored today. So let us go back one week.

One day on Chennai mail..

You must have read about the incident on allepey express. Well it happened again, but this time on Chennai mail. I have been traveling the same route for more than two years now and it is only allepey express which is the dreaded train, while 2624 chennai mail has always been ok, if not great. But the thing which happened last Friday makes the allepey blog sound simple.

The train as usual is late by half hour – nothing wrong as whenever it comes half and hour late, it reaches Chennai in time unlike when it comes on time. The station is unusually not crowded, except for the expected number of passengers. No ‘returning home after tired days work’ people. You normally expect a group of people of this category in any station in India around 6-7 pm everyday. But that day, there was no sign of them. I was happy that I didn’t have to fight my way around to get to my compartment and started reading a book. The train arrived. It was then I realized I made a mistake in deciding this was going to be happy simple safe journey.

The compartment was packed to full, it looked a ‘5-E’ bus in peak time. It took me a full ten minutes to get to the door and get a foot in the compartment, the train started and I was still on the footboard, hanging for my life. I could have got in earlier but I let some middle aged uncles and aunties to board before me. So here I was, on the footboard, going to Chennai 2624 – Chennai superfast mail. Superfast mail :D such a joke. It took me another ten minutes to get inside and go to my seat which amazingly was right next to the door S10- 3, that was my berth that day. After fighting with atleast ten people I went to my seat only to find it occupied. So as in allepey express that fine day, I requested the person to vacate my seat, and as always he gave me 6 inches to park myself. I told him 6 inches wouldn’t fulfill the Rs 500 indian railways took from me, so please vacate my seat, I think he then understood that may be I had got a reservation and he got up from my seat, I sat down, his friend nearby i.e now sitting next to me adjusted ( read pushed me out gently ) and gave the seat back to our original friend who sat down with a grin. I wanted to punch the entire gang, but I was outnumbered. I couldn’t possibly fight the minimum 100-150 people traveling in similar way that day, not to mention hundreds of ayyappa devotees. I never liked these ayyappa devotees for the mess they create while they travel. They might be great bhaktas, having loads of faith, but seldom do they stop creating nuisance for other people traveling in the train. The begger on the floor near my berth slept peacefully. Something happened and suddenly there were even more people, since I was near the path, people took me for a leaning post and started leaning on me, I thought I would send some message to my friends, but the shameless creature on my right couldn’t stop peeping at what I was typing, so I took the opportunity to bad mouth all of them in the message :D he turned away and I deleted the message hehehe.

Some more people came from nowhere, it was becoming suffocating, one idiot was leaning on me and was really comfortable. It was really horrible, I never expected this on the Chennai mail because of its timing, it is always late for office goers who want to reach home early. The TTE came, he asked for my ticket, he even had the nerve to ask my id proof, but he didn’t check any of these hooligans. It was just one of those days, it wasn’t until thrissur came that few of the open ticket masters finally got down. The guy leaning on me was still there, till now I couldn’t do anything because there was no space for him to move at all, but now it was inexcusable, so I asked the idiot to move his ass. He didn’t budge. I tried English, hindi, tamil. I am definitely sure he understood cos he moved away for a few minutes but came back again and again, it went on for half an hour. It was then that the person sitting in front of me lost his temper. Till then I took him for another open ticket master, but he wasn’t. For an entire minute he shouted something to the leaning guy in Malayalam – I dint understand a thing, then he switched to tamil, maybe for my understanding :D, so finally he moved off only to come back 20 minutes later. It would be palakkad when the rightful owners of the berth near me would occupy their seats. By then the slight temperature I had that day worsened to a fever. My worse day in a train ended as I went to sleep in the upper berth.

Out of boredom

2008-01-28T21:43:00.000+05:30

It is Monday morning and I am wondering what I did over the weekend, did I hang out and enjoy life? Did I take rest sitting all day and doing nothing? I did the unthinkable this Saturday, I got up at 5:40am, and I haven’t done that on a weekday for a long time now. Anyway the rhythmic buzzing of mosquitoes was too much for me to handle and I got up. With India playing test cricket in Australia , the question of “now what??” was answered quickly and I settled down to watch India ’s comic performance. It was a day Hayden went about his planned assassination of Indian attack. It ended with a brilliant dismissal of what seemed like good bowling, but in reality it was more like sheer dumb luck. It was then I realized that there weren’t any mosquitoes in the hall!!! Strange, just a few feet away I was mobbed by them out of my sleep, and here I am all comfortable with no bugging insects. I was planning on going back to sleep, so didn’t bother brushing my teeth yet. Soon, it was lunch in Australia , and with two options in sight – sleep or breakfast – I chose breakfast. It’s impossible to sleep when you are hungry.

The caretaker did a double take when he saw me early in the morning; I could feel his eyes boring through me as I walked towards my bike. The caretaker was discreet in showing his surprise, the people at Brindavan were much more open. As many as four people asked me what was wrong when I went there for breakfast! They were interested to know why I was in the hotel at 7:40 am on a Saturday morning, when for over two years now, we always landed there only for lunch with our just out of bed looks.

My god, what people have to go through for getting up early? Even my mother was surprised to hear this. I had to endure three calls that day explaining that there was nothing wrong and it was the mosquitoes which woke up. hmm.. I am getting a better mosquito repellent, this goodnight/odomos isn’t working in the wee hours of the day.

Captain - The coolest one

2007-12-09T15:11:00.000+05:30

We call him captain, the captain of 10-c, he was for a long time (we used to think) unaffected by things happening around him, his happy nature very contagious. Most people never understood why he was doing certain things. Now he is on his way to a new beginning, but I must go back to the past and list out a few of his deeds, which are intriguing and comical.

‘K’-the boss being his roommate has had more experiences than us, one for example is the number of times captain comes out and goes into the bathroom to take his bath, and how captain admitted at having slept off inside!!
Captain has never had had any problems in getting sleep, in two years he has never stayed awake beyond 12 in the night, whatever be the reason- Football world cup final, cricket match, interesting movie, normal chit chat among friends- captain slept early.
But in sleep is where captain has had disturbances, the Peterson episode very famous among 10-c dwellers. “Peterson! Where is Peterson on my back?!!” :D
Captain is also an avid ganguly and ajith fan. He was among the few who actually watched few of ajith’s movies which he himself wouldn’t have dared to watch. He has used wikipidea to the maximum extent, found out new facts about Tipu sultan, about mughals(babar, how akbar came to throne), Shivaji being his favourite pastime for some days.
Captain was the in-house football guru, with rest of us having no clue about football even though we took part in a tournament of which the only outcome was the back passing skills of our goalie (name not revealed :D ), and not to forget the brilliant header by our defender which our other goalie K-the boss couldn’t stop.
Wherever he goes captain is sure to enlighten the place with his presence.
Captain Saran – the coolest one.

Chinmaya Vidyalaya.. Layega Ekta..

2007-11-30T18:39:00.000+05:30

There was a time when I liked going to school not because it was fun but more because I did not have anything to hate or dislike there. But after 9th std going to school, or specifically going to school before the morning prayer became a headache, and I didn’t have a choice of going late too. It was not the prayer which I had got used to, but the things we had to put up before the prayer. One of my favourite quit a few days back and just before she quit, she decided to write a song, she put all her poetic skills into work and wrote a song as a tribute to the school she was going to leave. The song itself starting with my school’s name “Chinmaya vidyalaya …” is really well written, but I did not understand why they had to put it out on loudspeakers everyday at exact 8:25, that was after the first bell ( you had to be ‘in’ before the first bell ). Come to think of it, it wasn’t the song which was bad, but it was the tone and the singers they picked, they picked out one girl with a very very high pitched almost nasal S.Janaki kind of a voice to sing that song, there were of course other similar people on chorus. Till date I don’t know which A.R.Rahman in our school composed to tune for the song!! I still doubt our music teacher in school; she was allegedly an M.A in music. We used to have 2 hours everyweek for one of Music/Mridangam/Dance/Drawing, and we all, that is most of the boys picked drawing as it was the only class one which you can bide time, complete homework, chat around while the poor teacher – an old teacher, she had no control over the class from 8th till 10th. She was a real artist, when asked she used to give a lot of tips and tricks for drawing and painting, but we lost interest in between. Coming back to the song, that girl was later named ‘nightingale of the school’ ( no one told the poor bird this info lest it kills itself). And to make matters worse, my school also started bhagavad geeta chanting after playing this song!!. By default all students of the school were participants in annual bhagavad geeta chanting competition, I too was :D !! Every class had to in a round robin way take up chanting geeta on the mike, but no one from our class showed up, none of the girls in our class (by 11th std they were only 5 of them) could spell bhagavad geeta let alone sing, while the teachers weren’t willing to let our baritones fill the school :D. Incidentally, I never reached the second round of that competition. After a few weeks our class was exempted from this routine, we had to be content with listening to it. Yesterday at 3 in the night, I suddenly thought of this song and all memories flooded back. “Chinmaya vidyalaya .. laayega sajeevtha.. chinmaya vidyalaya .. layega ekta ..
Bhakti gyan shraddha ke mahatve ko hum gaayenge ..” . . it goes on and on and on, really lonnngggg it was.

Money Money Money

2007-10-23T15:52:00.001+05:30

It was the day before my history annual exam; I was running for my life that day, behind me my father was gaining ground, I was caught red handed playing cricket. That day I got very good beating which I remember till now, for me then, it was a grave insult. In addition to the beating I got a one hour long advice on the importance of getting good marks – not that I was flunking in my subjects – but still I got the advice. Till date I am wondering why he gave me the advice when I was doing pretty well in the exams. All throughout our school/college days someone or the other would always tell you to study well and we agreed. The system in school or college too never helped, they would always people who did well in studies, if only they had acted otherwise, there were more things in life, much more than Integral calculus ever taught me. It doesn’t matter if you did well in your studies or not, all it matters is whether you had enough dough in you pocket to take you till America. While I was trying to figure out working of Klystron oscillator my lab team mate was out for a ‘dumm’ (smoke in slang). I used to wonder why he was like this then? Now he is someplace in US finishing his MS while I write this blog. If I think now, he must have been wondering why I was so much interested in finishing the lad on time.

No doubt the Hero Honda add in which a guy cries out “main aa raho hoon India” was created by a MBA grad who didn’t get his US visa. Since he couldn’t go there, poor guy settled down for some patriotic adds. Every thing is run by hype, if you don’t hype up yourself you might lose out in the competition, that is what I think US/MS has created now, also included in that list is onsite at work. So much hype has been created by people who have been onsite that those who are left behind for a variety of reasons are now looked upon with a sad expression which says – “ poor chap, I remember he used to be good at school, huuuhh .. life gets on, people lose focus, poor guy”. Little do they realize the kind of work that people in ‘onsite’ do, but at end of the day all that matters is the paper with gandhi’s photo on it. If you really get tough and ask people around questions on why this is happening, out comes the reply – hard luck guy .. take it easy, next year try again for your MS or maybe the next time such a opportunity comes along, you will be in it. Then there is the philosophical angle to it --- “ money is not everything boy, you will realize it later in life” .. ok I might realize it when I am above 60 unable to find out the difference between a Rs 50 note and a Rs 100 note, but not now, now is the time I require it, loads of it, but um hmm .. I am not the person, cos I was the topper, not for me atleast now.

Living in paradise

2007-10-05T14:19:00.000+05:30

Innocence or Ignorance was never a good thing to have. Being ignorant/innocent you allow unscrupulous people to take advantage of you. Nowadays it has also become a style statement, people tend to portray themselves as being innocent while on the lookout for other innocent lives. On the other end of spectrum are people who portray themselves as being know-all but in reality they are ignorant and get cheated.
There are people who take pride in saying they don’t remember what happened yesterday whether I went to place ‘a’ before place ‘b’ or the other way, but are able to remember some incident which happened years ago.
There are people who portray themselves as diplomats, being calm in a situation, thinking about good for all, saying things for common good outside in public but are the exact opposite.
Then there are people who are meticulous in whatever they do, but lose out on the accolades because they don’t show off too much, and are happy with what they get (atleast they seem to be)
Then there are the don’t cares who are oblivious to things happening around, don’t care about anything anywhere and just exist, they are really funny to be around.
Then there are normal people with no great ‘landing on moon’ ambitions ..

It is when all these people meet at a place does trouble being, which, happens everyday everywhere on this planet.

Twinkle twinkle

2007-10-04T18:53:00.000+05:30

Be it apple ipod/iphone, xbox , playstation 2/3 or other non-techy stuff temptations are everywhere, more so when you are not stable yourselves. I bought a mp3 player a year ago which I hardly use now. A seven hole flute is staring at me everyday from my cupboard. The carom-board hasn’t been moved from its place in the hall since may/june when Sathyavan sai paid us a visit. The less clearer your priorities are, the more you will fall to temptations, it also depends on the available cash in hand or in my case the credit card in hand. Four years back I walked out of a ‘get together’ just because my friends took me to Coffe-day at Isphani centre in Chennai instead of some other place when I had only fifteen rupees – enough to take me home. Now I haven’t yet estimated how many-if not thousands- hundreds of rupees has gone on coffee with friends @barista. Mr.Executive has a super costly headphone, so do pardesi babu and me. I bought mine when the old one was working perfectly.

As far I know we are the only roommates who have ‘get-together’ every time we travel to Chennai. The countless auto drivers we have fought with for raising the fare by five rupees while we had bun/vegetables for two hundred rupees (sub – translation for pardesi babu). It is high time we train ourselves to ignore flashy things which pop up everywhere, learn to ignore temptations, live with it than to solve it.

Ps: me looking out latest cheapest laptop now .. it doesn’t seem to stop ;-)

Guess who?

2007-09-28T12:08:00.001+05:30

Two: pardesi babu : The north Indian looking south Indian.
He’s our unofficial English guru. adjusts well with what is available, hasn’t tried to learn tamil even though he’s been living there for more than 20 years. Likes branded products, was initial afraid of him becos he speaks in English .

Three: Bharat bhooshan. One person who isn’t suffering from insomnia. Absent minded, very funny at times.. doesn’t know what is happening around him much. great fun to be with.

Four: executive.
Comes to have lunch or dinner in full formals .. tucked in shirt and all .. is very conscious of about his looks/dress. Of late has become really funny(at times really boring) with his comments and replies. Havent seen much of him at home as he isn’t around much (can be seen at office 24x7)

Five: Munna bhai – the south Indian looking north Indian
Really funny character .. mysterious at times.. still havent found out his school name .. gives out a different answer everytime I ask him .. short tempered (when it comes ‘six’).
Gets on really well with people.

Six: Old navy
Can be seen in t-shirts which would fit two people. Sometimes really crazy, really irritating when u go out with him ..cos he speaks to everyone on the way.. autowala, rickshawala, security, waiter, conductor, driver .. .. don’t go with him if u want to do something fast.

Seven: not so cool dude:
Gets on well with ‘six’. Has arguments with all of us. Centre of all ‘pulling of legs’ at 10-c.

One: me
Eight: sathyavan sai.

Spiderman in house

2007-08-17T11:06:00.001+05:30

I have sometimes wondered where I got this affinity towards some weird creatures, even though I would probably never want to handle them. It seems it started many years back in Battiprolu in AP. When I was two years old a cobra was found in a cupboard very near to where I was sleeping, then there was the crab and three or four snakes in Berhampur. Even in Chennai where it is really hard to find any wildlife other than crows/cockroaches, a snake somehow managed to find my cycle’s front wheel a comfortable place to coil itself around and take rest. This was all when I was in school, and it didn’t really matter then, but an encounter with a 5 inch spider in your living room is a different thing. This is exactly what we had to deal one fine night a fortnight back. Vivek’s frantic call for back up at home didn’t raise any alarms, we (Venkat and I) were relaxed, it might have been some cockroach or a small harmless insect, but imagine our shock when we opened the front door and found ourselves face to face with a 5 inch huge spider.
All our lives we have always seen spiders as some harmless things hanging out near the ceiling with wiry legs. We just had to blow them away. But this one was humongous, the biggest we had seen outside the T.V. We were faced with a dilemma –to kill or not to kill, what if we tried to kill and it escaped and attacked us instead, regardless of whether it is poisonous or not its size was enough to seed fear into us, if we just shoo it away it might come back also. So we decide to kill the foe. But it wasn’t a simple matter either, the spider was near the ceiling, away from mine or venkat’s striking range with a broom. So we had to lure it to a lower height and then give the fatal blow. We decided to film our brave efforts; vivek took up the position of a cameraman. I tried to lure or rather irritate the spider into coming down, it was quick for its size, once or twice it attacked the broom, I was happy I was nowhere near its huge fangs. It kept running towards the tubelight – its safe haven. After nearly half and hour we got it in a safe height. I handed over the broom to Venkat to deliver the final blow. The attack came from the left, with a blinding speed Venkat leapt off the ground with arms raised as if ready for smash in badminton. It was over in a second. The spider which had taken refuge in our house had left this mortal world, it soul departed, only its body remained, after a final photo of the crime scene we hit the sack. We had conquered one of our worst fears. The spider was a visible threat which we could easily conquer, while there are other mysterious biting insects which have so far been invisible to our eyes but somehow have managed to wound us every night. The mysterious insect might have won the battle but the war will be ours, we will win over every foe that kochi throws up at us and live to tell the tale in this blog.
Our fight for independence continues.

Kochi to Allepey - beyond the horizon

2007-08-13T16:01:00.000+05:30

The prospect of another weekend going waste, with us doing nothing other than the basic activities to live was enough to kindle the roadies in us. Neither were we the real roadies with big Harley’s or the Bullet nor were we planning to go on a all India trip in our steeds, but we were simple people working (spending time in office) 45-50 hours on weekdays and looking for something exciting in the weekend atleast. Rajan as usual with his ever enthusiastic planning of trips which never really happen suggested Allepey as a possible destination, we agreed. So we got up early on Saturday at around 11am, got ready and had lunch @brindavan – one of our life savers in kochi and the starting point for the trip. I had to fix my rear view mirror as it had become loose and kept falling on my arm. We started from Brindavan @1:30 after rajan got a pair of new sandals. The route was fairly simple, straight road with no forks or turnings for the full distance of 64 km. With Venkat and Rajan on one bike and me and Vivek on my bike, we hit the road.
The ride was mostly uneventful with Venkat being the avid photographer trying to take pictures on the go while the bike was going at 60kmph. We passed two bridges a few kilometers from vytilla, great view from there, although at the time it felt as if the bridges were made of some other material other than concrete as it started wobbling every time a truck or bus passed over it. After these two bridges, there wasn’t much change in the landscape. The highway at many places became a bit dangerous with too many potholes. Even though I wasn’t breaking any speed records I was going at decent speed, while Rajan on his fiero sped away out of sight with Venkat taking photos on the pillion seat. After nearly one hour and ten minutes we reached the outskirts of Allepey at 2:40pm, had tender coconut in a roadside shop and were off to back waters where the famed boat races took place. The entire place was off for cars and bikes, we parked our bikes and proceeded on foot.
After about a 2 km walk, we reached the back waters only to be greeted by a huge wall of people. There was a raised platform made out of wood and people were all over it. The entire place was a mess and we couldn’t see a thing. So we left that place and walked a kilometer further down, the place here wasn’t so crowded, we even got ourselves spot near the water’s edge. Although we couldn’t make out who or what were the teams, we enjoyed our first live boat race experience. After an hour or two at the boat race, we raced off towards the beach, with a little photo session at the railway gate. It started raining heavily when we reached the beach, so we took shelter in a Guajarati temple nearby. The allepey beach is what a marina or a besant nagar beach would have looked like 15 years ago. Neat small little place. Then it was time we left and by the time we reached the highway it was dark. The vehicles coming on the opposite side did little help by being on high beam, thus blinding me. The ride back took more time with us trying driving slow to avoid the potholes. A wrong turn took us to Edakochi instead of back to Vytilla. It was the shorter route but it took us more time to travel through the crowded streets of Edakochi, Mattachery, Fort kochi . Finally we were back on MG road. Not wanting to have dinner in a place where cockroaches kept flying all over, we came out of dhaba and finally ended up having dinner @Brindavan/Abhirami- the place where it all started.
It was a fresh experience, traveling 120km on bike, watching the boat race and the clean beach. Nice way to spend the weekend although a bit more tiring than the other option of eat/sleep/eat routine.

Take this Chennaite

2007-05-28T20:08:00.000+05:30

7:20 am: I finally get up. I had initially planned to get up at 7am to kick off a new week. I went to the window, saw that the rain which started last night hadn’t yet subsided, so went back to bed, rolled around for 10 minutes, trying to sleep, but sleep is one rare quantity for me, it never strikes twice, not after I had four continuous hours of sleep.

7:30am: After filling up hot water, I get ready to take bath, but on my way I now saw Rajan looking at the rain with utmost interest. Since I was in no mood to decipher what his interests in rain were, I decided to take bath.

8:00am: I come out to see vinay still in dreamland. Kapil was calling out to me, asking me if he could come with me. Why? Saran is still sleeping and wants to come office late today. Ok..

But it is raining heavily!! So we wait until we could wait no longer.

Having no prior experience in driving in rain, it was fun, except that the brakes weren’t working normally. That was little scary when overtaking vehicles.

As a chennaite I welcome rain with both hands and but unlike others I don’t expect the roads to be dry. When it rains there are a number of articles in The Hindu every day in Chennai in late October, November. Throughout the year people crave for rain and when it rains instead of being happy they start cribbing about the bad roads, water logging slush. Be it because of bad administration or not, the roads normally give away in the first rain itself, from then on almost all roads are full of potholes, sometimes making them really dangerous, be it bad roads or not. I sometimes feel, it is the ill will of so many people hating the rain that rain never comes :D. Many people in Chennai mostly office goers start complaining when it rains.. “aiyyoo, road ellam ore seru, thanniya irukkum .. office porradhu kastam L ” .. what do you expect when it rains? A clean dry road ? I heard one neighbour complaining to my mom one day, there was one thing she mentioned I didn’t like.. going to office in such a climate is difficult .. seri ok don’t go! .. the roads are full of slush, water logging …blah blah… what is the point …anyway she is going to the office rain or not then why crib.

It was fun going to school when it rained, the roads were water logged, every trip was interesting as there was always a question of whether the manhole was open underneath all that water. Vembuliamman koil was the worst of it all, even for an overnight rain the water would be knee deep on that road, but it was worth the ride. Now coming back to the problem, Chennaite’s don’t deserve the little rain they are getting because of the noise they make when it rains. Even years of water shortage never taught them a lesson.

Great weekend- Karur, Madurai, Trichy

2007-03-26T13:51:00.001+05:30

What started as a simple trip to Karur to attend a colleague’s marriage ended up being a round trip across central Tamilnadu. The bad thing was it wasn’t planned. If it had been planned beforehand we would have had even better experience.

We left Kochi on Saturday night by the Tea-Garden express (haven’t figured out why it is called so). The journey was uneventful in which surprisingly I slept well. We reached Karur – my place of birth – the next morning. I expected some strange feelings while stepping on to the platform, but it never happened atleast the there weren’t any strange feelings. I felt happy being there after 10 years. Not much had changed but I never visited the places I knew before to be sure. I remember very little about karu…. my grandpa’s house, the street , krishna theatre, sundaravilas hotel, ajantha theatre, thaandoni malai, a few names mostly my grandpa’s friends – jayarama konaar and some other konaar.

So once the marriage got over, we moved on. After asking directions for the bus stop where the bus to Madurai stops, we reached there in a jiffy with vinay helping himself some ‘Nannari sarbat’. The bus ride was a three boring hours ordeal with ‘Mudhalvan’ movie not helping much. After enjoying mile after mile of acacia trees and some other thorny plants(the one definite way you can say you are traveling in Tamilnadu) we reached Madurai’s periyar bus stand. We had our lunch at a road side hotel. We never expected such great food at such a small place. Having been to decent looking hotels in Kochi which serve food which you would dare eating only if you were stuck like us, in kerala, the lunch in Madurai was brilliant. We then took a local bus to reach the ‘Meenakshi Amman’ Temple. Since it was near closing time, we couldn’t explore much. We went to the thousand pillar mandapam inside the temple, which is now a museum. After nearly an hour we came out of the temple- actually we were almost pushed out by the temple guards.

Visitors to Madurai must definitely have ‘Jigar thanda’ or Jigari thanda. It is strange looking and strange tasting drink famous in Madurai. But we liked it very much, so we had two servings of it.

Taking an auto we reached the bus stand and boarded the trichy bound bus. Another three hours later we reached trichy. Since we had one and half hours until our train. We visited the ‘rock fort’ temple in trichy. It provided a much needed exercise for lazy souls like us. After a real tiring expedition we reached the station in time for our return journey again by the ‘Tea- Garden express’.

One fine morning in Allepey express

2007-02-13T11:47:00.000+05:30

I wasn’t able to stretch my legs. Was too sleepy to notice the three bags placed at the end of my berth. Only when the alarm on my phone started ringing that I got up. I got up to find half my berth already occupied by three bags. All typical officegoer’s bags. Same black colour. Surely placed there by, some friendly person who wanted to make sure I got up before my station. I looked around for that person to thank him. But he was no where in sight. After I got my bearings I started looking at how to get down from the top berth. I found a way.. simple way it was in the end. I just started getting down ignored the bag in between. According to physics there was no way I could get down without pushing the bag down. I was not in a mood to disprove physics theories. So, I pushed the bag on top of one persons head nonchalantly. Didn’t bother to ask an apology because invariably it was his bag, he hugged it to his bossom immediately. Who cares? I got down and faced my next problem. My sandals where nowhere in sight. I looked around at the obvious places under the seats –with very little help from the ten to twelve open ticket passengers who were coolly sitting in the seat I had booked one month ago paying 300 freaking rupees.. after I found my sandals I took up the next problem- my seat.

Note: I have nothing against bald men or their wives.

There was a bald guy sitting in my seat- well officially my seat according the ticket I had till ernakulam. Since he had occupied my seat and there was no other place to stand let alone an empty seat, I had no other option so I asked him to vacate my seat. “Sir this is my seat”. Silence .. no response, he was looking interestingly at the coconut trees passing by. May be he was hard of hearing. Tap on his shoulders. “Sir, this is my seat, please get up”. He looked at me with a sympathetic expression, moved his butt a little and showed the little place for me to sit. I was getting irritated with this bald guy. “hello, this is my place, get up”. He said something I understand. Once again “hello, get up.. you first get up, this is my seat” the crowd around started looking at me as if I just murdered him. He got up finally, I thought he would give me his seat, but he said “this is my wife so I am sitting with her”. That was it. It was the ultimate explanation anyone could give.

“so what, she can be your wife or anyone else, who cares, both of you get up”. I was so pissed off I would have said have your affairs in your house. The bald idiot guy irritated me very much. Even after I totally wrote him and his wife off, the idiot hadn’t understood the situation. I was taken aback. Dumbfounded. I was thinking “either this man is on a high or he is really stupid” (flicked this from somewhere :) ).. it was a question one would never ask after 5 minutes of argument. i never expected this. He asked me “do u have reservation?” why the hell would I argue with a 50 yr old guy, damage his family , his wife, waster my energy if I didn’t have a reservation!!!

Amrithavaahini - let us ride the music wave

2007-02-04T16:18:00.000+05:30

“Saamaja vara gamana …” these were the exact words which started off a musical revolution in 10-c Si Apartments Edapally. Though it was not the only song in the movie “Sankarabharanam” there was some spark in that song which lighted our dead or about to die artistic instinct. I know a few eyebrows will be raised questioning that instinct of ours, but no one can deny the effort being put in to create, if not heart melting music but atleast some sound which encourages one to practice more.

The flute we bought at Athirapilli falls started the next level in our search for musical nirvana. Rajan, Vinay and me are so far the only members of this club. This club is in reality no club, it is not one which has been formed to impress supervisors, or is hyped up so much with not an ounce of substance. It is an informal group (at present only three people) trying to learn something. We may not become great artist, but we would have learnt something, we would have learnt to appreciate great musicians and artists more. We would have felt the difficulty in playing the instruments; the effort needed even to produce the basic sounds properly. We found it the hard way yesterday that playing a flute was not a joke. Even to get a simple train whistle like sound took me the better part of half an hour. Imagine me playing a full keerthana on a flute. Once we got through the initial difficulty of getting a simple sound from the flute, we started discussing the basics---

Where is the S R G M P D N in this flute … before that what is this sruthi ? what is a thaalam ??sruthi, thaalam, ragam,

Being engineers J we took a scientific approach. A band of frequencies is the sruthi (what people call elu kattai or elra kattai) or scale. Within each sruthi there are low frequencies sounds and high pitched ones. So any song can be played in any sruthi depending on the ability of the person. So that part decided we moved to thaalam, this is the speed at which the swaram or words are played. That too can vary. We were now decently well versed at these. Now came the next question where is the ‘Sa’ ‘Ri’ ‘Ga’ .. in this flute. A small book from the nearby music store helped solve this a little bit.

But we ended up with a new problem. The book told about S R G M P D N S for a 1 + 6 hole flute, and all the flutes depicted on the book had the same number of holes, while the three flutes we had either had 7 holes or even worse eight holes. It took sometime before we decided to ignore that last two holes and use the remaining six for our endeavour’s. Thus, started our music club- the club meant only for music. We are not trying to impress anyone, not trying to hide any image of not having work, there is no one drive this, no one takes the ownership. As said “Kotilo oka manushi unte chaalu ee amrita vaahini anantharanga pravahishthundhi”. Music is divine whether Indian or western.

The trip and the scare

2007-01-22T11:15:00.000+05:30

Finally, a team outing! Lets rock…..Yercaud .. It was supposed to be a one day outing giving us time only for team activities and not much for sight seeing.

The probability that any team outing would begin on time is very low, so in accordance to that theory 16 people ended up waiting for two for 45 minutes. So the journey which was scheduled to start at 9 pm started at 9:50 pm instead. The driver wasn’t too happy about being held up late but I wasn’t least bothered about him. He spent the entire 40 minutes sleeping at the wheel. Ahh .. such a thoughtful driver he was getting sleep whenever he can.. how naïve I was not to have noticed such ominous hints!! We raced across Kerala.. while the driver was busy maneuvering the mini bus on the highway, we started playing the normal timepass games – dumsy and anthaakshari.. it went on for almost three hours after which people lost interest and the game faded away into oblivion. Palakkad – one hour left from Kerala – Tamilnadu border and the “valayar checkpost”. The drivers orders for me were to provide him with a passenger list with age and sex. I wrote it down in a piece of paper and gave it to him. “not this kind of paper!! Give it in a proper paper” was his response. I had half a mind of telling him to go to hell but he had a point, who would accept a list written on a small notepad. So I gave him a new list with a carbon copy sometime later. The driver examined it, he seemed to be satisfied with it .. the verdict –accepted .. hurray !! Valayar checkpost – he ordered Rs 450 – said 400 was for the kerala check post and 50 for the tamilnadu checkpost. The senior most person on the bus was in dreamland so I gave him the money myself (sometime back she had paid for the diesel charges).

I went with the driver to the checkpost and saw that he did what he said i.e give 400 at the checkpost – he did.. so I came back, the driver came back sipping water from his water bottle. Said something in Malayalam about “pani” I remembered “pani” in tamil being cold or mist, so I nodded back to him “yes there is pani”. Into tamilnadu, the roads were a bit better, being toll roads. Ahh finally all my work is done, I thought why not get some sleep, it was already 2 am. Sat down, relaxed in my seat when two or three other night owls around me indicated the driver’s weird style of driving. I hadn’t seen anything particular till now, but anyway I too looked at the road, oh my god, we were going in long ‘S’ shaped curves on a straight road. Still trying to be optimistic I went closer to the wind shield and checked out if the roads were bad and whether our good driver was trying to avoid potholes. But the roads were immaculate no even a single bump in sight, so something was wrong with the driver! Then we got the confirmation from the man himself. …..

Traveling at 90 km/hr he went straight for a stationary lorry in the middle of the road waiting for a right turn. We wondered why? The drivers face looked calm and relaxed. A bit too calm and relaxed .. as if .. as if in deep sleep .. our good old driver was getting nap while traveling at 90 km/hr ..!!!! he got up in a moment realized that the lorry was not moving but stationary and at the current speed, the bus would have to jump over the lorry to avoid an accident, so he braked with all his might. The huge sound of brakes screeching awoke every single soul on the bus except one! But the momentum built in the bus was so much that it was impossible to stop within the short distance, so he swerved to the left out of the highway into the mud beside the road, came to halt in front of the lorry and to the amazement of all started shouting at the lorry driver in hindi.

The realization fell like a bombshell. Our driver fell asleep on the wheel!! with no other feasible option in hand, we asked him to complete his short nap. He stopped the bus, took out his make shift bed and was asleep in a jiffy. Great! .. we were in the middle of no where somewhere in a small town called avinashi with driver who is asleep. After 45 boring minutes we decided it was enough time for the driver to freshen up and woke him up. But we were mistaken, this time it was even more dangerous. One more narrow escape. Same 90 km//hr, again one more lorry, but this time he was trying to overtake one, somehow fell asleep in process, got back awake realized his mistake braked and swerved left hard. This time not many knew it happened. This was it, it became too dangerous for him to continue like this. We(they were three of us awake at that time) asked him to stop the bus near a tea shop. Had tea ourselves, bought him tea and gave him the options he had .. one .. let one of us who knew to drive cars to drive the bus while he the driver slept .. get a hold of himself and drive properly .. he took the second one. We wanted to know what was the reason for him feeling so sleepy. He said he wasn’t feeling well the day before. Then it dawned on us that he may be on medication. Yes he was .. he said he had paracetamol and benadryl the night before coming starting the bus.

who in his proper mind would take paracetamol and benadryl before driving!!

So with no other choice and already being late by one and half hours, we started again. This time all three of us, were constantly chatting with him trying to keep him awake. Our chat went on n on for three full hours from 3:30 till 6:30 am until our questions dried up. We had got his full biography in our hand then. He was 33-34 yrs old, 15 yrs experienced, initially was a lorry/bus driver only now a mini bus driver ..long distance wasn’t new to him .. he had gone till pune .. Volvo buses cost 60 lakhs .. and gave mileage of only 2km/lt .. he had two kids one in 1^st std and other in 4^th std .. his name was sudarsan.. yes the highway was part of a golden quadrilateral project .. joining jammu with kanyakumari .. and roads from krishnagiri to Bangalore were far better than this .. there were lot of bad driving on highways (he forgot his name though) .. it went on like this for full three hours .. we three having lost our sleep already didn’t mind much ..

So finally after 4 grueling hours with this nutshell of a driver from 3:30 am we reached yercaud at 7:45 am. Happy to be alive I got down and as a first task asked our beloved driver to get some sleep. He obliged by sleeping from morn till dusk, when I woke him again for our return journey. The tour in itself wasn’t as exciting as our journey was, the return being equally exciting and thrilling. Only this time we knew what to expect. Thanks to our drivers heroics we learnt very important lesson that day – it is better to be insomniac as you have a chance to save yourself!!

Black !

2007-01-17T19:42:00.000+05:30

Today was a boring day at work. Everything around me looked dark, sad, and lifeless.

The fake GI-Joe toy is looking at me with a sad expression. The giraffe seems to have shrunk in its grief. The mirror in the clock has lost its shine. I suddenly realized that my pc is black in colour. I have a black bag, am wearing black trousers today, have a black chair….. the list goes on…

On some other happy bright day all of these may have looked different. The GI Joe toy may actually be looking happy, the pc is black so that it is easier to maintain ..the colour black would have had some meaning other than grief and pain… I am wearing black because my other clothes are yet to be washed. But today um hmm .. today is dull boring day .. so anything grey appears black :-) ..

To brighten my day I am going to watch finding nemo tonight with all its bright colours and the happy ending….

Why did they leave me

2007-01-08T13:37:00.000+05:30

The giraffe looks down at me. I too look down at it, I am not going to ‘look up to’ a giraffe – no way. I take it he liked me very much, but I am not for this kind of friendship. My life began here. The only thing I know about this place is this room or whatever. It has vertical bars of some material. Five years back it was huge, then as time progressed it has decreased in size, now it is barely enough for me. I don’t why I am here, I keep asking the guy who feeds me, but he just moves away whenever I go closer. Every day when the red ball of light is about rising there in the distance, this guy opens the bars, it opens only for him, I tried many times, it does not open for me. Maybe it recognizes him like a mother would recognize its son. Maybe it is his mother. So when he opens the bars I go out. I have a wonderful time outside, I try to make friends with everyone. Many people come and stand near the wall, I invite them all, I call them, but they never come

:-( , they just stand there, some of them have a black thing in their hand and light comes out of them, I asked them to lend it to me, but they ignore me all together. These humans are bad, here I am inviting them, call out to them, asking them for help, and all they do is ignore me. The only one who is ready to talk to me is the giraffe in the adjacent place. Whenever I am outside he comes near my wall and shows his tongue to me. I too show my tongue in response. Then when the light ball is about to fall off on the other side the man once again opens the bars, he keeps some food inside thinking that I will go in because of the food, again stupid human, I go in because the light ball is gone, there wont be any light here, I can see even without the light but the humans go away, my friend giraffe also goes to sleep, so I too go inside, the human is happy that I have gone inside and he closes it, again with some magic, his mother recognizes him.

Then one day a new human comes near my place, he is dressed neatly, he is fairer than the other usual human, but he has a strange object in his hand. I am not sure what that object is, he brought the object to his face, he clutched it in a weird manner and then a big sound came and I felt a sharp pain near my back, I looked around. It was brightly coloured thing which was pinching me, I reached out to remove it, I could not. Then I started feeling sleepy, it was weird I normally don’t sleep till it is dark, I couldn’t resist the sleepiness, I turned and asked the human what it was, once again the big sound and sharp pain, I decided it was the ill omen of the new human that whenever I looked at him I felt this sharp pain. I decided not to do it anymore and went to sleep. I don’t remember how long I slept, but when I woke up I was no longer in the same place, this place was different, this wasn’t the usual place, there was no sign of the wall or the human who gave me food. There were tree all around, I looked around, I saw the human with the strange object, I turned quickly to avoid that sharp pain, it worked I had no pain, I looked at some other people who were there, they saw me, got into their vehicle and it moved away. “Wait!! Wait !!..where are you guys going, where is my food, I am hungry .. aahh … they left me here in this strange place, what would I do here, I have no food, I don’t even know what it was it tasted good, how will I get it here, may be some human will come here and give it to me. I will wait till then.

It no longer is fun

2007-01-08T13:03:00.000+05:30

Growing up is becoming less adventurous, having to deal with more constraints, rules, customs, society basically it is making yourself a boring creature to be with, with you being incapable of doing something crazy or out of the box or doing something for fun. Whatever you do even if it is new and exciting for you it is no longer done for the want of it, it is all done with only thing in mind- money- and if it is not so, it may be that the thing needs so much of money that you drop it all together. Cycling used to be fun a few years back, now is it fun? No, you do it because you want an exercise and in few cases to save some money spent on petrol. You don’t ride around your flat in cycle all day even if you like to becos you’ll think people would brand you crazy or the rowdy types. Do you jump into the gutter to retrieve a ball when playing cricket? No! You ask some small kid to do it for you.

While growing up did give us a lot of options we never had previously, it has taken away all we had for 15 – 18 years. We no longer have that freedom or security. Can we now ring someones door bell and scamper from there. Or can we release air from next door uncle’s motorcycle for ‘revenge’. Nope :-( none of it is possible. I once shouted at one uncle “poda sotta thala *%$%$%” and few weeks later I asked him how he was, he had forgotten all of it or atleast he had forgiven me. I was not a 4 year old then, I was in ninth standard and still nothing. If he had come home with complaints I had a huge truck load of complaints against him, so my case was strong. At that time I thought he was afraid of complaining, come to think of it I think he was. Now who would go in public and say that he was bad-mouthed at by a teenager in front of 10 kids, or that the same kid threw an atom bomb into his bedroom through the window, when he himself had a worrisome kid who caused an old man his eye sight.

I am missing all that, hope I had that freedom now, I would have given my opinion to a lot of people.

Across the coromandel coast

2007-01-02T13:23:00.000+05:30

Beep beep beep .. the sound of alarm started ‘the day’, the day when I would embark on a 1670 km train journey cutting through 4 states running along the coromandel coast …

The train is late – half an hour late - the other train coming from the Trivandrum the special train has come early. Passengers from the just arrived Tamilnadu express walk past in their winter attire – funny, winter attire at 10:15 am in Chennai. A monotonous voice announced the arrival of the train. S6 – 4 LB, a middle aged lady with a 2 year old baby sat in my seat, I took the nearby middle seat, along came mister one hand jones with his right hand in plaster, poor guy had a fracture. One hand jones immediately starting listening to music with his brand new Ipod nano. Not to be left behind, I too took out my own version of Ipod. An uneventful one hour passed with no signs of the TTE. “Saar, I have four ticketsu saar, all four confirmed but two tickets are in S3, there are three ladies saar only me gents, can you take the S3 seat saar”. I pounced on the opportunity and took leave of one hand jones and aunty with baby. S3 -13 someone is sitting in my seat and having full meals, he looked like a Andhrite – “sir, ee seat naadhi, after u have ur meals will u please vacate it” It took 40 minutes for him to finish his lunch, then his wife started having her lunch, not to mention their family friend. So I waited in a nearby seat.

One hour later I got my own seat. Gudur, Nellore, bitragunta, ongole – the train goes on. The only stop being at Ongole for 3 minutes. The 6 month old baby is looking at me as I dropped from Mars. I looked back at her as if she was from Jupiter. Then she slept off.

After having my own lunch of two cakes and one banana, I waited for something interesting to happen. When nothing did, I started to enjoy the beauty outside, agricultural land everywhere, the fertile Nellore delta is ideal for rice cultivation and Nellore is well known. The train passed over the River penna or pennar and then numerous unnamed canals. After seven grueling hours the train stops in the middle of a bridge over Krishna river. The entire train is standing on the bridge seventy to hundred feet above the water surface, stupid people who would install a signal which would stop a train in the middle of a huge bridge? After a chilling 15 minutes the trains starts of again only to stop in Vijayawada – one of the places I have spent many days in my childhood. I get down to get some fresh air and snacks. Half an hour later we move off. 120 minutes later the river I like the most, the bridge I fear the most, by far the longest bridge I have ever seen, I didn’t have a odometer but I bet that bridge was atleast 2 – 2.5 km long, fifteen long minutes to cross that bridge – GODAVARI , such a huge river, I was told that the Godavari is the only river in Andhra which does not have Dam because of its huge size and unavailability of a proper location for a Dam. If traveling over the river in December was so frightening, I can’t imagine traveling in Monsoon when the floods are up. The family with the baby from Jupiter get down at Rajamundhry, in comes Mr. Panparag eating somberi and his friends. Eight in the night and he wanted to sleep, idiot, I had no option, mine was middle berth, so I lay down on berth cursing him till 11 after which I fell asleep. Got up at 8 in the morning and Mr Panparag someberi is still asleep. Result- I went back to sleep, he was waken up by a group of friendly eunuchs, they tried to wake me up too, but um hmm not me :-) as they say “it is easier to wake someone who is asleep not someone who is faking it – as was the case with me that day”. So for the first time I escaped and had a very good feeling seeing Mr Somberi give off Rs 10 . ha ha ha .. he deserved it spitting pan parag all over the place. To top it all he was adjusting his hair style every 5 minutes, to me even vi***’s hair looked neat that day.

No one informed me of the great Mahanadi, I never expected it to be so big, no wonder they named it that way. Smaller only in comparison to the Godavari, the Mahanadi was beautiful. While the Godavari takes your breath away with its huge size, the Mahanadi calms you with its beauty. In the early 8’o clock foggy morning the river looked godly. After Mahanadi we passed over numerous rivers mostly I believe were tributaries or distributaries of the great river. Orissa looked beautiful. It was not ‘one tree’ and water which made it look so, it was the variety one could see. So many different types of plants and trees and not to forget the different crops which were being cultivated. I could make out Sunflowers, some other small yellow flowers which grew in bunches, peanut crops and other crops which I couldn’t name and so many different varieties of trees –not ‘only coconut trees and rubber trees’.

Finally at 11:40 am I got down. The longest platform in the world – KHARAGPUR, 1.072 km long. Other than holding the title of having the longest platform and having its very own IIT, there is nothing else of interest in Kharagpur. One hour journey in a local train to Mecheda, and from there one more hour by road. At last after 26 – 28 hours from the time I got into the 17-D bus to take me to Chennai Central, I am in Haldia, my destination.

The secret seven and the sathyavan

2006-12-21T12:30:00.000+05:30

Bharat vilas – that’s what I am going to name 10-c Mandalay point, not because we are losers like Indian cricket team, no! The season’s changed –positive outlook. We are moving towards a healthy hygienic lifestyle …

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are completely imaginary. There is not lifestyle at all and huh !! hygienic ? healthy ?? forget it.

Yes, where was I? Hygienic and healthy lifestyle. One year in Kochi had kindled a lot of things in us and one among them- culinary skills . As a part of our ‘be proactive in life’ resolution, we( eight –including sathyavan sai and the secret seven) bought a gas stove and there started a long process of making ourselves kitchen friendly. We were already dining table friendly. I am proud to say that we are now experts in making a variety of items ranging from hot water, coffee, boiling milk, rice, noodles and soup. Once or twice we have even tried out making rasam and sambhar much to the delight of our friend Kabali(name changed). There was a lot of zest to be involved and to show it to the ‘man’ that we can do it. ‘Ready to mix and eat’ items flew in by the day. ‘Paruppu podi’, ‘karuvepla podi’, ‘poondu podi’, ‘instant rasam’, ‘instant sambhar’ – you name it we had it. With an appetite that would please gatotgaja 25 kilos of rice were finished in about 10 -15 days time. Such was our passion and commitment (hunger rather :-). But the initial momentum died out, now the gas stove is rarely used other than for making ‘health drink’ by the captain himself and an occasional oatmeal breakfast by yours truly and oatmeal ‘by2’ friend. Is this the end of secret seven and their delicious dinner? Will they go hungry? Has the work pressure numbed their culinary skills? Will there never be the sweet smell of sambhar cooking in bharat vilas aka 10-c edapally. Only HE and the secret seven know the answer to that. Let us hope the new year brings in new spirit into the hearts of the secret seven.

There is however some hope, because till today even though the cooking has stopped, we still have breakfast in the morning in the form cornflakes thanks to the efforts of the courageous, omnipresent, kindhearted, lively, enthusiastic (ok may be I am crossing the line here) --- add other ‘good’ adjectives--- the great krk himself (that’s me J ) on every single day except a few days when he has been unable to because of various valid reasons.

Losers ! continued

2006-12-20T16:46:00.000+05:30

I am trying to portray to different perspective here.

There are no winners .. only losers and the rest are people who haven’t lost right now. Let it be single digit scoring tendulkar or out of the team ganguly or the “lost the ashes again” England cricket team they are all losers. We can see they are losers because these people are in the limelight, there are a million others who never come on TV. Take for example me, my roommates – a bunch of losers, my colleagues – a big bunch of losers. They are all losers, they loose in most things and do not loose in some because there are better losers. In the end it is about being the worser looser and not about winning. I guess this makes one among the elite losers. Ofcourse people may argue what about Olympic champs? Yes I accept they do win medals but what happens later, they lose it in life. Finally it all boils down when you lose

Disclaimer: The views presented here are authors creation and do not represent any person or people. The scores are real though :). It was not meant to hurt peoples feelings. The author apologizes to all such people who feel they have been wrongly victimised

jeet kar bhi haar gaye? did we lose even after winning?

2006-12-19T11:50:00.000+05:30

Even though some of us have done well in our previous role over the past 10 to 15 years as students, a few of us really well enough to be rank holders be it university rank holders or school level, those we used to think were losers are now pursuing there careers in the west while we are working for services companies which get works from BIG companies which in all possibility employ such ‘losers’. We may end up working for people who we termed losers. Sometimes I get the feeling, why did I do what all I did, why didn’t I do it differently like the others. Why did we waste our lives trying to get top marks only to waste life again and I don’t like the lines or believe in “sabar ka phal meetha hota hai” or something else in other languages. One may say you are working while the others are still studying – but the point is he may come out of a college in US next year and his first months salary will outweigh mine 10:1, so what I earn in 2 really hard years, choking and fighting with gundarici and puttu kadala in coconut oil, he may do it in 2 months with a ham burger in his mouth. Still the amount of awe he would generate is far more, people would hardly look at me. “ Two years in IT industry and he still hasn’t gone onsite , arey even munna who has done production engineering from vasool raja college has gone to amrica twice now, there is something wrong with this guy, hmm .. people said he was good in his studies, come to think of it, he might have copied in his exams, then how would you explain such a ‘brilliant boy in school and college’ not to have gone onsite or gone for higher studies’ ? is the question people are going to ask in a few days.

Unfortunately we don’t have an answer which would satisfy all. All we can say is we are working in the ‘hottest technology’ and our team is working on one of the biggest es o see’s :-).

A new beginning

2006-12-02T23:42:00.000+05:30

The phoenix rises again. It is easier to write someone off. But I am back, though not with a bang but have atleast something to tell. After listening to the song Kerala fonia I am inspired, I used to wonder where the real bashers are ? There are here, in the world wide web spreading the news that the rumours are after all only what they are – romours . God does not live here any more.
That’s to continue with what I did in my previous posts.
I have been really “busy” the past few weeks and hence had no time to write a blog. I know it is hard to believe, but with my manager sitting a few feet away I cant just keep browsing the entire day. This time while traveling to Chennai I made a big mistake of not bringing a blanket. To understand this issue it is imperative that you travel only once(one is enough to make you understand the problem) from somewhere in kerala to chennai or the opposite route. There I was showing a macho image to the old man sitting nearby saying “uncle I don’t sleep much at night, I will take care of you dabba you can take my lower bearth” and I took his side upper. Even with the fans switched off the cold was unbearable. I was hoping to catch the fellow who rents out blankets in the train but thanks to Murphy’s law he didn’t turn up, so I was up all night “enjoying” the serene night journey through Tamilnadu waiting for the next station to arrive so that I can get a cup of hot steaming tea. At the end of this eventful journey I found out many things,
1. Old people are lucky with people like me around
2. The tea in Erode is better than the one in salem.
3. Allepey express is the worst train to travel in. This opinion is shared by a lot of people who are working with me ( Sai !! you too)
4. The engine driver must be a crazy fellow because he kept hooting the horn throughout the night.

After 6 sleepless hours in the near zero temperature(ok that’s exaggerating but it is very close to 10 – 15 degrees), Chennai at last. I got down at avadi itself fearing a rendezvous with our old friends from the “other” side or rather “neither” side (The Ali’s). To make my return a little less exciting I have kept a reminder on my mobile phone to take a blanket.

Note : This is directed at people who were last seen ridiculing others blogs. Not everyone can write blogs which people like. I am not trying to. This blog is a place where I write what I feel like, I am not writing to please you. Thanks

rain rain go away

2006-09-26T13:35:00.000+05:30

Varuna bhagavan is working overtime here. It’s been raining cats and dogs – no, gundarici here in Kochi. Someone ask him to stop this nuisance. We get drenched no matter whether we use an umbrella or not. Riding a bike in the rain is dangerous, with numerous potholes decorating the roads, not to mention the friendly bus driver :-) who is ready to send us lords abode everytime we step on to the roads. Walking on the roads here in Kochi requires pin point accuracy in jumping over potholes, alertness, eyes on the back of your head, ability to forecast one’s future and decide whether to venture into roads or not? Since I am bad in most of this it is difficult time for me. I have to keep looking backwards while being clear that there is no speeding lorry coming on the wrong side towards me. With such precautions we disappoint the drivers of Kochi every single time. As a further improvement we propose to use safety helmets for walking on the road and microcontroller based safety shoes which transport us to a safe location if a oncoming vehicle is too close for comfort by giving us the jump of our lives – jump to save our lives rather.

My umbrella is broken. The umbrella is the most important thing a person needs in kerala throughout the year—the more important if you don’t have a spare set of clothes for tomorrow. You wouldn’t realize how important an umbrella is unless you are stuck in kerala rain with no spare clothes at home, no umbrella and you are waiting for a bus which wont stop unless the driver sees you at the stop (where there is no shelter nearby from the rain, the only shelter is some 50 meters away from the direct sight of the road).. hows that for a curse. My umbrella got broken two weeks back, and normally I should have got it repaired by now, but these are not normal situations, since my umbrella is broken I couldn’t travel the 100 meters to the umbrella repair shop across the road on weekends since it rained heavily throughout the day ( atleast when I was awake). And on weekdays, the shop is closed when I reach the place at 6:45pm according to the strict rules and regulations of the region (when medical shops close at 8 why cant umbrella shops close at 6:30 ?? ). So even after two weeks when I have tried to get the umbrella repaired a number of times (it is once) it is still not in a working state. Even today morning when it was raining heavily, I had to manually hold my umbrella in a umbrella like position to keep away the rain. I have a long distance to travel today …. Bon voyage to me ..

blue green yellow and "tcsh .... "

2006-09-25T16:01:00.000+05:30

Added later … this railways website never works here. Today it is unimaginably slow, this is the umpteenth time I have been trying to login, the home page never loads. Maybe today is one of those days when nothing works. But the problem I am having mostly such days only there are never any normal days here. Where is normalcy in this place? Everything is abnormal here, right from my arm length bitter gourd to gundu rice everything here is one (sorry ten) sizes big. One would forget how small vegetables are when one lives here for an extended period of time. Living here I have an important lesson in life, no matter what people tell you, no matter how much one is ready to pay you, if you have lost interest in life want, want to roam around coconut trees with nothing to do in life, die peacefully drenched in rain this is the place for you guys you can come here. Tourists are welcome here anyday anytime. Hospitability is something they think you get in hospitals ignorant souls that they are. I take this opportunity to tell them that hospitability is not a medicine or an injection you get in hospitals but is a character of which India is famous of throughout the world. “tcsh .. … tcsh ….” No that is not a tc shell prompt but that is how you would be called here. They don’t confuse with names or titles here, it is a simple culture where elders, youngsters, ladies, gay people are referred to as “tchsh …..”
(pronounce it as hiss ..) it is something a king cobra would be proud of.

Having moved into a new building, I am surrounded by colours. If there was something called interior designing then the person who designed this must have always bunked that class and went for a movie. How can people have such worse tastes? Now look at my cubicle – one wall is purple, the second is black and the third one is chrome yellow and to top it all the wall is yellow colour. Yuck !! If I was in a better mood then maybe I would have liked this colour but today is not that day … today is one more day of disappointments. One more day which proves why I don’t like this state or its people very much. “Interestingly, a significantly large proportion of Indians in NASA are people from this state” .. a board in infopark boasts, doing what ? I ask – do they do what vadivel does in dubai. Guess so. That’s my personal opinion a highly prejudiced opinion in that. A state which celebrates the return of its rakshash king every year. Boasts of its great special meal. I am trying to book a ticket online. The internet connection is really slow, as always here. My dial up connection is faster than this. Common sense prevailed in choosing where to put the plugpoints and they have placed it on top unlike the previous place where the plugs were under the table and everytime one had to bend down, go beneath the table and plug the charger in. And the toilets are comparable to those in cinema theatres, the mirror is placed is such an awkward place it is convenient place for gay men to enjoy the view. Atleast I have got back my song collections to listen to. Let me listen to kaise hai ye ruth from dil chahta hai …

It does not matter what dil chahtha hai but what matters is only what purse ke andhar kya hai … and the pantry is one kilometer away. The stairs is closed and only one lift works .. what do they expect us to do ? if there was a sudden fire accident here in this place, I would all of us have to run to the stairs at the back of the building to run away. Till then probably agni god would be munching on his sandwich.
Talking of my (our future here in this wonderful place) .. we have a bright future awaiting us… as bright as the wall in front of me

Here it goes

2006-09-04T22:25:00.000+05:30

India is such a vast country with numerous cultures and their own respective festivals which they celebrate in their own grand way. May because of my inherent prejudice or some facts which I came to know over the past one year made me – a silent person who couldn’t hurt a fly ( tongue in cheek) to become into this – one who puts out his opinions… after reading this there will be some people who disagree and some who agree. For those who agree ( I already know their names as they will be only a handful ) I invite them to join the bashing.. for those who do not agree I would invite them to join the bashing too, as it would provide another view point which we are ready to oppose.

This is regarding an article I read in paper today. If it wasn’t for this article this blog would have never come, so I take this opportunity to thank whoever wrote that article. I have been looking for such a topic for months. Once in a year people eat what we eat throughout the year. For them it is a festival and the meal is a special meal. The article says that in no other culture or festival is such an elaborate meal prepared! My heart goes out to these poor souls. Little did they realize that right across their state boundaries people have these as their lunch everyday of the year. I guess they are really so much good mannered that they don’t even see what the person next to them is eating. It is really sad that even in this modern age where information spreads like fire, there are such ignorant people… :( ohh how sssaaadd ..
…. the author sheds some tears here after witnessing how naïve people are … . :( …. ……………..

let us all maintain a one minute silence to pay homage to these poor souls …..
Oh god, the kind hearted you are , oh benevolent one, inki raksha kar …

“ham bhagvan se prarthana karthe hain”
Om nama shivaya …
Hare Krishna hare Krishna Krishna Krishna hare hare
Hare rama hare rama, rama rama hare hare
Swamiyee saranam aiyappa
Sotram sotram aandavare …
Allah … mein dua kartha huun

now that the bullshit is over lets get down to business … the courage these people have to put up such articles.. to quote one “it is supposed to the most elaborate and grand meal prepared by any civilization or culture in the world.” The article was put up by a person who has been living in chennai for the past ten years. One could only imagine how naïve he was. I am going to visit all the holy places in India starting from rameshwaram, haridwar, kasi etc. We should ramp up these people. What would you suggest? I am looking at starting a channel especially for such unfortunate people, the channel would show what people in India have for their lunch. Ignorance must be abolished. “kaala akshar bhains baraabar” is a famous saying in hindi. I don’t know if the situation matches to the saying but that is the only saying I could remember. Let us celebrate this grand occasion.

Vande maataram.

We are the nocturnal animals

2006-08-08T11:17:00.000+05:30

Some four years back I have never stayed awake after 11 in the night. Now, I don’t get any sleep till it is 1 a.m. What is the reason for this change ? Thanks to our own Anna University and its stupid evaluation system because of which the no of marks you score is complex equation based on probability. It is easier to predict whether you will win “Bhutan Lottery” than to predict the marks you will score in the exams (you can sometimes succeed with the first but never with the second). With such a difficult task lying ahead we were always running against time preparing for the exams, so slogging in the night became a norm (I don’t mean to say that I did that….. I watch T.V or read a book).

You may ask .. why do you stay awake late now ?? One of our friends in a very good orator, we listen to his enlightening speech everyday ( :0! great orators please forgive me) By ten in the night he starts talking, and my god what does he talk !! The way he talks one would probably think he is drunk big time, but he hasn’t. Throw one more guy into the ring( the one with the “stylish” hairstyle !! he claims it is) you’ve got the perfect entertainment. One famous speech of his is on “Intellectual capital”. I guess readers will be interested in listening to his speech. He goes live everyday at 10pm on 10c- Mandalay point TV

Somberi

2006-07-12T18:05:00.000+05:30

There are times when you miss being at home. One such time is when u live with 7 other lethargic people. It is a competitive environment where each tries to be more lethargic than the other person. Unfortunately a few unlucky souls who realize that someone has to get up early (which may be ten minutes before the next person) is tagged as being an “early riser”. That tag weighs heavily on my shoulders. My mother would be really proud of me if she happens to know all this (ME AN EARLY WHO GETS UP EARLY … ha ha ha )

Like all people I prefer someone waking me up-so that if it gets late you can always throw the blame on them (just joking). I have not much of a choice, simple calculations would tell that someone has to get up early. I made that calculation(one more mistake), so i took up the cue.One thing I really hate is looking at seven sleeping %^&%@ while I get up. I sometimes feel like throwing a bucket of water on their heads. That’s why I like weekends, no tension of getting up early, no office, no work (as if I have on weekdays). Weekends I try to get up as late as possible to shrug of the bad feelings of the past week J .

“kaal karai so aaj kar, aaj karai so ab” is something which we despise

(something must be done to treat these seven people) ..what to do ?

Masters of the game ?

2006-06-12T11:39:00.000+05:30

Humans are the most destructive creatures to ever set foot on this planet. This may give the false belief that humans are the toughest, whereas in reality humans are weak creatures. A human baby cannot walk till its one year old and cannot feed itself till its more than 3 or 4 years and cannot live on its own until it reaches the teens. Whereas a tiger cub starts hunting in just one year and can live on its own by the time it is two. A deer can run barely half and hour after it is born. Given a patch of land, only we humans and elephants can make it bare. While all animals kill only to fulfill their hunger, only the humans kill for beliefs. Basically humans are weaklings, they cannot survive on their own, and they always need to be told that there is some supreme power above who takes care of him. So, when two groups believe in different supreme powers, it is only a matter of time before one groups starts believing that their supreme power is more or less powerful than the other group’s one. Here starts a clash between the two groups on whose power is supreme. The core reason behind every war is this belief. What if you are told that the thing you believe is not so powerful at all, there is something else which is more powerful? You are now confused- well you may not be now, but a thousand years ago when people were not like us, they would have been confused, the opportunists would convert to the new faith while the rest would condemn it or even fight against this change.

Darwin’s theory of natural selection does not include humans, atleast now. “survival of the fittest” ? In the twenty first century, this theory doesn’t hold good. If only the toughest were to survive then we would not be 6 billion in numbers, it would have been far lesser. Not now though now we have reservations for people who cannot. Humans are not the toughest, we are the opportunists. One human cannot take on a lion by himself, so he uses team work and his well developed intellect and modern equipment to take on the lion. We are well and truly the masters of the game and are marching towards a global destruction of the animal kingdom where one day, only the humans will be left, then our survival instincts take over and we would start killing one another for food, like how the our ancestors did some ten thousand years ago.

ONE-ce upon a time - II

2006-06-05T17:55:00.000+05:30

There are few things about people like one, they have a close circle of friends within which they are like any other person -free to interact, often express their likes and dislikes but outside the closed circle no one hardly knows them. Often they are tagged thickheaded, rude and god knows what. This is kind of situation one faced. Four never had such problems, he was an extrovert having no problems adjusting to a new environment, getting new friends, hanging out with them. He just forgot about one who was of no use to him now since he had taken up a different subject at college. Whoever had said that friendship is forever perhaps had never seen people like one, two, three and four or was perhaps a ‘four’ kind of a person who didn’t bother finding out, what the others felt. After college one joined a multi-national company while four and his friends joined another MNC. One’s luck continued as all his friends both school and college friends joined in a different company. So one had to start all over again, but life had taught him some things so one tried his mighty best to be free i.e get rid of his shy attitude and prove it to people that he wasn’t the thickheaded person they thought he was, that he too was a normal person in need of good friendship and attention. One now found new friends in six, seven and eight –all of them very helpful and understanding. But he had no way to tell if the friendship with six, seven and eight will take the same course as two, three and four – only time will tell that. As it happened, one got a mail from ….. Who else – four, his old friend. Although he wanted the old times back, it just didn’t happen – a broken cup remains broken, although it can be mended it will never regain its past glory. Likewise although one maintained contact with four, it was never the same, there was always an invisible barrier reminded him of the past – those darks days … those dark days when four ignored him, atleast three and two he could forget and forgive because they had moved to another school in another town. Now the once close friends remain not even as pen pals but as former contacts. One’s story is not so rare as we would think, it happens to every introvert, there is always someone who uses him and discards him like a paper tissue. It is for people like one to realize this and not give a chance for someone like four to take advantage of him. It is never late to change oneself. As Darwin correctly put it- “ it is a world in which only the fittest and the most ruthless survive”, the weaklings are destroyed. People like one should realize that they are not weak and that is only with his help that four excelled in his exams and take it up as a challenge and succeed in life all the while keeping in mind that they don’t give the same treatment that four gave to one to others. The future belongs to us.

YOU and ME

2006-05-30T11:19:00.000+05:30

What is common between Sachin Tendulkar, Brian Lara and Ramakrishna (me) … think …socho ….. didn’t get the answer ? … your English teacher must be the most unhappy person in the world now…. They are all proper nouns!!. Ok this is not about Sachin or Lara but this is about you and me.

How many times have we thought it would have been better to be someone else ? I bet every person in the world would have felt the same at point in his/her life. Finally all that matters is being yourself. Whenever we see someone we know becoming famous there is always a small voice inside which says “why not u? or sometimes why him/her? “. Although most people don’t show it outside it is always there (isn’t it??). why aren’t we outgoing as some others ? These things wouldn’t have mattered much some twenty or thirty years ago, but now in the so called “competitive age” we think it matters much because it gives the other person an unfair (ok, fair) advantage over us. With only 30 odd percentage left (others are already reserved) in every field (except toilets I guess) it puts a lot of pressure on today’s youngsters. One, they cant get over their inherent shy nature to overcome some hurdles added to that is the fear of losing out on the basis of reservation.

So, it is only natural that we feel jealous of our own friends even when we know they are a lot better than us in every field. If you say all these things to a psychiatrist, he would probably say we should feel happy with what we have, infact he will also point out to some homeless people and say “ see how lucky you are! You have nice home, good school education, a degree …blah blah ... Other bullshit follows”

But there is something which we shouldn’t forget, if we try to not be ourselves by being someone else we will end up in doldrums which can be verified from “gamblers ruin”. Gamblers ruin is a theory believed by many mathematicians around the world. Everytime a person gambles there is a equal chance of him either winning or losing. So you would think that in the end one’s loses will equal his gains. But that is not so in reality, let us say that two people play a game of flipping a coin. One person wins a rupee if it is head and the other wins if it’s a tail. At the start of the game one person A has suppose 90Rs and the other person B has Rs10. If suppose they play hundred such games then naturally A has a probability of winning 90% of the games so gaining 90*10 rupees but on the other hand he will also lose 10% i.e 10*90 . But being in a better position the richer person A will gamble more hence increasing his chances of losing. Thereby after a long series of games the richer person is bound to lose. One can ask the question as to how this is related to our topic. So…. if we start mimicking others without equipping ourselves and without being ourselves we will end up in the losing side again. It is always better to equip ourselves.

Since we can’t make others less competitive (there are some ways ..law does not approve them J ) let us try to make ourselves more competitive, there are a lot of ways to express to express yourself now, one sure way is this … .. if I had said all the above crap face-to-face I wouldn’t have a face left tomorrow.

"Never argue with an idiot. They will drag you down to their level and beat you with experience"

ONE-ce upon a time

2006-05-28T14:58:00.000+05:30

Once upon a time, there were four friends, really close friends – one, two, three and four. They used to go to school together in their bicycles blocking up the entire road oblivious to the car honking behind. They were in the same batch from class 7 till class 9. After class 9 two moved out of that school to a different school because he couldn’t cope up with the high standard of education at his present school. One, three and four understood his plight and life went on. One and three lost contact with two because he lived far away from their place .After the class 10 board exams three decided to go back to his hometown to complete his studies because he was now living at his uncles place, and his uncles attitude towards him seemed to have changed.

Come class XI, one and four were in the same school, so they continued their tradition of blocking the road. Four was outgoing while one was shy .Both class one and four were good at studies and there was always a healthy competition between them but one always used to outscore four. Time went on, four started coming to one’s house on the eve of exams and used to get some useful tips before the exams. As class XII board exams came nearer the number of visits became more frequent. Both one and four discussed a lot of concepts the day before the exams. The exams got over, both had done well. During the holidays one was confused- why didn’t his friend turn up, for all these five to six years even during the holidays four used to come to his house and they would play together or go someplace. But now, all of a sudden there was no four. He went to four’s house to see if four had gone to his relative’s house for the holidays. No!! there he was, sitting in the couch watching T.V. Anyway since he was there now, both friends played for sometime, chatted till it was late into night. One went to fours house once in a while but four never came to his house now!! . Then one day one met his other classmates, they said that all of them and four had gone to a cinema sometime back. One was now really confused, why didn’t they call him? Had he done something to offend his classmates and his friends? He had no answer. Time went on, now three came back from his hometown and had joined the same college as four while one was in a different college. One felt happy that his other friend had come back, but three never came to meet him! Two had also joined a nearby college now. One used to meet his old classmates from school whenever time permitted. He gave his new phone number to all of them hoping that atleast one of them would call. But the call never came. So, he started calling them but the responses he got drowned his spirits. Years passed one finished his college, his college friends were really helping him out but he hadn’t forgotten his old friends two, three, four and a countless others he had thought were his friends. The one thing which really hurt him was that the rest of them had frequent get-together’s and still maintained contacts while he felt they all ignored him. Time will tell what will happen to one and his friends.

Life at the edge of chaos

2006-05-17T15:20:00.000+05:30

One of the lines I picked up from Michael crichton’s Jurassic park. Michael crichton has done a great job in this book although there are a few glitches here and there, like how the mathematician who was supposed to be dead in Jurassic Park came back alive? I liked the book not because of the story involved but for the introduction given in the book, about the life at KT boundary (K-cretaceous, T- Triassic) and arguments he has put forward on extinction. The environment around us is seldom static, plants evolve as fast as animals do, but we don’t realize it. How would you account for the pitcher plant, the venus fly trap and the sun dew plant? Trees too evolve. To ward off insects trees produced sticky sap which entrap the insects. Some plants use ants to ward off other insects, it is a unique symbiotic relationship where the ants protect the plant from foreign attack while getting nourishing sweet nectar from the plant as food.

A very good example is the acacia tree and the giraffe. Long time ago the giraffes used their long necks to pick off leaves off high braches. The trees evolved by developing sharp thorns, the giraffe responded by growing long tongue to evade the thorns. In the next cycle the tree evolved chemical weapons. They started producing toxins which made the leaves inedible and harmful to the giraffe. They even developed a communication system wherein if a giraffe ate leaves from one tree, it would send a chemical signal to all the trees in the surrounding area, at once all the tree would produce high amounts of the toxin. The giraffes countered this move by moving to the next tree upwind.

One more thing which can be seen is that only small organisms evolve by mutations whereas large organisms like primates evolve by making behavioural changes, this behavioural change requires highly developed brains hence primates have large brains but large brains cannot pass through the small birth canal hence primates are born with small brains, with basic reflexes like grasping, sucking etc. The brain doubles in size in the first year. The primates counter the small brain size at birth by living in a group where members of a group raise the young ones and train them to face the real world. Hence primates haven’t developed for many years now. If there is a change in environment they simply move to another one or change their dieting habits. Only if a behavioural change happens suddenly do complex organisms perish. It is postulated that dinosaurs did not die because of a meteorite falling on earth but because their behavior changed after the meteorite fell on the earth 65 million years ago. Let us suppose large herbivores changed their diet to shrubs and grass instead of leaves on top of trees, then the smaller ones would starve to death leading to the death of predators which depended on the small dinosaurs.

chennai central welcomes u

2006-05-16T15:16:00.000+05:30

Built by the British some time back in the last century, the Chennai central is one of the major landmarks in Chennai. In any Indian movie, the first thing which they show in Chennai is the central and then comes the LIC building still the tallest building in Chennai ( that’s because the government is not giving permission for anyone to build a building taller than the LIC ). Anyway back to Chennai central. It is HUGE , there is no doubt about it and no other station comes even near it with respect to the looks, sheer size and the facilities ( whatever little that is there )- the Victoria station in Mumbai maybe- but this is not about any station, this is about the Chennai Central station. Like any other station people by the thousands (sometimes millions) come here everyday. Some maybe traveling, others may have come pick up their dear ones while there are a few, very few like me who go there just to be there (it sounds stupid! I know. Who would go to a station without any work). Whenever I am anyway near the central I hop in and have a look around and enjoy the scene there. It is not a comfortable place to be in the Chennai heat, the heat generated by so many bodies added to the Chennai climate makes it unbearable. Yet, the volume of people from different parts of the country one encounters there is astounding. There is life in a railway station which is not there in an airport. An airport is a dull place with nothing much of interest, one wouldn’t want to be there even when picking up someone, unless of course to escape the heat.

Sometime back the government wanted to paint the Chennai central white but the project was abandoned after some protests by the people. It is now restored back to its original brick red colour. The no of trains which come and go everyday is staggering and this no maybe rivaled only by vijayawada, it being in major station connecting the south central , southern, eastern and western railway. All major trains from cuttack and bhubaneshwar to Hyderabad, Mumbai ,kerala , Bangalore pass through vijayawada making it a busy station but it is small station and cannot match the central’s beauty. The architecture, the crowd, the trains and the just the atmosphere in the central station has made me a great fan of indian railways and Chennai central.

Potter mania

2006-05-15T17:38:00.000+05:30

I am not a potter maniac but if maniac is someone who has read a book more than twice then I am one. It all started some two years back when I saw my friend reading a Harry potter book in the bus. I asked him what the story was about. From what he told me I took that it was a well written book for children telling the story of a boy wizard. Since I had no other better work to do, I borrowed a book from him. It was the third part “ Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban”. That day another harry potter fan was born. Since I didn’t know what the previous parts were about I read those shortly. Then came the fourth, fifth and the last one “harry potter and the half blood prince” . But I couldn’t resist reading it all again so I read them again and again and again until finally I couldn’t do more because I knew too much so that I could tell the next lines so left it finally. Then I started watching the movies. The movie doesn’t give you the same excitement as the book does. Anyone who has read the first five books has a lot of doubts to ask. There are a lot of unconnected parts in the plot. All these are made clear in the sixth. The true colours of professor snape is out.

I believed the spell names had a logic behind them but the exact meaning I learnt from a blog one of my friends sent me . http://abhisconfab.blogspot.com/ It is really well written one and almost all the spells are covered in it. One thing which the harry potter series shows is that heroes are not ones who are brilliant in everything. It is clearly evident that harry potter doesn’t even know most of the spells, his friend Hermione does a very good job of teaching him many spells. Infact he is bad at his studies, manages to just scrape through every year. The only thing he is good at is Quiddich – a game played by wizards. The depiction of Hogwarts- the wizard school is brilliant. It requires great imagination to think of such things which at present I cant even dream about, but nonetheless it is worth reading the harry potter series even though they are a bit on the larger size.

Route 5E- Vadapalani to Besant Nagar

2006-05-15T12:27:00.000+05:30

It is one of the many bus routes in Chennai which takes you through the past, the present and the future of Chennai, where you go through areas where the rich , the poor and the middle class of Chennai lives. Chennai is a big city though not as big as Mumbai or Kolkata but it is definitely bigger than Bangalore. Keeping that in mind, you can expect any journey through the whole of any route to take atleast one hour, but during peak hours 5E takes one and a half hours. The bus starts at Vadapalani –known for its Shiva and Murugan temple (the name itself vadapalani means palani in the north … the other palani is near madurai ) after a long wait at the traffic junction at the 100ft road the bus then moves in to K.K.Nagar (Kalaignar karunanidhi nagar after the politician Mr.Karunanidhi). By this time itself, hardly just two stops in to the journey the bus is crowded. Still, the brave hearted people of madras board the bus without the slightest of hesitation as this is the only bus through K.K.Nagar to the Adyar and Besant Nagar areas.

The hot Chennai climate takes its toll on the poor passengers, smell of sweat mixed with coconut oil is all around, sometimes it gets to a nauseating level. The bus stops at major points in K.K.Nagar viz – PSBB, Pondicchery guest house, MGR Nagar (Ironically, an area inside KKNagar is called MGR nagar after Mr.Karunanidhi’s political rival)

The bus then moves onto the famous Ashok Pillar and Udhayam theatre where more people try to board the bus. By this time the poor conductor has had enough and he starts shouting at people not to board the bus as it is too crowded, but people ignore him and board the bus. The plight of college students is horrible, even thought they enjoy it seeing them hanging on the footboard give you a jolt. You cant blame them, the only space left on the bus is the footboards where 10-15 teenagers evade all laws of physics and hang on to their lives. The bus then moves through Jafferkhanpet and into saidapet where some of the crowd gets downs and some more board the bus. Next the bus moves into Guindy where the Guindy Nationala Park, Anna University and the IIT (Chennai) are situated on either side of the road. This is where the future of Chennai and India studies (the anna university and IIT that is not the national park). Then the bus gets stuck at the infamous Madhya kailash junction. Half the crowd gets down at anna university or at the IIT. The bus is now mostly empty with only three stops left. The final stop is near Besant Nagar beach where a large no of college students hang out wasting precious hours in their lives.

Besant Nagar is a posh area in Chennai as is Anna nagar and it too boast of a famous temple – The AshtaLakshmi Temple honouring Lakshmi- the goddess of wealth.

DAPPAN KUTHU

2006-05-15T11:36:00.000+05:30

Dappan kuthu , Gaana pattu , kutthu song and whatever name they are called in other south Indian languages have now become so common that every film has one irrespective of the context of the film. Even a high-fi movie has one. Why are these songs so famous? We will never know. It has the same beats as a “mariamman koil thiruvila” song has or the beats played by drummer at somebody’s death –“saavu molam “ … either way it is the same kind of beats ….. these used to be the songs which mostly would be heard in slums .. these were the poor man’s songs, now they are heard every where. Is it because we unknowingly get an urge to dance to the beats which one wouldn’t get if he/she was listening to a melody or because the young generation wants to look cool and doesn’t want to listen to the “old fashion songs” … But every year if one has a look at the national filmfare awards it is always the melodies which bag all the prizes not the dappan kutthu … So, even though these songs are far more popular the “other songs” these donot bag the coveted prize. One can argue that the panels for selecting the songs are old rags but even if teenagers were put as panels they would still select the melodies. Why did these songs come in the first place? Is it because someone wanted to remove the influence carnatic music had over film songs or because some music director could do only dappan kutthu songs. If you take for example one music director from Tamil Nadhu he is more famous for his dappan kutthu songs than for his other songs

Tamil or Thamizh

2006-05-12T18:45:00.001+05:30

I am by no means a tamil fanatic, but I have lived in three states and visited all the south indian states. One thing I have noticed is that in all the states except Tamilnadu, the local language is a compulsory language in school other than Hindi which is our national language. One may raise an eyebrow and put forward the question as to why this is the case. We have to go back many years and look at the various protests the political parties in Tamilnadu have made to stop hindi being made a compulsory language in schools and they were successful in their attempts. The government gave a choice of language studied at school. The idea was that given a choice people would make their wards take up tamil and all would live happily ever after, but what did happen? Now we are in a state were 75% of the 12^th passouts know only Tamil and English. It is not a problem if he/she stays in tamilnadu throughout his entire life.

IF these people move out of tamilnadu they are stuck with a new problem, neither do they know the local language of the state nor they are hindi literate which atleast the local people will know because their government had no issues with making hindi a compulsory language.

The other thing which is happening is the since many people have started realizing the above fact or because of some other reason, we now also have a large population of people who cannot read tamil (count me in ) which is bad the language which is known to be one of the oldest along with Sanskrit. This blog is not going make any effect on the current education system in Tamil Nadu but at least it point out some facts to the people about Tamil Nadu.

indian railways

2006-02-03T15:17:00.000+05:30

We all know that it is really big and almost everyone of has our own complaints.. but there are a lot of things about the Indian railways that we don’t know about nor do we care about or we don’t have time to look at the details.. almost everyone who has studied electrical engineering atleast for one semester would know that it is a dc series motor which is used in electric locomotives and electric multiple units .. there is also something called DMU ..it is not diesel multiple unit .. but a diesel electric multiple unit .There is a diesel engine which drives a generator .and the current produced drives another dc series motor. Hats off to BHEL which now produces these huge motors which were earlier being imported.

At first when lights were put on the coaches the normal 220v/40W bulbs and 220v/60w were being used which led to a lot of loss to the railways because people had a habit of pilfering the bulbs and fans .. so they came up with a simple solution to. make all the items steal proof .. they simply switched to a lower voltage .. now all the lights and fans in all the coaches work in 110v power supply .. so the thief has to really smart and probably would require a step down transformer ..which is a big ask for the average Indian thief. Now almost all coaches have tubelights which don’t require a starter ..and they make electronic chokes right here at ICF. All the furniture(whatever bear minimum that is there ) on the coaches are meant to last .. they are made of really good quality steel and wood …..

What I thought to be common knowledge had once been proved wrong by my friend .. the power lines that on top of the tracks are 25k volts (25,000 volts ) ..my friend thought that they were 220v supply !!! .. just think of the work that has to be put into the electrification work done by them. Nxt time u travel on a train just look at the overhead lines and u can see how much work has been done at the track intersections .i.e .when the tracks intersect the overhead lines would also have cross over … nxt time look at how it is done .. simple but effective idea . Even in a straight stretch it is not a single wire but only segments again another simple idea to solve the problem ,,, one line which is about to end go is a slow incline while a new line comes down at the same angle and at the point where they are at the same height the pantograph ( that’s the big claw like thing on top of locomotives .. ) switches to the new line … great stuff

boring days

2006-02-03T11:25:00.001+05:30

Four months back i would have been the last person in the planet to have started a blog. But after four boring months and suggestions from my friends i have started this. What do i do from morn till dusk sitting at my desk looking at the monitor? For one whole month i tried to do the obvious thing that everyone of has done in their first days at office. I tried to read all the documents my project manager asked me too, then nature took its course.. things started getting boring. i started feeling sleepy everytime i opened a pdf.Forwards were a problem in the beginning then they became the only source of entertaintment for me other than songs.. then started chatting first with people around me and then on the messenger. I even started writing really long mails which my friend in iim would be proud of. If someone from my college saw me now he/she would be in for a surprise .."avana ivan " (refer tamil dictionary or contact your local tamil guru ) .. "eppadi iruntha naan ippadi ayitten " .. To be frank i have been like this throughout my life except my days in college (both the colleges ). Yes, i have fortunate and unfortunate to do my engineering degree from two colleges.. ..now even this is boring..

Talk about the food in cochin... it is teerrribbble for anyone who is a veggie and not a malayali himself.The food at the infopark is a nightmare we have to go through every single day as we have no other choice in the area these people have sprung up the IT park. Thinking about life in cochin .. ya ..nxt the"bus and the driver ".. the bus drivers in kochi would make michael schumacher and alonso proud..these guys fly through the roads with little care for the poor people in the road or inside the bus.

I am really ..really interested in trains. I even joined the indianrailways fan club but didn't like their idea of fun though. They even record the horn,and other sounds from diesel and electric locomotives.. i am not interested in those although some of them are really good. I wanted to know how things really worked at the railways, so i enrolled for inplant training at the ICF in chennai. Those 10 days were great . i am really crazy about trains, i pass my time watching trains come and go at chennai central.. i have been there doing this for so many years now.. every time my dad or brother is coming home i go there atleast one and half hours early and watch all the trains coming in .. ya i am crazy ..

Here it goes

2006-01-04T22:17:00.000+05:30